So it’s really over! In almost five hours I will be sitting on my plane to Seoul where I am going to stay for one night and I’ll be back in Germany in less than 48 hours. When I think of the first days here in Sydney, when we had to stay in an uncomfortable youth hostel and were searching for a flat, minutes seemed to pass by like ages. The last week on the other hand seemed to be exactly the opposite.

As you can imagine, I’m very sad at the moment to leave all the lovely people behind that I met here in this house, at uni or at some of the parties we had here.

Goodbye to all of you! I really hope our ways will cross again some day!

I’ll miss you very much and I’ll never forget you even if I’m getting old and grey some day! I promise!

So, to all those who I couldn’t contact yet via internet - if you want to keep in touch I’d very much appreciate if you’d contact me through the following ways:
Skype: san_marian
ICQ: 162523240
Email: marian.sander[AT]googlemail.com
I think I’m also going to create a Facebook account, as soon as I’m home.

But still… I’d also like to sum up a little bit what happened since my last entries… as long as memories are still ‘fresh’.

There was a really great party in our house at the beginning of June - I think with guests from any country you can imagine. As one of those guests said: It was a little bit like the UN, but obviously a lot more fun. ;)

Maybe a picture from the morning after can give you an impression of the dimensions of that party.

And that was only the garden…

Next I finished my studies on June 5^th so after that I had a couple of weeks that could be called ‘holidays’. Actually this was the first time since the beginning of my studies where I was not involved in any study projects! Well, unfortunately an almost-non-stop rain started two days before the end of the semester that appeared to last until one week ago. So I spent some time at uni to improve the animation that I created during the semester. And, believe it or not, I was following the way of the German football team through Euro 2008 although most of the games were at 4:45am… I think Sydney’s pubs and bars have rarely seen so many crazy European guys at that time of day.

I also used one of the rare rain-breaks to go on a whale watching tour which was a lot of fun not only because of the whales but also because of the fast speedboat we rode to see them… but maybe due to the cold wind on the open sea or due to the fact that almost everybody else in this house got a cold: I got a mean little cough and a running nose… Thanks tons of ricola herbs and fisherman’s friends I got rid of it before the start of the last sunny week!

Therefore I spent my birthday and the day after in the Blue Mountains which I would consider as the most impressive landscape I’ve ever seen. Unfortunately my camera was not nearly able to capture the whole beauty of it but maybe these pictures can give you at least a little glimpse of this experience.

The top of the huge cliffside that can be visited by people is very tourist friendly and a little bit overcrowded but if you go down the giant staircase (first I thought it was only a name…) you can enter a beautiful rainforest and go for a bushwalk.

Then, three days ago we said goodbye to a couple of American students that we met first on one of the first UTS parties and saw from time to time during our stay here.

Two days ago we had a very nice but also a little bit sad farewell party because three of us are leaving this house now. Anyway I think it was a very nice way to say goodbye!

Today all of the housemates came together for a last time to enjoy some very tasty Korean food and bid a last farewell.

And now I’m sitting here on my bed, torn between greatest joy to see my family, my girlfriend, my friends, my fellow students and my home again and deepest grief for leaving so many people behind that I became so fond of. It’s really quite overwhelming to me…

But… to cheer everybody up a little bit… here is something I almost forgot:
This is a little picture of something that I won’t order again on the plane this time. Guess why!

‘Catwalk - Black Cat Crossing’ won the Digital Pike award at the first annual of the e Clips festival.

Thanks to Dennis for the photo!

Today I got an email from my fellow student Patrick Kayser saying that our short film ‘Catwalk - Black Cat Crossing’ from the second semester won the second price (endowned with 500€) at the Movies & Stills Award in the category Stills.

Therefore the priced stills will be part of an exhibition at basis in Frankfurt and a presentation in Rödermark.

Catwalk is currently also nominated for the Bitfilm Award 2008 in the category 3D Space. Due to the fact, that the winner is selected through a public vote, we would appreciate any support we can get. So if you have not voted yet, please follow this link! ;)

A highres version of Catwalk can be downloaded here. I’ll upload it to my webspace as soon as I have faster internet access again.

