Full Immersion Entertainment
Brad Friedman

7/3/2010
I'm launching mDAG, a project I've been working on, during the weekends, at home, while working at Method.

I've open sourced it under the Artistic License, 2.0 for a few reasons.

Firstly, I think its a tool, sorely needed in the visual effects community, in general.

Second, I'd like to see it adopted, and generally supported.

Third, I'd like to start using it at Method and felt open sourcing it was the clearest and cleanest path to Method's ability to use it.

My hope is that as it grows, it will become a standard at many studios and facilities, and that many visual effects and animation artists will grow to love it and adopt it as a tool in their arsenal.

7/3/2010

Actually, this is old news.  As of January 2010, I took a staff position at Method Studios.

For FIE, this means the consulting and software facets of my company are going into a bit of a frozen state.  I will continue to develop software and tools in some capacity outside of Method, but will limit that work to open source tools most likely.

The creative development half of the company is still moving forward however slowly...

6/2/08
VFX World has published an article on previs, in this summer's blockbuster movies.  Leading off the article is Iron Man.  Kent Seki, the previs and HUD effects supervisor gives a good window into what we did and how we did it.  He also details quite thoroughly the tools and techniques I developed for the film.  I've also detailed a similar account on my blog a few weeks ago.

There are a number of videos embedded in the article.  However this one is a surprise.  This is one of my range of motion tests from early in the suit design process. 

6/2/08
PLF's short summary of the effort on "The Incredible Hulk" is a good primer on what was done for the film.  My good friend Erol Gunduz did a great job of stepping up and taking the main TD burden on the job.  My contribution was in the areas of training, tools development and some Mocap supervision in Toronto.

PLF's online breakdown of previs on AvP2 showcases our last minute previs effort and how it ended up on film.  Jonathan Roybal, Tanissa Potrovitza and myself put in some late nights late in the game to pull this off but its pretty clear from the breakdown that it was of significant use to the production, as it was pretty much shot as is.

Linked is an older article from my early days at PLF regarding Stay Alive.  I got my own Q&A section.  As an added bonus, I was compared to Egon Spangler, a childhood hero and strong role model for Technical Directors everywhere.