We do dorkdom Big Apple style.
As if we needed more than one excuse to dress up, Halloween and New York Comic Con happen in the same month. The New York Geeks get together to talk about costuming of all kinds.
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Last Thursday I found myself drifting way downtown to a meeting of AfterEffects NY, which promised a special lecture by Steve Forde, the new Sr Product Manager at Adobe After Effects. It was a quaint affair, with a tingle of promise and excitement. AE has been around for 18 years (barely legal!) and all of the original team-members from AE 1.0 COSA (1993) are still working there! Steve Forde used to be in charge of the company that made NucleoPro, but now he heads the AE production group, which consists of 20 guys and 1 girl. He collects all of their photos… He is in charge “of the one application I literally spend my life in.” [random Twitter quote] And he wants to “give our lives back 30 seconds at a time.” Steve Forde totally did, because I learned you can just pull the Effects tab off to the side so you can see the Project tab, and it’s dumb little things like that, that help my workflow.
“All of this stuff may or may not happen to be in a new version of After Effects at some future point in time, maybe.” That was the legalese they produce at Adobe… But at any rate, there are A FEW EXCITING THINGS you can look forward to:
Light Falloff -
Tired of those pesky lights being unrealistically bright and not conforming to our sketchy understanding of the physical universe? Worry no more! Now there is a built in slider that will simulate light-fall off from spotlights and more, so you can have murky shadows…
Rack Focus -
Possibly the coolest thing I’ve seen. They took a video of a boy pretending to hold something in his hand, animated in a ball of fire, separated the hand (foreground) from his face (bkgd) and then applied a rack-focus-map to all the layers. Then you just slide back and forth and viola, simulated rack focus!
Source Code -
all videos will be coordinated and you can switch between any source code you want… I’m sure editors are happy about that
Image caching -
each layer will individually cache their data, so if you change one little thing, it will take less time to update the whole image
Multi Ram Processing -
didn’t actually understand this, except that when you use it, limit the number of virtual CPUs, use a smaller amount of RAM, and disk caching will now default to 20gbs, and u should use it with an ext HD.
3D Glasses -
apparently they already had this filter, but now there will be a one click 3d-stereo-camera rig you can set up and different preview options to try out all the diff kinds of 3d glasses that exist today
RED film -
raw film data can be processed in AE, just like those snobby fashion photographers instantly color correct their pics on set
and finally…
WARP STABILIZATION & SUBSPACE CONTROL!!!!!
A new stabilization filter that uses a default cloud of 500+ tracking points to stabilize an image. We got to see all the crosshairs, but that won’t be available in the future. They had no idea how to term their controls, so one is actually called Subspace. It is all to reduce artifacting and warping around the edges of stabilized footage. Also cuts back on the amount of scaling and cropping. A vast improvement, but not universal for every shot. Personally I think it might cause a little motion sickness, but you’ll have to judge for yourself.
I was going to include a video preview of the Warp Stabilizer, but even though AENY promised it would be up the next day, all my Google efforts produce nothing but Star Trek engine designs… but keep an eye out!
How to tell them apart.
In this bite-size, David and Brett regroup after the NYC release party for the Boxee Box, a set-top media aggregator for your TV.
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"Cheer Up!"
Ah, New York Comic Con, how we love and hate thee, let us count the ways. In this half episode we discuss our recent journey into the heart of geek; stinky and sweaty though it may be.
Guests: Chris Murphy, Erin Natal, Dan Pinto
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Last night I attended the 6th Tom Stathes’ Cartoon Carnival, a periodic cartoon festival with a 1930s theme and a penchant for naughty old animation. Skipping the god awful commute to Queens (I wrote out all the directions for the M train but stupidly decided to take the 7 instead and got lost) the location, Attic Studios, was gorgeous. A vast white loft with two full walls of windows showing a view of the bridge (ONE of them anyway) and the Manhattan skyline. Many white plastic chairs and a big screen for the 16mm film projector. And a small roped off area where you can buy drinks, get free popcorn, and flirt with the cigarette girls who offer raffle tickets, ciggs for $1 and candy ciggs for a $1. Continue reading ‘Travelaffs!’
First, they came for Rollerball and I did not speak out because I was not a fan…
Then they came for The Pink Panther and I did not speak out because I was not a fan…
Then they came for The Karate Kid and I got mildly annoyed, because I was a fan…
Then they came for Total Recall and… DEAR GOD PLEASE NO!!
Noooooo!!!
I tried to doubt it. Hell I only found one site reporting it. And then another. And another. Oh dear god, this is really happening…
Yes, friends, Len Wiseman, auteur of such fine works as “Live Free or Die Hard” and the “Underworld” series, is set to direct a remake of Total Recall (aka the greatest film ever made… possibly).
Nothing like a 3 day geek convention to introduce me to the West coast. Armed with my nerdy t-shirts, camera, sketchbook, and magical Super Mario 3 baseball cap, I tried to absorb as much info as possible. I apologize in advance for the random panels I attended.
3 things you need to know: 1) One fan stabbed his friend in the eye with a pen for a seat for “Cowboys & Aliens” 2) Stan Lee made out with two chicks simultaneously in the Marriot hotel lobby on Saturday night, and 3) this will all be in documentary by Morgan Spurlock
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Check out the album for my Top 5 Cosplayers, all the runner ups, and photos from events!
Click to read more about Comic Con secrets! Continue reading ‘cOMIC cON 2010′
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