2006 is on the doorstep...

2005 is almost over. When I look back, many good and bad things happened in this year. Maybe there were more bad things than good things. So I'm really looking forward to next year. There will be certainly a big change in my life. I'm very curious about that change.

Some fellow students of the German Film School will come over to Hamburg tomorrow. New Year's Eve will be fun and we probably celebrate all night long.
A Happy New Year everyone!

White Alstertal

Christmas was warmer this year. We had about 8C° but it was getting colder the last two days. It is below 0C° again and it's freezing. I went for a walk through the Alstertal today. It's a trail beside the Alster river, very beautiful cause everything is covered by snow.
I was lucky to see a woodstock which you can see in the picture on the left.
There were also some ducks and swans chilling in the snow.
It was very cold....but fun ^^v

Japanese Class Reunion 2005

Wooow that was so amazing! Just came back from the Class Reunion of the Japanese school . We used to go there every saturday here in Germany. We know each other for more than 20years now! It was so awesome to talk about the stuff we did together back at school. Damn we were some big trouble makers ^^
The most surprising thing was that we met at 3PM and talked until 11:30PM non stop. The time was running so fast...and we laughed so much. I'm pretty sure I'll have sore muscle in my cheeks and belly tomorrow...

Here is a little comparison. The upper picture was taken about 20 years ago when we were in the first grade. The second was taken today.

It was so much fun! I miss you guys already ^^ we have to do that again sometime!

More Reunions....

Christmastime is great cause everyone comes back to the roots. Even if some friends are working in foreign countries, they probably come back to Christmas to spend the Christmasholidays with their family. So it's the best time for all kinds of reunions.
Tomorrow I'll meet my classmates from the japanese school I used to go every saturday here in Germany. Some guys I haven't seen for a very long time. It'll be fun!

And to enhance the reunion mood, here's todays painting.

Class Reunion 2005

I graduated highschool in 2000 and yesterday we had a class reunion. We were about 90 graduates and around 30 came to the reunion last night.
It was really fun to see all the familiar faces again and some people I hardly recognized by the first look.
I spend the whole night talking and my food which I ordered got cold ^^;

It was so interesting to hear about the different paths of each one of us. Some were completely unexpected. Definetly the most interesting class reunion we had until now.

Many thnx to the organizer.
It was a great event!

And Merry Christmas everyone!

Christmas Card

This year's Christmascard! I did a combo of 3d and 2d this time.
Some polys in Maya, some brushstrokes in Photoshop.

Red Pillow

Here's another one.
Trying different styles is fun! ^^v

Mortal Kombat vs Street Fighter 2

A friend send me this link today!
Wooooooooow this is so awesome! Since I'm a huge Street Fighter fan, I don't have words for this awesome piece of work! I watched it several times already ^^;
A must see for both Mortal Kombat and StreetFighter fans!

PROXICIDE you are my Hero!


You can check out part one and two and an interview with PROXICIDE(creator) here.
Mortal Kombat VS Street Fighter
Now sit back and enjoy the movies ^^
The flash files are around 5MB, so if you have a slow internet connection it'll take some time to load.

Woman in Black Dress

Today's sketch...

Traffic Light with Countdown ^^

Christmas is near and Hamburg down town is full of people. I went christmas shopping with a friend of mine on friday....damn we walked a lot. My feet still hurt.
In down town at the subwaystation 'Gaensemarkt' in Hamburg, we have a traffic light with a countdown. You can see how long you will have to wait until you can cross the road. I talked to a friend about this, and we thought this feature is completely useless...but I realized when I crossed this road yesterday that you can see the countdown display from a greater distance. So you can adjust your walking speed to the countdown and you won't have to stop walking when you cross the road. ^^
I think it's not necessary to spend thousands of dollars for this little installation (which they did) but it was fun playing with the timing...

Anyways, I went on working on my animation. (still animating...)
So nothing special going on this weekend. But I just painted a little fanart of King Kong.
Time to go to bed...

The Orkbabies and the Golden Panda

The Animated Short "The Orkbabies" which I created with 5 other students at the German Film School made the first place at the 8th Sichuan TV Festival in the category "Best Animated Short Film (3D)" and was awarded with the "International Golden Panda".

"The Orkbabies" is a "Lord of the Rings" parody. The basic idea was to create a pilot for a 3d series. The production time was about 5 months. We were six people working on this short. When the short was finished and we watched it for the first time, we were a little disappointed cause we wanted to create a funny entertaining short but it wasn't funny anymore ^^;
Anyways I'm still proud that I could work with very talented people and that we managed to keep the deadline. And I think it's still a good short from the visual point of view. It's just the story that didn't work out as we expected.
So I was really surprised when I got the news about the award.
Many thanks to the jury!

