If you click on one of the images in the sets below it will pop up a slideshow for you.

One A Day

Not necessarily the best shot of the day, but the one that I think is the most representative.

Horizons

We traveled the length of New Zealand’s north island, exploring its coastline, cities, farmlands and forests. Other than the Kauri trees and waterfalls, it is a basically horizontal land.

Food

We also explored a lot of restaurants, enjoying a wonderful array of beautifully prepared food. Dining in New Zealand is world class and locally sourced.

AnimFX was held at Te Papa Tongarewa Museum in Wellington, NZ

(Note: My wife and I spent two weeks in New Zealand, with AnimFX making up the first five days. This post is mostly excepted from our travelog for the whole trip which can be found here.)

I was invited to speak at AnimFX in New Zealand at this year’s conference on Nov 15-17. The Visual Effects Society is one of the event’s partners, and it was through my friend and fellow VES Board Member Kim Lavery that my invitation was extended. But it was also because of what we’re doing at CMU’s Entertainment Technology Center that they felt I could be a relevant speaker for the attendees.

The conference is organized by the GAV Trust to advance the Gaming, Animation and Visual Effects industry in New Zealand. Most of the participants are Kiwis, and include students, producers, creative professionals in games, animation, effects and TV production, business owners, and representatives from New Zealand’s Trade and Enterprise group. The speakers are a mix of NZ and international professionals. Overall, about 250-300 people participate in the event.

I did two sessions, the larger was a five hour Master Class on Entrepreneurship in Entertainment Technology, distilled down from the 15 week course I do at the ETC under the same title.  The smaller session was a forty minute section for people to practice pitching their companies, but was set up the day before the longer class. More details on both are below.

Monday – Tech Prep

On Monday, the day before the conference opened, most of the speakers had arrived and we all did a tech check with the proper equipment in the rooms we would be speaking in. Kudos to the tech crew at Te Papa Museum – everything worked seamlessly right off. That evening there was a VIP dinner at Hippopotamus Restaurant across from the museum where we all got a chance to meet the other speakers and our hosts. Quite fun.

Enrico Casarosa of Pixar during tech check, testing out the projection in the main theater for his presentation on "La Luna."

Tuesday – Short Sessions

The conference began on Tuesday with an inspiring talk by Lance Priebe, creator of Club Penguin. If you ever feel frustrated that you can’t find time to work on your pet projects, take a lesson from Lance: he set aside Wednesday nights to work on what became Club Penguin while he was doing web design. His long term commitment to his passion turned into the biggest kids online game in the world (and he had some crazy stats about that!).  Patrick Hudson of Robot Entertainment talked about their transition from big budget console game creation to attacking the downloadable and mobile games market, and Tracey Sellar shared her experiences at Microsoft Games Studio in doing deep user research on their games.

My “Company Pitch Session” on Tuesday went according to plan, as long as the plan was Plan B. The forty minute session was set up as a precursor to my Master Class on Entrepreneurship the following day – anyone who wanted to do a practice pitch about their company was invited to do so, with the promise of a friendly audience and constructive feedback. I had a Plan B ready under the assumption that people would show up to be in the audience, and no one would be willing to put themselves out there and pitch. It pays to be prepared, as there was an audience of over fifty people, and no one wanted to brave the crowd. So instead I spoke about reasons to pitch, some good rules of thumb to use, and then we deconstructed a very successful pitch from a company who made their TechStars Demo Day presentation available on line. Overall it went well, and let me spend a bit of time in front of the room before the next day’s five hour session.

After lunch were four other breakout sessions, which I unfortunately missed. I got wrapped up talking to other attendees and doing some last minute editing for my class.

In the late afternoon, Enrico screened the Southern Hemisphere premiere of his short, “La Luna,” followed by a wonderfully illustrated walk through his creative process for creating the film at Pixar. This was followed by closing remarks and a cocktail party hosted by the New Zealand Game Developers Association.

Wednesday – Master Classes

Wednesday’s program had three tracks – a Games Master Class, an Animation Master Class and my Entrepreneurship in Entertainment Technology Master Class. The concurrent classes went from 9:00am to 3:00pm with an hour for lunch. This was my big work day. I had distilled my fifteen week class at CMU down to five hours.

Forty four people signed up for the class, all Kiwis, with a variety of backgrounds and experience from students to business owners to producers to representatives from NZ Trade and Enterprise. I had timed out the whole day on my notes and was right on schedule until about half way through. Utimately I ran long by about 15 minutes and sadly had to rush the last section.

