Facial expression references

I’ve worked on pipelines and tools for facial animation rigs for about 7 years now. In that time a lot of has been written about Facial Expressions and Ai. In this article I summarise the reference’s I find most useful for illustration, performance and character rigging.

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HDR Photography Equipment

I take a lot of HDR images for vfx work. I’m on a quest for the perfect setup that’s super fast to use on set. Here’s the HDR photography equipment and software I’m investigating. I’ll add more as I find it.


Everything HDR hdrlabs.com


Control your Canon EOS with your Android device dslrcontroller.com. The specs on this look amazing. Frankly I’m temped to replace my iPad with and Android tablet just to try this out.


Mod your canon dslr firmware using Magic Lantern firmware.

Includes HDR Bracketing for stills and hdr video (which is just nuts frankly)

magic Lantern view


CHDK is a great project for Canon’s Point-and-Shoot cameras. CHDK gets loaded into your camera’s memory upon bootup and is a temporary change to the firmware.

It runs simple Lua Scripts. You can write your own or download them from the community wiki.

Try HDR_Fast_Shooter


Some links for auto bracketing exposures. Using software or remote control http://www.dslrassistant.com/


Control your camera using a scripting language HDRCapOSX


Expensive do everything dslr remote control promote


There’s also OnOne’s dSLR Remote for the iPhone … unfortunately you still need a laptop to connect to your camera and run the software. But it has some useful applications.


trigger Trap

Trigger Trap Produces a bunch of devices and an app for the iPhone that will trigger your DSLR in creative ways using various sensors and timers.

Concept art and inspiration Links

Man there is a lot of sci-fi art on the web. Every time I create a mood board I’m just swamped.

Some of my favorites are

www.conceptartworld.com
www.cgsociety.org

Heres some work by Scott Robinson at http://conceptships.blogspot.com/

I was discussing Concept Art with my friend Nick who lectures in Finland. He directed me to this book.

The Skillful Huntsman: Visual Development of a Grimm Tale at Art Center College of Design.

It’s a great example of how to generate ideas. I found the silhouette studies really inspiring. Shape and feel can be the most important part of the process.

I’ll keep updating this post as I go along