No Talking Tuesday # 115


This Tuesday found me doing two equally unlikely things.
The first was participating in a snowball fight in Oakland,
and the second was watching a screening of a film
I worked on for over two years,
which had been in production for at least a year before that.

The film had gone through something like six directors and five producers,
countless different scripts, and more trouble and drama than you can shake a stick at.

The film is about Mayan culture and history,
and was the reason I traveled to the Yucatan two years ago
to help do 3D scans of ruins and paint mood/lighting boards.
At the films end I was credited as lead texture artist and concept art.
(www.artofali.com/mayaskies)


We eventually passed the film to another production company
which worked on it in its final months.
The film opened in Mexico and the Science center in Oakland
before it's licensed to play in various full dome theaters around the world.
So we drove up into the Oakland hills, as a field trip of sorts,
full of apprehension and excitement at how the film came out.
And in the spirit of diplomacy,
I'll simply say that the final film is much better than I thought it was going to be...
and just leave it at that.

We were all mulling over our impressions of the film
when we continually noticed with astonishment how bizarre it was
that there was so much snow in the hills,
definitely a freak weather occurrence.
My art director in his infinite wisdom
solved the problem of how to give vent to our impressions of the film
as well as the absurdity of the weather
by pulling over for an impromptu snowball fight.

What does it look like when a van full of nerds
come out from behind their computers to frolic in the snow?
Well the answer is the extremely awkward footage below,
captured on Ingmar's godless i-phone black magic.
(For those viewers easily agitated,
please note I am in fact wearing a furry Russian hat thing,
and not being mauled by a fat raccoon)