CompuServe Messages

Trent wuz happenin' Autopilot just crashed a second time here while I was just typing to you. Sheesh! Thanks for your EGS Feedback. I guess I'll make way some how. I've heard alot about Alpha Paint, & I even Emailed the author to ask if he were thinking of writing a version to 24 bit boards. I don't think I got a reply yet. Thing is, I can't stand doing detail work on a composite display. If I were, I'd have to shell out about $700 for a good Composite monitor w/ underscan & some half decent phosphors. No can do right now. Thats not to say that its a bad program. Built in tablet support, great text/brush handling, Alpha/video keying support…real nice job by those people @ Innovision. A polished & well rounded program it seems, geared for video. I'm sure their decision to go w/ a composite/toaster framebuffer output was to more directly support video overlaying & target a defined base of Amiga professionals. Can't blame them for that considering the 10 month carrot dangling we've all experiencing w/ this dragout (formerly know as the buyout). I work at this post house here in NY called The Tape House Editorial/Digital. I started about seven years ago, 18 yrs old & green from head to toe. I arrived there one night when they were having a Super 8 symposeum. As it was, I was heavily a Super 8 fan, shooting clay creatures & blowing up every model kit I had for the sake of filmmaking. The symposeum showed how when Super 8 was transfered to tape using a Rank Cintel telelcine, it can be made to look like 16mm. And on that fatefull night, in front of all, the film broke! A splice (over only 2 frms, really big accomplishment back then) gave way to the tension arms on the Rank. As it happened, they had the same exact splicer as I did & no one knew how to splice it…except one. That was my break. I spliced the film, saved the day, & thanks to my sis's persistece, I gathered the courage to ask the VP of the company for a summer job. Shortly after, I picked up an A2000 after 9 months of planning, saving, and drooling. I started working in the Film transfer dept @ Tape House and remained there for 4 1/2 years. I got alot of experience there, trained many, 3 of which are now telecine colorist, and moved on to graphics. I hung out w/ alot of the Harry artist there since I was totally floored by the Paintbox/Harry. I was always facinated by visual FX, having read CineFex for as long as I can remember; and the Harry offered the feedback that was unheard of in the film optical world. Yup my heros are guys like Ken Ralston, Richard Edlund, Bruce Nicohlson, John Dyksta, Dennis Muren, Phil Tippett…the list goes on. Guys that I wanted to be like, and the Harry offered me chance. Back in '91 I got my Toaster after working double shift for about four months, and brought it to Tape House. Get this, I was rendering LW 1.0 anims to a Harry for comping, Man I was in Heaven! I got alot of support from the other artist & animators, but my boss really started to hate it. I pitched & proposed to him to get a system to supplement the 2D room we had. We had a stand alone Paintbox & an A60 disk recorder in one room that was literally empty for the most part. I was getting little odd jobs for layoffs (as I engineered them) & music video bumper animations. Videography mag even came out those specials highlighting the then to be release B5 pilot, not to mention all those Unsolved Mysteries anims. The timing seemed perfect! No dice. I heard it this way & I heard it that way. Oh, they had no prob booking *my* system for lay offs & charging them, but would I recoup any..No. So I pulled it out. Within a year I got an Emplant & I started outputing to Mac Syquest for digital output. It was a frustrating period, but I got my reel together w/ some commercial work & I learned alot in terms of not just 3D, but also management politics. The child in me was gone for sure. As it goes Trent, if a client see's a little Amiga (did you say Omega?) cranking out images @ broadcast quality, whose gonna pay for the expensive Workstation anims that are being produced. I think they believed that they could not charge as much since it was considered "low end". As it turns out, some LW work isn't charged so low, in addition to the low overhead in equipment; not to mention that the output isn't exactly "low end". Anyway, soon after that I got involved in this ill-fated film project with this funny-turn-arsehole kind of guy. Get this: he wrote the story and got some of his buddies together. I directed the whole thing, paid for half, and I was posting it. The guy was promising me recouped costs and that his "uncle" @ NBC would put it on FOX (?!???!). Now you gotta understand, I've already had a couple of projects under my belt, & plus my post experience. I shot blue screen & FX shot for this film. I knew what was goin'. This guy would just hype himself as if he was some Ed Wood or something! All he did was yap, act like an ass, and drink. When things slowed down in post (the film transfer), he demanded that I finsh it. I said "what?". He was in some kind of rush because he wanted to be a rockstar in a year (his words). He claimed that he could finish it in a couple of weeks. The guy, Trent, was truley delerious. Never had I'd seen the work of ignorance, arrogance, & stupidity work in such harmony as it did in this guy. He pulled some low stunts, really low! I gave him a copy of the tapes & said "hey if you want it so bad, finish it! Eight months later, he's still showing my cut around, trying to pitch himself as a producer. I still got the neg, the receipts, the orig transfers, & some of the opticals done. The stuff looks wayne's worldish w/ Mad Max thrown in. Fun stuff, but not worth the headaches of the past couple of years. More lessons learned! Now I'm doing my own work, helping some friends w/ music videos & checking out a CD-ROM project at work. I do Harry work at night for salery & to keep @ Tape House. It can only get better from here. Well Sorry for that drift, but you got me started. ;D Let me know it you resolve your problem w/ the EGS CyberCruising at ya from Brooklyn, NY on Autopilot, —Archie