Haven't posted anything for a couple of days due to school and work being fairly crazy. Oh well that's what you get for having no days off. For today's post, I was thinking about what I should put up. I have a couple of houdini one day projects I have been working on but I really felt because this blog is so young I would explain a little bit more about what I hope to accomplish with my career. Hopefully by writing it down it will keep me honest and actually keep me on track to getting things done. So this will be the first post in a series about some of the people I follow and a little about how they influence me.
GMUNK aka. Bradley Munkowitz:
In 2010 I was 21 years old and a Jr in college. Like most college students, it took me a while to piece together exactly what I was supposed to be doing with my life. I spent a while in an engineering program which didn't encourage my need to create, so I switched to a more creative major, computer graphics. I was enjoying my self quite a lot. Being an engineering school they really had no idea what computer graphics meant so they just threw everything together that they thought should be computers and pretty pictures. I had courses in web design, graphic design, CAD modeling, technical drawing, ect... But it wasn't till my Jr year that I really felt like I had found something. About a year into the program they allow you to start taking more specialty courses, a few of which were in Autodesk Maya. To me this was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Looking back I really had no idea what I was doing but I enjoyed it and wanted to learn as much about 3D and what it could do as I could.
Fast forward to December of 2010, I had been doing 3d related things in Maya and AfterEffects for 6-9 months at this point so I could maneuver fairly well but only having 1 modeling course and an animation course or 2 really wasn't cutting it for me and I felt like I needed something else. Like I was missing something. So for winter break I went home. Goofed off with some old high school friends, and being the nerdy kids in high school of course we decided to go see the new Tron: Legacy movie.
As a life long 'bad' scifi fan, I loved this movie. Love is probably the wrong word. Adored might be closer but that's not important. The visuals were fantastic. The continuation of the idea of being 'In the computer' fascinated me.
The thing that stuck with me the most was the UI design. I am obsessed with moving images. Especially subtle ones. I'm not a big character animation guy. Sure I can appreciate character/creature animation but there is something about shapes and movement that really does get me hot and heavy. Things like short .gifs or Cinemagraphs I tend to collect and horde away on hard drives that tend to follow me everywhere. The difference about this UI design and others I had seen in movies up to that point was the detail, care, and animation put into it. Not to mention IT WAS IN 3D! WHAT!? It was extremely well integrated into the movie along with other effects even. It fit the style of the movie perfectly and I knew that I had to know more. Over the next month or so I looked into who was actually responsible for the effects of the movie. I knew that Digital Domain was in charge but who were the people that actually did the UI and fx? Finally, I found them.
In charge of the UI/Hologram elements of Tron: Legacy was someone that went by the name GMUNK. Real name Bradley Munkowitz. I spent more hours than I care to admit going through his work and the work of the others on his team in the coming months. Reading through their synopsis of the work they did on Tron and other movies they did. Finding interviews they had done on the side about their design aesthetic. Some others on this team will get their own posts probably. As for GMUNK please check out his work if you haven't. He labels himself now a days as a design director and mainly works on smaller projects and commercials but all of his stuff is top notch and definitely has a unique style that is totally his. It's ok I'll wait. Here I'll even make it easier.
Taken a look? Good. Now back on track. From his work and his teams work, I knew I wanted to go back and learn VFX. Explosions and water sims are cool for sure but there is just something about UI animation especially when paired with 3d techniques that really calls me to learn more. So over the next few years, I finished my undergrad, did some interviews at VFX/Animation companies and really looked for a place where I could learn VFX. Only a few Maya courses wern't gona cut it and I was told so on multiple occasions. I decided to move from the midwest out to Los Angeles and started going to school (sigh*) to learn VFX. I have learned a lot about the 3d pipeline over the last few years. Getting my fundamentals of design and film more polished as well as learning what I do and don't like in production. I am graduating in the next couple of weeks and hope to FINALLY make some real time (not just a day here and there) to dive into some of my FX interests and carve out my own style and design.