Seasonal Lights

Winter in Vancouver is long, dark, and rainy, so we are very grateful to the artists and creators that bring unexpected light and colour to our soggy grey-blue city every year.

Lumiere is a great example of precisely this sort of effort, with an 11-year track record of lighting events around downtown Vancouver. We have enjoyed them ever year and its been fun seeing it expand from a few lit up animals in our neighbourhood to a festival like we get now. This year they had an experience that included laser beams and lights on the trees also lighting up dry ice smoke being pumped through the air. The raindrops were similarly picked up by the light, making for a very cool experience.

While experiences are all well and good, we were very relieved to find some of our old favourites again this winter after an over-long hiatus. Although we miss having them in our area, we found Davie, Barclay, Luna, and Stanley scattered around downtown as well as this delightful squirrel (that you would be forgiven for mistaking for a fox)

At the top of our list of unexpected surprises was this dragon. Better still, there were enthusiastic people on hand saying "Would you like to ride the dragon and make it breathe fire?" Its design included a tractor seat beside a lever that would open and close the mouth and emit an audible belch of fire.

Other highlights for the evening were fire dancers, opera singers, bubble blowers, and a general sense that the city had come out of hibernation for a few hours. Not so bad for a dark winter night, and at least we don't have to shovel rain...

FWOOSH!!

Photogrammetry

The latest photography niche I've been dipping my toes into is photogrammetry. I am particularly interested in combining the resulting models with 3d printing for casting and jewelry production. I have been focusing on skulls so far because they are pretty cool and a surprising number of people I know have small collections of them around.

This involves taking numerous photos of an object and feeding them into a special program, which studies the differences in overlapping areas between key parts of each photograph, and interpolates a 3d model based on those differences. It's almost like a panorama in reverse or, for those of you that recall my VFX career, a camera track where the end result is a model rather than a camera path.

Fortunately, we already own most of the kit for such experiments while a turntable and additional lighting were cheap and readily available. The internet is such a bountiful source of information that it was very easy to learn how other people were achieving this goal and copy what has worked for them. Below is a picture of my basis setup which is now 5 for 5 in terms of success.

After knocking out the greenscreen in each photo, 3d Zephyr does some funky analysis to produce a loose point cloud and then a detailed model. There are numerous options in the photogrammetry software space and I picked this program since it combined a internally generated masking (key for turntable techniques) with a reasonable price for a perpetual license (software is increasingly moving to a subscription model and I don't want to pay a monthly bill).

I have found a sweet spot of 144 pictures (4 sets of 36, 2 with the object right side up and 2 more flipped) to provide overlap without taxing my time or attention unduly. This also yields a suitable model when reproduced at a small or medium level (the detail would not be acceptable for 1:1 reproduction, but will look amazing at 1.5" or so.)

The picture below shows the model in 3d Zephyr with each of the original camera positions denoted in blue.  Note that, once the greenscreen is removed, a static camera taking photos of a turntable is comparable to perfectly moving the camera around the skull at an even distance. Handholding the camera would be a nightmare since I use a combination of low ISO and small aperture which requires long exposures to compensate. The skulls aren't going anywhere so there's no hurry.

 Finally, the model is exported as an STL into zbrush. There I patch any breaks or fix areas that are low on detail or high on noise. Since we plan to cast some of these in the future, I also ensure all areas have a minimum thickness, add loops or pins to attach the piece, and add my maker's mark

I'll share more on the casting process when we get to that stage. 3d renders are neat but physical metal is a whole other ballgame of awesome.

Octopus Medallion

 Earlier this year I had designed an octopus-themed medallion for 3d printing and fabrication, but the toll the CPA took on my personal life pushed the actual completion back about 6 months. The original design came together in zBrush, which is an ideal program for creating lumpy creatures covered in tentacles and suckers. The only problem I find working in 3d, which is entirely my fault, is that its easy to put in details that will never print out or to forget just how heavy metal will be in the end.

 As evidence of this error, I printed the original design out at 2-inches across which sounds small when you're just looking at a ruler but comes out pretty beefy in real life. For a piece I had envisaged being printed flat, the 3d printer ultimately came up with a pretty crazy angle to print at. All the support scaffold on the bottom looks pretty neat but is really just cut away in the end.

