The program’s loaded with options for specular blooms, rays, and other effects. From its demo video it looks like Glare offers all the fine tuning you could ask for: you can view and adjust which highlight levels should get the effect and view those selections and their effects either alone, or overlaid on the source image(s).

Using a stand alone application like this means that the effects can be tweaked and changed at any time after rendering – nice! – and because the program will work on image sequences you can add blooms to whole animations without having to re-render a thing.

I’m thinking about renderings here, but I guess it might not be obvious that this works equally well with video footage.

The final bits of the demo video show some of the possibilities for compositing Glare’s edited frames with the original frames of an animation.

At US $50 it looks like a great tool to add to the toolbox.

(Via Max Underground)

Technorati Tags: computer animation, 3d, computer graphics, rendering, specular bloom, post processing, compositing, glare, Guillermo M Leal Llaguno

So when Harry’s chest and waist were getting pulled back and forth between warring bones I extracted some splines from his model, skinned those splines to parts of his skeleton, and added the splines to the bones that control Harry himself.

Then I adjusted the influence of those splines to even out the skinning and lock down the chest and waist lines – which are structural parts of his clothing, among other things.

This is a lot like what I’ve lately been doing with faces. The 3DS Max UI does a lousy job of displaying the splines’ envelopes, but since I can see the results on the model that’s not a huge problem.

The biggest downside seems to be that if you intend to edit the splines, as I’m doing in my faces, it’s not a great technique for animation because it’s hard to keyframe the shapes of the splines*. I guess you could create morph targets for the splines, which is a thought, but I so rarely do animation that I’m not worrying about that for now.

One reason this might be nice for animation, though, is that you can use the splines to simulate the way surfaces like skin or cloth slide over the more rigid surfaces they cover. That’s sort of what’s happening here already.

*Oh, there might be a way, but I don’t seem to be clever enough to work it out.

Technorati Tags: computer animation, 3d, thrilling tales of the downright unusual, character skinning, splines

In one way it doesn’t matter. I mean, we’re going to reach the finish line at the same time, regardless of what I do first. But on the other hand I know that I need to start posting the Clockwork Book stories as soon as possible and all this character setup (a lot of which is for the other story, Part Two of The Toaster With TWO BRAINS) isn’t helping me to start posting those any earlier.

But I do hate to break my streak.

If I could just build ‘em, I’d be pretty happy. But I have to skin the characters to their skeletons and that, as I think I’ve mentioned, is a task that I really don’t enjoy. Probably because I’m not that good at it.

Along the way I’ve worked out a completely different way to skin their faces. It’s a little wonky, but it’s giving me much better results. So I also know that at some point I need to go back to my recurring characters and reskin their faces the new way. Oh joy.

I think what I need is servants. Though I just got a little nervous when I remembered that there’s a name for servants that you don’t need to pay. Oops. Okay, what I need is a Faithful Robot Character Setter Upper, or, as I have just decided we ought to say it, an FRCSU. Does Roomba do that?

Technorati Tags: thrilling tales of the downright unusual, retropolis, harry roy, retro future, art, illustration, imaginary robot accomplices

My Thrilling Tales character work continues: here we see the skinned version of our friend Al Bowlly, rocketeering maintenance man and window cleaner of the Future That Never Was.

I’m banking several new characters in advance right now, so that I won’t have to grind to a halt when I’m cranking out the illustrations for the next Thrilling Tales. Well. I know that I’ll be grinding to a halt anyway, as I build new sets and whatnot. But I won’t grind to a halt for these, anyway.

Next up: Harry Roy, in progress, and miscellaneous officers of the Retropolis Air Safety and Astronautics Association. I’m getting there.

Since the air outside the Secret Laboratory isn’t steaming any more I find myself wishing that I could sit out on the porch and write… with something other than pen and paper. Someday maybe I can do something about that.

