Ironman Modeled in modo

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 08:39:39 GMT

Ironman is close to being released. Personally, I've only been waiting for this movie now for something like 35 years or more. After walking by a rack of some 2008 Ironman Slurpee cups on my way to get my Diet-Coke, I remembered the old Ironman Slurpee cup I had in the 70's. The artwork was terrible back then and Ironman had a nose. I don't know. Maybe the cup is worth something now because of the nose.

So anyway, the point of this rant was that I read over at Luxology and NewTek just now that modo was used for modeling, UVmapping, and painting the Ironman model used in the movie. XSI was used for animating the model. And Lightwave was finally used for rendering the model.

A Great American

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 06:45:27 GMT

Charlton Heston died today. I was just thinking about him a few days ago, wondering how he was doing. I remember his last public appearance on television and the speech he gave like it was yesterday.

This Movie Changed Me

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 08:07:19 GMT

When I was ten years old... This would have been back in 1973... A movie called, 2001: a space odyssey, was returning to theaters for a second run. We had the MGM soundtrack record album that opened up with amazing photos from the movie inside. And there was great artwork on both front and back covers of the thing. I remember looking at all the photos while listening to the music. It was my favorite of all the records we had. I must have listened to that record over 50 times in a 50-day... No, I'm joking... Let's just say it was almost unhealthy the number of times I played it. My parents still have that album to this day. I wish they still had the old Heathkit stereo to hear it with.

Anyway, the movie was showing at a brand new futuristic mall in El Cajon called, Parkway Plaza. It was like the mall was designed to look like it was actually 2001. And they had a UA theater there showing the film on one of its three screens.

My Dad took me and my brother to this event. And I think there were about ten people in the whole theater. My dad had already seen the film when it first came out, but he never told me anything about the story. He wasn't much of a movie goer and so he was basically my brother and I's (or is it me and my brother's?) driver.

It was a terrible theater. Horrible seats and screens. The food was nasty. They tore it down probably ten years later and didn't do much with that part of the mall until a Walmart was built there a few years ago.

But when that movie started, I was in space. I knew all the tunes from the movie already and now I had the scenes to go with them. There I was. A 10-year-old kid wondering if 2001 would really be like what I was watching. 2001 seemed like a hundred years from then for me at the time. My dad looked bored. I couldn't see my brother. I'm guessing he was on the other side of my dad. He could have been bored, too. 2001 had that affect on some people. But the film had its grip on me and wasn't letting go.

Up until that point in my life, I thought I was fearless. I thought nothing could scare me. I wasn't afraid of dying or being killed somehow. But when Frank Poole died in space, and it was how he died that was the most unsettling for me, something in my mind snapped.

Until that moment, I had seen movie characters die from basic boring stuff like car wrecks, gun shots, falling, drowning, sharp objects, acid, and even nukes. But I was not prepared to see someone die from air leaking out of their spacesuit. For a year I had trouble sleeping with the lights off after seeing that film. The darkness reminded me of being in the void of space. And to this day still, I think a leaking spacesuit would be the worst way for me to go. I'd rather die like the ship crew in Alien died a hundred times over than how Frank died in 2001.

To this day, 2001: a space odyssey is still one of my favorite movies of all time. And I just looked... And according to my web site... It's number one on my top ten films list. So good.

Any lasting affects that the movie had on me, other than discovering the worst way to die, would be my addiction to computers. More precisely, mainframes. Because that's what they had for computers in the 70's. Three years after seeing what would always be my favorite movie of all time, I wrote my first computer program in BASIC on an HP-2000F which was a single mini-mainframe tied into all the public junior and senior high schools at the time. Chatting with other students at 300 baud on a DECwriter II terminal with greenbar and tracker feed, etc, etc. And ASCII porn that you hid from the SysOps.

All because of 2001.

FROM SHONNER'S STUDIO: Movies

Ironman Modeled in modo

A Great American

This Movie Changed Me