Welcome to Hollywood...

iPhone and blue pencil.

Cocktail by the pool.

Florida Iguana

Airport

Giving the Cintiq a whirl.

Zbrush and myPaint on Kubuntu 10.04.

This is why FX artists shouldn't be allowed to use fireworks.

The FX department with fireworks - 1 from Simon LeGrand on Vimeo.


The FX department with fireworks - 2 from Simon LeGrand on Vimeo.

The Fishermen's Town.

Badulah train station.

Slow-stick maiden test flight.

Unsuccessful would be an understatement, however it was a fun time and basically I think all I need is more power. The prop is hooked to the engine by quite a large gear lowering the RPM's of the prop compared to the RPM's of the engine. I'm going to try to change that gear ratio and I'm confident this baby will fly. The airframe seemed fairly stable. I may try to increase the V of the wings for more stability and also, somehow shift the electronics so that it's not so tail heavy.

Slow-stick maiden test flight. from Simon LeGrand on Vimeo.

Quick test sketch with the Cintiq.

I am so ashamed. I have had this Cintiq for a couple of months now and I haven't been able to find the time to do any work with it. This is a very quick sushi chef test sketch that I did tonight with MyPaint.

Scratch built rc plane update.

Scratch built slow stick progress.

The overall beast in all its glory of wood and metal bits.

The elevators and rudder. Showing the control rods connected.

The servos ready to do my biding and control this untamed demon.

The propeller taken from an old gas engine rc plane. Hopefully it will do the trick.

My trusty controller. It's always there for me.

Meccanos! Who doesn't love 'em. 

Rubber bands to hold the wings! Yup, ya gotta do watcha gotta do.

Scratch built slow stick.

Moon.

As well as being the title of one of my favourite movies of all time, tonight, it was also the subject of some test photography using a crazy 1300mm lens (merci Papa!). I'm very happy with these early results as I did not have a trigger with me and it was windy, thus shaking was a bit of an issue. Future tests will include tests on Venus, Jupiter and the neighbour's bathroom window.

Ubuntu Linux Used in the Making of Avatar

It's definitely nice to see that the fact that we use Ubuntu on our Desktop computers at Weta is finally coming out officially. I hope Weta digital will make many more press releases on this topic.

Click the two links below to read a bit more about it.

"Ubuntu is at the core of all of this, running on all of the rendering nodes, and 90% of the desktops at Weta Digital".

"According to Paul, Ubuntu is at the core of all of this, running on all of the rendering nodes, and 90% of the desktops at Weta Digital."

Sculpture of some little dude.

Mercedes SLS-AMG

It's a BEAST!

I just bought a mother-flippin' CINTIQ!

I'm on a boat MOTHAF*CKAAAA!

A video of the light sensitivity test.

Arduino - Light Dependant Resistor, LEDs test. from Simon LeGrand on Vimeo.

And in action!

Arduino - Light Dependant Resistors, in action. from Simon LeGrand on Vimeo.

Arduino Robot.

This little guy was the result of an Arduino (Interactive Physical Computing) crash-course I had the chance to attend over the weekend. I have to Say, Kim Newall from Mindkits was a great teacher and we all managed to get quite a cool little robot out of the 2 day course.
Here are some photos for now, I will post some video to demonstrate its functionality very soon.





Until I get footage of the actual beast, here's what it could do...

Don't Drink This Video.

Experimental film using liquids mixing and chemical reactions. Shot on Canon 550D with Nikkor AF micro 60mm lens. Music by "The Orchestral Movement of 1932" (tinyurl.com/28q9kyg). This video is creative commons and you are welcome to use it for any purpose. I am also a strong believer in open source, so if you think one of the full HD source files may help you in one of your project don't hesitate to contact me and I will do my best to send you the uncut original source videos.

Don't Drink This. from Simon LeGrand on Vimeo.

Don't drink this.

Some stills from yesterday's exploration of liquids mixing. I will post the full video on VIMEO very soon.

Ceylon - creatures