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Finally Finished Writing

I finally finished writing my book about Cinema 4D. I started in March and wrote 10 chapters over the course of the rest of the year. I would have been done sooner but I had to revise a decent portion of it when Maxon came out with Cinema 4D release 13 in August. Look here it’s a real thing I swear not just something I made up to sound cool.

The final word count:

*faints

Yikes. Kind of makes me want to go back in time and smack myself whenever I felt stumped by a stupid 5 paragraph essay in school. Teenagers are so dumb. The page count is inflated because of the formatting and the pictures. It will be 500 or so I think.

Writing was a draining process; I’d come home from work and end up just doing more work almost everyday. It’s especially tough when you aren’t really making any money until you finish and hopefully sell the damn thing. And it wasn’t just writing, I had to design dozens of projects and examples to teach the software and take screenshots of all the lessons. I can’t wait until it’s finally published and tangible instead of a Word document.

I still need to prepare some sample videos and stills to help promote it on here, but the heavy lifting is done. I’m glad I finished before the holidays and I’m looking forward to setting some these new goals, in order of increasing difficulty:

  • Relax for the holidays
  • Complete online traffic school for going way too fast
  • Fix my Xbox
  • Find and consume at least one bottle of Brooklyn Black Ops
  • Learn Spanish
  • Find a girl who can stomach me for more than one date
  • Learn some new software. Maybe Nuke, Realflow, or Syntheyes… yea that’s right ladies ;)

Should be fun.

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  • August 14, 2011
  • Posted by: BIGMIKE
  • No Comments
  • Books, Posts

Cinema 4D Release 13 and My Book

As if writing the book wasn’t challenging enough, Maxon unveiled Cinema 4D Release 13 at the beginning of the month, and I will be updating my book to cover what’s new in it. That means I have to learn it fast and get some new lessons in ASAP. Stay tuned.

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Woooooah We’re Halfway There

I have wanted to update my site but I’ve been locked in on a rather interesting and time-consuming side project. I’m halfway through the first draft of a book about how to use Cinema 4D. Yes, the same guy who cranks out a ho-hum blog post every month or so is writing an entire book. Makes perfect sense.

I’m still not 100% sure why I was the one asked to write this book, they could have picked a million other designers to do it. It must be because I am an industry leader in 3D animation using Cinema 4D and sarcasm they drew my name out of a hat or something. Whatever the reason, I didn’t ask any questions and I got to work ASAP before they changed their mind. I’m taking the project quite serious because it’s obviously a great opportunity at my age to become a published author. It’s also a much better side project, and I don’t have to waste time racking my brain trying to come up with a new tutorial or creative design file I can sell for a $1.25 at the Envato Marketplace.

The book will be a thorough overview of the essentials features of Cinema 4D. It will have roughly 80 short lessons that go over just about everything you need to know to become well-versed in the program. A general concept I try to infuse into the lessons is to compare how certain techniques can be achieved in Cinema 4D versus how they are accomplished in real life, and I draw from personal experience to make recommendations and encourage further exploration of the program. You could write whole books on individual components, menus, and tools within the program, so I did my best to cover the most useful and straightforward topics to turn the reader from a novice to advanced user if the book gets read from cover to cover.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to channeling my unfiltered creativity and seek the proper inspiration as I forge ahead with my pièce de résistance.

Sent from my iPad 3 via WiFi at Starbucks while adjusting my dark rimmed glasses.

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3D Presentation Slideshow and Weigh In

I had to update my banner to reflect my actual, accurate weight. When I updated the site over the summer and added the tagline with my height and weight to the banner I listed myself at 160 pounds, which was generous, I was a bit less than that. Yeah, I lied to you. But all of last year I focused myself in the gym for the first time in my life while eating a lot of helpful food to get stronger.

I gained 30-35 pounds in less than a year. Good pounds too, they came with equipped with muscles and everything. So I changed my banner to reflect my new weight, I wish there was a PHP plugin to sync up with my body and do it automatically, but that would be hard to program.

I’m not sure at what weight it stops being ironic that my nickname is “BIG MIKE” but people were calling me that when I was 4 foot nothing so it will stick no matter what happens.

Besides eating and lifting heavy things, I also designed a new file for purchase on videohive.

