2020 Update! And 25 YEARS @ ILM!!!

Sorry for the looooong absence here. It's been a crazy couple of years but all good :)
Besides finishing up 5 months in London finishing up Ready Player One, I then continued on to a few other projects including Bumblebee. Since then we've moved to Dallas TX, while still working remotely for ILM.
     Speaking of ILM, as of Today I have been with ILM for 25 years!  Yeah.... I've been working at ILM longer than I haven't....

     So in honor of that I'll share some more stories here of my 25 years.
Some of the basics I've already shared here, but I'll start with what I remember about my first day. I started at ILM back in Feb 1995, just over a month after graduating from the Art Institute of Pittsburgh with studies in Industrial design and animation, and 2 years at Detroit's Center for Creative Studies where I majored in Transportation Design. I showed up at ILM and nervously knocked on the  heavily tinted business door marked "Kerner Optical". Inside that door was a simple front desk with a stormtrooper art triptych that I believe was done by Ty Ruben Elingson (a member of the ILM Art Department)
        I was met by Jeff Olson, modelshop manager, who ushered me through several hallways lined with posters, past a motion control stage, out into a parking lot and back through another building called 'cookie bay' (it used to house a cookie company at one point) and out again to arrive at "G" building. G building was an L shaped office strip mall type building, one wing was the Model Shop the other wing was the Art Department. I started out in the model shop. I was brought into the building past a messy (and obviously male centric) bathroom into the workshop, which was basically an open more gutted warehouse type section. There were noises of saws, Dremels whirring like a nightmare dental visit sounds, the smell of fresh cut wood, fiberglass resin and wet paint. I was quickly introduced to several model shop members like, John Goodson, Don Bies, Kim Smith, Ira Keeler, Giovani Donanvan and Nelson Hall, Randy Otenberg, Brian Gernand,  Steve Gawley and others. I was told I would be working on a movie called Congo, I would be helping build a miniature jungle set by making foam trees and vines. I sat with Nelson who showed me what we were doing, carving grooves into long foam tubes like pool noodles. Then wrapping the tubes in a latex skin with a tree bark texture on them. Lunch was a quick jaunt over to Picante, an iffy Mexican restaurant behind G building. After a stomach sized gut bomb burrito we walked over to 'C' building where the big miniature set was going to come together. This was ILM's biggest indoor stage space complete with ceiling grid and giant roll-up door. This picture below is a composite of live action FG and our miniature set in the BG.

Another job I did on Congo was make a miniature arm speach band for a miniature Amy the Gorilla with modelshop sculptor Richard Miller. Overall it was a mind blowing experience, little did I know it was the first day in a 25 year + journey that would lead me around the world, meeting legendary artists, directors and actors. With work on nearly all of the biggest VFX films in recent history... all with the same company... Industrial Light + Magic.

Ready Player One Art!

After a lot of legal clearance, I finally got permission to post some of my work from my 3 years on Ready Player One. I played a new role on this film as I was working for the Studio (WB and Amblin) as "Virtual Production Concept Design Supervisor". What that means is I was working directly with Adam Stockhausen the award winning Production Designer to help manage and design the world of RPO and mainly the Oasis. In that role I served as a supervisor of the Virtual Art Department which mainly consisted of artists from Digital Domain who ran the virtual sets and motion capture, and ILM and other freelance concept artists to visualize the extensive worlds in detail before any actors arrived on set. I continued on as VFX art director along with Steve Tappin on the ILM side to see through to final completion of all the 90 minutes of full CG Oasis scenes by ILM.
       For a microscopic taste of this, I'll start with vehicles, which was one of the first jobs assigned to me by Adam. Although I did many, many vehicles for this film, due to 3rd party license issues I can only show what I got cleared. But the other vehicles you can see in the film I can't show right now are: The Mach 5, I did a modern upgrade to this icon as a personal vehicle for Daito and what I would've preferred the Mach 5 looked like in a modern film. The Mad Max interceptor, also mild upgrade including hidden thrusters in the rear gas tanks. And of course Aech's main ride the Bigfoot monster truck, also customized to his/her tastes and size. Below are the final illustrations for the IOI stock car racer. Based on NASCAR, but given a bit of a plain, but menacing corporate branding and armor to fit with IOI's over all aesthetic in the film.
enjoy!
-Alx

READY PLAYER ONE!

See what I've been up to for the last 3 years! As Concept Design Director, I served in many roles from the very start as a concept artist, to virtual production art director to ILM visual effects art director. Check it out March 29th!

http://readyplayeronemovie.com

JAEGERTECH Stormtrooper Helmet in new SW Stormtrooper book!

After years or touring around the world some of the Star Wars Legion mini Stormtrooper helmets have come to be featured in a new Star Wars book all about Stormtroopers. I was flipping through this book at Costco and came across this page featuring my JAEGERTECH Racing Helemet! Grateful to see that out of the hundreds of artists that made some incredible versions that mine made it into a book all about Stormtroopers :) Sadly the rest of the book doesn't feature any of my many, many actual Stormtrooper art. Although final versions of my designs are present.
Enjoy!

