Niles “Bob” Foster – A Good Cat who Lived his Best Life
We lost our Bob today. He was a good cat and lived to be at least 17. For the majority of his life was a feral barn cat. He roamed all over this hill and probably knew the other animals here quite well. He was a fierce mouser and scrapped for everything he got most of his life. When we bought the house, he came with it and after a few cold winters he joined our family to live inside. He loved to sleep during the day in one of his beds and would enjoy fresh meals and water every …
Fred Ward – R.I.P.
Fred Ward died today. He was only 79 years old. I guess that’s old for some people but it doesn’t seem super old to me. 85 plus is when I’d start thinking about the eternal dirt nap. Anyway, Fred Ward was in quite a few cool movies when I was growing up. His gruff, grizzled, but honest nature set him apart and his performance cemented his place amongst his peers. The clip above is from “Remo Williams” which was a great movie that sits in it’s own genre. Was Remo a super spy? A super hero? What a great cast …
Motion Tracking in After Effects – A learning process
View Post Motion Tracking in After Effects – A learning process Motion Tracking in After Effects isn’t terribly difficult once you get the hang of the process. However, it’s definitely something that requires practice to get anywhere near decent. YouTube videos were enough to get me started and I did a decent job for a complete novice. The first thing to track is motion. After Effects has an automatic motion tracker but you’re likely to discover your auto track quickly runs into trouble when the object being tracked isn’t crystal clear. So, I manually tracked the football in this video …
The Arcane Council
So…is this right? Am I about to embark on a journey I’ve already taken? If you’ve been following this blog at all you may remember that I was a competitive WoW player for the first 10 years World of Warcraft was available. Our Guild was The Arcane Council on the Bloodhoof Server and we were quite accomplished for a competitive, yet family friendly guild. I played with the same players for many years and came to hold them in high regard. We forged our way through every obstacle placed in our way. I was so proud of how Taranis let …
A Weighty Issue
“Die? Aren’t you being a bit dramatic Eric?” you might say.
Creative Block & Amateur Filmmaking
I went into my #LostSock project with an immeasurable amount of ambition and little experience over 2 years ago. Not really understanding the scope of my project I was determined to teach myself as I go, and that’s exactly what I did. I could hold a camera, frame a shot, and edit it together so how hard could it be right? I had put out a few short videos in the past that were well received, this project would just follow the same patterns and be done in short order right? No. It turns out that all those words scrolling …
AquaJack 2014
Jack has been taking swimming lessons and I wanted to put something together that utilized my After Effects and Premiere Pro skills. The intro was fun, but I should have keyframed the motion blur to only be active during the quicker motion times. I could have also easy-eased the motion keyframes. The audio mastering also needs a lot of work as the ambient noise could be eliminated in all but the most important parts. If you’re new to keyframing check this guy’s explanation. Hope you enjoy the video!
The Art of Haiku, Senryū and Photography
The Art of Haiku, Senryū and Photography Haiku is a form of Japanese poetry that stresses that the author be frugal and very selective in word choice. Traditionally western Haiku and Senryū consist of 3 lines of poetry made of syllabic counts of 5, 7, and 5. Traditional Japanese Haiku requires the use of a Kireji and a Kigo to be considered true to the form. Kireji is a form of verbalized punctuation and since I don’t speak Japanese googling WAV’s and videos resulted nothing, you’re out of luck for an example here and there is no equivalent in other …