my website working again

My personal website www.jakubkrompolc.net was blocked due to malware thread, but is fixed now and back online!

fantasy fox anatomy

Nice rigging analysis of a fox fantasy character :))

UK tax breaks on animation

For anyone working in UK animation industry, this is of course good news. It could be inspiration for any other government who wants to help their VFX or animation industry going. It is tough competition today with jobs being done more globally.


http://www.cgchannel.com/2012/03/uk-government-announces-animation-tax-incentives/

look back

(from old Softimage, ILM, 1993)

Real Steel

I just watched Real Steel on DVD. Nice movie for kids about robots. I was just a bit dissapointing that in Making Of Bots, there was only mentioned creating "practical effects" animatronic robots by Legacy Effects (ex-Stan Winston studio). Fair enough, it was great work, but no word about vendor of most robot fx shots, Digital Domain. It was nice to find out that lead rigger was Peter Shipkov! He`s also main developer of SOUP Maya plugin, consisting of different useful nodes for particle dynamics and mesh deformation. Good to mention as well, that Real Steel got Oscar nomination for visual effects. It`s another movie done with hybrid visual effects on set using Simulcam system that projects 3d assets real time over live action footage. Same system was used on Avatar.

Brave concept art video

Here`s more Pixar Brave concept art seen in this video

JOB: 3d animation teacher

Teacher for 2d and 3d animation software is needed ASAP in Bratislava, Slovakia at Paneuropian University.
If you`re interested please contact Mrs doc. Jana Grecnar, ArtD via email jangrecnar@centrum.sk or call  (Slovakia extension +421) 905200097.

Gift of the Night Fury

I really liked this christmas short movie from DreamWorks (based on How to Train Your Dragon). Not sure how long it was online in full length, found it by accident on youtube.

CG Student Awards

There is a new website for a computer graphics competition, CG Student Awards. Anyone recently studying university or course with a demoreel showing his best work can enter a competition with a chance to win an internship at one of the high-end visual effects studios or a license of professional CGI software like Houdini or ZBrush. Every competitor will get 1 month subscription for Digital Tutors and Slash Media magazine.


Here is an interview with one of the Studio Internship Prize winners from 2010 who had a chance to work at Double Negative on John Carter visual effects postproduction. Read about Elliot Stammer`s unique experience which was a great way for him to enter the industry.

15000/300

To this date this blog had over 15.000 visitors checking some of its 300 posts starting from 2008. Thank you everyone for dropping by and I hope you will find it interesting as well in the future. Best,

Jakub

Pacific Rim movie

New Guillermo del Toro movie plot sounds interesting:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1663662/

Doom 4 alleged leaks

UPDATED 12/03/07 >> GamesOnNet published an article saying ID software confirmed Doom4 leaks as authentic. As apparently many assets are taken from Rage library, I first thought it`s fake Photoshop work. Now it takes different sense - to be able to faster populate and "sketch" the look of the levels, the team is probably reusing Rage assets. I suppose these are placeholders to be changed later.
Based on the destroyed cities environments, Doom4 action would take place on our planet. I wouldn`t be against a military moon base, but the designers probably want to take different direction from Doom3, more similar to Ghost City from Rage (which looked brilliant and was the most scary from all Rage locations). Anyway it`s too early for any conclusions.


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Recently a couple of images and even soundtracks appeared online that some speculate to be leaks from Doom4 game, a franchise of a classic id software title with an amount of interest from gaming fans higher then previous waiting for Rage. The artwork is from portfolio of a former id software artist Thao Le, according to a game server gamebandits.com.

Here is page with high res destructed building models:

http://www.dsogaming.com/news/doom-4-over-170-assets-leaked-by-games-ex-artist-four-music-tracks-revealed/

Here is more screenshots with game engine environments and also character assets, which some could be made for another game, soldiers could be Doom4:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-02-29-more-leaked-doom-4-art


There are also some music tracks. This time courtesy of Mick Gordon, game score composer, again according to gamebandits.com it could be from Doom4. The tracks sound like work in progress. It`s also available on youtube:

I`m not sure what is this all about. As both leaks appeared in the same time it might be part of the marketing strategy to measure the interest of the gaming community.
Anyway, I would expect first official announcement and imagery not sooner then august this year at Quakecon, Texas.

Maya nHair demo

This is demo of another new Maya feature under development at Autodesk. No announcement if this would be released with Maya 2013. It`s looking very cool!

Maya file reference demo

Autodesk has published this demo of their current work on file referencing. They also gave statement that they cannot confirm new Maya upcoming feature.