Scrooge in Hell, 1970 with Albert Finney & Alec Guinness David Ridlen 2023-12-25 | This scene from Scrooge 1970 scared the "Hell" out of me as a five year old, when I saw it in a theater. The scene was always cut from TV showings.
Resist the Call of the Robots! Teens in the Universe, 1974 David Ridlen 2023-05-06 | Russian teenagers on a 27-year, deep space expedition, encounter a planet where AI has seduced the inhabitants into a mindless trance following a directive to make humans "happy."
Concave Earth simulation David Ridlen 2023-01-18 | A first pass simulation of "Concave Earth Theory," based on my interpretation of general descriptions by key Concave Earth proponents. The surface of Earth is supposedly on the inside of a sphere (as opposed to outside), with the cosmos contained within another inner "glass" sphere suspended by inexplicable forces. The Sun is a 140km-wide hemisphere with a black backside, again suspended and propelled by more inexplicable forces. Even with convenient "bendy light" assumptions, I dont see how the Sun can ever appear to set or rise behind an earthen horizon. Instead, it would always rise and set behind the glass sky-sphere. And Earth should always appear to reflect in, and refract thru the "glass firmament." This video was originally unlisted, and I sent a link for review by Concave Earth proponents for constructive feedback, so I could update before publicly representing their model. But I only received angry denial and insults, without any specifics. I get the same blanket "wrong!" response from Flat Earth proponents, without any practical corrections.
Raised by Wolves 2 VFX created in Lightwave David Ridlen 2022-09-24 | Some minor VFX I did for the second season. My usual snow, and I was assigned creation of a Holographic game that originally started out more involved. The game became pared way down, I think because ultimately it was deemed too complicated and unnecessary for the plot. More game scenes had been shot, but some angles required the game action to be fixed in place instead of a more roving cinematic concept that was initially storyboarded. The "presence" on the planet would eventually use the game to infect the minds of the players for some sinister purpose, but the show was canceled and never developed that point.
Fallout 4: Most Epic Conflict David Ridlen 2022-07-06 | The only exciting thing about Nukaworld DLC is my daily settlement clashes with the neighbors after I gave all heavy weapons to the settlers, followed by unusual moping around traumatized. I edited game captures into a dramatic short. No mods.
The Ravine VFX created in Lightwave David Ridlen 2022-01-17 | Some visual effects I created for the movie The Ravine using Lightwave 3D and Fusion for composting. Juan Vargas also did some of the butterfly animation. The butterfly wings were modeled and textured by Chase Champagne, and added to a stock model. Genoma was used for the Butterfly rig. FiberFX used for fur. Turbulence FD was used partly for the specter, along with PFX and hyper voxels.
Mr Dark, Halloween animatronic I could not resist getting. David Ridlen 2021-10-18 | This new 2021 item sold out fast, and the mechanism is surprisingly hi-tech for Spirit Halloween. The sensor does not really work, and the volume is much too low. But comes with an1/8 mini-plug outlet to connect to speakers/amp.
A Shadow in the Cloud mixed to FCKD by DJ Hyper David Ridlen 2021-05-07 | "Misogyny incarnate" VFX by Weta- https://anchor.fm/weta-digital/episodes/Shadow-in-the-Cloud-eq739v
Yogi Baird - contortionist fiddler David Ridlen 2020-11-05 | A bit of rare video of the one and only Yogi Baird that I recorded at the State Bar in Dallas in 1994. Known for his memorable appearance in the Detroit marathon scene from Robocop 2.
