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As an employee in the visual effects industry, I take interest in topics related to the business.  Recently, a fellow named Lee Stranahan posted “An Open Letter to James Cameron” on his website.  You can read the letter here.  In order for the rest of this post to make sense, you should go read it now.

Have you read it?  Great.  Just about everything he says in the letter is true.  Visual effects are the reason why people go to the movies these days, and yet we get the short end of the stick.  I’m glad to see Lee speaking out about this issue.

However, since when is it James Cameron’s responsibility to speak up?  If anything, it’s in his best interests for things to remain as they are.  I do think that Cameron is sympathetic to the visual effects artists’ situation.  In the credits for Avatar, visual effects artists were listed before traditional artists and other film staff, and the significance of that was not lost on me.

Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that Cameron does speak up on behalf of VFX artists at the Oscars.  It would be great for visual effects artists and a generous act on Cameron’s part.  For a brief time, it would bring the issue center stage.   It would be a news story, and people would talk about how wrong the situation is.  And then that would be that, and the news cycle would move on.

The bottom line is, if VFX artists want things to change, we will have to do it ourselves.  The movie industry isn’t going to suddenly say, “oh hey, you know what?  You’re right.  We’ve been treating you like shit.  Here’s some health insurance, and some profit sharing, and a retirement program.  And we’ll see what we can do about some job security.”   If we want those things, we’ll have to take the responsibility on ourselves to get them.

I know, I know, it’s been over a month since I’ve posted.  What can I say?  If only I didn’t have to go to my job, but could still receive the paychecks.  That would be nice.  And I could make posts much more frequently.  But alas, that’s not how the world works.  Here’s a few things I’ve been up to.

For Halloween, Neil and I attended the wedding of our friends Jason and Frederique.  It was a costume wedding, and people really got into it.  Neil was a groomsman, and I went as a survivor of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

If you’re interested, more pictures are here.  Not all of the photos I took are up yet; I’ve been slowly adding them over time.  So check back periodically.

I also had the opportunity to tour the main house at Skywalker Ranch.  It was amazing.  The layout team for our project went up to the Ranch, had a lovely lunch (they make a great fruit crumble, people) and toured the first floor and library of the main house.  It was gorgeous.  There are numerous original paintings by great artists like Norman Rockwell and Maxfield Parrish.  It was a true pleasure.  Unfortunately, I don’t have any photos, because I forgot to bring my camera that day.  If you do a google image search for “skywalker ranch”, I’m sure you’ll find some good photos.

Let’s see, other news… Neil and I went apple picking with my good friends Julianna and Lara.  It was a lot of fun, but then we were overrun with apples!  I made two or three apple crisps before I just got tired of having a box of apples on my counter, so I cut up the rest, and cooked them down as applesauce.  Now I have a large vat of applesauce in my fridge.

I also successfully made sweet potato gnocchi!  I was truly amazed at myself for this.  In my mind, gnocchi is a food that you can only get in a restaurant.  Neil and I had been out to dinner recently, and Neil had some really excellent gnocchi.  I started to wonder, “how hard is it to make gnocchi?” so I decided to look up a recipe online and find out.

Turns out, it’s not that hard.  It is pretty labor intensive, however.  I used this recipe.  Next time, I’m going to make regular gnocchi, instead of the sweet potato kind.

Ok people, that’s all I have for you right now.  More soon, I promise.  I will sincerely try not to let a month go by before the next post.

Neil and I have been taking evening strolls lately.  The sky is often spectacular in the evening, and we sometimes see deer, or other wildlife, out and about.  Because of the beautiful sights, we’ve been bringing my portable camera with us.  I thought I’d share these photos.  After I took these,  Neil hauled out his digital SLR and tripod for an impromptu photo shoot of the moon.   The photos he took make a nice animated movie of the clouds moving across the sky.  I’ll make the movie and post it soon.

For the past several months, my wonderful and talented husband Neil has been working very, very hard on putting together an instructional DVD for the Gnomon Workshop. I’m pleased to announce that his DVD is now available! You can get it here. If you work in the computer graphics field and are interested in hard surface texturing and shading, you might want to check out this DVD.

As an observer of Neil’s process in putting together the DVD, I can say with confidence that the content is very good, thorough, and of high quality. If you want to learn hard surface texturing and shading, you will not be disappointed.

Also, Neil and I would like to thank Nowell Valeri for his help on the project, shooting some live footage for us. Thanks Nowell!

I’m posting this for my friend Jen. Jen is planning a trip to Ethiopia this coming August, to refurbish three of the state-run orphanages in Addis Ababa as well as spend some much needed time giving attention to the orphans who remain there. She’s raffling off a trip to Maui in order to raise funds for the trip. Details of the raffle and charity are here. If you can, please help her in her charitable endeavors.