Last weekend I attended a vray & compositing workshop/seminar conducted by JJ Palomo (a.k.a 3DBlasphemy) in PepeSchoolLand.

I’ve learned that you don’t need to do any “super-cool” render to archieve highly realistic results, it’s everything in the compositing phase… just with a decent render you can make it rock after the compositing phase (so you can have quicker renders). I’ve also learned to know when to work more on details or just making it simpler if it is not going to be closer to the camera, this may sound stupid but it’s impressive how can some really simple almost-cubed-shaped models work when you’re not making closeups of them (and if those are moving and with some motion blur…even better! lol) and a lot of quick-tricks that he teached us for archieving stunning results faster…

He also teached us some things they have been working on since he founded his own VFX Studio, BLR – Big Lazy Robot.

Finally I’ve decided to work just on my modeling reel which is supposed to be available on late 2009.

Last weekend I’ve been in a character setup workshop conducted by the great Daniel M. Lara (a.k.a pepeland) in PepeSchoolLand.

He teached all of us a lot of improvements and tricks to make a rig as simple and efficient as it could be. Because lots of times we (rigger-wannabes) pretend to do rigs with as much automatisms as we can, and those rigs so overloaded affect directly to the viewport’s performance when animators are testing animations in viewport.

I also have to announce that my 2006 rigging reel is going to be offline as of today, because I am working right now on my 2008 reel (actually both of them), I hope it will be finished for late 2009.

I’ve been last weekend in a modeling/sculpting workshop with Alex Huguet (a.k.a metamesh) in PepeSchoolLand where he explained us how they work in the character modeling department of Ilion for the feature Planet 51 which is supposed to be released next year by june or so (or that’s what I understood) edit: the final date for the release is 2009’s thanks giving.

I have to say that I learnt a lot from Alex about how is working in a production environment and how is working as a high-class-freelance, as I didn’t worked on CG yet I didn’t knew some tricks and shortcuts that he teached all of us, I have to say that I also met there really great people and I would like to say thanks to Alex, for answering all my questions (and by saying all, I mean, A LOT).

so yup, it’s been a great weekend ^^

About a month ago I started an online sketchbook where I upload all the stuff I draw, the best sketches from there will be uploaded here, to my sketches gallery (right now is hidden) I will try to upload new stuff every week if I have enough time… The sketchbook is located in my subdomain http://sketchbook.cgexavi.com, I invite you to comment some sketches and tell me if you would like to see any sketch converted into a 3d mesh

By the way right now I’m preparing to start my new 2008 reel and I say that I’m preparing because for this one I don’t want to search for a job whith a reel done in less than a couple months. The first one was done just for fun, this one is for getting hired (or at least trying it )

About two weeks ago I took the TOEIC (test of english for international comunication) and today I’ve picked up the results, the score is 890 out of 990, well I think that it is a good score, but I know that I can improve it. Unfotunately the day I was taking my test I was pretty sick so I couldn’t concentrate whatsoever and I didn’t heard some things because I was sneezing (sounds funny, but if you’re takin a test and trying to listen something, its NOT!) and they just play once the recording … Anyways, I think that this one is a good score, taking into account that I didn’t prepared anything for taking that test, I didn’t studied anything, not even the day before taking the test, so it’s not a bad score.

So my overall score was 890 divided in:

-Listening: 455 (I could get 495 if I didn’t sneezed that much!)
-Reading: 435 (uhm… whatever… )