The Mercedes-Benz SLR 300 is a machine like no other - sleek, sensual and legendary - the ultimate in bling. Not just the fastest production car in the whole world – with a top speed of 207 MPH - but a veritable goddess among luxury automobiles. In fact a possession so indulgent it’s positively out of this world.

So while the star of the spot is the McLaren SLR 300 undoubtedly the star of Little Fluffy Clouds’ studio is our creative/animation director, Jerry van de Beek, who modeled the car using available photographs only and without the aid of any factory specifications or a cad cam version. Working together with partner, Betsy de Fries, the two designed and directed the spot together. Van de Beek animated the entire piece - writing specialized shaders, applying final gathering techniques, rendering complex layers and compositing the piece in After Effects. VFX extras were skillfully actualized to create a look as luxurious as the car itself.

Out of This World is an original spot designed, directed and animated by Little Fluffy Clouds. Production took roughly 8 weeks - sans model. This sizzling all CGI spot is animated in Maya, composited in After Effects and rendered with Mental Ray. The stunning VFX extras use Real Viz, Trap Code and Sapphire plug-ins.

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Emru Townsend 1969-2008

Emru Townsend came into our lives back in 2003. We made a little animated short by the name of Au Petite Mort. Emru saw it at Siggraph that year and reviewed it on his site. I didn’t see that great review until months later but as soon as I did I wrote to thank him. I felt he truly understood the intent of the piece and was so happy he appreciated the all the work that went into it. That started a long, interesting and incredibly diverse friendship. Our conversations via email and Skype covered all sorts of topics from animation, the arts and the state of industry on any given day, we discoursed on culture and simulculture, we nattered on about friends, relationships, family ties and touched very lightly on our backgrounds. It was easy and casual. I sent him everything Jerry and I worked on and solicited his honest opinion with which he was generous.

Many moons passed and we arranged to do a podcast for Frames Per Second. Through a series of technological mishaps it turned into a weekly event of chitchat on the phone while being recorded. Many of those sessions failed to record or transcribe or simply vanished like a poof of smoke in a cosmic disappearing act. It was as strange and baffling as it was amazingly funny. But it kept us talking for weeks on end starting with, “Now, where were we…?” Somewhere along the line Emru got a cold that he couldn’t shake. We commiserated because I had one too that seemed to drag on for weeks. He said it was making him feel strange and was going to see the doctor if it didn’t shape up. The rest is history.

We followed everything Emru posted by the day and sent encouraging notes. And even when things seemed bad I refused to accept that he wouldn’t get better. There were so many highs and lows and even at the worst moments I found myself rocking with laughter at some of the things Emru wrote, said or described. When Emru’s sister Tamu wrote, Game Over, I couldn’t believe it. I almost still can’t and it’s taken me months to write this piece and start writing the blog again. … Sometimes people come into your life for a short time only. They make a profound impact and when they depart the planet they leave a gaping black hole where once there was an outstanding human being. Emru Townsend was one such person. We are all richer for having known him and all poorer for our loss.  Now become a donor and help save a life.

UK - Anthony Nolan Trust, African Caribbean Leukaemia Trust

USA - National Marrow Donor Program, DKMS Americas

Canada - Hema Quebec Stem Cell Registry, OneMatch Stem Cell Network

I like reading blogs as much as writing one myself. In fact I often neglect mine in favour of reading others. So, imagine how great it felt when I checked in on fellow Brit, Ian Lumsden’s, intricate animation blog and found our piece, TODAY, there - In Praise of Barack Obama. Here’s an excerpt from what Ian had to say.

“It seems appropriate on a grey day here when such little light as exists is cast by events across the Atlantic. The words resonate with hope and the CGI piece is beautifully crafted by the design team, co-founders Jerry van de Beek and Betsy deFries. Quintessentially American rural landscape on a perfect Spring day, butterflies, canary let out of its cage, splinters of light, flowers and a young couple squinting in the bright sunlight: the piece unfolds and matches the rich voice of the narrator and lyrical beauty of the poem. Lovely and uplifting.”

Thanks Ian for discovering our work and pairing us with this breathtaking moment in history.

Check out Ian Lumsden’s blog and even more wonderfully animated films at: http://www.animationblog.org/

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From: “Emru Townsend” emru@pobox.com

Date: October 29, 2008 5:47:08 PM PDT

The good:
I’m back! Actually, I’ve been home since last Friday, trying to readjust.

The bad:
The reason for my discharge and transfer back to my old hospital is because although the transplant itself was an awesome success by any measure, I haven’t gone into remission.

So what does this mean? Well, there’s a chance that I’ll develop Graft vs. Host Disease (GvHD) which might attack the leukemic cells. But frankly there are too many ifs in that statement, and there’s no guarantee it would wipe it all out, as far as I know.