 The final piece accidentally broke in the casting process since it had a greater volume than originally estimated so two batches of metal had to be poured into the mold in order to complete it. As a result it split down the middle but Andy was able to solder it back into one piece after I cleaned and filed the fragments. I actually quite like the look of it is this way and feel that the break adds character to the look of the piece.

 

The other blessing with 3d design is that its really easy to scale things down and try again, so this size will be a one-off attempt but we're going to try again with a smaller pendant as well as cufflinks and maybe even earring studs if the detail will hold up at such a small size.

Breach

Whenever I have been able to get a spare minute away from studying for the CPA this year, one of my ongoing projects has been doing some whale-themed jewelry design and fabrication with a small group of clever and experienced friends and artisans.

Way back in 2010 I bought a copy of zbrush but forgot all about it when I fell out of love of effects and ran away to be an accountant. All that changed when a friend of mine showcased some of the results you can get by casting 3d prints.

Fortunately, the makers of zbrush have one of the best customer service policies ever, and I was able to get the latest version as ongoing support for my original purchase. Mercifully I had not entirely forgotten how to work the software and after a few evenings of tinkering around I had come up with a pretty pleasing design. After many years of trying to be a jack-of-all-trades and model, texture, rig, animate, render, and composite my projects, it was pretty liberating to only concern myself with form and ignore everything else.

Now, I have made all sorts of 3d objects and animations, but none of them have ever crossed over from the screen into the real world before. So I was totally delighted and blown away when the talented guys at 3dsmith right here in Vancouver were able to realize my design to within 0.3mm as a print in resin.

The machines and process are pretty amazing (and worth a post in their own right some day) but the photo below clearly shows how they start out with a base and build up an armature to support the final result. The layers are printed so finely that you really can't see any banding in the surface of the object as its slowly built from the bottom-up.

3d prints are amazing from a technical standpoint, but resin can't shake the look and weight of cheap plastic. And that's where Andy at Uscochi Manufactory came in to save the day with a combination of patience and very old but proven techniques. The "lost wax method" has been updated for the 21st century by allowing the print to serve in the place of wax which is then burned out after being cased in plaster to create a mold. Once the casting process was complete, I got to step in and learn how to saw, file, sand and buff the piece until it was shiny and complete as you see below.

 

Huge thanks to everyone involved in the process and I really look forward to having the time to do some more work in this vein. After a few years away I really enjoyed reconnecting with my creative skills and collaborating with friends to make some new and totally unique artwork that would survive a hard drive failure.

Indigenous Stonework

 We recently wrote about the Pre-Columbian Gold Museum and the very otherworldly feeling that the artwork of the indigenous Costa Rican people had, and I wanted to follow that discussion up with a handful of pictures of stone sculpture by the same people to further illustrate how awesome and unique their style and cultures were. First off, nearly all of their standing objects had three legs; both their food jars/pots and the stone benches which were the pride of the warrior class. After a lifetime of four-legged chairs, they just seem the most natural and stable way to build, but these people carved tripods for most of their needs for centuries.

 Next up, this brazer in the form of a crocodile. We saw many pieces with this strange motif on the head design and never REALLY understood why it was so prevalent and popular, other than being an amazing piece of work. One bit of text did elaborate that their artists would obsess on a single defining feature for many animals and reduce the prevalence of most other body features down to next to nothing. In the case of the crocodile, it was the ridges down the back which their artists chose to express at the cost of all else. I don't get it, but I really liked these "chainsaw lizards" whenever I saw them.

 I wanted to end with this piece since its the only one I've shared which is representative of a human being and would indicate how the people saw themselves. Warriors were a common theme of sculptures in human form, so we can assume this might have been a famous warrior or hero. It was very popular in their art to depict warriors with severed heads, which must have been bragging rights and symbols of power, but this piece does not include any.

Pre-Columbian Gold Museum

 San Jose has a handful of very nice museums, one of which is dedicated entirely to gold artifacts and crafting techniques of the people who lived in the country prior to the arrival of Columbus. Since all the pieces on display are small and priceless, the museum is sensibly built in a giant vault. The same area also had a great display on the history of money in Costa Rica, but doesn't photograph as well since its all either text or notes on display.

