Tiny Pixel

Belated Update

2009-09-05T20:42:00.002+10:00

I actually don't use the blog any more, but since I still have my google account and I post comments on blogger.com blogs, there's every chance people will be linked back to here.

So for future record, for all of you that care, my blog is now

www.lukecottle.com/blog

Teddy Bear WIP

2007-10-27T01:23:00.000+10:00

Yet another work in progress. This is a smaller scene, so should be finished quicker - maybe by tomorrow? who knows.

Either way - here it is so far.

Turbine Hall WIP III

2007-10-07T01:24:00.000+10:00

Just posting an update to my turbine hall that I'm modelling. More so I can link to the image on the threedy.com forums.

Killed the stars

2007-10-07T01:15:00.000+10:00

Well Tim and I headed out to try our hand at some star trails. Wasn't a huge success, but we learned a bit for next time.

Things to note for next time:

The more distance from the city the better. We were way out at Samford, but the light polution from the sky was still too bright.
Gotta face South to get the circle of stars.
More photos, shorter exposures. I did 6 photos at 10 minutes each with 20 seconds gap in between to let the sensor cool down, though even with the cool down time I still had a fair bit of noise in my shots. Will try 5 minutes on and 20 seconds off next time
Higher ground is better. We were near a creek and it filled up with fog which meant I was wiping my lens a fair bit to get the condensation off. Bad move, I bumped the lens so many times - as painfully obvious in the final shot.
Don't leave the car sticking out into the road.... despite how much one would think there would be no cars out there at that time of nite.. there is.
Take something entertaining to do cus you'll be standing around for ages.
Don't drink lots of water, makes you want to piss alot
And finally, find a more interesting foreground. I darkened my foreground in this shot just cus it was really blurry from being bumped so many times, but it wasn't exactly interesting.

So.. the image. Looks like crap - but you live and you learn.

News I

2007-10-05T02:20:00.000+10:00

And in camera news.. again.. my filters are slowly arriving :D. I bought myself a Cokin graduated Tobaco filter - good for sunrises which I seem to be doing alot of. Just have to hope I can find the damn filter, wherever the hell I put it. I also ordered myself an ND 0.9 filter (8) aswell - so I can start playing with long exposures in lighter environments.

Both these filters are something I've been wanting to play with for a long time, and I figured now that Im getting out and taking photos more often, now is as good a time as any.

I got the nagging feeling in the back of my brain that I ordered something else - or that I'm expecting another package but don't remember. Well I guess it is 2:30am and I did just get home from work, so not all is in order up top right now.

I've been finding myself lately doing more and more photography when I'm wanting to build my 3D folio. My project of choice is my factory (well its actually a turbine hall) that I've been working on and I'm hoping for that to be my first finished project. Its just hard when there is so little time to work on it. Maybe it'll be done in 2-3 weeks.. maybe.

Anyway, back to photography. Tim dragged me out after work at midnight down to the local carpark to try some photos he's seen. Basically the idea is to trace the outline of a car during a long exposure with sparklers (a good example is here) - and what a great failure it was.

In all its butchered glory.. I still kinda like it (click to see bigger view)

Good thing I didn't burn my car for this shot.

Reservoir Sunset

2007-09-30T19:55:00.000+10:00

The colours were beautiful, the mozzies, were not. I'm suprised I haven't been out there more often since its only a 2 minute drive away.

Not sure if I like this shot, its slowly growing on me. Haven't decided if its dA worthy yet.

I know its simple, but i'm a huge fan of colour gradients during sunsets. Looks so pretty hehe. Was thinking maybe this image could be a bit thinner.

Factory WIP II

2007-09-30T16:46:00.000+10:00

Time to do an update on some of my 3D work. I've decided I want to hurry up and get this piece finished (though I think it'll still take a while, texturing will be interesting .. ugh).

I'm basing this model on a turbine hall of the old and abandoned Yonkers power station in the Hudson Valley in New York State in the US (So google tells me anyway).

God I got a long way to go on this.. ugh

Whats your excuse Brisbane?

