Jason F Maurer

Today I checked another of my goals off my list of things to do before I die… I went shark fishing! My buddy Justin took Jaime, Liz and myself out on his boat for an afternoon of amazingness. It was a intense day with good fishing and crazy weather. With lightning striking above our heads we called it a day and traveled through what can only be described as a mini white squall. It was raining so hard we could barely see the anchor on the front of the boat. Once we cleared that well then it was time for Justin to teach Jaime how to throw a cast net to score some shrimp – which Jaime and Justin managed to pull in quite a tidy some. We were then graced with one of the most spectacular sunset over water that I have ever seen – unfortunately my phone died so no photos of that today, but I took several with Justins big camera so hopefully I’ll have that to show later on.

All in all an amazing day fishing with friends – here’s some photos for ya to cruise through -

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On a recent Kayak trip out to Little Tybee I shot a decent collection of photos – here’s the best from the trip. I particularly like the fly on the shell – that was a complete lucky shot. Hope you enjoy them.

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A really great day trip from Savannah can be found on Jekyll Island’s Driftwood beach. It is one of the hidden gems of Georgia’s coast and no more than 2 hours south of Savannah. Once you get to Jekyll there is a five dollar admission fee to get in and there is absolutely no gas stations on the island – so be warned. There are a few restaurants and shops – but its best to come prepared with your sunscreen and a picnic lunch. Driftwood is on the northern end of the island and locating the specific spot to park can be a bit tricky. You’ll notice a small, like 6 cars, parking area on the left with widely marked trail head on the right about 5 minutes down after the turn north(left) after the t-junction from the islands entrance. This is the best place to park if you can get a spot.

A quiet, mysterious beach area that stretches almost a good mile -driftwood offers a great place for family and the romantics alike. If you walk northward towards the very tale end of the beach it is very quiet and isolated – perfect for that summer picnic with your loved one, while near the beginning is perfect for the kids. While either playing in the surf or climbing on the huge trees both offer plenty of exercise and magical memories for the all.

Here are some of the photos from the day -

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I had the rare joy of recently watching a performance of “One flew over the cuckoo’s nest” by Dale Wassserman adapted from the novel by Ken Kesey. It was a local play performance here in savannah at the Indigo arts station.

Directed by Christopher Soucy and produced by Sheila Lynne Bolda this play was mind blowingly entertaining and a very harsh reminder of the realities of life. The Drama Bums(that’s the actor’s production company) put on one helluva show – notable performances for the night were put on by Allan Lander playing Dr. Spivey, Peter Griffin playing R.P. McMurphy and lastly Sheila Lynne Bolda playing Nurse Ratched.

Ms. Bolda’s performance of Nurse Ratched really stole the show. Her constant tense, rigid demeanor along with her curt direct delivery of lines set a air of harshness and forced order across the stage. Mr. Griffins performance of R.P. McMurphy gave life to the fly by the wire, care free radicalness of his character. Together they brought on stage the clash between order and chaos, between freedom and imprisonment -two sides of the cage of life. The battle between the two characters in the play was well supported by the remaining cast all of whom pushed and pulled and lifted the two actors higher than they could have achieved by themselves.

With almost no budget they were able to transform the stage into that mental ward that Jack Nickolson made so famous all those years ago. With little more than colored tape, a second hand couch and a beat up card table the ward was alive. You could feel the moonlight drifting through the window as Chief and McMurphy watched the geese flying south. You felt the emptiness of the ward as McMurphy was wheeled in for the last time, as the Chief escaped.

All in all a wonderful production and I would encourage those of you in Savannah to go and see the final shows tonight and tomorrow -well worth the entry price of 10 dollars. You won’t be disappointed.

here is some video from the performance – grabbed it via iPhone so audio is a bit low.

Snippet video of performance- 22 megs

Second Snippet video of performance – 20 megs

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Five Guys Coffee Spoof commercial from Jason Maurer on Vimeo.

Put this together as a class assignment. Wanted to re learn how to match to live action again with new software tools. I’m pretty happy with the second shot, but the track on the first shot is definitely off.

Sound is waaaaay scratch. The actor is Jim Reed and the DP was Arnold Lee.

