Archive for November, 2007

SGI O2

SoftImage 3D

We have been tinkering of late. Again.

This tinkering has provided us with a new way to do certain stuff – like the small video clip attached to this post, and also left us with a whole bunch of questions too.

We won’t bore you with the questions that have been thrown up by our tests – just because we’re geeky about these things doesn’t mean that the rest of the world should have our geekdom thrust upon them!

~No, we’ll just leave you with the interesting visuals that have been generated by our tests…..

The more astute, or film fans among you may recognise this sort of effect from the X-Men films – and possibly more stuff out there too. But you know what, with all this work and the R&D to boot – we don’t get much time to watch many films these days!!

More soon.

Keep well all.

A very nice project and very, very nice clients. That’s how I would sum this piece of work up – but you need details don’t you?

Ok, here are the details……

We were contacted by the Birmingham branch of a national Architect firm, called Chetwoods and their partner in this project: Gazeley – to first of all produce a printed brochure to accompany their presentation to Advantage West Midlands, in the hope of securing a land development job.

The plan for the development was to create a logistics hub (that’s warehousing, storage and distribution centre, to the rest of us), that would not only bring employment to the area, but also be carbon and energy positive in its running.

Anyhoo, the plan evolved. The thinking came about that EESB could help get Chetwoods and Gazeleys‘ rather complex (if you’re not into planning, development, architecture and sustainability) message, and the finer details of said message, across to people in a passive, but engaging and captivating manner.

The option was put to them, of depicting their message in an almost moving instruction manual way – with representational imaging and pictorial reference rather than powerpoint-screen-upon-screen of complex machinery, figures, pie-charts and bar-graphs.

The plot up for development is Chatterley Valley, the project name from Chetwood and Gazeley is Blue Planet. The site had a good history of coal and colliery work – the following image is from the introduction segment, which took viewers from Chatterley Valleys’ past, into what its future could be.

The next segment [CO2], was used to show the implementations suggested by Chetwoods and Gazeley, in order for the site to not only meet current requirements and legislation – but to far surpass them.

These things include: All manner of sensible doohickies which enable the site to generate its own energy, and deliver electricity back the National Grid too.

The next section is about waste and pollutants – and the ways in which they will be managed on-site during construction and during the hubs working life. The anaerobic digester looks like an awesome, and very useful bit of kit.

Section four is Biodiveristy. We cannot put the plans in this section in any way other than just brilliant. How many developers have you known who want to draw local people and species back into an area? The development even has parts of the building specially designed for social purposes. Ace.

Water. Section five. Again – forethought, and lots of it. We won’t go into too much detail here – you’ll have to go to our web site for all the info.

And the last section – Community. This one kind of speaks for itself. As well as having its own special features, this section ties in a lot of elements from the previous sections in how the local community will benefit from this development.

We here at Eight Eyed Sea Bass have our skills and specialisms; like making things move, and understanding colour bit-depth.

Our talents helped Chetwoods and Gazeley win this £50 million contract, and as such, 500 new jobs will be created in the Chatterley Valley area.

We’d never claim to be at the height of architectural knowledge or in the upper echelons as concerns engineering and the understanding of it….. but when the facts about the site are broken down into easy to understand ways – Blue Planet looks to us, like the way forward.

Two weeks worth of work involving nine people, turned around in less than one week.
Lots of planning, lots of understanding, lots of lost sleep! It is the Sea Bass way.

To see the sections in all of their joyous glory, wibble here, and find your way long to the ‘creative’ part – you should find this project in amongst all the other finery we have produced.

More soon, keep well all.

After a seemingly lengthy time of existence, we’ve realised that there’s a hell of a lot of work that goes on within this company that outsiders have no idea about.

There are things we work on or develop that are designed for us to learn from them; there are things that are done to figure out a visual style or flair; there are things created just for fun; and naturally there are things we work on to help drive the company forward. We use tools that are used in the film industry for Hollywood blockbusters on cutting edge hardware, so it’s important that we are able to get to grip with these.

We have big aims for the Sea Bass, and we one of these is to become known as being the leaders in post-production, animation and visual effects in the Midlands region.

So with all this stuff cooking, we thought it’d be nice to show you lucky, lucky people some images of ‘things’ that have been worked on. Now, these pictures are not works of art, but that wasn’t their aim. What you’ll see are our studies for internal projects – the kind of things our clients haven’t given us a chance to use yet.

