Rigler Digital Blog

“A movie is a miracle” That is a my favorite quote from Vicente Baldwin. He died suddenly from a heart attack February, 9th 2009. Vicente took a chance on me and shot an entire film for pro bono in 1998. Yes we had been friends for that long. Vicente had an incredible enthusiasm for filmmaking and new technology. He received certification as a camera operator and at one point filmed Bill Clinton in Washington D.C. He also was Alfonso Arau assistant in “A Walk in The Clouds”. He worked closely with Keannu Reeves and Debra Messing. He had a unique way of looking at life through the lens of a camera. Please listen to our last recorded session together.

It’s been awhile since we posted a movie trailer. My sister visited recently and got me to watch Twilight.  Check out their trailer for New Moon. Stay tuned next week for more interesting websites. Hulu is one of my favorite for movies and tv on the web.

For those of you who have been following my blog/podcast you know I am an avid user of Final Cut Pro.(no pun intended) Recently for my podcast I went online to check out 2-Pop.com only to find out it is not as useful as it once was for FCP users.

Apple's Final Cut Pro

2-pop is more of a landing page for Creative Planet to promote their other companies. Yes there are articles and yes there is a forum, but the latest entry I saw was for February. Not an active forum in my book. To focus on the positive; I suggest Ken Stone’s website. He has a large number of tutorials. It is a very zenlike site laid out very clean. Each tutorial is the way I like it so a complete novice can understand step by step. Another resource is the Los Angeles Final Cut Pro User’s Group - ok lafcpug.org also done with care and tutorials by experts in the field giving step by step instructions.
However, where is my favorite place to get help with Final Cut well that’s easy: Creativecow.net. I like CreativeCow because their tutorials are video based with the program open and running. This helps by which you can start and stop the tutorial - view it as many times as you like. Richard Harrington is their expert and he does a great job.

To continue to create you need to be inspired.  What gives me inspiration, I admit is some photoshop eye candy.  Two sites in particular are photoshopcafe and ImagineFX.  Photoshopcafe has not just tutorials but a cool gallery section with pieces done entirely 100% photoshop. (no scans or photographs, illustrator). Yet ImagineFX’s homepage is great because they feature members latest work and have a image of the day.  Just visiting their site, I know I can pick up some inspiration.  

Golden Hinde "Penny West" - Brandon Hall Artist.

      I also need good music to create and two internet stations that I listen to are last.fm and pandora.  Pandora is part of a music genome project -  well that’s what they state.  You can create your own radio station of music you like.  The program that pandora uses randomly picks more music within the same genre. You can give each song they pick a thumbs up or down.  Very cool. Last.fm is also very cool they also recommend songs on your music choices.  They just recently added personalized visual radio,  I have to spend some time on that.  Hmm and with iTunes adding the genius feature seems to be a theme here.  I wish I had some literature to list to inspire me hmm no.

"Grape - Just Grape"

Until I set up a gallery page, I wanted to post a couple of pics of some past work.  Grape.  I wish I had some profound name for this guy but no.  Grape was done as a spec commercial for “California Grapes” The tools used: Cinema4D, Final Cut Pro, and the music I grabbed from Garageband.  I learned a lot from this project.  I learn best while on the job, books and tutorials are great but then you have to jump in and do it.  Here’s the completed video.

             “Saucer Boy” is an idea created by Brad Goodchild.  Saw his idea and thought wouldn’t this be great in 3-D. Here he is in fighting mode. See video here.  The ocean was created by a tutorial from 3-D World issue #74 pg. 66.  That magazine is worth every penny and why I love the U.K. and myfavouritemagazines.co.uk

Saucer Boy - The Experiment.

To recap this week’s podcast I disscussed Noupe.com   Gotta love their post on the 25 spectacular C4D tutorials.  I’m on it.  Love the zebra tutorial. (continue reading…)

No really. It’s a quote my wife uses all the time. She went to law school and is now a web designer, go figure. I asked her to explain herself and she stated “for the most part being a lawyer is all about the research you do of the law, and think of how many laws exist; nobody’s an expert on all of them.” That makes sense. If I think of all the programs I use on one website or a video project of mine, it makes my head spin. I realize that I have to know where to go online to problem solve. Here’s a big one: Lynda.com Lynda Weinman started a series of books, Hands on Training (H.O.T.) she did them herself on web design, and photoshop. She now recruits experts in each program to give hands on training. She understands if you can, find someone much better than you and learn. Listen to my previous podcast. (continue reading…)

If you’ve visited this blog before, thank you. You are probably thinking what happened? As a digital artist you can’t underestimate 2.0 and social networking. I know I have for far too long just depended on my website Rigler Digital. No more. This blog will hopefully reflect the enthusiasm I have for all of the different software we use: Cinema4D, Photoshop, Final Cut Pro, Dreamweaver and last but not least After Effects. On the last version of the blog there had been 6 months between some posts, yea not good and not happening this time. So I hope you will subscribe now if you are new and find the posts here full of info and entertaining. To recap from our last podcast I had discussed PhotoshopDisasters and C4Dload. PhotoshopDisasters on blogspot is a great place to visit when you need to take a break from your current project and laugh. You can’t believe that this work gets approved and printed - on a very large, commercial scale. My own theory with these sites is that you can learn from others mistakes.
C4dload is from a Twitter success. The creators of c4dload found the RiglerDigital Twitter page and continue to post about their new site. It originates from Germany by Milan Herzog. Yes if you speak and write German the site is best. However, they are working very hard to make the English translation a success. I myself registered on the site and am looking forward to new tutorials and new discussions in the forum. It’s fun to participate in new sites –kind of like new blogs.