 One thing I found very fascinating about all the native art we saw in Costa Rica is just how different a style everything was. This should not really be any surprise given the artists had a completely different culture and understanding from my own, but all their artwork has a striking and alien quality to it. These artisans used the "lost wax method" where they would carve their piece out of wax, surround it in clay, then melt out the wax and use the impression it left behind to cast their piece. Given the detail of all the pieces and the difficulty (so I read) of working in molten gold, the final results are still stunning hundreds of years later.

 Early indigenous people were fascinated by jaguars, vultures, crocodiles, frogs, and a variety of imaginary gods and creatures, and this was clearly reflected in their art. My inner Englishman was particularly taken with this golden shrimp which reminded me of lobstering off the Northumberland coast.

Kalene & Blair Pt 2: The fun and games

 Blair and Kalene are both talented artists and know how to host a good party, so there was plenty of style and fun to be found at the wedding. The picture below is of a huge banner they had on the side of the barn as well as on a number of the take-aways from the event. Anyone with goggles on their cat is pretty awesome in my book.

 Speaking of awesome books, they had a little kiosk which would record 7 seconds of video and convert it into a flipbook which was printed and ready within minutes. To add to the fun, there were also silly costumes and accessories available. We did a few as a couple and part of a larger group and have to say that it was a brilliant and memorable little take away :)

 And after every wedding comes the dinner, drinks and dancing with a great mix of familiar friends and new faces. We were seated at a table with other visual effects people and a university friend of Kalene's. All in all a thoroughly enjoyable evening spent with the special new couple :)

Outbound Inlaws

 Bevan and Valerie stayed with us for a few days before departing for their Alaskan cruise, which gave us a nice opportunity to have a visit and share and take in a little culture and relaxation. Between leaving work a little early and a whale watching cancellation due to bad weather, we were both able to be around for the majority of their time with us which was very nice. Here they are at the departure gate for their ship.

 Which was an enormous monstrosity of a ship! Apparently their room is midships on the starboard side. I think we'll stick to our small boats and nature tours for a good long time to come, but maybe the day will arrive when we'd like to be pampered in a giant floating hotel ;)

 On a very rainy Saturday before they set out, the four of us took a visit to the art gallery, which had a display called 'Mashup' which was an assortment of modern art, collage, and video editing. That sort of art in particular I find is a healthy split of 50% clever and 50% utter garbage (yes, signing a urinal maybe re-contextualizes the object from its original purpose, but it's a little too nonsense pretentious for me...) The highlight of the gallery was a small "dub room" where they were playing Jamaican music which introduced us to the fun album "Super Ape" by Lee Perry and the Upsetters. The photo below shows the main rotunda with a fancy modern art paint job.

Traditional and Unexpected Glowing Objects in the Neighbourhood

 It's the festive time of year full of holiday cheer, final exams, and bright lights. The first two items have been consuming more than their share of my spare time lately, so we're a little late bringing you this update on the third item. The west end of Vancouver gets some pretty nice lights, as we have mentioned in the past, and this year was no exception.

 The middle of December had a festival called "Lumiere" which featured some nice light sculptures, the highlight of which is the life-size orca sculpture by a Slovakian artist which is covered in tiny LED lights and turned on nightly. It's a very pleasing addition to the area and we're both hoping it becomes a permanent installation.

 But winning the prize hands down for "Most Unexpected Glowing Object in the Neighborhood" was A-Borgg who decided to do a photo shoot in the park near our home on the same night as my work Christmas party. Yep, that is a 9-foot tall robot covered in LED lights. He is available for all your rave party/wedding needs, and apparently has a giant gun that shoots CO2 over the crowd... because of course he does. I love our neighborhood...

Weekend Wanderings

 Now that my exams are all done and summer has arrived, I actually have time to spare to go out and enjoy the city we live in. So while there is still plenty to share about California, I thought I'd mix things up for one week and share a trio of events that I was able to take in recently. Below is the affordable housing protest at the art gallery.