Here is Paul’s take on what has always been a classic image (in the 3D industry) created to test colour, lighting and materials, the Cornell Box:

Next up, Paul has this thing for pencils…. I dunno what that’s about either…:

Paul modelled his personally-used headphones, and a rough example of a picnic bench – which was potentially going to be used in the Litter job much earlier this year:

We love depth-of-field! Oh yes, it’s lovely. In the next image, Paul created a boxey-shaped … box shape – with a bit of DOF to boot! Of course he also wanted to make a Digipak model for optical disc storage. We had hoped that this would be animated, but haven’t had time yet. So far it was a geometry and materials study – though it could do with some more colour perhaps?

Our man Paul also likes to do some of the more ‘photoreal’ type of imagery. I don’t know what makes him think subjects as depicted in the images below, but, as you can see, the boy done pretty good…

Actually, the techniques used in the filmstrip image above were put to use in a project for Birmingham School of Acting, in a DVD project which required some not-entirely-disimilar imagery and animation, by sheer coincidence! Well done Pauly – how did you sniff that out in advance?! Anyway, that project was well-received when it was premiered at the IMAX cinema… yeah, you know…. where they have that HUGE cinema screen at Millenium Point?

Cool.

Oh yeah, Mr B has also been working with some sub-surface scattering materials. Think of when you shine a bright light at the webby skin between your fingers and it glows up reddish… and that is sub-surface scattering. The credit for the buddha model should go to Stanford University. Nice one, chaps.

Paul also likes to spend some time sorting out his edge-loops. That’s got nothing to do with his clothing, no no, good people. It’s actually making sure his 3D models have a good flow of his modelled polygons, so that they’ll deform oh-so-nicely when animated. This is good for characters.

The final pretty-pictures-of-the-day are of a different nature. In these we are having a play with our landscaping tools. Using these programs we can create realistic or completely fictional places. I like that, me. And what also makes these somewhat different to the last images, is that these ones were created by me! Yes, strangely enough, I also do some of the work around here. Sometimes I work so hard that I give Paul really obvious hints that I need another cup of tea. Cos, you know, I’m much too busy to get up to make one myself.

So that’s it for now. We’ve got some bigger things planned for this year and next for us to create for ourselves, and me personally, I cannot wait! So many images and stories to make. Stay tuned, and there should be something more substantial in the next few weeks.

Take care, all.

Wahey!!

The Bass reached it’s third birthday successfully on October 25th 2007.

Yes, ok, admittedly we are a little late in posting this, but we’ve had a lot to do lately – though at least this time we actually remembered on the day of the event.

Thanks must go to everyone in the EESB Team for the hard work, and to our clients for the great projects.

Take care, all.

!!w00t!!

For all those who have not realised or been informed – Eight Eyed Sea Bass Ltd has moved tank.

The relocation has taken us from Digbeth to The Jewellery Quarter in Birmingham, and to a much nicer (and vastly larger) space all round if the truth be known.

The Bass has taken a studio on the newly re-diddled fifth floor of The Big Peg on Vyse Street, a location that boasts just about eveything a company, and a person could need: Post Office, bank, two decent pubs within crawling distance, and the 24 Carat Bistro – see what they did there?….. Jewellery Quarter, 24 Carat Bistro… yes, no? Well, I thought it was funny. Then again I thought shingles was funny.

Seriously, the 24 Carat Bistro do a wonderful burger, and then some.

Ok, in reality, this section of our new inter-wibble-based presence has taken us a while to put into place – the reason being that we were pretty much snowed under from some time before our move, to some time just around now. Not that everything has just stopped -oh no; Not by a long shot. It’s just that my esteemed colleague, Dommo, has decided to hold my beer to ransom until a significant post is put up on the brand spankin’ new Eight Eyed Sea Blog.

*I’m nearly done, can I have my beer back please Dom?*

So, since the move, we have completed the anti-litter campaign for Birmingham City Council; to be found under the ‘creative’ heading on our site clicky here, entitled ‘Reaction To Litter’. A very enjoyable piece to work on.

I think it would be fair to say that we were most likely one of the first companies in the West Midlands to utilise self-shot HDRI, image based lighting and global illumination within a live action and 3D composite piece, if not the first.

We have also (in amongst everything else!) recently finished one of those jobs that jumps out from the bushes at you – for an architectural and land development group, to help give their presentation to a panel a bit more weight. We hope to have this work on our site shortly for your delectation and enjoyment. Roughly two weeks worth of work, somehow magically squeezed into less than one week. It it the Sea Bass way, when needs must for our clients.

Righto, before things drag on (sorry if you think that things have already dragged on….) we’ll leave you with a promise to get some images of the new place posted here as soon as possible – we love it, our clients love it, and we’d like for the world, his wife, two bacon sarnies and a bottle of pop to see and love it too.

More soon, keep well all.