My trip to the Top Gear test track!!

So for 4 months this past summer, I was working in the UK, While there we did several cool things on the weekends, one of which, thanks to my lovely wife, was going to the Top Gear test track in Dunsfold Park! Here's a little video I edited together from that trip, enjoy!
-Alx

and to view the entire lap session click below. We had to wait for a while to do the first lap, but it gives you a better idea of what it was like.

Guess who's an Academy Member now!?

It's an honor to be chosen to be one of the 'class of 2015' to the Academy of Motion Pictures! And last Monday night was a event to toast all the new members, including many actors, directors, producers and even a few of us Visual Effects folks. Fellow ILM'ers David Nakabayashi, Wayne Billhimer and Carry Philips, along with actors Elizabeth Banks and Jason Siegel among others. It was a great evening to hang out and meet the fellow new members as well as the esteemed staff and leaders. I would like to thank the Academy. :)

New Blog for Electric Vehicle stuff

check out VOLTZWAGEN, my new-ish blog about life with the VW E-Golf!

WIRED celebrates ILM's 40 years of Magic

WIRED just released their newest edition featuring ILM's 40 years of Magic with some great stories from a slew of key people, and even a few quotes from me! Dan Winters did all the photography for the piece and it turned out great! check it out!

George..

Steven

JJ

WHA??? :)

and here's ILM's 40th reel

The 'Old Axolotl' robot character designs in 3D!

The awesome chaps at Platige Images sent me the 3D prints of my robot designs from the ebook 'The Old Axolotl' look closely, they even included my signature! buy the ebook and you can print these too! Now available in English on Amazon. These are 'Startrooper' and 'Al-Asar'. Startrooper is a contemporary industrial robot, inhabited with a human 'download' and Al-Asar is a 1000 years advanced robot with a formless head that displays emotions when needed and is described as if it was made from cinnabar, a translucent red stone...

2015 "VOLTZWAGEN" e-Golf! "the Zippy Car"

Here is the 2015 VW e-Golf, an ALL-ELECTRIC VW with LED headlights, 'C' shaped day time running lights, aero alloy wheels EPA rate 116mpge and an average range between 70-95 miles.
Ok, so the car doesn't come like this, but I couldn't help myself, and this time I went beyond photoshop and actually made the custom vinyl myself.

I used my wife's paper crafting cutter to cut out the fender decals out of 3M 1080 Cosmic Blue and Metallic Silver. Created the graphic in illustrator after a rough tape version I made to get the size and angle correct.

 I also wrapped the underside of the rear spoiler gloss black like the GTI. Then I had the roof wrapped in gloss black and the mirrors in cosmic blue by VinylStyles in San Carlos.

There is still one more piece to do and that is a cosmic blue stripe just under the door opening to help ground the car a bit. Debating getting the Eibach sport lowering springs to drop it a bit. In addition to these exterior touches I also added the metal pedals and dead pedal, LED bulbs in the rear lights and power folding mirrors.

       As far as the experience of switching to an all-electric car after coming from a GTI and R32, I gotta say that it's pretty darn FUN!! Sure it's not as 'sporty' due to the low rolling resistance tires, but the power delivery is quite addictive with 200ftlbs of torque at any point it takes off quicker than a GTI from 0 and since it has no transmission it just keeps pulling without hesitation and even stranger, without much sound. So much so my boys call it "the zippy car"!

      Eco wise is very efficient even in it's full power 'normal' mode averaging over 4.2mpkwh on my daily commute and that's without any sort of sacrifice of driving style. So I can whoomp on it and just use the brake regen modes wisely and still get 4+ mpkwh. Yes going uphill drops that pretty quickly, but going down brings it right back up. It also is way more responsive than a Nissan Leaf which to me felt squishy and soft in pedal feel and is plain ugly. The Fiat 500e was also fun, but way too small for our family. The BMW i3 was more powerful and futuristic, but also weird for no reason and $15,000 more for the same range performance.... and kinda ugly too. The e-Golf also offers more modes than all the other EV's out there including a coast mode (D) that's turns off the regen completely, as well as 3 increasing levels (D1, D2, D3) and a 'Brake' mode (B) that is strong enough it makes the brake lights come on as soon as you lift your foot off the accelerator.
     In all I gotta say that this will not be my last electric car, in fact it may be the first of a long line of nothing but electric cars in my future. I choose to lease the e-Golf in hopes that Tesla would have their cheaper Model III ready, but I'm not holding my breath at this point since the Model X still has yet to appear and the gigafactory has barely been started.
     So for now I must commend VW for such a fun and sensible electric car that ticks all the right boxes and still makes driving a fun event! And I don't miss having to stop at a gas station!!

-Alx