2004 YEAR END REVIEW 01

The end of 2003 seemed to show great promise going into 2004. I got a new LCD monitor and computer equipment, an all digital orchestral library and other sound equipment, and I even created a new skeleton rig for my Lightwave 3D characters. I also wrote this:

I can tell you of a certainty that next year will see the creation of my first one-man feature Occult Salvation. It may not get finished next year. It will be a true feature at the best possible quality, thus taking time to do right, but it will get past a simple trailer!

Needless to say, not even a trailer has been done on this project.

It gets better though. Because of the demise of Westwood Studios, I wrote this:

If I hadn't made a concrete decision never too return to working at studios before this, the decision was made then. I still stand by that decision to this day. I will never, under any circumstances, return to working in that environment.

Well, I didn't stand by that long. I did go back into that environment and there found myself working on this project:

Yet another remake of Lost in Space, this time directed by the famous John Woo. Of course, like so many other major Hollywood projects I get involved with, this show, according to this site right here, has been entirely scrapped. More on that later.

I will break this review into four sections each covering three months of 2004. This time I will even bring out some details that may not have surfaced during the original posts. You'll notice a certain theme coming up during this, even based on what I wrote at the end of 2003. Something I continually wrote that I should do, but have not done. That will be the focus of these reviews.

Let's get to the actual review:

This year began with the creation of this character. Immediately after, I found myself in Marina Del Rey at what was called a "workers meeting" with many pastors from my church. Now I had never been even remotely religious up until very recently; however, the more I studied pyramids, archaeology, ancient civilizations and symbols, history and prophecy, everything changed. So here I was in a meeting in a beautiful hotel as we talked about what could be accomplished in ministry over the next year. My focus was on using new media technologies in the effort. I wrote this:

Man this reminds me of the time spent in China, on high floors, looking out over incredible views. Granted, back then it was the beautiful city of Shanghai with that great harbor. This time it's the ocean. If I was at my computer I would check to see if I wrote something on Q's old blog about the hotels there. (*whispers* I hate to say it, but this hotel, nice as it is, is not quite up to the level of those I stayed in over there.)

Because of some of the great imagery seen there, including a beautiful moon over the ocean with seemingly painted clouds, I wished I had a digital camera, something I have yet to purchase to this day. After that short stay in Marina Del Rey, I created another character, and then I wrote this:

I will soon be wrapping up the old, starting with the World of Hartz manga. I have one final chapter to do for the book. Now if I was a Japanese artist like Masashi Kishimoto of Naruto fame, this would be a week's task. I may not do it that fast, but I don't expect to spend all month on it either. I will do the "name" for this new chapter tomorrow and Friday. All of it. Over the next week I will finalize the pages and call this book in the can. I mean, a whole year to do one manga. Let's be realistic. Still, I will not get into that. That was last year. I will wrap it up.

Yes, I was still finishing up Hartz. So something was getting done, but I also wrote this:

I don't yet have solid production schedules for my new projects. I don't know how long they will take, but they will be pursued diligently and you will see constant updates of new characters, images and trailers as great changes overtake this site in the coming months.

As you know, that didn't quite happen.

As the evil Disney closed their Florida studio and offshoots sprung up, Sony's Playstation II gained a 66% market share and I was diligently thinking about not repeating the mistakes of 2003 and getting Occult Salvation into a booming DVD market. I wondered what would happen if an indie artist found a way to make a feature in six months. January ended with Pixar quitting talks with Disney over renewing thir contract for distribution.

February began with me planning to finally wrap up Hartz. While Disney had more troubles with Pixar, I decided to upgrade my music equipment to the 21st century and go USB on everything. I also took notice of what Shoji Kawamori was doing with Macross Zero!

By the middle of the month I finally saw the trailer for the all cel shaded CGI movie Appleseed. While it impressed on one level, I wrote this:

Now I will let it be known up front. I prefer traditional. Even though I use 3D techniques, and even that has lessened due to Mirage and a WACOM tablet, I do not want it to ever look 3D or seem to have any aspect of 3D to it. Still, this looks to be a very interesting project.

I handed in the final pages of Hartz and then, borrowing someone's digital camera, I started taking pictures. I began to realize how digital photos could be integrated into my work for use as 3D textures and matte painting elements to vastly improve quality and speed of doing higher quality movies. I wanted to get a professional camera of my own as this was a "point and shoot" model. The month ended with me doing more research on ancient Mesopotamia.

In March, I redesigned this webpage and inplemented the famous (or is it infamous?) contact form which spared me from the over 100 SPAm mails I received daily. It is around that time I began to totally lose interest in any single software package being "the best" and thought to look at all tools for whatever was their worth in getting the job done. March also saw the beginning of Mind Animation!

In reference to how it made doing anime like digital music, I wrote:

In doing anime, my keyboard is using Lightwave 3D models. My tracks are the multiple layers in Mirage for compositing. I could conceivably have room to experiment, calling nothing final until I deem every layer to be what I want. If have models, and even they don't have to be final if you think about it, I can start animating something right now, this instant. I am talking about right from my head, where this is the storyboard or animatic. I can then refine, even replacing entire layers with something better until a scene is complete.

I think this will make the process truly fun again. I think this will enable me to dive right into something and just be creative. Having something to tweak and fix is much better than sitting around thinking continually.

These experiments led me to totally refine and update my 3D character models for high definition. This was probably some of the best progress I had made. One one expect that with this new found freedom I would go right into production on that feaure I talked about at the end of 2003. That was not the case though. I did do a single shot on a feature project, but I then moved on to something else.

The idea was to protect from burnout by doing two vastly different projects at the same time. I would learn later that was not the best road to getting a serious project done.

More to come...

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