Overseas Birthday Presents

So my dear friend Tyler and I have been pen pals since I was about 13/14, he is from Illinois USA and we like to share various arty bits and bobs with each other. Tyler writes his own comics which you can have a look at here! I'm super proud of him for finally getting his work published after so much hard work!

For his birthday this year I sent him a few little creative things including this painting of a fox done in acrylic. It's been great to get painting again this year again, even if the designs are simple!

What I actually do

When people ask what I do for a job, 9 times out of ten I will say “artist” or “I work in the film business”, which quite often gets mixed responses. Some people say “oh cool, so you meet movie stars?” and others say “hmm… not a proper job then”.

Truth is my job is a weird one. I say “artist” because it’s easy, and if people ask further I will explain in more detail. What I actually do is a wonderful mixture of art and technical practice sat in front of my computer, which includes mathematics, anatomical structure, physics and programming. My full job title is:

Crowd Technical Director (within Visual Effects for film)

From this I’ll often get, “so you work with crowds at festivals?” Not quite lol.

Visual Effects or ‘VFX’ artists are experts in creating realistic effects on their computers for films, TV and games. Everything from CGI dragons to explosions to digi-doubles of actors to weather conditions to well, anything you can imagine really…

My specific job within this industry is to create realistic crowd scenes within films… think huge battle scenes or hundreds of rats flooding into a Parisian kitchen:

iRobot © 20^th Century Fox : : : Image © Massive Software

Ratatouille © to Pixar : : : Image © Massive Software

A.I Application

The way I create these large scenes with huge amounts of characters is to build the little guys in a computer environment, and give them their own intelligence so that they can make their own decision when they’re “let loose”

The way the characters make their own decisions, is through a form of logic called “Fuzzy Logic”. Fuzzy logic deals with reasoning that is approximate rather than exact. Compared to binary logic (where variables take on the famous 0 (false) or 1 (true) values) fuzzy logic variables may have a truth value that ranges in degree between 0 and 1, creating as many different potential  outcomes as you can possibly imagine.

Fuzzy logic is applied to many fields, including that of artificial intelligence, which is why we use it for our large crowd scenes. Each one of our little guys is thinking for itself :)

This is an example of an agent brain within Massive:

 It might look scary but it’s very very logical, and works similarly to a human brain when decision making. Imagine all of the little lines are connections in a brain, all coming together to make rational decisions and behaviour types. For example:

If someone is walking towards me AND they are approaching on my left = I will turn right to avoid them.

This can then be developed further, so:

If someone is walking towards me over 3 mph AND they are approaching me at a 45 degree angle on my left = then I must slow down AND turn right by an angle between 20 and 40 degrees.

And so on and so forth:

If someone is walking towards me above 3 mph AND they are approaching me at a 45 degree angle on my left = then I must slow down AND turn right by an angle between 20 and 40 degrees. However if someone is walking towards me at 3 mph AND they are approaching me at a 45 degree angle on my left AND they are wearing a pink jumper AND NOT wearing a hat = then I will turn towards them, wave and then stop to chat.

You can see how things can get out of control with those little brain connections ;)

As well as brain development, it’s important to set up motion trees so that the agents can transition between different actions, do lot of curve editing, cloth simulation, skeleton building, physics set ups and anything else that will make our little friends look as realistic as possible.

Example of inverse kinematic curves (used for helping feet stick to the ground so they don’t slide about and look silly):

Image © Massive Software

As a crowd TD I have so far worked on Disney, Marvel, Warner Brothers and Futurikon films.

To find out more about crowd simulation and the wonderful piece of software that I use, please visit: www.massivesoftware.com Without these guys, none of these incredible crowd scenes in the movies we al love would be possible.