While I do agree that housing in this city is disconnected from reality, the people at the protest didn't really have a clear message of what they wanted or even what they were protesting for (against foreign owners? raise minimum wage? magically make more land?) Vancouverites themselves were clearly uncertain how they felt about the issue as well since there were perhaps 200 people there, but for pro-marajuana day there are thousands in every direction.

 Next up was the Vancouver Comic Arts Festival (Vancaf) which is in its 4th or so year and gets bigger and better every year. They had 2 full exhibition rooms of artists plying their wares and sharing their creativity which is a real boatload of fun to be around. I actually went on both days since one trip can be a little overwhelming and I didn't want to miss anything.

 Finally, I went to a local Show & Shine to see everyones nice vintage toys. Most everything there was a collector's piece from a time when there was a whole lot more chrome and leather going into car design.The highlights were a very nice firebird and a vintage corvette, but I thought the picture below better shows the mix of cars and people.

Hearst Castle Interiors

Much like the exterior, the interior of Hearst Castle was an amazing collection of repurposed European art and furniture. Below is the view of the dining room with a full antique table, mideval tapestries, and engraved ceiling. This photo was taken near the enormous fireplace at one end of the room and apparently as guests stayed longer throughout the week, if they became less interesting to the hosts, they were seated closer and closer to the fire in one of the least subtle dining arrangements ever.

 The billiars room was similarly adorned with antique tapestries and carpets. Its hard to see from the photo below, but the ceiling was being restored to reveal its original etchings and paintwork which had been damaged by decades of smoke and the general passage of time.

 We showed you the Neptune pool in our view of exteriors, but there is also another indoor pool at the far end of the property. To ensure that the "over-the-top" per square foot of the property was maintained, the floor and walls of the indoor pool area were inlaid with gold.

Hearst Castle Exteriors

 William Randolph "Citizen Kane" Hearst was a newspaper magnate back in the 20's when you could spend 30 years building a mansion full of centuries old artworks in the back hills of California and then surround it with exotic imported animals. It was a simpler time when you could ship your wife off to New York so you could live with your mistress, invite the Marx Brothers over for the weekend, and raise zebras in your 240,000 acre backyard.

 Not only did Hearst live in a time when having Charlie Chaplin over for bootlegged rum was a social event and not a fever dream, he also lived when modern antiquities trafficking was called "redecorating". The entire grounds are covered with various greek and roman treasures but I found this Egyptian statue of of Sekmet a particularly unlikely purchase to try and make in the 21st century.

 The "Neptune Pool" occupies a sizeable area with a network of walkways and guest houses around it. Since California is having a water crisis and the pool has a "leak" (of apparently several thousand gallons a day) the area was drained and under repairs, but is still a striking place to have a walk around.

 

The grounds of Hearst Castle are absolutely amazing to explore, and I would heartily endorse anyone wanting to visit to bring a wide-angle or fisheye lens with them as the photographic opportunities are incredible.

Chainmail: Knitting with Metal

I learned some chainmail basics back in the 90s, and thanks to the collective resources of the internet, its never been easier to research new patterns and find suppliers. I hadn't done much for years, but wanted to make Kathryn some new jewelry and found that dealers now sell annodized aluminum rings which are not only easier to work with, but can come in striking colours that were very new to me, as when I started out it was mostly nickel or brass for colour.

 The photo above is of a bracelet I made for Kathryn in what is called "Byzantine Weave" which works really well with alternating colours for a rather striking pattern. The photo below is the belt component of a piece using a pattern called "Helmet Weave" which I only found on the internet and thought was a pretty neat pattern.

 Last of all, this is Dragonscale Weave incorporated as part of a tie I made from a kit for my future graduation/power tie needs. The steel rings are maybe 1/4 inch across and the black rings fit inside them, so the scale of the whole piece is a exaggerated by the power of the macro lens I used to take the picture. I mention that mainly to mention that while the rings here may look sloppy and unclosed, in real life it all looks pretty smooth. This particular piece has about 4,500 rings, and took most of my spare time in the 3rd term of school.

Canada Day Highlights

 Kathryn and I both really enjoy Canada Day and while it has long been a staple of our summers together, we have had a rough time getting our schedules to line up and enjoy it together the last few years. That said, we were delighted to both have the day off this year for a nice outing and visit with friends. The shot below is a fraction of the crowd downtown at the main music stage near the convention centre.