2007-09-29T15:10:00.000+10:00

I decide that it'd be a good morning to drag tim out to take photos around Kangaroo Point (just to keep the creative blood flowing).

Bed by 2:30am (Tim finished work at 1:30 and barely bothered to sleep at all). Sunrise at 5:30am. Arrive at 5:10 to setup so best get out of bed at 4:30.

4:45 pick up Tim.. running slightly late. 5am, were almost there and... its foggy and we can't see SQUAT... god dammit.

So we walked.. and walked.. and walked. Took a few misc photos here and there, but nothing that I could really be bothered uploading. Ended up cruising all the way up to the Storey Bridge where I decided to take some more photos (might upload later if they turn out ok)

Timmy has come up with a cool idea to document all our photo missions and YouTube it for people to see how we do it (I got a feeling it'll be a comedy more then anything..)

Look at him. He has that smug look of "I just farted and you don't know it yet" on his face.

Turns out the only photo I'm half interested in was taken as a quick hand held snap pano just before getting into the car. Not sure I'll upload any of these to my deviantArt, we'll see how I'm feeling.

Pop

2007-09-23T21:19:00.001+10:00

Well Tim and I had some more fun playing macro today - which I think we'll have to do again. Anyway, with a bit of playing and some makeshift construction of our macro studio we managed to create something we could get a few decent shots from.

We started with 2 lightbulbs. We tried to smash them with different methods. I tried a lighter and a bowl of cold water. Tim tried a hammer. Tim's turned to dust. Guess that wasn't the most efficient way to do things haha.

Anyway, after drowning this lightbulb accidentily, drying it with a hair dryer, breaking the filament and tim tying it back on by hand, we finally had a go-er.

In a rabit onslaught of slr's going off (mine and tim's) I managed to catch this on my 2nd shot. I'm pretty happy with it to be honest. I'm happy I bought this lens :D

This is another macro of a match head catching fire. Probably not that clear, but I kinda liked it all the same (well enough for it to go on my blog, maybe not my DeviantArt account).

New Toy pt. III

2007-09-21T19:30:00.001+10:00

So Timmy and I went out to the botanical gardents today to take some photos in all its flowerless glory. The choices were either limited, or dead. Stupid drought.

Anyway, to be honest, macro flowers aren't necessarily my type of thing, I prefer more inorganic stuff like buildings to photograph and hence I really only have one photo that I actually liked out of the whole lot. Might try and pick some more out later and upload them, I'll see how I go.

I think the next shot will have to buy to buy some flowers and shoot them in a studio environment where the light can be controlled and so can the wind.

On another note, my poor macro studio that I made (see New Toy pt. II) got destroyed today hehe. Oh well.

One last shot - this little (not so little) guy stayed still for me to get right up close to him. Was pretty cool to take shots of with my macro. Shame the DOF is so narrow

New Toy pt. II

2007-09-19T22:33:00.000+10:00

Well, I'm still sick, but I had a bit more energy to play with my new lens today. I didn't really have too much creativness in me, so the items I chose weren't anything special.

I also made myself a little DIY macro studio from Strobist. It came out quite well, though I think the light is a little too strong from the left side. I was only using a lamp, as I don't have any offboard cable or pocket wizard or anything for my flash (hence why its in the photo). Anyway, I might try putting another layer of tissue paper on to diffuse the light some more, or find another light to ballance it out somewhat. I think I also need to find a bigger box haha.

I also had a play around with macro stacking (see this quick tutorial). The whole point of it is to increase your depth of field where you just can't get it any deeper for whatever reason. Just a word of note to those that have a play with this.. use a tripod. CZ5 can align images, but not very well in my experience. Far easier if your photos are all aligned right in the first place. See the dragon above for an example of stacked photos.

And.. this is a coke bottle. wow.

New Toy

2007-09-17T20:06:00.000+10:00

The macro has arrived! I'm so happy. I've been thinking up ideas of photos to take with this lens for ages. Unfortunately all day I've been really sick so I barely picked up the lens. I took a sample shot just to test it.