I hope I’ve explained this reasonably well, if you guys have any questions or are interested in becoming a crowd simulation artist, drop me a message :)

Other cool links:

Fuzzy logic - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzy_logic

Chaos theory - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory

Fx guide - http://www.fxguide.com/

Skin ramblings

So now I'm in my mid-twenties, like most of my peers, i seem to be going through a bit of a health kick (which i hope is not a phase!). Over the past year my diet has changed a lot, I'm taking more care of myself inside and out and one thing that I am really very aware of is the appearance of my skin. Sitting infront of my computer all day means that i rarely get to see any sun, especially in the winter, so the lack of vitamin D needs to be made up in other ways to keep my skin looking good.

I've always had "ok" skin, a little oily from here to there with breakouts but nothing too horrenous. Over the past year I have tried out several products to get my skin looking great, but so far I have not had much luck with a lot of products (including moisturisers) making my skin even more oily causing more breakouts :(

I've tried everything from chemical cleansers by Clearasil to oil based unbranded cleansers to water based cleansers imported from France all which claim to do the same thing, improve skin quality. These have sadly not worked for me :( It has taken me an entire year to try and fall in love with the ONE product that seems to work for my skin type:

The Clarins Facial Cleansing Due for combination/oily skin is a dream come true. Teamed with one of these beauties:  A pure cotton muslin cloth, i get mine from the Body Shop.

Whilst the cleanser and toner combo is a little on the pricey side, you don't need to use a huge amount so I imagine my bottles will last me a really long time. The idea is to apply the cleanser on your face and massage in, until it gets a little thicker and then press your hands against your face and pull away quickly. By doing this your hands are creating a mini suction that pulls impurities from your skin. When you have done this several times, take a hot damp muslin cloth and wipe all of the cleanser off. The slight texture to the pure cotton material works as a gentle exfoliant to get rid of all dull dead skin cells that have built up, leaving your skin smooth, radiant and glowing. When you have washed all of the cleansing milk off, apply some of the toning lotion onto a cotton pad and apply to your face and leave to soak in.

Using these products together makes me skin feel SO amazingly fresh and clean at the end of every day. They smell amazing, and I just absolutely love using them. My skin has improved MASSIVELY since I started, i only get small blemishes now and generally my skin looks smoother and more dewy. Would highly reccommend these products to anyone who is looking for a change or just wants lovely skin. click here to find out more about the products from Clarins or to purchase :)

Happy Skin thanks to Clarins!

Nude in charcoal

I drew this at one of my life drawing classes with some old charcoal i found in the drawing box. I quite liked the contrast in the lighting here so thought I would share :) I like drawing from life, I think there is something incredibly elegant about the female form, especially when you see it right infront of you. Whilst I draw a lot of my portraits from photographs, it's always refreshing to draw the human figure or faces from life.

Home grown yumminess

2013 has been the first year I’ve been able to grow my own food. I’ve successfully grown tomatoes, peppers, chives and mint and will continue to do so next year! Hip hip hurray for all things juicy and home grown!

These yummy specimens went into my home-made home-grown ratatouille, along with marrow from my friend Lisa's allotment :) Served with lemon chicken, crusty bread and a bottle of bubbly. Super simple and rustic, and super scrummy. 

New job and fresh start :)

Today I started a new job. In the past few months I have had a few personal and professional obstacles to overcome, and today feels like a completely fresh start, which is the main reason that I am starting this blog.

One thing I’ve learnt in my time as a technical artist (despite the stereotype of being an anti-social cave gremlin) is how important team work is. I believe there is a direct correlation between the relationship you have with your team and your performance at work, enthusiasm towards your job and general well being.

Thankfully, since 2010 I’ve been lucky enough to have been trained up by some of the best TDs in the business. It’s these people who I think are the most important in the industry as they can see the potential in younger artists and drive them forward to realise their potential. Sadly, as I have discovered, colleagues are not always so supportive. The only person to push you through, is you.

I am lucky enough to have today signed a contract with a great company and super team, who have been incredibly welcoming and warm. Sometimes it’s just the small things like the offering of a morning coffee that makes you realise you’re in the right place :)