Bourbon St. in New Orleans

I’ve also been working with the visual effects team to begin chipping away at the 50+ shots of the film. I’ve got an amazing team and I’m excited about the way things are coming along! More updates on this front to follow. Postproduction will likely take another four or so months…

I also had the opportunity to go to Siggraph in New Orleans to work on the Blender Boothcrew! I met a lot of awesome and talented people, and I had a great time.

Now I’m back in Maryland and I’ve got only 6 days before I leave for Amsterdam for Durian! I’m using the time to get as much editing, vfx, email correspondence, family time and lifeplanning taken care of so I can throw myself 100% into the project without distractions. Not sure what it’s gonna be like, but I’m getting pretty excited!

There’s a lot going on in my life right now. Production for “En Route” went really well! We shot in Savannah over four weekends during the last month of school.

Here’s a sample frame from the raw footage, at 2k:

...and this is half-res.

In other news, I have this thing called “Infectious Mononucleosis”, known more conversationally as ‘mono’ or ‘glandular fever’, depending on where you’re from. I have a fairly mild case of it, thankfully, but that’s what I’ll blame my disappointing progress on.

I installed Ubuntu Linux on my machine! Scary intimidating. Don’t know the first thing about the command line, and I’m having a frustrating time with basic things like figuring out how to switch keyboard layouts on the fly and get my display resolution correct… but I think I’m gonna like it. My inner geek has been neglected for too long now anyway.

 
Aaannddd….

DURIAN!

This too is no longer news, but it’s so exciting it needs a dramatic introduction. I’ve been asked to direct the next Blender Open Movie project at the Blender Institute in Amsterdam!

I won’t post too much about it now because very little about the project has been defined.

But we’ve already got a fantastic core team, with concept artist David Revoy, renowned Dutch comic book author Martin Lodewijk, incredibly talented software developer Brecht van Lommel, composer Jan Morgenstern and of course the remarkable Ton Roosendaal, lead developer of Blender and head of the Blender Foundation.

Submissions for other artist positions ends in just a couple days and I’m confident we’re gonna put together an awesome team for this project. Alright, that’s enough superlatives for this paragraph…

I’m super excited. If you aren’t familiar with Blender’s open movies, check out the first two projects: Elephants Dream and Big Buck Bunny.

Really phenomenal works, and the films were created almost entirely with open source software.

Production starts in September and will last 6-8 months, so if everything works out I’ll be in Amsterdam in less than four months! Be sure to follow the progress of the project at durian.blender.org.

Alrighty. That was an epic post. Time to get back to work!

–Colin

On my way.

After a fantastic and semiproductive 6-week break in Maryland, I’m headed back down to Savannah for school. I’m currently a junior, and have about a year and a half left at SCAD.

I aim to make good use of that time. During this break I wrote two short screenplays (well, more like one and a half) which I’m really excited about. At school I’ve gotten to the point where I feel that the most valuable (and educational) thing I can be doing right now is pursuing my own independent projects.

So my plan for the next six months at school is to make an ambitious short independent film– with a real cast, crew, and budget. It’s an intimidating prospect for me, but I’m determined to make it happen. If you want to learn more about the project or possibly get involved, please let me know!

I’ll be posting more about it shortly, and hopefully will launch a website for the project.