The people in the class made this a very enjoyable experience – I wasn’t nervous about having enough material (in fact I was throwing stuff out right up until the day before), but I was a bit concerned about keeping everyone engaged though a five hour session. As it turned out we had a great dynamic – people shared their experiences, asked questions, and participated in some great discussions. I’m excited now about an opportunity to do this again, with obvious tuning based on the day’s experience. And next time I’ll have lemon and honey tea ready to fight off a subsequent day of hoarseness.

There were about 40 people in attendence, but I only remembered to take the picture after the class was over. These are most of the survivors.

Thursday – Weta Day

Weta Digital hosted everyone at their Park Road Post facility. They requested no photography or recordings on campus, so the best I did was this:

Me, outside Weta's Park Road Post

The morning had five speakers breaking down the making of “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” including Eric Winquist (formerly of PDI!) going into detail on the Golden Gate Bridge sequence which he supervised. During the afternoon we were treated to talks by Wayne Stables and Jamie Beard about the genesis of the digital version of Tin Tin for “The Adventures of Tin Tin,” and pre-script visualization of action sequences for the film.

In between the sessions they hosted lunch for all of us at the local (lawn) bowling club. As is typical at conferences, these types of meals and coffee breaks make for great opportunities to meet new people and catch up with old acquaintances. Though I tend to be introverted in large groups of people, this crowd made it very easy to make some new friends.

I stuck around after the main events to watch two screenings of Enrico’s “La Luna” that were arranged for Weta employees in the evening. After seeing his talk on Tuesday it was fun to see the finished film a couple times more to appreciate the nuances that he exposed us to.

AnimFX closed with a party at Red Square in downtown Wellington. It was packed, loud, and lots of fun. The event felt way too short.

Thank you GAV Trust and the people of Wellington NZ for inviting me down!

The Hippo tank

Hippos are surprisingly graceful underwater, which this young lady is finding out – unflinching as the behemoth cruises by.

The chimps calmly take in the animal sights. They must see thousands of visitors up close every day, yet somehow seem to remain interested in the parade.

Eye to Eye

This older male seemed interested in the toddler, but I couldn’t tell how he felt about the older brother’s tongue antics – though it was simple to tell who had more life experience at this point.

Chimp to Chimp

Morphing Faces

In addition to allowing the camera to see both the observed and the observer, the reflections also afforded this real-time morphing between remote cousins.

Spying on the Neighbors

By just hanging there, these two monkeys managed to get their neighbors riled up to a full howling fit. I’m not sure why 20 people outside the windows didn’t have the same effect.

Finally, I played with one of the penguins for awhile. We did this routine for about 30 seconds before I started the camera rolling.

Here’s a few of the good ones…

Marmot, Fallen Leaf Lake

Angora Fire Area, Four Years Later

Morning Row Craft

Beer Selection

I’m the banker in the nightly poker game, and I thought I’d throw them off a bit with some unusual beers – one of which was clearly bought just for the name. The scale isn’t evident in the picture; these are mostly 750ml bottles, the same size as a wine bottle. Traditional ale, fruits, cacao, flowers, spices… I was hoping they’d be distracted from the betting, but no such luck.

I’m happy with what I was able to get. These are four of the ~140 shots I took – including views from the top that never seem to work as well as really being there.
These first two are abstacts based on the curve of the arch. Most people who shoot similar angles tend not to turn them ‘sideways.’

Sky Track 1

Sky Track 2

This third photo is a typical angle, but I like the contrast between the sides of the arch, the sky and clouds. Thank you polarizing filter.

The St. Louis Arch

In this final image I teased the arch, hiding behind the trees rather than laying it out there.

St. Louis Arch - Approaching Through the Trees

It was especially fun noticing Alan Parsons on the exhibit floor selling his new “Art & Science of Sound Recording” DVD set. If you want to meet real Guitar Gods and other Rock Heroes, NAMM is a great place to do it, but it usually involves standing in long autograph lines in one of their sponsors’ booths. If you wanted to meet Alan, a simple “hi” worked well; he was selling his own product and was happy to talk about it without the long line.

This photographer looked like a pro, so I paid attention to what he was doing. After he was done I took a quick shot from the same position - Yikes! Alan Parsons staring right over Alan Parsons' head. I hope that isn't what he was really planning.

