Macbook surgery
iaian7 » blog John Einselen, 1.06.08Last week my macbook died. It was happily playing an iTunes playlist, then started randomly pausing. Then freezing. Then nothing, save for the clicking noises emanating from the hard drive compartment.
TimeMachine had backed up my files early that morning, so nothing was actually lost (save for application installations, which in my short sighted wisdom, I removed from the backup list to save space!). I think I’ve learned a little after losing 2-5 years of my life just a month or two ago in a freak hard drive format. Backing up is very, very important. TimeMachine makes it easy. If you have a mac running Leopard, use it! (Though beware the caveats below)
Since the hard drive clearly had to be replaced, it was finally the perfect chance to upgrade! I would have liked to go for a nice 7200.2 Seagate drive, but found a slower, larger (and perhaps more battery efficient) Western Digital on sale. My frugal scottish genes were happy.
Drive installation, unlike Macbook Pros, is really rather wonderful. I took out the battery, detached the internal compartment guard strip, slid out the old hard drive, attached the new drive to the sliding tab mechanism, slid it back in, closed everything up, and was done. The entire process took less than 15 minutes, though it certainly helped that I had a hex bit handy, and a decent set of miniature screw drivers.
Then came the challenge – when installing Leopard, you can easily restore users off an old mac, an external hard drive, or a TimeMachine backup. However, I’d stored my time machine backups on the second internal hard drive in my G5. Which is inaccessible via network during the Leopard installation. Booting the G5 into FireWire disk mode only helped a little – the macbook backups were somehow stored in a compressed volume, and only the G5 backups were visible to the Leopard installer!
The process was circuitous (and ended up involving the Migration Assistant and multiple user accounts), so I won’t bore you with the details, save for these suggestions: back up to an external drive, and if you can, use a different drive for each computer. It could simplify the process greatly.
Now that the painless hardware upgrade and painful software install is over, everything is finally happy again. All my documents, music, videos, emails, settings, and preferences are restored, and the Macbook is humming away happily with well over 3 times the hard drive space (Vista should be happier too, I doubled it’s partition size!). While it’s not a particularly speedy drive, it should suffice till its own untimely demise, and I can upgrade to something better suited for photo editing and video work. Perhaps by then the solid state drives announced last week will be cheap enough for a mere mortal to afford.
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Much less hair
iaian7 » blog John Einselen, 24.05.08
Since I no longer need to be growing my hair out for a faun costume, I took the liberty of cutting my hair the morning following the movie. From several inches of curls to 1/4 inch burr. Sadly, my old hair clippers are rather dull, and only just barely made it through the ordeal. Meijer had hair trimmers on sale, and this week I finally got a new set…
So I cut my hair down to 3mm. Definitely the shortest I’ve had in many, many years, possibly ever. Shocking, I know (and as always, more on Flickr).
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Narnian horns
iaian7 » blog John Einselen, 17.05.08With the release of the latest Chronicles of Narnia film, I wanted to go as a faun again (I have a weakness for dressing up, especially for Lord of the Rings and Narnia films). For the first film I wore full fur pants, hooves, custom costume, and horns. Since finding out how dangerous the hoof extensions are to ankles (and without a workshop to develop something more stable), I had to give up up on that… and by extension, much of the rest of the outfit. The old horns I had were also pretty rough, and if they were going to be the only real costume piece, desperately needed an update.
I found some nice translucent Fimo clay (I usually use Sculpey, but Fimo was on sale at Jo-Ann Fabrics), and started sculpting some basic horn shapes a month ago. The first three tries weren’t great, and I didn’t get back to it till this weekend. My fourth attempt turned out to be too smooth (though the shape was fairly goat like, thumbprints showed up too easily during the painting process), so I tried again using a stiff hair trimmer cleaning brush to texture the surface. Though the results are perhaps more antler like than horn like, the painting was a lot easier and turned out surprisingly natural looking, for how simple it was (just one wash of a custom brown paint / matte finish combo, with some brushed water and finger rubbing to blend and wear it down a bit).