… how are you?

Bondi Beach, May 7th 2008 at 6:35am.

For the highres version click here.

Hey everybody, this is very important!

Since the 1rst of May there is a vote running on the website of the Bitfilm Festival that lists all nominated movies for the Bitfilm Award 2008. Please do me the favour and hop over to the website and submit your vote.

You can do this by creating an account, logging in and going to the 3D SPACE AWRARD section.

To create an account, please click -> here <-.

If you search for the direct link to Catwalk, please click -> here <-.

Thank you very much!

Btw. the timing of the background music in the Bitfilm version of Catwalk is a little bit messed up due to some technical issues. I hope you still like the movie. ;)

Some of you might already have seen it. But to make it somehow ‘official’:

I just released my first demoreel. If you like, you can download it here:

Highres
Lowres

Finally the date of the e Clips film festival got officially announced on the website of the University of Applied Science and Arts, Hanover. Click here for further information.

I’m very sure that this is going to be a fantastic event and I’m quite sad not to be able to attend it. Anyways I hope that one of the two entries that I worked on (e Clips Trailer and Catwalk - Black Cat Crossing) are going to win a digital pike award. ;)

I highly recommend to everybody who is around one of the two venues to drop over and to have a very entertaining night packed with great short films for less money than a cinema ticket would normally cost!

I’ve uploaded a lowres version of ‘States of Convergence’. Click here to download it.

A whole website with a lot more background information is currently under way.

Heyho! As promised here is some news for you!

We finished our project with the Master of Digital Architecture and Master of Animation students.

The final product is a sequence called ‘States of Convergence’ and is supposed to give the viewer an impression of the futuristic Sydney in the year 2050. It was created for a presentation of the Vector Guerrillas at the Critical Visions conference of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects that took place last week. It is the biggest national architecture conference in Australia. I will upload the videofile as soon as possible.

Our timeframe was limited to six weeks and from that two weeks passed by due to research work and mainly due to the fact that we had to wait for the Panasonic hd cam and the Boujou 3d tracking software - although the responsible persons did a great job in getting us the necessary equipment as soon as possible, or even sooner. ;)

Our task was to implement buildings and objects, that were designed by the architects, into life footage, that we shot on four different places in Sydney. For one shot we went onto the very topside of the UTS tower where we were actually not allowed to stay longer than ten minutes because of the heavy radiation. But the view was awesome!
It’s only approxamately a 160° view but if you like this panorama click here for the highres version.

Of course the 3d buildings that we received from the architecturs were great for their purposes - which mainly means to present 3d objects on 2d platforms. But as we wanted to show them from different distances and directions, we had to cleanup or remodel them, shade, light and render them and composite them into the life footage.
Fortunatly Bernd made clear very early what kind of goal we had to achieve.

Personally I was responsible for remodelling parts the tower building, the simulation of the hair system that is supposed to collect energy in this futuristic vision and some background animations. If you look closely at the fourth shot, you will notice some tiny little people that are running around on the ground. Actually I created a simple humanoid model with main extremities and animated a complete walk cycle… just to find out that you almost see nothing but black dots in the final version.

The last days before the presentation were really work packed. We actually spent several nights at uni and fought with the renderfarm from time to time. Once we ended up rendering on 32 computers… locally.

But the worst thing is: McDonald’s was only 50m away and therefore even closer to our building than the ‘Union Center’ which is more or less the UTS’ equivalent to the ‘Mensa’ at German universities - just more expensive.

Oh and before I forget to mention it: Anthony Burke, who led this project, told us, that he is going to show the sequence during his guest lecture at Princeton University. :)

Now we have two weeks off (as I am writing this, there are only ten days left) but I think I’ll have to use most of the time for my assignments for Game Design and 3d Animation.

I just received the info that Catwalk - Black Cat Crossing got nominated for the Bitfilm Award in the category 3D Space!

More news are coming soon but for now I have to drink some beer after a few very busy days.