This week in CDM we didn’t have a guest speaker in to talk to us so instead we were to watch a Lynda.com video in the category of creative inspiration. I chose the video which is about an American motion graphics and visual effects artist by the name of Ron Crabb.
Motion graphics is something that interests me because so many of the Hollywood films that have been coming out in the last 10 years are using them. I don’t know a lot about the technicalities behind it but I look forward to hopefully learning them.
Ron lives in a place called Blakely Harbor Park in Washington but works in the film and tv industry with a lot of his work coming from Hollywood. He talks about how the improvement in internet technology allows him to work from home because a lot of his work can be uploaded around the world instead of having to be done in a studio. I thought that was brilliant. Making money right from my home would be amazing.
So like many people in the digital media world Ron has a colourful background that has shaped the way he works today. He wanted to do fine art in college but ‘blew it off’ and went to California. He got into a print shop doing art for sportswear which lead to logo design. He then got a job doing graphics for a news company which lead onto computer graphics in 1985 and it all rolled from there. He talks about how now in his career he would like to define what he does rather than doing too many different things. It always interests me to hear when people in this industry are constantly doing different types of work because as someone who likes variety I’m excited to see where I end up.
Ron got to work on some big films such as Xmen and Last Samurai where he created matt paintings. Mostly they are backgrounds or add ons to sets to make them look much more realistic. I never knew this was done and some of his work is unbelievable. It look so real! Here’s one from his webpage:
Matt Painting
This guy is the king of Photoshop. He is given hig definition photographs and it’s his job to change them and make them fit into the background. He shows a painting done for speed racer which is 12,000 pixels wide! Working in Hollywood demands amazing work and Ron is fantastic at what he does.