The ugly:
I asked one of my hematologists in Ottawa how much time he figured I had. He said less than a year. I asked the same question of my hematologist today, and she said weeks, maybe months.

Those are the facts about the leukemia. I have a lot more to write, but I started today about twelve hours ago by collapsing and needing to be be brought in to the hospital by ambulance. I’m quite tired. I have just enough energy to ask a favour. Could those of you who are on mailing lists I’m on (or used to be on) please post this? I don’t have the energy to go to PWAC-L, the various SIGGRAPH lists, CE-L, and so on. You’d really be helping me out a lot. Thanks.
– 
Emru Townsend | emru@pobox.com
Frames Per Second magazine: http://www.fpsmagazine.com
Black History Pages: http://www.blackhistorypages.net
The Accidental Blog: http://5×5media.com/accidental
Are you a match? Find out how you can help save my life:  http://www.healemru.com

Once every couple of years I attend Siggraph just to feel the vibe and to see if there are any cool tools that need some hands-on playtime. After feeling the cool thrill of seeing 3 of our IBM webverts on the big screen at the Nokia Theater in the 2008 CAF, I went back to the exhibition floor and found such a cool tool.

At the Wacom stand they were showing off their newish Cintiq tablets. I’ve seen these before but never really played with one. I’m always looking for devices and software to make the creative process smoother and this is one of those. The special feature of this tablet is that it has a built in monitor. This enables you to draw right on the canvas so it feels like you are drawing on paper. Those of you doing more pitches than jobs will realize immediately the worth of such a tool.

I’ve used Wacom tablets for over 10 years and can attest to the fact that they’ve saved my wrists. They are great for drawing and even for 3D but I still sketch on paper before I take the image into Photoshop. For me there has always been a strange disconnect to draw on one surface and to see it on another - the monitor. Now, with this Cintiq, that problem has been resolved and your brush strokes flow out of the tablet’s pen.

I decided to get the smallest one in their arsenal - the 12WX. I do like the 20 and 21 inch versions a lot but as I am a generalist, simultaneously using other devices, I didn’t want it to take over my entire desk space. Real estate is at a premium and I saw it more as a replacement of my regular tablet in combination with my 30 inch display. I wanted to be able to switch on the monitor part of the tablet for when I wanted to sketch.

Okay, so now you’re thinking, whoop-dee-doo, he finally discovered the Cintiq tablet. But although that’s great the cool thing I wanted to tell you about is a piece of software that makes using the Cintiq even sweeter.

Let me back up a little. The Cintiq 12WX is small and has a screen resolution of 1280 x 800. My 30 inch Dell monitor has a resolution of 2560 x 1600. The way you normally set up the Cintiq is by setting up your displays as DualView. This extends your desktop over 2 monitors and you can drag your canvas from PhotoShop to your second display -  the Cintiq. If you want to work in Mirror View, in which both displays show the same image, you’ll have to set the resolution on both screens to the lowest one. In this case the one of the Cintiq. Believe me, 1280 x 800 on a 30 inch monitor looks awful.  Also, I didn’t always want to always have the Cintiq monitor on and the Cintiq doesn’t have a switch to turn off the display. (Note to Wacom.)  When I’m not sketching I want to use the Cintiq as a regular Wacom Tablet by putting the monitor to sleep. What I found myself doing was switching display profiles in my Nvidia Control Panel every time I wanted to sketch.

I packed my bag and went out into the World Wide Web to find some help - and I did. The elegant solution that you all have to know about is the UltraMon at: http://www.realtimesoft.com. Their website is terrible but don’t let that put you off. I have to admit I paced up and down in front of this site before I found the courage to download their applet. UltraMon basically takes over your display settings. From your taskbar you can quickly switch from Single Display, Dual Display or Mirroring. This is great and already a lot quicker that opening your Display Control Panel to change it there but there is even a much nicer feature in UltraMon - it allows you to create short cuts. I created a shortcut for Photoshop in UltraMon. I won’t go into all the settings as I’m not writing a manual here but in essence this is what it does.  When I click on my newly created Photoshop shortcut in my task bar UltraMon automatically changes my display settings to mirror. It wakes my Cintiq monitor up from sleep mode and displays full resolution (2560 x 1600) on my 30 inch display and projects this as well on my Cintiq. It probably does this by scaling 2560 x 1600 to 1280 x 800 but whatever it works. When I quit out of Photoshop UltraMon switches back my display settings to Single Display and puts my Cintiq monitor back to sleep. In short, UltraMon allows you to create shortcuts for each application that drive different display settings. UtraMon uses the icon from the original application for the shortcuts so it looks clean and professional.

This is a $40 “must have” piece of software if you own a Cintiq tablet.

I’ve been running into some strange error messages lately. I thought they would go away as I just bought a new clean workstation but after I installed all my software the same error messages appeared. It was time to get to the bottom of this.

