Lee Lanier’s Beezle Blog

A Palm Springs kind of day.

I spent Friday splitting my time between films at the Camelot Theaters, historic home of the festival, and cranking through films at the Film Market. Either I’m getting old and jaded or the majority of short films are still 10 to 20% too long. Even the good ones. There were […]

The Palm Springs International Short Fest remains the largest short film festival in this hemisphere. Not only does it screen 300+ shorts and have 300+ filmmakers attend, but it hosts 2000+ short films in their film market. In other words, it’s a great place to scout for this year’s quality short film work.

PSISF - Feel […]

Before you jump to conclusions, I have to say that I am a “Star Wars” fan. Like many Generation X’ers, the original films inspired me to go into film and animation. That said, I have become increasing disillusioned by the newest spat of Star Wars work. “Clone Wars” is no exception. It’s not the beautiful […]

Thursday, I took a detour and spent some time in Long Beach. (Secret mission - perhaps more on that at a later date.) Long Beach hosts some nifty oil rigs right offshore. Only these rigs were made into artificial islands that look like they came from a 60’s Bond film. Who could oppose offshore drilling […]

I spent most of Wednesday catching Talks and re-navigating the exhibition hall. As for the Talks, they covered such topics as “Madagascar 2″ cloud generation, “Mummy 3″ avalanche effects, “Wall-E” crowd texturing and control, “Cloverfield” monster development, and “Iron Man” 3D suit creation. I loved hearing about the quick-and-dirty compositing effects on “Cloverfield.” Damn the […]

I checked into the Millennium Biltmore, which is one of your grand old hotels full of marble, carved pillars, huge lobbies, and friendly valets around every corner. They just don’t make them like they used to. Even the guadiest Las Vegas casino seems simple when compared to old-school architectural detail.

You need a fire truck ladder […]

I drove into L.A. a little late today, so I wasn’t able to check into the convention. However, I arrived just in time to attend the Autodesk Users Group Meeting / Mega-Party. This year, the shindig was held at the Shrine Auditorium, old home of the Academy Awards. It was much better organized than last […]

Okay… I finally managed to get a few tasks out of the way and am ready to blog once again. My writing has been tied up with the 2nd Edition of “Advanced Maya Texturing and Lighting,” which is now available at Amazon. Just click the image below. The book has been expanded to 500 pages […]