Technorati Tags: thrilling tales of the downright unusual, retropolis, al bowlly, rocket pack, jet pack, toaster with TWO BRAINS, retro future, retro futuristic

Among the many things I didn’t know is that the Rocketship was also briefly installed at the NASA Ames Center as part if their Yuri’s Night celebration (in case you don’t know, that’s NASA’s very sportsmanlike recognition of Yuri Gagarin). Alan’s blog has a video of the ship’s raising there.

And as we see in these photos the San Francisco installation has added a "Rocket Stop" kiosk so that travelers can tap their toes waiting for the next rocket ship to take off. That’s a nice addition since liability issues are sadly keeping the ship’s doors closed for the duration of its stay.

If you get tired of waiting for the rocketship to take off, it should be a short walk up to the Maxfield Parrish mural in the Pied Piper Bar of the old Sheraton Palace Hotel. That’s at Third and Market… if we can trust my memory.

Technorati Tags: raygun gothic rocketship, rocket ship, retro future, retrofuturism, retro futuristic, sculpture, installation

August is nearly half over and here’s my first post of the month. I’ve been very busy with working on the assets for the next Thrilling Tales stories, in the mornings, and fleeing down the stairs of the Secret Laboratory to escape from the heat, in the afternoons. Or anyway that’s how it often happens. By late evening it’s sometimes safe to come back up here.

In other news, yesterday I mailed off the last of the rewards for the Thrilling Tales Kickstarter project. I should probably write up my Kickstarter experience sometime soon (before I forget). It was an interesting journey and I learned some things that I expected to learn, and a few that were a complete surprise.

By the way, if your name is Michael Church or Alain Cayrol, please get in touch with me through the Kickstarter messaging system. I still have no idea where to send your stuff.

You can see from the illustrations here that I’m not doing the sensible thing. The sensible thing, you see, would be to concentrate on the Clockwork Book stories first because I need to start posting them while I work on the Toaster With TWO BRAINS. It probably wouldn’t surprise anyone who knows me to see that I’ve failed the sensibility test.

My brain likes to bounce back and forth between the two, anyway, and since that seems to be working for me I’m not going to impose any more order on it. I won’t need to exercise that kind of discipline until I’m done with one or both of the scripts. I’m thinking about writing the scripts for both Part Two and Part Three of The Toaster With TWO BRAINS, so that I can start on Part Three as soon as Part Two’s done. We’ll see if I’m sensible enough to follow through on that idea. Hmmm.

Technorati Tags: thrilling tales of the downright unusual, retropolis, rocket pack, jet pack, interactive fiction, retro science fiction, sci fi, pulp, illustration

IDW has recently released both a recolored anthology of the Rocketeer stories and the line art “Artist’s Edition” of Dave Stevens’ original inks.

I had my doubts about the former – which, it turns out, has been well received – but I think that the latter sounds like a great insight into the original work.

This latest news is that IDW will be publishing a limited series of new, short Rocketeer stories by a wide range of Pretty Big Names:

Dunbier said “The Rocketeer” will be a standard-sized comic with three stories per issue plus pin-ups. “We’re going to start out with a four issue miniseries and then see where we go from there. There’s some pretty decent people who are lending their talents to it so far.”

Those “decent people” include Mike Allred, Kurt Busiek, John Cassaday, Darwyn Cooke, Michael Golden, Gene Ha, Michael Kaluta, Garry Leach, Bruce Timm, Bill Willingham, and more. “Mike Allred is writing and drawing his, Kurt Busiek is writing a story for Michael Kaluta, John Cassaday and Darwyn Cooke are both writing and drawing their stories,” Dunbier said. “There will be some pin-ups by Geoff Darrow, Art Adams, Jeff Campbell, Mike Mignola, a bunch of different guys.”

(Scott Dunbier, Editor, via Comic Book Resources)

I have so much affection for Stevens’ work that any announcement like this makes me squirm a little. But I also know that the names in that list probably have at least as much affection for The Rocketeer as I do – particularly Kaluta, who had a hand in some of the original stories. So I feel a bit optimistic about the announcement.