Urds Quest - a liminal experiment from 1984 David Ridlen 2020-10-16 | As a teen with my first video camera from 1979, I was intrigued with empty industrial landscapes in the early stages of development around Irving where I grew up, that appeared abandoned and other-worldly with empty gray structures and no one around for miles. They were free sets that gave scale to my backyard epics, and no one bothered me as I built a fire or wandered off, leaving my camera in the middle of a road for hours. Lynch's Eraserhead was an early influence, lingering on a grungy environment to become the foreground in a surreal narrative. I desperately wanted a Super8 camera for Xmas 1979, but instead Dad gave the family this thing called a "video camera." I thought, oh well, I just have to save my donut shop checks to get a decent film camera. But the next day, my mind was blown to discover that for the $10 cost of 3 minutes of super8 film that never looked anything like you hoped, I could record 2 HOURS of video, AND see exactly what I was recording, AND play back each take immediately... AND record over to edit in-camera!?! I thought, fuck film. Video was way more versatile, and allowed us to play and teach ourselves for no cost.I am also intrigued with portals or gateways between worlds, which I often have recurring dreams about. And I liked the way footage looked after reshooting it while playing back on a TV. Filmmaker wannabe friends and I taught ourselves by imitating movies, and struggled to find ways to make our low-rez vids look interesting. Most things we shot had no beginning or end, but we grooved on trippy ambient visuals. Humans have a shorter attention span these days, but "liminal" has become more of a thing now, and I wanted to digitize the footage before the old VHS oxide became any more degraded.
Specter effect tests David Ridlen 2020-10-02 | Using Lightwave PFX and hyper voxels, post processed in Fusion.
Some Visual Effects using Lightwave 3D David Ridlen 2020-08-23 | I assembled various VFX shots that did not make the cut into my other demo reels over the years. I did most of these. The Clouds Test was created with the old Ogo Taiki plug. Someone else animated the Test Crow rotation for Jonah Hex, and the crow in the smoke test was animated by Sean Scott. I lit and textured, and did voxel smoke for a proof of concept that was not used in the film. I dont know who originally rigged or animated the dragon from LW7 days, but I updated it here for LW2019. The tree blooms were tracked and created by Dave Lombardi. The Gondola was for a low-budget documentary about megaquakes, that I finished in a day. Some of the flying craft for Rim of the World were added later by someone else.
Game Over Man visual FX created in Lightwave David Ridlen 2020-07-23 | I put this demo together of some some visual FX I worked on for the movie, Game Over Man in 2017. The zipline was mostly animated using DP Kit Spline Deform. Bullet was used for windows shattering, and for the zipline when pulled by the thrown iron. Small glass bits used PFX and instances. Juan Vargas modeled the two main buildings based off lidar scans, and textured with Substance Painter. And he created the digital cycolorama. I manually tracked most shots because the foreground guys were swinging around too much against a background that was too cluttered and close for practical depth cues. Syntheyes was used for a few shots. Early on, more shots were expected to use CG buildings, but the compositors did a great job using various still photos taken on location. The wide shot of the man falling out the window while shooting was done in Maya by Jordon Alphonso, except the shattering windows I did in Lightwave. Sean Scott animated the zipline in a few shots, and the bullet shell at end.
War of the Worlds music montage David Ridlen 2020-07-17 | How would humans handle an alien invasion in 1895? I always wanted to see War of the Worlds set in the original period! I edited visuals from the three-part British miniseries War of the Worlds- youtu.be/r-yas0yPbLU to dark ambient music titled Subo Contages, from Erotomechaniks, by Coph Nia & Mindspawn youtu.be/oj073InVw98
NeverEnding Story - moral of the Swamp of Sadness David Ridlen 2020-06-03 | Some of the deepest sentiments ever in a kid movie. My second favorite scene from it. I was shocked the horse dies! But it drives home the point. This was the most popular renter at the first video store I managed in the 80s (along with Somewhere in Time). Adults seemed to appreciate it more than kids. Ideal to remake! But the rights seem unattainable.
