Wallester T. Dog

Wally deciding what piece of great literature to tackle next: the abridged Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, or perhaps The Winter of Our Discontent.

Study in Black and White, Somewhere in Idaho

A well photographed building in northeast Idaho. At one time probably a school house, now just a temptation for folks intent on disregarding the posted No Trespassing sign. Also, it is probably haunted.

Audi R8 Commercial

Below is the completed spec commercial for the Audi R8, more an opportunity to practice animation and rendering in Maya than anything else. The car is modeled in Maya 2008, using primarily NURBS surfaces, with the occasional polygon thrown in for good measure. Most of the textures are procedural textures that do not require a detailed texture map. The car itself was typically rendered in three passes in Maya:

1. Color / Beauty pass - mental ray with Final Gathering, etc. turned on.
2. Occlusion pass - mental ray default rendering layer.
3. Depth pass - different techniques depending on the shot.

Further animation was done in the Maya software renderer. All elements were then imported into After Effects, where some fine tuning took place, lens flares, etc. Final layback and export with audio was via Final Cut Pro.

Below is the 'HD' embedding, and below that, the normal embedding for slower connections.

Deviating From The Script

It was a silent night, at least initially - calm - but bright.  Much brighter, in fact, than the average night.  The local radio had mentioned that the full moon would appear larger and brighter - something about the rotation of the earth.  The radio also mentioned the influx of visitors from afar, drawn by the glowing sky, however the radio failed to mention the exact rhyme and reason for at least one of the visitors.  Peace, or conquest, it motives were up in the air, crackling with static electricity.

Little Girl With Bunny

From a collection of old photographs in and around the Teton Valley in Idaho, taken sometime in the early 20th century, probably between 1905-1915. This photo in particular is a portrait of a little girl in a pioneer dress, holding a bunny.  The chair looks a little more modern than the above time bracket, but not by much. 

Fractured Head

One from the archives. To see more photos from Florence, Italy, visit this photo gallery.