Creative Cloud - The future of software licensing

Adobe's announcement to move its software licensing to a completely subscription-based model upset many loyal users. They've all stated their reasons for being enraged: no longer owning a permanent version of the software, paying a monthly/yearly fee forever rather than a one-time cost, etc. Then about a week ago I was walking along shooting the shit with Shane Luis from ReRezTV (we were shooting his own rant video on Microsoft's announcement of the Xbox One), when he asked me about the news of Creative Cloud and how it was affecting everybody. He decided to turn my own camera on me and get my brief thoughts on the matter.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzwKABo_K50

And for the record, I don't think that Creative Cloud will solve piracy. However, I have met more than a small number of people (and the rest of us are very aware that these folk are out there) who justify pirating copies of Adobe programs because they can't afford the costs of purchasing them outright. Instead they download illegal versions of the software to start learning and working in order to eventually get legit versions down the road. This would make it far easier for those wanting to dive in and learn the programs right away, and far more difficult for folk to use cost as an excuse.

Wiping the dust off this filmmaker's blog

Where did all these cobwebs come from? I thought I closed this place up good when I last left it. So I've been a bit absent from the posts lately, but that is all going to be fixed. Starting right now.

Some of you may be wondering what I've been up to lately. Others may just be wondering what it is that I do...period. How about I answer these with a quick update activity here.

- - -

First of all, if you follow my comings-and-goings you may have known that last November I was in Seattle on the set of The Gamers: Hands of Fate serving as both co-director of photography (there were 3 of us for 3 separate segments of the film) and visual effects supervisor for the "epic" portions of the shoot (Hint: #00FF00 has a large part of it). Now the film is steeped in post-production goodness. Over the course of the next few months, I'll be working on compositing green-screen footage against some lovely backgrounds provided by the post-production's digital matte painter.

As with most projects, I have approached the directors and producers with the idea of putting together behind-the-scenes material of the visual effects work and they were receptive to it, so hopefully you can expect to see that. But, as always, they have the final say if they don't want anything released until the film is completed and screened. Always have to be wary of spoilers. But here's the teaser trailer cut with footage from GenCon last summer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNxJNpb590c

- - -

In the meantime, there is a project that I'm a part of that you can see. As in right now. The web series Versus Valerie has launched and hit the interwebs with the force of a thousand suns! It follows the character Valerie Lapomme (whom you may or may not know as Sexy Nerd Girl from her ongoing vlog). This is a narrative story showing her life outside of the bedroom (mind out of the gutter, folks) and how she deals with her many day-to-day challenges with the odd escape into her imagination to help. Episode 1 launched on March 7th and a new episode is released every other week, each one styled on a different nerd sub-genre (eg. Star Wars, Star Trek, FPS shooters, etc.). I've been working in the visual effects department on Versus Valerie along with another vfx artist, Davin Lengyel. One of the areas you can see my work in are the title sequences for each episode.

Here's a breakdown of the first episode's title sequence. The episode itself was styled off of the BBC series Sherlock, hence the look of the title sequence here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oje0KKZW-k

- - -

One other role that I just recently took on was picking up editing for the comedy series, The Gate. This series was produced with a team of Toronto web series creators including Elize Morgan (Pretty in Geek), Jason Leaver (Out with Dad), Ash Catherwood (Microwave Porn) and Fraser Mills. The series follows St. Peter at the pearly gates of Heaven and the different characters he runs into. All of the episodes released to date were edited by Jason Leaver, but he's become busy with other production work and has made the decision to hand it over to someone else. Any fan of the Toronto web series scene would recognize that these folk are pretty much like The Expendables of web series around here, so just to be working on a project with them involved is a big honour for me.

Watch the first episode here and keep posted for when new ones will be released.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSx30cqfNts

- - -

That's it for now...wow, I'm going to be pretty busy for a while. What are you working on?

To receive updates on my work, follow me on Twitter and like my Facebook page. Them's be where I post images and videos regularly.

Snapseed Photo Editing App Review and Tutorial

The one thing I love about Smartphone photography is the ability to take pictures of anything, anywhere at anytime and post them instantaneously. If there was one downside to the simplicity of this process, it's that it makes it difficult to touch up any of these photos to really make them stand out. It's too tedious to snap a picture, transfer it over to the computer, fire up Photoshop and then go back to the phone to upload it to Instagram or Tumblr. The filters that come standard with photo-sharing apps are okay, but there's really no creativity to picking a "look" with little wiggle-room to be had.

Nik Software introduced a photo editing app some time ago making it super easy to make adjustments and enhancements to images straight from the smartphone. Though it was only recently that the app has become completely free!

Snapseed gives you complete control over adjusting your smartphone images. Trying to take the picture just right is difficult with little control over exposure, focus or any other camera settings. This app fills that gap by allowing simple adjustments like brightness and colour, or more complex and fanciful looks.

Check out my thoughts and walkthrough on this app and make your images POP! Download and try the app without spending a dime.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nylLcjBOyQc