Correlian Joyride David Ridlen 2020-04-17 | Solo opening set to Rammstein remix. Processed to accommodate copyright filter. Music from- youtu.be/Dopwaln01js
Creepiest scene from any kids movie - Adventures of Mark Twain David Ridlen 2019-10-27 | Claymation from Will Vinton, 1985. Full movie here- youtu.be/qRgY56Sgub8 Based on an incomplete novel by Twain, The Chronicle of Young Satan, about the sinless nephew of Satan (aka #44). Will Vinton was the King of Claymation, and made the first stop-motion film to ever win an Oscar- youtu.be/QoBmlbQApJE This is the story of his meteoric rise and fall- priceonomics.com/how-the-father-of-claymation-lost-his-company
Potential submerged in doubt. David Ridlen 2019-10-19 | "My first six years in the business were hopeless. There are a lot of times when you sit and you say 'Why am I doing this? I'll never make it. It's just not going to happen. I should go out and get a real job, and try to survive.""You simply have to put one foot in front of the other and keep going. Put blinders on and plough right ahead."-George LucasThe word “submerged” refers to the psychological state of being involuntarily weighed down by the bowels of the unconscious, whether through archetypes, symbols or dreams. It is a state in which the mind is battling against certain contents and the energies of the individual are driven to address this internal narrative. Clinically, submersion may manifest as depression, anxiety, bipolar, aggression and emotional volatility and other mental conditions — yet these are often outward symptoms of a deeper spiritual dilemma.No types are more acquainted with the depths of human nature; no types are more aware of the shadowy corners of our being than those who have gone through immersion and come out through the other side. From this place springs forth great creative force and artwork.
Rim of the World intro - Lightwave and Octane David Ridlen 2019-10-01 | I started experimenting with Octane at the beginning of this project, but never had time to return to learning it well enough to commit to using it for this shot. So I stuck with rendering in Lightwave 2018. Drastic changes were made late in the schedule, and we began running out of time to complete render at 4k in Lightwave. I also had trouble getting rid of reflection noise in Lightwave, without renders taking way too long. So Pixel Magic hired an experienced Lightwave/Octane artist, Billy Brooks to render the Space Station much faster with Octane GPU rendering. So the Lightwave version is shown first, that I comped in Fusion, followed by the final version as it appears in the movie, comped by Brad Moylan, who also created the Earth in ORB for After Effects. I don't know who modeled the mother ship, which was provided to us. Chase Champagne added much more modeling detail to the ship, and to the ISS window area for closeup. I textured the ship and space station, and did lighting. I started animation, but had to move on to other shots, so Juan Vargas did final animation, and added the gore-hole in the astronaut. The CG shot had to smoothly transition into the practical footage inside the window, where the live camera corkscrews thru the window, and whirls around to see a CG exterior outside the window. It was tricky getting the camera to fly smoothly thru the head-hole, and the center of the window on the model which is rotating on all axis, and to line up with the moving plate inside the window, while also having control to make variations for the client. I came up with a pseudo dynamic parenting workaround, and Juan wound up doing a different trick that is hard to explain. But this is where I needed to be able to envelope dynamic parenting. Or, I needed to use a spline for the camera motion, and have a few control points parented to the station at one end. But I could find no tool for that task. So I cloned the nulls that control the ISS motion, and parented the camera to those. That gave me control to effectively enable dynamic parenting with an envelope over time, easing into the ISS motion as the camera gets close to the window, while leaving the camera free to move independently before that.The Space Station (ISS) and astronaut were stock models. The station had over 900 surfaces. Patrick Trahan used Substance Painter to detail the astronaut, and I did final texturing, and shattered the visor. When the camera is inside, looking out the window, I had to manually track that part, which was difficult with the semi-handheld camera, and a background that is mostly out of focus and partly obscured by the actor moving around.
Building Floor collapse test - Bullet dynamics David Ridlen 2019-09-20 | Using Bullet dynamics in Lightwave 11.6, I constructed this many different ways until it fell apart without errors, then cloned it 40 times for final- youtu.be/4feTdAq8EpQ
The problem with Hyper Voxels David Ridlen 2019-09-20 | Compared to RealFlow, the addition of a simple 'distance between particle parameter' would drastically improve Hyper Voxels.