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It all started with Jeremy saying – hey let’s take the convertible up to Sandro’s wedding in Atlanta. Thumping toons, wind in your hair and great company. Two dudes on the road off on a crazy weekend adventure… little did I know…

Baam! Clunk! rattle rattle rattle…. smoke…

Exit 111 claims another victim. Jeremy’s car had stopped dead… lucky for us exit 111 on I16 has a truck stop. Grady’s truck stop to be specific and it had a garage. So in 95 degree heat, Jeremy and I push his car the 1/2 mile or so down the highway shoulder. Good thing I hadn’t run yet today, cuz after that push I felt like I just ran a 10K! So I sat down, had a smoke and chill-laxed.

Upon arriving at Grady’s we find out that the garage only works on semi’s… and after some calling around there isn’t a garage that will take the car. So Jeremy quickly calls his road side assistance and gets us a tow truck to take it back to savannah. With only 4 hours left to go before the wedding starts it was looking grim, but the sign in the mens room was like a prophetic bolt from the blue…

We quickly used the power of the iPhone and found an Enterprise rental car agency in Statesboro and in 40 minutes, and an unusual car trip with a ragged old man we were back on the road in our brand new white PT cruiser. We made it to Atlanta with no further issues, ended up missing he ceremony but made the reception.

It was a sophisticated wedding and as always I was underdressed, but hey I can have fun at a funeral so I shook off the clothing blues, grabbed a glass a wine and proceeded to spread joy across the room. Post reception, a Scottish bar, a  couple of car bombs and some very bizarre people later I managed to make it to my hotel room and pass out.

Slightly hung over and ready for the trip home Jeremy and I headed out, loaded up on coffee and a biscuit I was ready for anything.

We stopped at a gas station and as my previous post mentions – Yellow root tea – we ran into one of the GA locals with a raspy high pitched voice selling his snake oil. It was priceless.

Now our plan was to stop in Macon to get pizza, but after relating a story about a small cafe in Juliette GA – the whistle stop cafe, which was in Fried Green Tomatoes – I was like lets have lunch there man. So we detoured and holy mother of god was it worth it. A wonderful little cafe in the middle of the deepest southest part of Georgia I’ve ever been. It was literally something out of a movie.

Here’s a shot of my lunch – country fried steak, potato salad, squash and onions, fried green tomatoes and sweet tea all from heaven’s kitchen.

We step out after lunch and the weather is hot, the sky is beautiful.

The town is so small and they have a few shops so we decide to look around. After exiting the creepy shop that had its own special racist corner – with Uncle remas’s tales and song of the south videos (no kidding!) –  we came upon another shop that had these amazingly creepy glove puppets…

As we were leaving, I noticed an old RC cola sign and had to shoot these last two pictures as I’m a sucker for texture like this…

We made it home safely, and while we both spent more on the trip than we wanted. It was a great adventure, and a wonderful way to start off my summer!

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Here are some photos from last weekends amazing events… you may all wallow in despair if you weren’t present… hahahaha….  :)

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Before anyone goes any further please be warned that the embedded video contains extremely violent and graphic content – that being said you NEED to watch this. I only recently came upon this via www.wikileaks.org and was stricken utterly dumb by it. Take a watch and then read on…

They always say that there are three things you should never talk about in polite conversation – politics, sex and religion. So I guess I’m all cleared then to talk about war, but then again no one has ever accused me of being polite in my conversations so the hell with it.

I watched this video and my first thought was one of horror at watching these people die. Then I started to think about the situation and how I should/would respond to it.  I mean its war right? War is hell. People die. Its horrible. So many terrible things have been done in the name of war. We should just look the other way, forgive it all because its war. We are their protecting the safety of our country by rooting out terrorists and helping to stabilize the country from the horrible evil insurgents right. All of these sound like convenient excuses…

This isn’t homework people and the dog didn’t eat it.

The truth is people die. It happens every day all over the globe. One minute your here then next … pop hello happy hunting ground. It’s not death I’m upset by here – its how they died, why they died. This is a very confusing, emotionally distressing and complicated situation to address. Most people, because it is so distressful will go the party line, will follow blindly the shepard because thinking about it, dealing with it on an emotional level is too hard.

Take just one second, and re-watch the video the part where you are watching a fellow human being being ripped apart by 30mm bullets…  Now imagine that this was your mother, brother, sister, father, wife or husband. How truly horrible. How does it make you feel? What would you want to do about it?

So whose to blame? We always have to point the finger at someone right? Someone is at the wrong here and should be punished for this act of murder right? Is it murder when its war? Should we blame the soldiers flying the heli’s or what about the radio operator who gives the go sign? or was it the photographer and reporters fault for being in a war zone? How about the president or congress for keeping us there? Or maybe it was Saddam Hussein’s fault for being a right bastard… but wait he got his punishment.