My first error message was “windows logon UI encountered a problem and needed to close” and my second was for a USB key that unlocks my Canopus ProCoder software license.This USB key uses the HASP4 driver from Alladin. The second message read “cannot open HASP driver”. 

I went through all the usual stuff like reinstalling new drivers from the internet and reading through endless and normally very helpful bulletin board posts with no luck. It started to look like I was the only one having this problem. This made me think that it might be a conflict between drivers or devices so I started to uninstall software. First one out the door was ProCoder and it’s Hasp4 driver. It was no surprise that the second message didn’t show up anymore but Dr. Watson still went bat shit giving me endless error messages about my logon UI problems. This happens on start up and goes away after a while. I don’t know why but suddenly my attention shifted to my Logitech web cam. That could be because a little amber light on the camera blinks each time my computer starts up. So, I uninstalled the camera drivers and unplugged the camera and that put a sock in Dr. Watson and solved the logo UI problem. I re-installed my Canopus Procoder software with the Hasp4 Driver and all worked fine.

Now that I knew what created the conflict my next task was to find a solution. I plugged the camera back in but instead of installing the bloated software from the Logitech site I let Windows XP find the drivers hoping these would be lighter and less prone to conflict with other software. Also, as Skype checks for the camera on start up, I changed that one setting to prevent it launching on start up. 

After I rebooted my new system everything looked healthy and best of all Dr Watson is off my back.

The Car and The Road: A Romance in Automation follows the trials and tribulations of a sensible, straight road as he seeks to reinvent himself for the car he loves.  Watch, as the road bares his inner passionate self to woo the fun loving car … “that can do things other cars only dream about.”  Sigh… a true love story for the modern era.

This charming work, directed by Jerry van de Beek and Betsy de Fries of Little Fluffy Clouds, was created for the Lexus Car Corporation.  Described by the Association Internationale du Film d’Animation (ASIFA) as, “A lovely animated fable…” The Car and The Road takes its inspiration from Chuck Jones’ Oscar winning film, The Dot and The Line. Original composition for the almost 4 minute film was scored by Trivers-Meyers Music whose arrangement fits hand in glove with the visuals. Commissioned by Los Angeles ad agency, Team One, The Car and The Road is a colorful and imaginative feast for the eyes.  

Animated using Adobe Illustrator, After Effects and Photoshop with Autodesk Maya and hand drawn frames. The Car and The Road will be seen on all broadcast media: Cinema, TV and Web.

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The much-anticipated Samsung Instinct has hit the market. Packed with all the latest features and mobile phone wizardry this wireless device is Sprint’s biggest handset launch of the year. Scoring high in the reviews, pre-registration for the Instinct surpassed all expectations. The sleek look and touch-screen design is all set to go head to head with Apple cult favorite, iPhone. 

Retailers report that the Instinct, which is cheaper than the iPhone, is flying off the shelves since launching June 20. Six days after the phone’s launch, Sprint called the Samsung Instinct ”the fastest-selling EVDO handset in the company’s history.”

Photo real model and layouts created by Little Fluffy Clouds for Goodby Silverstein and Partners, San Francisco.  Check out the buzz at: http://www.instinctthephone.com/ 

Okay, I confess, when I blog it’s usually in the service of Little Fluffy Clouds animation. We’re not as big a studio as Pixar so we have to maximize every opportunity to blow our own horn. It’s kinda like that when you’re an independent film maker or a first time author. If you’re flogging the new iPhone 35 everyone wants to print your press release verbatum but if you’re Don Gallinger and you’re only on the cusp of fame and fortune and not yet on the Oprah book club list, then you’ve got a hard row to hoe.  So, to this end every friend with a blog or horn must be enlisted towards the effort.

The Master Planets by Donald Gallinger.  Here’s a brief synopsis:

In the summer of 1973, Peter Jameson, a buoyant, handsome, already-idolized rock wunderkind stands poised to take his band, The Master Planets, to the top. Then his mother, a suburban housewife with a flower shop, is found dead after murdering an elderly German man living in Ohio. Suddenly, past collides with present in a sequence of loss and betrayal that ends his dreams and forever changes his life.  …  When everything you wanted is taken away, what is left behind?

Intrigued? Away you go then to Don’s blog to read a longer excerpt and order a real copy via Amazon at:http://www.donaldgallinger.com/ 

PARTY  is the latest in a continuing series of spots for Oscar Meyers, Lunchables, starring the irrepressible Lunchables Brigade of Oscar, Maya and Abel. In this episode the firm friends bring their own brand of explosive fun, mayhem and chaos to the school playground. Follow the action where just opening a pizza box sets off a party to be reckoned with. But young Buck, one of the Lunchables schoolyard regulars, has eyes only for the best tasting pizza ever and even though confetti, balloons, streamers and hi jinx happen all around him his rapture never wanes. Airing nationally on Cartoon Network, this 30-second spot is all animation.

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