Magic of Spell (1988), pt 2 of 2 (best possible Q) David Ridlen 2019-09-18 | Weird wacky supernatural kung-fu sequel to The Peach Kid. Seems to only exist on a few rare, lo-rez VCDs. Tiny Dog, Tiny Monkey and Tiny Cock must battle the demon wizard who is out to bathe in Peach Kid's blood, and eat Ginseng Boy to stay immortal.
Magic of Spell (1988), pt 1 of 2 (best possible Q) David Ridlen 2019-09-18 | Weird wacky supernatural kung-fu sequel to The Peach Kid. Only exists on a few rare, lo-rez VCDs. Tiny Dog, Tiny Monkey and Tiny Cock must battle the demon wizard who is out to bathe in Peach Kid's blood, and eat Ginseng Boy to stay immortal.Director Chiu Chung-Hing was a former stunt choreographer who got his start on the Yuen Woo Ping (Matrix, Crouching Tiger) classic Miracle Fighters (1982) whose eccentric influence is seen here. Magic of Spell is so imaginatively goofy, interspersed with such such jaw-droppingly elaborate scenes of madcap wire fu, optical effects and cel animated interludes interwoven with eye-catching artistry. The story is rife with Buddhist virtues not least the selfless, altruistic Peach Boy who seems always willing to lend his strength to those in need. At one point the Buddha himself intervenes and saves Ginseng by zapping the evil monsters with cartoon laser beams. Considering this is a children’s film it is alarmingly horrific with the slaughter of many innocents, but this is something of a Kinko trademark. Imagine Disney movies with extreme violence, big explosions, risqué humour (at one point the comedic sidekick is sexually molested by the evil witch!) and crazy surrealism that would make Dali do a double-take.
Eye for an Eye (1984) David Ridlen 2019-08-11 | This was originally suppose to be a 30 second flashback in the middle of a vague, no-cost, 5-minute short idea I had, but never finished. The long lost source footage was shot with an RCA VJP900, portable VCR- youtu.be/UycFmF2BaUE And the glitchy, 2nd gen edits I still have are on diminishing, 37-year old tapes. The image is quality is low and shots are a bit incoherent. But I realized even then, that viewers may be engaged by effective use of _the angle and the edit,_ without spending a dime. You dont need money, school or anyone telling you how to do it. Beg, borrow or steal the gear you need, and just do it. Learn from mistakes, and find your own way. High school friends and I wanted to be film makers, and since 1980 we taught ourselves shooting and editing by messing around with affordable consumer VHS. By the time others our age were graduating film school, I realized that we had a more original, free-spirited style of shooting and editing (MTV/Raimi era) because we had spent so many more hours experimenting with wacky visual "epics" (we called them) on cheap, versatile video, which was naturally looked down upon by film snobs. Back then, film production/school was so exclusive and expensive, and the complex gear was so much less accessible that students wound up with less experience, and in a lot more debt. In 1986, we attended North Lake Jr College with the best video production facility of any school in Texas. But our cheap home gear still allowed for more tricks, and soon after, the teachers were asking us how we were doing things. I realized that schools were not going to teach us anything. By 1990, a friend and I were teaching ourselves graphics and CG animation in Autodesk Animator- youtu.be/HTl-pPlaD7Q (became 3D Studio Max), then in Lightwave on Amiga 2000s (Amiga still lives! https://amigastore.eu/595-vampire-500-v2.html ). By the time the DPS PAR capture card came out in 1993- http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/par , there was no longer any reason to think about learning to use film. Desktop computers allowed us to teach ourselves to produce visual FX, and create visual impact that rivaled studios. When it comes to creative endeavors, I always advocated teaching yourself and following your own muse. That passion will drive you to persevere thru the tedium and setbacks of practice, to find your own voice.
