TwentyFortyOne Blog

Everyone inside my circle knows that my passion for the Halo series ranks amongst the highest in all the land – along with my ability to completely pwn your ass at it. Cocky? Perhaps. Don’t believe me? Look me up on xbox live: WolfTroutCobra, and lets dance.

Ok so maybe the title is a little misleading (because I’ve only played ODST for about 3 hours EDIT: After last nights marathon the total PT is up to 6 hours!1!), but so far Halo 3: ODST is well worth the *caugh* $60 *caugh* I spent on it last night. And while $60 might seem like a lot of money to spend on a video game, I try and explain it to my wife like this, “It might seem like a lot now, but think of all the money I’ll save by staying in!”

I could turn this into a typical game review and talk about how insanely awesome the “Firefight” game mode is, or how whack the new grenade throwing trajectory is, but I’m going to take another angle and talk about how rad the marketing and advertisements have been for the Halo 3 series.

Could you imagine getting a call on some random Tuesday morning from Bungie’s marketing director asking you to produce a series of live-action Halo vignettes?!? Rumor has it that Peter Jackson was actually scheduled to direct the feature length Halo movie, but the film was put on hold most likely for some bureaucratic red tape BS…

Well in typical twentyfortyone blog fashion, I have started a post acting like I’m going to go all in depth but by the end I get bored and just want to post videos and call it good. Enjoy

Going back to my roots, I thought I’d post some work of a somewhat local artist. I’m always surprised to see all the great work that comes out of Portland, and from rather unsuspecting fellows too. Take the two guys I used to work with at Nike for example (Marshall and Russell you know who you are). Meet them on the street: what’s up, regular ass dudes with no tats and who wear normal fitting jeans and t-shirts. Meet them in the lab and they’re turning out some of the sickest motion graphics and 3D work I’ve ever seen. Anyway, back to this guy…

This piece was just too good to pass up. I personally have never used Lightwave, but this is about as good as I’ve even seen. And forget the tech mumbo jumbo, this is a pretty bad ass Porsche commercial too! It’s ads like this that I watch and think, “This is real sick, probably cost a fortune, but where does it end up?..”

I’ve kinda been all over the place with this post, so I’ll go ahead and shut it down. Check out Stephen Fitzgerald’s Vimeo page and keep checking back for more blogs on motion graphics, video production and editing.

The TV, film and video industry is one of the most technologically competitive markets out there, so it’s no surprise that the 2009 NAB Show at the Las Vegas Convention Center has been the talk of the tech blogosphere lately. I was lucky enough to get the chance to go to LV for the 2007 SEMA Auto Show (similar in proportion, only it’s for the auto industry instead of the TV, film and video). There is nothing like being in a convention center the size of Boeing (…not really…) that is fill with more lights than Tokyo, and more gadgets than Fry’s! It’s a tech heads dream. NAB has become the industry standard location for product launches, updates and fresh ideas.

Most media hardware and software companies believe that the evolution of video is resolution and speed, which is why I think that the SE Portland based company, Immersive Media is doing something right! Not only do they have a camera that shoots 360 degrees x 360 degrees, they’ve also figured out a way to stream the data LIVE(!!1!) from anywhere! I truly feel that their hardware/software is an industry revolution, not evolution (as keynote speech as that sounds…).

The video above and the photos below are examples of the media streaming from a camera setup in Texas and at the NAB Show, and how the viewer would navigate through the video stream. This technology has ENDLESS applications, and will only continue to explore the possibilities.

This is a great example of how someone took a played out idea and executed it perfectly. The two things that work for this piece are the lighting on the car (hard to match the scene without HDRI probes) and the motion capture they did for the movement of the “robot”.



I believe this ad was created by the same company, but for a different car. The studio that created the spot is a Canadian-based firm called The Embassy Visual Effects, Inc. There is a great write-up on how they accomplished the task HERE.

You can’t animate 3D objects that well, so you have to put a guy in a wetsuit-looking thing with about 150 infrared reflectors on it whilst being recorded by special infrared cameras… NERD ALERT!

So most of my friends know by now that I’ve been interviewing with a company here in Portland called Immersive Media (they’re the company who invented the Google Street View technology). They’re probably the biggest media company that you’ve never heard of.



During our last meeting they showed me a piece that they did (along with Saatchi and Saatchi) for Armani’s latest jeans campaign, and damn is it a great use of the technology! To all the creative and ad agencies out there, take note. You’ll want it soon.

Footnote: One of the models in the ad is also Miley Cyrus’s boyfriend… See if you can spot him.