(more on Flickr)
Super glue is not the smartest choice, perhaps, but it does work beautifully. I have some water-proof (and non-toxic) glue that seems to work well on skin and prosthetics, but I wasn’t sure it’d hold up to an evening at the movies, or if it would work with the larger horns (it’s important to note that these are still a good 3 and a half inches shorter than the original pair I made in 2005, which at that length caused much pain and trouble when getting in and out of vehicles!).
Unfortunately, the paint job around the horns didn’t turn out so well. It was shiny, and way too prominent. Next time I may try gluing the horns to my head without any blending done on the skin at all. An abrupt growth of horns would probably look more natural than something as poorly blended as this was.
After a few photos to prove to my friends I really did grow horns, it was off to the theatre! I thought the movie was… ok. Some people like it more than the first, and it is a decent second movie, but overall I’m just not sure I felt it.
The writers did a good job on a tough assignment. Prince Caspian is a difficult story to translate to film, and the added storylines and character flaws only seemed to accentuate many of the themes C. S. Lewis was writing about. Tyler Smith wrote a longer writeup on the story, so you can read more about it on his site.
The visual effects, on the other hand, seemed off to me. Aslan comes across flat, both in performance (which, in its defence, was also nicely subtle) and in shading (which did seem especially flat and overly-CG). Rythm and Hues, the studio that so brilliant brought animals to life for the first film, was replaced by Framestore CFC this time around, and sadly the characters seem to suffer. The badger, the bear, and others were hardly as lifelike, or loveable, as the beavers were in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe_.
Due to new leg rigs for the actors playing centaurs, they move around a lot more in this film. Sadly, the movement just looks weird! I think I liked the more stationary centaurs of the first film better. Walking around, they just look silly; it becomes painfully obviously that they move nothing like horses. It isn’t entirely a problem with the visual effects, but just in how the performances were captured on film. As written up in the CGworld article, the actors were able to change direction in ways a horse simply cannot.
It might have just been me, but fauns (and even fully digital characters like Repicheep) also seemed to have foot placement problems. People balance using their toes, and it felt like the hooves were placed roughly where the heel of the actor had been, causing them to look completely off balance, and in danger of falling on their face. Perhaps I should withhold judgement till I can watch it again when it comes out on DVD or Bluray, but I was not particularly impressed by what I saw on screen at the theatre.
This all does sound rather negative; I actually enjoyed the movie quite a bit, and the music is great! Hopefully the next one, Voyage of the Dawn Treader (currently filming), can step it up in terms of realism and quality. A new director is at the helm this time, and it’s going to be interesting to see what he brings to the series.
And just in case you were wondering, I removed the horns by… pulling on them. Hard. Next time I really should try something other than super glue!
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Art and animation
iaian7 » blog John Einselen, 14.05.08I’m gearing up for a pretty hefty animation project at work. My first “real” character production, and it’s going to take a lot of research to do it right.
First off is character rigs. I can handle the modelling, and certainly the texturing, lighting, or rendering aspects (my background in VFX seems a bit overkill here!). But the ever elusive character rig, especially in Lightwave, seems to… well, elude me. I can manage minor expressions, understand IK and FK, have even tried some procedural and reactive flight simulations using purely native Lightwave solutions. As I try to rig an expressive character, though, I’m reminded just how much I have yet to learn!
Also, character animation in Lightwave sucks. 
It’s doable, but man, is it painful. Anyway, as I learn more about the workarounds and techniques needed for a stable rig, I’m trying to pick up as much knowledge as I can about the art of animation itself. I have a lot of catch up to do, but through tutorials, articles, and blogs, I’m starting to get the animation education I never thought I’d need.
Which brings up an interesting topic, something I’ve touched on before. As postulated on an animator’s blog discussing the differences and similarities of 2D art versus 3D animation, there is essentially no difference in the art of animation, merely in the path, the medium, to get there. Be it film, animation, illustration, photography, or otherwise, good art is always recognisable.
A visitor then left a comment asking wether they should use 2D or 3D animation to make a film that connected with adult audiences. I can think of few questions more misplaced!