It’s hard to kill someone when you’re not carrying a weapon. Its hard to kill innocents when you’re not flying over their homes. But the argument here is well they hide in innocents homes and to avoid casualties on “our side” we take certain measures… wait who is “our side”? Wait why are we even in Iraq? Like I said complicated…

I guess this makes me sad and angry because there is no easy answer, no quick solution where we all go home safe and get chocolate bunnies instead of folded flags and broken hearts.

Were mistakes made where innocent people died? You betcha.

Did they die for the greater good and success of the Iraq war? Not likely.

Will it happen again? hello human nature…

What can we do about it?

Talk about it. Work through our problems. Avoid war at all costs because as a great sage once said – “Don’t give into hate for that path leads to the dark side.”

Tags: Iraq war
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At forsyth with Billie drinking wine and enjoying the weather. You should come out I’m south of the statue and on the east side.

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Record Makers Promo from CreativeApplications.Net on Vimeo.

Really nice piece here. by Mrzyck & Moriceau for the Record Makers promo. Just goes to show you that you don’t have to be all sexy with the camera work and editing to do a really stunning piece of work. Nice job guys. I love the simplicity of it!

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Nuit Blannche is a touching short film piece. What it really does successfully is Visual FX – almost everything is done through CG and compositing. My VFX peeps out there should watch this one for sure. I really enjoy the music and the use of slow motion – very inspiring.

Nuit Blanche from Spy Films on Vimeo.

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Line – Directed by
Laurianne PROUD’HON and Ludovic RAMISANDRAINA

Nice student piece. I especially like the little black figures throughout the piece. Their use of focus and the J.J. Abrams lens flare is well chosen. I do think the dusting of the orchid in the end is a bit over the top and feels forced. All in all really nice piece guys… can’t wait to see more from you!

Line- Movie from Ludo Rami on Vimeo.

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Really very stunning piece of experimental CG animation. His sense of timing and editing are very top notch. It makes me strangely happy to watch this piece – which is refreshing. No one ever said that all experimental animation has to be grungy and dark and moody…

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A really great answer from Bakshi – he hits it right on the head peeps. My respect for him has always been high, but now I really am impressed. Well said Ralph, well said.

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This film is absolutely stunning. Alex’s choice of camera composition and movement is sublime. Not to mention the simply stunning visuals – its hard to believe that this is NOT live action but CG. A really great film to study for lighting, composition and use of music. His choice of renderer… VRAY.  Nice work Alex. I hope you take this to festivals and win some accolades. I’ve also included his compositing breakdown for you tech heads out there…

Here’s the film -

The Third & The Seventh from Alex Roman on Vimeo.

Here’s the breakdown -

Compositing Breakdown (T&S) from Alex Roman on Vimeo.

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With the upcoming winter quarter starting the much heated topic of grading has been stirring up in my mind. Grading is one of those things that with objective based things is pretty straight forward – but with art – well talk about a subjective area of study. Without going down the slippery slope of what defines art or makes art good I want to talk about my feelings on grading, how I approach it and finally a list of guidelines.

Grading in general I feel hampers the learning process and can in a lot of cases force students to develop strong senses of elitism or  entitlement- the well I got a 4.0 so I deserve that nice cushy job. Society often looks at and praises this sense of achievement rather than the process or the knowledge that is exhibited or learned from mistakes. All that seems to matter to the student is achieving that “A” and not what was been learned or gained in the experimenting process. So we have hordes of students whom did well on their SATs but couldn’t problem solve their way out of a paper bag. Our sense of grading, I believe, is helping to support a cultural system that is teaching our children to be drones and not independent thinkers.

I believe in order to define an “A” student we must look at how we define failure. Dictionary.com defines failure in part as “The condition or fact of not achieving the desired end or ends: the failure of an experiment.” This part of the definition I believe is crucial to grading art. The key word here is experiment – all art is an experiment. Sure there are formal processes and techniques and sure just like any craft there are known dos and don’ts to achieve the desired recipe of art but what is missing here is the passion for experimentation in that process. When one is so focused on the end result, the grade, you often loose sight of the true learning and growth.

