This was a presentation by me that should have been called "Of Helicopters and HDR" but was in fact called "Soaring China" for the ride film Big American Films has just finished live-action production on. Now begins the hard part of doing all the post. It was a very interesting event and a good turnout with at least 100 people looking on with 6 speakers.
or here is a very small one, but I wouldn't recommend it. Just go with the big one.
Yes, I know, took forever but we put a little taste of what we can do for FX work up on the home page. Take a look. It's amazing and we have more!
We are back to jabbing away at our in-house Animation project GoGoJo. Animatic will be happening by the end of this week and then time to shred it mercilessly until we get a good 5 minutes or so. Character rigging continues, and hope to have some promotional stills in time for Christmas.
At our offices in China we have some frustration with the web. The great fire wall of China, often talked about, is very real for us Expat types. I suppose the hope by the govt is that there are plenty of Chinese alternatives and people won't miss something as Western as facebook. What I find most interesting about this is it's a veritable finger in the dike. Anyway, it's a long conversation and here I just want to point out to our American and European friends a few of the big sites that are blocked.
Google (just en, not hk), Facebook, Twitter, foursquare
And the ones that really hurt : Vimeo, youtube (thank God for youku.com)
Recently I read an article that suggested the govt is hinting at ways to open things up a bit. If you know anything at all about the Chinese you realize that ANY kind of change in direction is a potential loss of face. Yes, even the national govt suffers from this eternal face-saving dilemma. I would guess the only good way to do it here is very slowly so nobody thinks of it as a mistake and thus no need for apologies. We'll see. Here's a semi-official list. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_the_People's_Republic_of_China But strangely enough, it's blocked.
Website fall Down, go boom… But we’re back before most noticed.
The company web site (yes, the very one you are looking at now) was temporarily down this past weekend for less than a day. We didn’t get the amount of email traffic on Monday that we expected so I surmise there were some bounces. Oops. Don’t think that will happen again as our service provider is very good. In fact I don’t mind giving them a plug as it was mostly our fault that it happened at all. For an international service check out icdsoft.com, out of Hong Kong. Sorry for any inconvenience, and please resend those juicy emails that might have lost their way to us. Thanks.
Hitting the BIG time in Asia "Big American" Evan Ricks is on TV these days, both MTV and Channel V talking about the new music video produced right here at BAF. We have what we consider an even better Music Video in the pipe right now and we'll soon put some snazzy sneak peeks on the site for all you "Voices of Chivalry" virtual band fans. Imagine telling your friends that you saw it First, YEAH!
OK, OK, but we are quite excited about this small bit of fame and hope to be doing much more of this kind of thing in the future.
Yes, we made the move from that smallish place to the new palatial, two story home. We have some room for growth here, at least as much as we want for now. Still to come are details such as light fixtures and some room dividers, and a logo on the wall, but at least we won’t freeze this winter. Last year at this time we were wearing fingerless gloves at the computers, even with a new heater directly over the heads of most of the animators! I was in even worse shape in the next room with no heat at all (if I turned on anything else the circuit would blow). But there’s always a silver lining, and the old place will soon become a photo studio for a while.
So, with new desks, new chairs, more computers there’s no excuses so if you work for BAF then get back to work!
We have added a new item to the front page, it’s a series of clocks courtesy of Google gadgets. Currently set to our time in Shanghai, LA and Paris. But it’s often hard to get ones head around phone or skype conference calls when dealing with big time zone differences. China is 15 hours ahead of LA, so it’s often a different day. Just makes your head hurt to think about it. So! You if you happen to be in Paris or LA you just click on the little “Launch the meeting planner” link and it lets you visually figure it out easily. Try it and you’ll see what I mean. It’s kinda cool.
Well, Ningbo rocks for at least one night…
The first kickoff concert for the Voices of Chivalry took place on Halloween (Oct. 31) and from where I sat it was a great success. The Club was amazingly well done, and Chivas was everywhere. A good time was had by all, as can be seen from these pics of Julia and one of the crew (Clay).
Ok, so Julia doesn’t look so happy, but she was. And Clay was very happy indeed, until the next morning…
The new place is looking pretty cool. Got the stairs in, Gigabit ethernet going everywhere, and a little server room to keep things quiet. Not to mention having space for larger meetings, coffee for clients and a separate edit suite.
I love this image, welding with glasses and a piece of stiff paper.
Chivas puts together a band of 4 male models… or they would be if they were real
Big American Films has been working overtime (literally) on what looks to be Asia’s first all digital ‘Virtual Band’. Chivas China, the number one spirits distributor in Asia came up with the concept as a new campaign targeted at the sophisticate drinker. The group will ‘perform’ in clubs all around the country starting on Halloween, then in a large live performance in December and again in January, both alongside headline acts, with songs never heard before. BAF will also be creating 2 music videos to be shown all across Asia on Channel [V]. We’re still in the thick of it here, and it’s a huge challenge given the amount of work (4 characters X 9 minutes of animation for the first concert), but we feel confident this will be a big hit. 2 songs will be ready by the end of October, another for the 2nd concert, and another for the 3rd. All music is coming directly from Sony Music who has been working closely with Chivas.
We have decided we are just too cramped up here on the 25th (and 26th) floor above the Little Sheep restaurant (if you live in China you know just what I mean, otherwise don't worry about it). After a fairly extensive search we found the perfect location, close to a busy district known as Xu Jia Hui, and only a few steps from a major subway line. We couldn't be happier to offer our employees and clients a more refined and spacious place to work and visit. 
We'll even finally have a fancy meetin' table, two floors, an edit bay, and lots of window space. Not to mention we won't at all miss the slow elevators to the 25th floor, this time we're only going to 4. The new building is crammed full of design companies of different sorts, and across the way is a large post facility (with a beautiful new digital screening/DI room) so it should be fun.
We were very proud to have our own Ozzy help out the folks from The Foundry in a demo of compositing software NUKE. We showed our recent work on some of the shots from Dragon Ball.
Down a new trail
Over the past several months we’ve been talking about a ‘project’. Now I think I have one. Eureka!
After a setback of a few decades, China’s animation industry is charging full steam.
The Animation industry had seen better days. Animation from the early days showed some real zeal and creativity. Then came the dark ages, and now with the help and urging of the government there is a healthy resurgence.
We couldn’t be happier.