Cowboy Bebop and Advent Children are both (admittedly youngish) adult films; one using hand drawn 2D, the other hyper-real 3D. Both are successful, and both have been lauded as highly artistic films.
Story trumps all; if your story doesn’t connect with the audience, nothing with fix it, and an arbitrary technique for telling it will only further deface the sad and desolate remains.
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Spring at home
iaian7 » blog John Einselen, 27.04.08This weekend I got to drive down to Indiana and visit my family! I also got sidetracked Friday night while driving through Michigan… somehow seeing the signs for I69, but completely missing the exit. After missing an alternate route with a poorly marked detour, I gave up and by midnight was in Berrien Springs, where my brother goes to college (we live on opposite sides of the state; he on the west side, me on the east). We didn’t get home till 2:30 in the morning, but it was a fun ride.
Saturday I grabbed my camera and took photos around the house. Cherry, crab apple, and pear trees were in full bloom, along with ginko, violets, and many others. My parent’s place is rather idyllic (granted, having grown up there, I could be biased). Unfortunately, being an “out of state” visitor, I couldn’t get cheap admission to the Mississinewa Reservoir, so ended up driving around the Seven Pillars formation and hiking some of the river bed and the reservoir dam till sunset. I love spring (there’s more on Flickr).
Sunday my cousin Sarah Wilson graduated with a degree from Goshen college. It was probably the best graduation ceremony I’ve been to yet; and though people still slept through much of it (the photo is of my parents), it wasn’t nearly as bad as most. It was also great to see extended family, and hang out with grandparents. We had a big family lunch, and celebrated as many holidays as we could think of at once (there are odd little things us cousins do as holiday rituals, such as grabbing food off other people’s plates as part of Thanksgiving festivities).
Sarah is working in southern Kentucky this summer, then moving to South Korea for a year as an ESL teacher, so it’ll be awhile before we can hang out as a group. She will have a website to blog and post pictures on, and with an internet connection, everyone should be able to keep in touch pretty regularly. I’ll post the link for the website just as soon as I can get the design and back end working!
hey, nice pictures! i obviously haven’t visited your site since you started blogging again a couple months ago. the nature shots are strikingly splendid, and the graduation ones are aww, special. also, i’m impressed with the costume you came up with for LotR. you’re much braver than i. well, i guess we just stick out in different ways: you as a faun, me as the only american in my village. i love you!
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Last snowfall
iaian7 » blog John Einselen, 21.03.08Or rather, I hope it is. Every week I think it’s finally snowed for the last time, and then a week later, I’m proven wrong. Which in a way, is good, because I’d hate to end this winter without trying some flash photography at night during a mild snow storm.
Just in case we’re going to keep getting snow till I finally take the plunge, here’s an attempt. At the very least, it was fun. Also, cold. Especially after an hour running back and forth in the snow, testing shots and exposures.
More on Flickr.
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CG storytelling
iaian7 » blog John Einselen, 12.02.08I watched the animated film Beowulf a couple weeks ago with some friends at the cheap theatre in town, and any review I could muster always comes back to this; computer graphic storytelling shouldn’t be any different than film. When it’s treated as something different, as something other than a filmic art form, it will fail.
Much has been written about the uncanny valley and its effect on storytelling. To paraphrase, the more robots and CG characters look, move, and talk like humans, the more repulsive they are. This is due to a multitude of factors, but depends primarily on the uncanny effect of something that closely mimics humanity – but gets it subtly wrong.
I’m not sure this can really encapsulate why Beowulf fails so spectacularly; though it’s certainly a contributing factor, there’s a bigger problem here. It’s also something I’m seeing more often as technology advances, and directors become more comfortable with CG. Like any other technique, 3D animation and computer graphics are merely a means to an end—the story. If the technique does not serve the story, it will most certainly and absolutely hinder it. Beowulf is a rather decent example of this; of how not to do a film.
Doing something because you can, inspires only rubbish.
Doing something because you cannot do it any other way; that has a chance to become art.