I often use this analogy in reference to being an animator verses a film maker. It is the same between a line cook and a chef. The line cook knows how to cook a very specific set of recipes, and a good one does it good every time. He follows the recipes and learns them by heart, he cooks and fast. He is about getting consistent good orders out every time on time or his customers will not return. Where as the chef (our film maker) he writes the recipes of his heart. Sure he can cook and often does but he is after something different. He experiments, he is not afraid of trying bizarre things, going off recipe because his gut tells him too. He enjoys the process of cooking, the creation of elements, the mixing, the blending, the smells. He will offer up things that are good, sometimes mediocre, but depending on the quality of the chef sometimes- life changing.

The pressure that the customers place on the line cook prevent him from this process of experimenting and thus it prevents him from growing outside of the proscribed recipes. Grades are the students customers, and as we all know the customer is always right – right?

Wrong. When trying to grade something as subjective as art you can break it down into two very vast areas for review – Craft and Idea. By looking at what the intent of the artist is/was you can then measure his/her use of craft against it. How well does it in fact communicate to the viewer? How strong were the technical aspects of his/her craft? etc. But wait isn’t the viewer subjective? My reaction to film is vastly different to my fathers or brothers reaction. And what if you don’t know the intent of the artist?

Well luckily when training artists, specifically animators, by setting up assignments and giving them specific goals and outcomes (what they need to communicate and how they need to communicate it) you can then begin to measure their progress- but even still this sense of quantification is risking formula. We must be careful to not fall into the trap of objectifying the art into something so much that it then ceases to be art. You have to allow for the “wow” factor.  I have often heard my fellow professors say – man you know its an “A” when it makes you go wow. When you ask them how do you define “wow” their first reaction is point to existing imagery that instilled wow and say that. There is a natural sense of what works – the more engrossed, trained, aged the artist the more intrinsic this sense or feeling of what works or doesn’t work becomes. There is/was a reason for the mentor/apprentice system for artisans. Students lack this sense or have the inklings of it. Through repetition, experimentation, discussion and time it grows and strengthens.

By using rubrics and setting up specific goals to each assignment so that the student knows what he/she is supposed to be learning and experimenting with we help the student polish that inner sense. This allows for them to mature as artists and eventually launch into the stage of self evaluation where they begin to evaluate themselves as artists, and set up their goals for expression and success.

My mentor and good friend Edward Kinney shared with me about a year ago a list that he has been compiling and refining in his 20 years of teaching. I have added only one thing to it to make what I believe to be a very comprehensive top 10 list of what defines an “A” student.

Characteristics of an “A” Student

1. An “A” student never thinks of their grade as they work on projects. They are creating artwork.

2. An ”A” student never tells me how hard they worked on a project. They were unaware of how much time they spent on a project. For the “A” student the activity was not work…it was joy in the art making process.

3. An ”A” student never misses class…NEVER. Not because they are trying to please the teacher but because they enjoy the course content and the class dynamic. They would rather be in class than elsewhere.

4. An ”A” student is totally involved from the first class to the last. Their effort is even and steady and comes from a love for exploration, creating and learning.

5. An ”A” student never works to please the teacher but rather to explore and refine the expression of their artistic impulses.

6. An “A” student hands in work on time even when equipment fails.

7. An ”A” student knows of all the gods that affect our lives the art god is far more significant than the grade god.

8. An ”A” student is learning to welcome the Muses. Seeking an “A”, by comparison, is a trivial endeavor.

9. An “A” student is self-motivated and focused on problem solving.

10. An “A” student never whines, complains, or offers excuses.

Tags: A student, grading, teaching
Posted in Animation, Daily Post | 5 Comments »

Here’s some shots of my desk at my home studio… now if I could just get some bloody work done on it. : )

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Avatar was stunning in its imagery and social commentary. Mr. Cameron deals with a long known skeleton in the closet for most western people – colonialism.

From Wikipedia - 

Marxism views colonialism as a form of capitalism, enforcing exploitation and social change. Working within the global capitalist system, colonialism is closely associated with uneven development. It is an “instrument of wholesale destruction, dependency and systematic exploitation producing distorted economies, socio-psychological disorientation, massive poverty and neocolonial dependency.” ^[4] Colonies are constructed into modes of production. The search for raw materials and the current search for new investment opportunities is a result of inter-capitalist rivalry for capital accumulation. Lenin regarded colonialism as the root cause of imperialism, as imperialism was distinguished by monopoly capitalism via colonialism.^[5]

My little brother said it best – “its a cowboy and indian movie cept the indians win.” Yep that’s right.Mr. Cameron nails it on the head by manifesting a “new” culture of native people whom are obviously pulled from several native peoples across the globe. He then portrays the earthlings, obvious westerners, as the industrialists just looking for a buck -with no care for the native people or the environment that surrounds them. Most people would think that this movie is a rallying cry for the environmental movement, I disagree with this statement. I believe that you cannot separate the idea of the native people from the environment. This mis conception is at the heart of why most westerners do not understand native peoples and their connection with the earth. This is why they are so often called primitive people or savages – when in fact the westerners were/are the savages. 