Monster Attack Team Intro David Ridlen 2019-08-03 | One of the intros to a Dallas cable access show in early 90s, featuring trippy, wacko Japanese pop culture that could not be seen anywhere else in the U.S. except thru bootleg laserdics. Edited by Eddie Holland, before this sort of rave/mashup set to music became common on the interweb. This colorful, high-flying, super-action genre from Japan and China began influencing American TV and movies in the later 90s with Power Rangers and Matrix.
Lightwave - examples of Hyper Voxels for visual FX David Ridlen 2019-07-22 | Do not try this at home kids. There are better ways to achieve FX. These are mostly tests I did over the last 20 years, using procedural HVs. There are no fluids. With LW 2018, HVs were relegated to "legacy," and no longer render with moblur, so they are officially obsolete, although they have been undeveloped for many years. They are replaced by the new and more complex volumetrics, but those do not yet replace the ease and functionality of simple HV tricks. For FX, use TurbulenceFD, Blender or Houdini. The upheaval at 2:22 was done by Brad Mullenix, and the Torus crumbling at the end was done by Dennis Greenlaw, both for the movie Epoch that I was CG supervisor on.
Flocking test in Lightwave David Ridlen 2019-07-14 | This was my first use of flocking for a rough test I tried while working on Rim of the World, to generate a busy, automated 'star wars' type battle for the background of a few shots. Barrier directors (type-plane) are arranged to contain the flock within a certain area. Emitters are parented to each ship, and randomly emit based on a world coordinate texture in the birth rate. But I could not get enough control to make it convincing.Instead, I wound up manually animating a handful of fighters, with simple null controls for varying flight paths, then cloning and repositioning the hierarchy several times. That allowed precise control.
Shock and Awe, and LBJ visual Effects demo David Ridlen 2019-03-14 | Computer animation I rendered in Lightwave, for the movies Shock and Awe (2017), and LBJ (2016). Both directed by Rob Reiner.Forum discussion- forums.newtek.com/showthread.php?159482-Visual-Effects-created-in-Lightwave-for-Shock-and-Awe-and-LBJ
Green Book visual effects demo David Ridlen 2019-03-03 | Some CG work I did for Green Book, using Lightwave, and Fusion for slap comps. FX produced by Pixel Magic.
Samsung Galaxy Note 9 - slow motion video at 960 frames per second David Ridlen 2018-08-29 | Trying out the 960 fps on my new phone.
Epikz - experimental, backyard VHS from early 80s David Ridlen 2018-06-07 | A mishmosh of crap I shot on VHS in early 80s.
Me getting beat up for a Taekwondo demonstration in 1986 David Ridlen 2018-06-03 | I edited this on a VCR in 1986, with added sound FX from movies. VCR editing was a pain. My friend and I came up with these "10 steps" as part of his first black belt test.
Infected - VHS rave edit from 1986 David Ridlen 2018-06-03 | I edited this the hard way, on a VCR in 1986. For anyone unfamiliar with VCR editing, it was not easy back then. Music is Infected - Skullcrusher Mix, by The The (Matt Johnson). I VJ'd raves in the 90s.I gathered over a hundred VHS movies together. Over the years, I developed an instinct for knowing precisely how much time passed between pressing pause to start recording, and when the recorder would actually start recording a second or so later. I had manually developed a +/- 3-frame accuracy, which was as good or better accuracy as a decent VHS edit controller back then. Then it was a matter of playing the source scene a few times to anticipate when a particular moment would occur, start record, pause, rewind-search, play to see if it worked. Maybe attempting the whole process a few times to get it right. Not easy.
Lightwave flocking test - claw David Ridlen 2018-03-05 | This shows a rough test I did for something odd that a client wanted of a flock of birds forming into the shape of a larger bird, followed by a render of the "murmuration" example scene that comes with Lightwave content.
Tentacles test in Lightwave David Ridlen 2017-08-21 | Using IK Boost, bone dynamics, and effectors. Forum discussion on tentacles- http://forums.newtek.com/showthread.php?154399-Possible-to-animate-tentacles-procedurally-in-LW