I’ll be interested to see if they continue the direction Stevens took – in which our hero Cliff Secord runs into pulp heroes without knowing who they are (Doc Savage, The Shadow).

But the main ingredient that made The Rocketeer iconic, and prevented us from ever seeing more of the stories, was Dave Stevens himself. His high standards for the work made it excellent, on the one hand, and impossible, on the other. By making it more possible, will we lose the excellence? Time will tell.

A “substantial portion” of profits from the series will be donated to Hairy Cell Leukemia research. That’s the form of Leukemia that Stevens fought for several years and which eventually led to his early death in 2008.

This is one of those Comic-Con days that’s full of news releases that often have nothing to do with comics, but have emanated anyhow from the singularity that is San Diego. Among the news is a little bit about Jon Favreau’s filmed take on the “Cowboys and Aliens” books with Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig. What I really like about this one is that Favreau is again relying heavily on practical effects with just a bit of digitality to enhance them. I say “again” because before he shot to everyone’s notice with Iron Man he directed Zathura – a film I think ought to have done much better – and Zathura made brilliant use of practical effects and miniatures. I’ve sort of expected his blockbusters might have changed things and I’m really glad to see him do another film with that same old school approach.

And that led me to think about Hollywood’s endless remakes, and the fact that although I have a soft spot for Disney’s Rocketeer movie…. it wasn’t actually that good a movie and it certainly wasn’t the movie that the Rocketeer deserved. So as of today, I’ve decided that what I would really like to see would be a Jon Favreau Rocketeer film – heavy on practical effects with just a digital gloss. Like everything imaginary, it would be awesome.

I meant it about Zathura. Go watch it.

Technorati Tags: the rocketeer, comics, dave stevens, michael william kaluta, idw publishing

The rest of the news isn’t bad. It’s all good. Really!

But as I explained in the project description I set a funding goal that I believed we could reach.

The actual expense of producing the next chapter of The Toaster With Two Brains and the non-interactive Clockwork Book stories will be quite a bit more than that. I’ll be making up the difference myself, of course, but as far as the Kickstarter project goes… well, the more the merrier.

So if you’ve been thinking about pledging to support the project in return for books, prints, exclusive t-shirts and so on, well, this is your last chance to pile on.

The pledge drive finishes at midnight, U.S. Pacific Time.

Technorati Tags: thrilling tales of the downright unusual, retropolis, interactive fiction, multiple choice, art, design, illustration, retro future, retrofuturistic, raygun gothic, science fiction, space fantasy

Mister Doortree’s time traveling scanner does it again with a collection of sixty-five covers from Famous Fantastic Mysteries magazine, featuring art by Virgil Finlay, Frank R. Paul, Lawrence Sterne Stevens, Raphael DeSoto and Norman Saunders.

Famous Fantastic Mysteries ran from 1939 to 1953. I have a particular soft spot for this magazine because it was the original home of so many stories by H. Rider Haggard, Talbot Mundy, A. Merritt and others which I read in reprints when I was a tadpole. It’s now struck me that the logo from the later issues looks like a parent to the title plate for Fantastic Stories, in which I read new fiction in those same tadpole days.

You just can’t go wrong with titles like Radio Planet and the Ant Men.

Technorati Tags: pulp magazine covers, famous fantastic mysteries, virgil finlay, norman saunders, frank r. paul, science fiction, fantasy, art

Because they’re the remnants of their print runs, they’re not available in all sizes.

I’ve had them marked down for awhile. But now you can pick them up for the low, low price of $8 each if you use the coupon code CTHULHU during checkout.

That’s right. This promotional offer comes straight from the Great Old Ones. Because these shirts are the Great Old Shirts.

So hop on over to the R’lyeh showroom and snap up the Celtic Skull and Crossbones, Celtic Art Cats, Celtic Biohazard Symbol, or Pentacle & Ankh t-shirts… while they last!

Technorati Tags: saga shirts, clearance, t-shirts, celtic art, skull and crossbones, biohazard symbol, pentacle, cats, cthulhu sez buy these shirts