It’s an Xpresso powered slideshow created in Cinema 4D and After Effects. It allows you to display photos, videos, 3D objects, etc. in actual 3D space within Cinema 4D. I coded the controls to be powered via Xpresso and a User Data control panel. There is minimal keyframing needed to create a great looking 3D presentation slideshow that will blow the pants off anything that can be exported from Microsoft Powerpoint.

I made a video that shows a little how it works in case people want to see behind the scenes before they buy it. I also provided an instruction guide and encourage any emails from users if they get stuck.

I have a bunch of different file ideas I want to execute, I just need more time in the day to be able to work on them.

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It’s Hip to be Square

Square is the new rectangle:



I made cards to match the new square logo. Here’s a breakdown I did of how exactly I used my last 1000 business cards:


So the result was no free lunches and women be shoppin’. This next 1000 cards will be way better, and $25 well spent.

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Oh, You Went With Orange and Blue…Real Original Mike

Almost 3 years ago I launched my web site with a vague idea where I was going. I spilled a bunch of digital paint on digital canvas and voila! A website of my own. It looked like no other and that was both good and bad. Obviously as an artist you always want to have a unique design, but I’m sure that it was often too messy and unconventional for some people. I don’t base all of my decisions solely on what others think, but it’s idiotic to ignore your visitors vibes and feedback. And in my head my site didn’t gel together. It felt like a half baked mixture of my CSS design, my WordPress blog, and my Vimeo channel.

So I’ve converted the whole site over to WordPress, and I have a much more organized and sensible structure for posts. I’m going to post my original stuff, as well as any new tutorials. I felt like 3 years with one look seems like and eternity, and revamping my look was the way to go. I wish I could take full credit for the design, but my php skills are limited so Press 75 laid out the foundation to highlight videos instead of posts and I fit the site with my color scheme and existing content.

The orange and blue colors contrast well, and the site has a very fresh feel to it. If you don’t like orange and blue you probably are just tired of losing.

Please let me know of any kinks, it’s still a work in progress but I am just going to keep the site live while I tweak.

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New Items: Bulletin Boards

I designed one model in 3D and exported it as both a Cinema 4D project on 3DOcean and an After Effects project on VideoHive.

It’s a bulletin bard you can add you own papers, notes, etc. to and navigate a camera around, highlighting various pieces.

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New 3D Ocean Model: Film Slate

Check out the latest model I made for 3D Ocean:

Film Slate Clapperboard

It’s a 3D film slate with a texture in photoshop that you can update externally and load in yourself. Animate it as you please.

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Support a Starving Artist/Nerd

I’ve recently added some clips on VideoHive and on 3DOcean. They are marketplaces for graphic artists to upload their work to sell, and I get paid a certain percentage based on the asking price and how many I’ve sold. If you want to support me and my site, feel free to buy a file, clip, project, or whatever I upload, I would really appreciate it. I’ve added a few things so far and I have some other designs in the work. I’m planning on uploading a ton of stuff eventually, whatever comes to mind and I develop. The idea is to create files with a lot of utility and have wide appeal to maximize sales.

Featured on 3D Ocean:

My Acoustic Guitar in Cinema 4D.
acoustic guitar made in cinema 4d

I modeled this guitar from scratch in Cinema 4D. It has a lot of detail and is a very accurate design, I included all the components in a real guitar.

Featured on VideoHive:

An After Effects Project that creates a 3D silhouette concert crowd.
after effects silhouette crowd

This After Effects project lets you control the intensity that the silhouette crowd reacts. They jump up and down like they ere a crowd at a concert or some other event. It is an expression based project, so you can keyframe just one amount to get the right intensity you desire.

Thanks.

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New Tutorial: Automated Bar Graphs with Xpresso

I produced a new tutorial for CGTuts that can be seen here. This tutorial demonstrates how to use Mograph and Xpresso in Cinema 4D to create a sort of mini-application that can be used to design and animate your own bar graphs. The Xpresso is the key, because it gives us the ability to enter and keyframe data from a control panel, and it updates automatically in our scene.

I felt deflated when I found that Andrew Kramer produced something very similar about 2 weeks ago on his site using After Effects. It’s a totally different way to make bar graphs, but it looks like I jacked the idea from him. I had developed this over a month ago, it just took awhile to produce and get it posted. I didn’t even check his site for it until someone mentioned the relation to mine. They are very different tutorials for different programs that happen to produce something similar. The timing just makes me look sketchy, oh well.