USB Christmastree

Since Christmas is near, I searched for my USB christmastree. Now it's glowing on my external hard drives.... ^^;
It changes colors between green, pink, white, red and blue. Wonderful isn't it? ^^

King Kong

So I went to the movies the other day to watch King Kong and I must admit I was amazed by the believability of the Kong character. He was so real that I forgot that he is a computer generated character. By far the most realistic cg character I've ever seen.


The flow of the story was a bit slow at the beginning and some parts where too exaggerated but these are the only things I could criticize. The movments of Kong where so ape like with a lot of emotions. The Animation was fantastic.
I also liked the cast.


I think what Peter Jackson has pulled out of the King Kong story is really amazing and the movie shows us the next step in Visual effects.

Birdwatching

Witch

I'm animating again and hardly find some time to paint.
Here is a little sketch before bedtime. I wanted to paint something different from usual.
A witch. ^^

Just Amazing....

Found this link in my lightpaintings thread at sijun.com.
The most coolest light paintings I've ever seen! It's a must see!

Click Here
(marcromedia shockwaveplayer is required)

BionicleWars

When I was browsing through my files I found this little project we did back at the German Film School. We had to create 3 Buildings from scratch using wood, metal, plastic and all differnt kinds of glues. I build the tall blueish skyscraper with my buddy Felix. We had a lot of fun working with real materials. It was a nice alternation to the digital 3D stuff we were doing.



Later on we used those models to create a little stop motion animation using a custom made motion control of our teacher. We brought the LEGO Bionicles to life. ^^
They have really fexible joints and were comfortable to animate.
It is only a tiny little project but we had a lot of fun creating it.
Thnx Moritz for creating this nice little clip!

click on the image below to view "BionicleWars" or right click and save target as for download.

LightSkaters and LightBreakers

Today's lightpainting session before bedtime

I tried to paint with my eyes closed this time. And I have to say it's way more comfortable to paint blind, cause you don't get confused by the reflecting light of the walls. You can focus better on the line placement. When I do more lightpaintings I will do them blind from now on.

Some LightSkaters and LightBreakers ^^

Wacom Intuos3 Wide

Finally Wacom has released a 16:10 Graphic tablet.
Really cool. Now you can work easily on a widescreen or on Dual screen without changing to the mouse mode. I'm using a single screen right now but I guess I'll get this tablet as soon as I work on Dual screen again.

Pixar's new "Cars" trailer

Just watched the new "Cars" trailer. I like it better than the first one but I'm still wondering how it'll turn out.

ToyStory, ToyStory2, Bug's Life, Monsters Inc, Finding Nemo and The Incredibles where all amazing. I saw them all many times. The Incredibles is one of my favorites.
But how will be Cars? I'm really curious about it. But we'll have to wait another half year T.T
It's great that you can watch those movietrailers at apple.com in 1080p. 1080p simply rox!

If you haven't seen the new cars trailer yet, check it aout here

The Hunt

This is a painting I did for the Master and Servant 2D challenge quiet a while ago. The painting got the 3rd prize and I won all analog gnomon training DVD's I mentioned earlier in my blog. I worked 3weeks on this painting and I'm really happy how it turned out.

The story:
In a land before time only the greatest hunters of the Gorgoth tribe were able to ride trolls. To gain the highest rank of their caste they had to engage one of those savage beasts in a bold fight and cut of its horns. By doing this they broke the troll's pride and thereby became the master of it.

Here you can see the first hunt the young master hunter Tholz does on his recently tamed troll. They have been roaming the the coppice all morning, when Tholz suddenly spots a deer herd grazing on a clearing. Avidly he gives the command to attack the deer, pulls the reins and draws a spear from his quiver. The troll obeys his masters order and rushes forward. The ground trembles under the heavy steps of the troll and the deer scatter in all directions trying to escape the danger. The master hunter picks an especially chunky one from the herd and commands his troll to go after it. Although the deer is quite fast the troll easily manages to catch up with it after a few seconds.
Tholz raises his stance and prepares for his throw, trying to get a steady aim on the deer. But suddenly the troll alters cause. It spotted a small white rabbit bounding happily through the forest.
'ARRRR' Tholz pulls the reins and screams: 'THE DEER YOU FOOL! GO FOR THE DEER!'

Waiting For The Sun

It's getting colder and colder over here in Germany...I have to wear couple of cloth layers ^^;
I have to scratch the car windows every time...and it's getting dark very early.

Anyways here is a little pic done for the daily sketchgroup on cgtalk. The topic matched perfectly with my feelings right now....'waiting for the sun' ^^