For some reason these colonialists/industrialists always feel that the native peoples need to be “civilized” by feeding them their medicine, clothing, technology, and religion. Mr. Cameron touches on all these things simply and easily by using archetypical characters in a very standard almost formulaic story format. What makes this film a great accomplishment of story is that he doesn’t just rely on the formula or archetypical characters to carry it – he uses it as a strong base in which he can weave his theme. This allows the audience to have a strong sense of comfort while watching something that visually could be very disturbing to the audience – realistic human like beings.

And the Nav’i were realistic. Brilliantly so. The visual effects in this film are so unbelievably well done that you are lost in the world almost immediately. The motion, facial and body was so believably real and well executed that I had no sense of the uncanny valley at all while staring at awe of this technical achievement. This movie illustrates in the best possible light why realism in CG should be achieved and developed. Mr. Cameron gets it – unlike Mr. Zemeckis.

Thank you Mr. Cameron. I enjoyed it.

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amazing brisket. wonderful potatoe latkies. and snowball fights. my brother mike got it in the face from his nephew.

my youngest nephew had a real blast with his super push and flash sit on airplane.

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First major snowfall I’ve seen this year and I had to drive up into indiana for it.

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The site will be undergoing maintenance this weekend to update to a new look. So if you happen to pop by while it is under development you might see some pretty weird goings on… stay tuned for the final look.

J

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Love the one of my friend Nana and the meat mania sign.

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So I was recently informed of a new tech advance – a stylus for my iPhone called the pogo sketch. It was like 15 US dollars and soooooooooo worth it. Pairing this with Autodesk’s Sketchbook app on iphone basically gave me a digital moleskin. I’m been playing around with it for a few days now and have done about 20 or so 1 min bar/cafe sketches with it that I like. While it is not pressure sensitive it does have a felt tip on it which gives the use an experience of drawing with a smug stick or a dense sponge. It takes a bit getting used to, but once you got it… it rocks solid.

By the way for you animators out there – there is a flipbook animation app available for the iphone… time out your poses maybe… hmmm….

Well here’s the drawings… enjoy.

Tags: animation on iphone, drawing on iphone, iphone, pogo sketch, sketching
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Well animation fans – I liked it. Yep. Not only was it a Wes Anderson film but it was a stop-motion animated Wes Anderson film. Talk about a perfect merger of Anderson’s typical quirky, yet cathartic storytelling with the deliberately static, and jerky motion of stop motion. He could not have picked a better medium to do this film. It had all the things you would expect from a Wes Anderson film – the witty dialogue, off beat humor and complicated family dynamics that we all can relate too. I mean who doesn’t have a cousin that out shines them at one thing or another.

One of the things I most enjoyed with this film was Anderson’s choices regarding the camera and camera movement. There was A LOT of it. Particularly chase cameras. Several times the camera ended up behind the character as they moved through the scene – while in live action this is really a no brainer – pulling this off in stop motion is bloody hard and they made it look easy. They also played a lot with flattening out shots by taking a very platform gamesk style of shooting which made for nice sense of visual texture and contrast. They were very mindful of the quality of texture in this film, maybe not as much as coraline, but very very similar. They also did a surprising number of extreme close ups on faces and eyes, where the puppets were very still, but they appeared to deliberately by accident move small hairs here and there to keep it alive.

Over all I was extremely impressed by the production value, style choices, writing and quality of film making. It was definitely worth seeing in theater. While it might be too sophisticated of humor for some of the younger audience members, I do feel that even they will enjoy the dynamic theatrics and quirky character designs to make it worth taking them.

Way to go Mr. Anderson – and thank you for re-affirming to me why we make animated films.  Because unlike Mr. Zemeckis’s Christmas carol, the Fantastic Mr. Fox truly brings life to the screen in a believable and inspiring way.

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