On another note, my poster, tshirt and little badges turned up today aswell from ISO50 - the artwork of Scott Hansen whos work I'm a huge fan of (both music and art). Have a look at http://blog.iso50.com/

Brisbane Square

2007-09-13T00:03:00.000+10:00

Decided to make the most of my new found enthusasm for photography again and ducked up to Brisbane Square after work today to take some shots. I left the tripod plate in the office and had to run back, so lost the better part of the falling sun, so this is all I was left with.

Canon 100mm Macro f/2.8

2007-09-11T00:18:00.001+10:00

So, I took the dive. I've wanted a macro lens for a such a long time, I figured that it'd be a good adition to my renewed enthusiasm to photography. 4 days till it turns up apparently, figures crossed it'll be here by the end of the week and I'll be posting new shots with it.

On a side note, last time I borrowed a macro here are some shots I took with it.

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Sorry people, I'm taking my photos down due to them being stolen

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Lake House WIP

2007-09-08T20:38:00.000+10:00

This is my current piece of work I've been working on of late. The idea is of ultra modern house out on a lake. Its still got a long way to go, and I'm not entirely sure where I'm going with it, so I'm just letting it evolve each time I work on it. I had originally hoped to make this as photorealistic as possible, but I think I'll spend too much time refining it that it'll never be finished. So I'll just aim to use this as a small learning curve for now.

Early Start

2007-09-08T13:59:00.000+10:00

So, it turns out I actually take photos aswell. Here are some from this morning with Hash and Steve.

Back in Action

2007-09-07T00:38:00.000+10:00

Ok, so the computer is back up to speed and working (finally after alot of hair loss and frustration). Now I can focus on working on my 3D again and actually finishing alot of my half started work.

Expect to see some final work up here soon.

Factory WIP

2007-09-05T19:51:00.001+10:00

So thought I'd quickly upload something I started work on and hopefully will finish sometime soon.

Speedbump #1

2007-09-04T17:13:00.000+10:00

My computer is dead. Well, close enough to. I bought myself a new computer not too long ago, spent a fortune on it, but there is something, somewhere thats causing it to lock up every few minutes. I've been trouble shooting everything with no such luck. Got a few more ideas I want to try tonight, I hope to god it works because I so desperately want to get started on my work. I'm so motivated and so keen to get into it but my computer doesn't work!!

Goals and Ambitions

2007-09-04T16:57:00.000+10:00

Goals

So a little more on why I started this blog.

I don't know really. Maybe as a record of my progress to keep me motivated? Maybe a way to attract like minded people. I guess I'd hopefully attract people that can teach me a thing or to, or hopefully to answer any questions from people learning.

Ambitions

I guess I've always wanted to travel and live overseas. I've had this idea in my head for a long time, I just don't want to be another statistic stuck in the same city. So why not mix work and travel together?

I never studied, well I have a Certificate IV in Animation, but its not really of any benefit to my line of work other then a foot in the door. Everything I know and have learned is self taught or I've learned on the job. I'd love to reach some form of stature in my career other then just on the lower rungs, so the solution I see is to aim for the big companies overseas.

The other night I started drafting some emails and sending them out to some of the big hitters asking what their standards are when looking for employees, in the hope to gain a picture, or a goal of what I should make my folio look like.

I've started to get an idea. I want to focus on architecturally influenced images and focus on realism. Who knows.

I have a handful of scenes I've started on but never finished so my first step is to finish them and actually have SOMETHING finished and either polish them up later or use them as a basis for bigger and better things.

So hopefully this blog will be filled with my ideas and drawings in the near future!

Explain yourself!

2007-09-04T08:58:00.001+10:00

Well, guess I should say something here.

What to say? I'm late for work. Good start...

I guess the point of this blog is to track my aims towards my goals. My goals being to be a better 3D Artist then I am now and to work with some funky high profile companies. I'm hoping to include some of my experiences and things that I've learnt along the way in here.

I'll start posting something decent tonight