It’s a weird and tricky dichotomy. Technology allows creative and amazing new forms of artistry, and yet often destroys the drive to make it good. And because so much is possible now, many directors seem to feel the need to use it, even when unneeded or inappropriate.
In the classic sci-fi film Forbidden Planet, a horrifying monster was insinuated instead of shown; footprints, shadowed lights, noises. It’s a well established fact that allowing the audience to fill in the gaps, to imagine what isn’t shown, is a far more effective, more terrifying storytelling device than merely showing the monster itself. Defining something limits it. The same principle developed by Greek philosophers should be used to great effect in filmmaking! Be it a logical argument, frightening scene, a tragedy, comedy; when the audience is involved in the act of creation (be it the logical conclusion of an argument, or the imagining of a monster in a film), it becomes their own. Far more true and real than a speaker or filmaker could ever try to define by themselves.
The movie Signs used this approach for much of the film, but ultimately showed the aliens in full-on visual effects. Many viewers complained that, once shown, the mystery and terror had been lost. There would be complaints if the film had been too subtle of course, and in my opinion M. Night Shyamalan often strikes a decent balance between subtle storytelling and visual gratification.
Limitations, though frustrating, will often stretch those involved to come up with creative solutions; a more effective story telling device, a cheaper alternative, perhaps a more subtle, more elegant telling of their story. I can’t say I like this principle, or even rise to the challenge myself, but everything I’ve learned so far points to it being true.
The creator of Family Guy blamed an unfunny season on the lack of limitations. They had not been censored as much, and instead of writing something funny, it became something crass (or in the case of Family Guy, simply more crass).
The original Star Wars films used cutting edge effects, but was still constrained by the limitations of film, miniatures, and (at least compared to now) rather primitive bluescreen technology. Instead of focusing solely on effects, however, the story took precedence. Technology became a supporting actor. Part of that was due to limitations, and I suspect part due to Steven Spielberg’s involvement, but nonetheless, the movies became a huge success.
Once freed of those limitations, however, George Lucas went completely nuts. Quite literally. Story was thrown out in lieu of “stunning” worlds and vast digital landscapes. Not only are the new Star Wars movies less convincing, but they fail at the very foundational element—the story was hurt, instead of helped, by focusing on technique instead of art.
This discourse could go one for quite a long time, so I’d better start wrapping up…
Which brings us back to Beowulf. While fighting an uphill battle to overcome the Uncanny Valley (and failing miserably), director Robert Zemeckis completely missed the point. The story didn’t need to be told via animation. There was no reason to use motion capture and advanced technology, none, and it’s painfully obvious that performances and purpose were completely lost in the process.
Pixar, on the other hand, has made it abundantly clear that they will not only put story first, but will only tell stories that should be animated—how else could toys, bugs, and cars talk?
Should a film be done digitally? Only if that is the only way to do it, the only way to tell your story.
Couldn’t possibly agree more.
Have you seen Lightwave stuff in Youtube? Mostly they are titled “VFX test” or “dynamics test”.
Most independent CG hobbyists never finish their production or even take a story into a serious consideration.
Myself, Im making animated small feature because I have discovered that “maybe Lightwave could be a media what I can use”. If I could, I would shoot the movie with 35mm film with real humans (and dogs).
I find your comment most refreshing and wise.
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Apple DRM
iaian7 » blog John Einselen, 25.01.08In a rather dire turn of events, Apple has just broken every macintosh After Effects installation in the world with the most recent Quicktime update. Quicktime 7.4 does, indeed, introduce the latest in digital rights management for media files. In the meantime, it also prevents After Effects from rendering to said files; you’ll be able to render a project for precisely 10 minutes, at which point Quicktime will crash the render process by “securing” the file-in-progress and locking down user access rights.
The current workaround is to render projects out to an image sequence (PNG files work well), and use Quicktime Pro to save the rendered frames into an MOV (or similar) media file. You may be able to render your image sequence from After Effects into a QT file as well, but be forewarned; even when pre-rendered, if you hit that 10 minute mark, you’re toast.