There isn’t too much that’s more fun than Barenaked Ladies in concert, and they did a long set in the Taylor Guitars suite. Taylor consistently provides a great show with a mix of established and new talent in their suite. The room only holds a few hundred people standing so it feels intimate even if you’re in the back of the room. And where else can you noodle around on some of the world’s best guitars in between sets?

A couple of Ladies having a great time on stage.

Kevin Hearn of Bare Naked Ladies

Ed Robertson of Bare Naked Ladies

I blogged about Night Ranger last year, and they delivered again in 2011. I’ll admit that I didn’t miss the Nuge sitting in with them for a Damn Yankees set.

Jack and Joel of Night Ranger

This is a band that still rocks hard. They are all lead singers and incredible musicians. But nothing says Rock ‘n’ Roll like knowing how to fling your hair, and Joel Hoekstra is a master.

If you're going to shred, use your head.

To even be accepted in the race you have to convince the judges that you’ll be fun to have around. From the Rules:

WILL MY TEAM GET ACCEPTED?

Maybe. Maybe not. We usually get more applications than each racetrack can handle, so we have to pick and choose. Boring applications like “We are four guys who love to race, and we have done (blah blah blah) driving before” don’t give us too much to work with: You might get in, and you might not. Applications like “Choose us, because we’ll wear beaver costumes in the paddock and our car is entirely coated in birch bark” give you much better odds.

And so the Caddy became an aircraft carrier.

Pushin' The Nimitz

More specifically, the USS Gerald R. Cadillac, aka “Pushin’ the Nimitz.” The full team was made up of the five college roommates, Bob (Ian’s dad and generous sponsor) and Mike (friend and team mechanic).

Front row: John, Eric, Ian, Gerard, Peter; Back row: Mike, Bob

For a better play by play account of the process, from entry acceptance to the finish line, read their Twitter feed at http://twitter.com/PushinTheNimitz

Prior to leaving Worcester, MA, very ounce of extra weight was stripped out of the Caddy, and a new seat, rollcage, five point harness and fire extinguisher were installed. Then the paint job.

The Helm of the Nimitz

Fast forward a few weeks, and the guys have driven the car all the way to Joliet, Illinois, arriving the night before the race. Warm-up laps for all – learning the track and how the ship handles, which they tell me is something like a ship. Sarah and I showed up on Saturday morning in time for the official launch.

Boarding the Nimitz

Saturday’s race went incredibly well. The judges assigned the team to Class C, which is the class the put all the cars in that are “likely to explode.” By the end of the day, around 200 laps, the team was first place in their class with a seven lap lead, and in 18th overall – not bad considering there were 87 cars entered in the race.

Down the front stretch

Day Two, not so good. Early in the day the car experienced cooling problems, either related to the whack on the side from another car, or not. The car spent about five hours in the pits on Sunday, with a view the usually looked something like this:

Issues with the cooling rods

Though they never fully solved the cooling problem, they did manage to get it back on the track long enough to take the checkered flag at the end – finishing was a great source of pride for everyone.

Taking the Checkered Flag!

And finally a trip through the gauntlet after final victory laps.

Welcome Home

The Caddy is getting hauled to Connecticut, where it will get some professional help in solving the cooling problem, and hopefully we’ll get to see her race again next year.

More info about 20 Hours of LeMons can be found here: http://www.24hoursoflemons.com/ and here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24_Hours_of_LeMons

The Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge Environmental Education Center at the top of the frame.

More about the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge Environmental Education Center.

Parking for trucks in an industrial yard in Alviso, CA.

Sea Anemone Macro

I spent the late afternoon at Fitzgerald Marine Reserve near Half Moon Bay, CA. The tidepools are locally famous, and there was a very low tide at 5:30pm today – right about sunset. I thought I could get some nice tidepool creature shots and a Pacific Ocean sunset all in one trip. The sunset was a bust – low clouds kept any red from reaching us, so it just gradually got darker. But low light is a great time to be shooting in tidepools with a flash – when the sun is shining the glare from the water is a big problem, particularly on cloudy days. But with just a flash you can control the angle and get some dramatic light angles and colors.

Sea Anemone Macro

Shot using my flash hand held off to the side, and the camera mounted on a tripod. The anemone was just below the water line.

Sea Anemone Tentacles Macro

Sea Anemone Tentacle Macro

Sea Anemone Tentacles Macro