Hop Teaser Trailer

Posted on November 24th, 2010 in Updates, VFX Projects with 1 comment

My first project done as a “Professional” at R+H. So, should I put this in my reel before the tank or after the explosion?

If you’re curious, I comped the first shot, some of the second, the fourth, the ninth and a did little roto work on the 15th.

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Google Buzz

Posted on November 20th, 2010 in Updates with no comments

I’ve been posting to Google Buzz for a while now, most through Google Reader, to share some cool links with my Mom. I took a look recently and realized just how much it had piled up, so I’ve I added a link to the sidebar. Take a look and subscribe if you’d like, I post the best of the internet to it multiple times a day.
Mattdoovall Google Buzz

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Straight up ‘06

Posted on September 28th, 2010 in Updates with 2 comments

While packing to move to the west coast, I came across this behemoth of an adapter I built my first year of college. Read the rest of this entry »

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SCAD Studio 1: Completed

Posted on September 23rd, 2010 in Updates, VFX Projects with no comments

After being away from Savannah (and this project) for four months, I managed to find some free time to spend polishing it off.

One of the main things I learned during the Rhythm & Hues compositing apprenticeship was to push as much of the work as you can in compositing. The first problem with the old rendering method I was using was that it didn’t give me enough control when piecing the whole thing together. So once I did a little backtracking and rerendering, I was able to devote time to 2d problem solving for the rest of the issues.

Feels good to press publish on this post, and finally archive this project’s files.

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Porsche Shooting Fake: One Year’s Progression

Posted on July 23rd, 2010 in Updates with 2 comments

Almost exactly a year ago, I was interning at Top Gear USA, BBC America. I wrote mostly blog entries and photoshopped top-five list headers, but made sure to watch a Top Gear episode weekly and talked about cars all day, I loved it. Before the site was closed and I moved onto doing other stuff for BBCA, we took on a little project, creating an automotive hoax. We decided to make a shooting brake (wagon) version of some car, people either love or hate wagons so no matter what, strong opinions are in order. At first I suggested a Hyundai Genesis, because I think that would be awesome, but to get the strongest reactions we aimed for a much higher horse, Porsche.
I modeled the car in Maya over about two weeks, we shot some video and an HDR in a Brooklyn alley, and rendered it with Mental Ray. I had to composite it in Final Cut Pro due to lack of resources, but the result was semi-successful.
http://jalopnik.com/5310288/porsche-cayman-mule-spotted-with-shooting-brake-shape/gallery/
http://www.autoblog.com/2009/07/08/spy-video-porsche-cayman-shooting-brake-caught-on-camera-phone/
http://blog.caranddriver.com/three-door-cayman-mule-spotted-possible-928-successor/

We did a second part with a screen grab from the then upcoming Forza Motorsport 3 video game, which garnered even more attention and helped remove some doubt on the car’s legitimacy.
http://jalopnik.com/5311903/cayman-shooting-brake-confirmed-in-forza-3-screen-shot
http://www.autoblog.com/2009/07/13/more-evidence-of-porsche-cayman-shooting-brake/
http://cupholder.blogs.topgear.com/2009/07/14/shoot-to-play/
http://www.0-60mag.com/online/?p=14925
http://forums.vwvortex.com/zerothread?id=4468726&page=1

Then something funny happened that we didn’t expect, someone created a render of our render. Taking our video and the Forza still, they photoshopped what the finished car would look like.
http://www.0-60mag.com/online/?p=15169
http://www.carzi.com/2009/07/13/porsche-cayman-shooting-brake-photo-video/

The last part of our hoax was a fake flickr gallery of a supposed intern at a German photography firm. I created and posted a bunch of images, of myself, a friend, a road and two of the Cayman.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/40860189@N04/3770157784/in/photostream/

The reactions:
http://www.autoblog.com/2009/08/07/spy-shot-porsche-cayman-shooting-brake-revealed/
http://jalopnik.com/5331445/porsche-cayman-shooting-brake-uncovered

From there the NY Times automotive blog revealed the whole shebang.
http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/porsche-shooting-brake-is-a-fake/index.html?ref=automobiles

Our producer, Jared Holstein, arranged a little behind the scenes with Jalopnik.
http://jalopnik.com/5336892/how-to-dupe-the-automotive-media

This was a great little reminisce, but not the reason I sat down to write this. The past few weeks I re-textured, relit, re-rendered and re-composited the Porsche, giving it the proper attention it deserved. I tried not to look at the original and just go from what I felt was right now, but every time I would google “Porsche Mule” for reference, the damned thing would pop up in the results.

Here’s some side by sides to illustrate how much a years knowledge, about $30,000 SCAD tuition, and correct compositing software really accounts for:


New:

Old:

It’s interesting to see that previously I desaturated and grained the background plate to match the car, cheap move 2009 Matt. . . cheap move.

And here is my very first render of the project, when I was still honing in on the shape. Simple HDR-lit renders of shiny objects will always make me smile.

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