 On the other side of the convention centre we caught a Lumberjack Show and, while it was very similar to the Lumberjack Show at Grouse Mountain, it was never the less a good time out watching some woodworking hijinks and log rolling tomfoolery.

 On our way home from the family-friendly portion of the day we make a quick stop off at Vancouvers subculture festival 'Canabis Day' which happens every year at the Art Gallery and seems to be getting bigger and more popular with each passing year. I always enjoy seeing public art dressed up for holidays and it was fun to see this Rastafarian lion watching over the crowd.

We ended our day off watching the sunset on the beach with a good group of friends and thoroughly enjoyed having a chance to visit with people and relax and have a nice day together as well. Happy 147th Canada!

Pottering Around

I have been potting.  I never really was into ceramics.  They did not grab me archaeologicaly speaking the way bones and lithics did,  but making my own though is a different story.  See what I made.  A Hog butter dish in pink and an assortment of sushi trays.  All hand made and hand glazed by me!  I am currently working on 2 plates and a flower pot.  Future plans include more plant pots, a tooth brush holder and a sun for my mummy!

This is a detail on the lower sushi tray.  A sea horse stamp.  I used ceramic paints on it but they didn't really come out.  Maybe I should have made multiple coats?  But the linear detail still stood out.  If I did it again I would give it a coat of clear glaze to bring out the shine.

My very first one!  I am aware it looks like an evil pig.  It will steal your soul and turn it into butter which I will spread on toast.  Piggy soul toast.  He has a curly tail too (not shown). I love my piggy hog dish.  Friend did the glazing job which turned out lovely. I love his pink body. Inside is blue and white.

So Long Visual Effects!

 Many of you have heard about this for the past 18+ months, but for those of you that don't already know, I am attempting the often dreamed of but rarely executed Plan B of Visual Effects.... going back to school and trying to learn something else to pay the bills while hoping its a step up. My good friend Jason Booth made a demotivational poster much like the one below in 2005 during Superman Returns which was widely accepted as one of the most toxic and badly managed vfx productions of its time.

 Jason moved on to other things not long after but many of us have stuck it out for years. I moved to Vancouver and worked in a bunch of shops, every time thinking that the next one would be the one that had things under control and didn't crush you with overtime and mismanagement. I have since likened it to the scenario of complaining that all the male crackheads you've had as room mates keep stealing your stuff and hopefully living with a female crackhead will solve the problem.

The issue is not the gender, its the fact that you're dealing with a bunch of crackheads.

Beyond the long hours and the unstable working routine, the average compositor workstation no longer appeals to me and seems to get darker by the year. The picture below is without exaggeration what most companies are like these days. Staring into a bright monitor in a black windowless room for 9-14 hours a day. Blech.

Not that VFX was all bad. I met some great friends, learned a lot of cool computer tricks and have my name attached to dozens of movies with varying levels of watchability, but its time for me to have a change. It was a fun job in my 20s, a frustrating job in my 30s and not something I want to entertain in my 50s. All the very best to my many friends that continue to stick it out in the dog-eat-dog business, you're doing great work. It just needs to be 3% less cyan and feel a little less janky... and its cut.... ;)

Alert Bay

I have always wanted to visit Alert Bay (Kwak'wala: 'ya̱lis) on Cormorant Island.  Over-rated Emily Carr paintings that don't do it justice aside, it is a lovely ocean-side community.  We did not dock but were able to view it from a boat after our dive.  Looks like a fantastic place to go ashore to stay or camp. 

It is located in traditionally Kwakwaka'wakw territory and post of the inhabitants are of this First Nation. The influence is reflected in the lovely ceder canoes that occasionally dotted the docks that ran the long towns length. 

The old residential school is in the back ground of the below photo. I don't believe it is being currently used for anything but I am not sure.  Alert Bay is home to the world's largest totem pole and also sports an inspiring collection. The totem poles are mostly in one area of the town but every once in a while there is another. My favorite thing about traditionally situated totem poles as that just as the trees they came from and the people who created them they eventually decay, fall over and go back to the land and are reabsorbed in the soils so you would never know they were there.