Ironically, this seems to be affecting OS X installations of After Effects, not Windows. Other applications (such as Lightwave) in OS X are also unaffected. While I appreciate Apple’s attempts to appease both media conglomerates and media consumers, I find it rather horrid that this is can be the result… especially as Apple has been quickly and quietly deleting forum threads regarding the problem. Will we be asked to move to Siberia soon? It’s more than a little disconcerting. At least last time I checked, the 99% negative reviews for the macbook power adapters were still displayed in the apple store.
On the flip side, some people have rightly pointed out that those installing Quicktime 7.4 have done so at their own risk. It’s not a required upgrade, they typed in their password, and clearly didn’t check to see if others were having trouble. You wouldn’t try a blind upgrade to other programs central to your workflow, would you? Adobe is notorious for not supporting Apple updates. It’s taken 6 months for CS3 applications to work in Leopard, and that’s after the year they had previous to the public release, with full Apple developer support.
Shame on Apple for so flippantly breaking a major graphics application in the process of implementing DRM procedures, shame on users for blindly upgrading without checking compatibility, and shame on Adobe for not writing compliant code (CS3 is by far the worst version yet of the Adobe product line – it doesn’t surprise me in the least as we’re seeing more and more fatalities).
One point to add about Quicktime 7.4 is that the newest iTunes upgrade (can’t remember which version) seems to require Quicktime 7.4. I tried to open iTunes after upgrading and it repeatedly crashed. After installing Quicktime 7.4, I had no problems whatsoever.
This seems to be another danger of Mac OS X software, that applications are interconnected. Users of both iTunes and After Effects are forced to choose which application will work better, missing out on newer upgrades or paying the price for upgrading.
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Macworld Live!
iaian7 » blog John Einselen, 15.01.08Well, macworld is in progress as I write this, and some reasonably cool stuff has happened already. The airport base station now comes in 500Gb and 1Tb models, the iPhone is seeing some updates, and iTunes is offering rentals. Sadly, a lot of websites are going down in the mad rush to find updates, but here are some of the live feeds still on the net:
MacRumorsLive is continuously updated via AJAX, and the only one I’m bothering with now. Text and pictures in a continuous stream!
ArsTechnica has several reporters writing updates and taking pictures.
Gizmodo and Engadget also have live feeds, though availability has been sporadic.
Here at Vectorform, bets have been raging as to what Air will entail… hardware, software, or service? My bet is on a combination, taking into consideration Intel’s WiMAX technology and the rollout of WiMAX in Japan and Germany. At the very least, Apple should be announcing an ulta-thin laptop, though I’m hoping for a tablet.
Well, now I’ve got to get back to reading live coverage updates… yay Macworld!
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Snow, fog, rain, and ice
iaian7 » blog John Einselen, 7.01.08
Today marked a massive climate shift; after weeks of cold weather, snow, and ice, we suddenly got a warm draft of air here in south-eastern Michigan. While I sadly missed much of the thickest fog, I did manage to traipse around in my Sunday boots and grab some pictures from around the apartment grounds. No photoshop needed, save for some colour correction and contrast adjustments. As it has already been asked, no, the fog is not fake.
I did manage to accidentally tear off all four of my tzitzit tassels in the process of hiking through the snow and ice, and my pants were completely soaked from the ground up a foot or two. For January it’s surprisingly warm, but after a couple hours I was feeling kinda chilled, and by 6:00 it was too dark for photos anyway. Once inside I realized I’d lost my camera remote somewhere in the piles of snow. Guess it’s time to start looking for a new one.
These have also been posted to Flickr, along with a few extras.
Alas, the downside of living here is the boring weather: ‘sunny and warm,’ ‘sunny and warmer, ‘sunny and hot. But I’m adjusting. And the sky and mountains give the most dramatic shows (usually when I’m driving to work in traffic without a camera).
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Just can’t catch a break, what with the server implosion and hard drive failures, can you?
I feel your pain in any case, but I’m glad to hear you had everything backed up.
Also, hello short hair buddy!