Gnomon DVDs are finally out!!

The wait is over! Today Gnomon announced the official press release of my Vehicle Design DVDs

So please go check it out available in both hard copy DVD or digital downloa

d.

Disk 1: Vehicle Design With Alex Jaeger : From Script to Concept

Disk 2: Vehicle Design With Alex Jaeger : Concept breakdown and Rendering

Also for those who buy the sessions, I'll be covering some follow up on building the Tank in 3D using Modo here on my blog. So check em out and then check back here for more updates!

thanks and I hope you are able to learn something from them!

God Bless

-Alx

Heading to the Oscars!

The Limo Parade

The strange throngs of people along the way to the Kodak Theater...

Some serious security dudes with assault weapons and bullet proof vests...

Searching the Limos for bombs... this is all the stuff you don't see on TV....

And Finally inside the Kodak Theater... granted I was in the 3rd Balcony... way, way up!

The 2010 Academy Awards happened this Sunday and I had the honor of being there again. This time to support ILM with Star Trek's nomination for best visual effects. Although we lost to Avatar (surprise) it was still a fun evening of literally rubbing elbows with Hollywoods biggest stars. I'll have some photos to post later, unfortunately cameras are not allowed on the red carpet but I did have my iphone for a few blurry pics inside. Congrats to all the winners and thanks to ILM for sending me down!

-Alx

My Joy Baby:)

Sorry for not posting any artwork lately, I've been traveling, working and generally enjoying time with my amazing son who I can't believe is almost 1! So I figured I'd at least share some of that joy with you. Here's Venice at 5 months having a laughing fit! - Enjoy!

long time coming....

OK, I know I've been out of it for a while but I have been hard at work and putting the finishing touches on a set of Gnomon instructional DVD's! Yes that's right....finally!

So check out the Gnomon Workshop site's coming soon section. The title is still in the works, but it will most likely be called Vehicle Design with Alex Jaeger: Vol 1 'From Script to concept' and Vol 2 'concept breakdown and rendering'.

I'll update more in a later post, just wanted you to know I'm still alive and kickin'.

Also check out one of my co-worker's DVD as well. Christian Alzman's DVD on Digital Illustration, now available!

thanks and God Bless

-Alx

MOON IS ON BLU-RAY TODAY!!!!!

MOON IS ON BLU-RAY TODAY!!!!! Go get your copy and enjoy!!!

IMO one of the best films of 2009, and for a tiny budget!

Check it out if you missed it in the theater, it's worth owning!

Merry CHRISTmas 2009

Merry Christmas 2009! And I pray you all have a fun, safe and happy new years eve for 2010!!

God bless

-Alx

STAR TREK: The Art of Film is here!

Here's a review of the book! I still haven't seen it yet but it looks to be a pretty complete art-of book, unlike most that only include pre-production art. Check it out!

OK I actually had a chance to check it out in person, it's a great art book, nice thick paper and all, BUT my big issue is that they removed everyone's names from the artwork!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!??????? And didn't even number them for the index, so you have no idea who did what

:-\ LAME

Sure there is a credit list in the back, but it's not very accurate because it lists by pages, but the art on that page may have been done by up to 3-4 different artists. And there will be a quote by one artist on a page, but 90% of the art on that page was by someone else....

Other than that, it IS a great book and covers a large portion of the artwork from all phases of production. I personally would like to thank Yanick Dusseault, Jerome Moo, Warren Fu and Dave Yee for their help on the ILM side of things.

Enjoy and Happy late Thanksgiving!

-Alx

more reviews here

and a flip through movie from parkaBlogs

Memorable Melbourne Trip...

It was a memorable visit to melbourne to give a talk for Semi-Permanent design conference. First off the trip getting to Australia was very, well.... LONG. Usually it is a long trip, but this one was made a bit a longer all because of a single bird....

     Shortly after take off from LAX our Qantas 747 struck a bird, right in the nose cone of the plane. No only did it cause a huge crater in the nose of the craft, but internally it took out the planes weather radar. So once the plane got to cruising altitude the pilot announced, "we struck a bird after take off, unfortunately it damaged our weather radar and we can't fly across the ocean without it, so we'll need to return to LAX and assess the damage, but first we need to dump our fuel over the ocean, that will take about an hour. Also you'll need to stay overnight in L.A. until we can get a new plane into service..."  D'oh!

    here's a photo of the damage one little bird caused to a huge 747.....

But once we finally arrived in Melbourne we had a great time. The conference was held at the brand new Melbourne Convention Center which was pretty cool in it's self!

    I had a great time talking with LA artist Jeff Soto, the guys from Three Drunk Monkeys, and the rest of the speakers as well as Murray Bell and Andrew and the crew of organizers. I also had a chance to speak to some of the attendees at the after party. 

    It was a great event and I  hope to be able to speak at future events!

-Alx 

speakin' down und'a

I'll be doing a talk in Melbourne Australia this weekend! Semi-Permanentdesign conference has graciously invited me to share with the Australian design crowd. If you're 'in the area' grab a ticket and come on by :). I'll be sharing a bit of ILM history, some of my own history as well as a behind the scenes look into our work on Transformers and Star Trek and others. There are several other speakers as well including music video directors and print design artists. Check out the line up on their website -Alx

CCS has grown... sadly Detroit hasn't...

After a nice visit back to the College for Creative Studies, I had the chance to explore campus and the surrounding area. The school has grown massively since 1993. The school had built a new Ford building a few years ago which now houses the clay modeling studios as well as other design classrooms. Sitting in the lobby of the building was a relic of the 90's, a red Saturn EV1. A car I thought was all but history in a scrap yard according to the film "Who killed the electric car?". They also recently were given the historic GM Design building and put a massive 145 million dollar renovation into it. It now houses dorms, classrooms for design classes, as well as an elementary and high-school!
The areas around the school haven't changed a whole lot. While the old Ferry houses have been renovated into the Inn on Ferry st. Some blocks have been wiped clean into vacant lots, while some have new developments and others are left as they were... full of old abandoned and fire charred buildings. The new Comerica Park right on Woodward is a bright spot, the downtown is still a boarded up ghost town of empty storefronts and broken windows. In fact I just had a brief trip to LA and was buying something to read on the flight and noticed TIME magazine's cover was on the Tragedy of Detroit! It stated that the unemployment rate in the city is 28.8% !!! And that over 20% of the buildings are empty or abandoned. At it's peak Detroit was a city of 1.9 million people.... today that number is less than 900,000!! More than half of the population has left! They went on to say that in order for the city to grow again it may have to shrink first. Meaning that they should abandon huge sections of the city and turn them into parks and compress the people into a smaller more controllable footprint for Police, fire and sanitation to handle in a city with a $275 million dollar deficit. Staggering numbers that show in the number of broken windows in 30 story buildings left to rot back to the earth.
It's still hard to tell if now is a good time to start from scratch there or do like the auto industry (and the other half of the people) and leave for greener pastures. One store front in particular caught my eye, a single corner window pane with an orange wall with the words "Detroit, Everything WILL be alright". I hope so.

-Alx