| WHERE I COME FROM | WHERE I'M NOW | WHERE I'M GOING |
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From a very young age I have been very interested in music, animation, photo- graphy, electronics, and computers.One important event must have been early morning at Saturday december 6, in 1969. I was three years old, and that summer we had just moved to the countryside, far far away from family and friends. It was the day after Sinterklaas-eve (Saint Nicholas), when all Dutch children get presents ... or are deported to Spain (where he lives of course), if they had been naughty that year. MoreFortunately that didn't happen to me so we were able to inspect our gifts that morning, and there it was: the L.Z.K. Magic Lantern with Disney slide films. These toy projectors were manufactured in Poland (Google "Lodzkie Zaklady Kinotechniczne" or "Diaskop Bajka"). 
Together with my brother and sister we watched slides from Disney's hand-drawn
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and I couldn't believe my eyes. Instant fan!In the years thereafter we eagerly read Donald Duck magazines on a weekly base. Donald is still one of my favourite characters. My first two books at the age of six: one about a cute penguin, and one about computers. Linux didn't even exist (Unix v1 did). At the age of nine I started learning to play organ and after a few years I could also start learning to play piano. After keyboards, samplers and synthesizers I mainly use my digital Roland FP-5 piano and digital B3-style Hammond XK-3c organ in combination with Propellerhead Reason, a virtual music studio with all the instruments and effects equipment we could only dream of in the seventies. 
The Pitch Edit mode in Reason, for monophonic sources, is ultra cool and allows me
to finetune my voice and prevents birds from falling dead from the sky.
It offers new possibilities for self development.Learning to sing is much like learning to produce narrations. You think you can talk, but you only hear how bad it is when listening to a recording. During recordings you need to suppress your accent(s), articulate well, control your breathing, and on top of that you pay attention to emphasis, accents, tune, sound, rhythm and speed. And then the sound of your voice seems completely different each day and depends on mood and physical condition like fatigue and even the amount of milk or caffeine. Even after so many years, every production is another challenge, at least for me. The good news is that you do learn how to sound less bad. Besides that it's a lot of fun. Photography started early with my own camera and a b/w doka. When I could afford it, that b/w doka was replaced for a color doka. It proved to be a forerunner for my video activities, much later. Electronics was initially practically limited to simple DIY projects and lot's of electronics magazines and books, many were related to musical instruments, but that changed with avionics training in The Hague. Nowadays I hardly touch a scope or soldering iron. On the Commodore-64 I learned to program in Assembler and I bought my first 286 PC in 1987 that I used to learn programming in C and C++. To produce a hand-drawn movie, you need lot's of drawing skills and, in those days, expensive 8 mm film equipment so that was not really feasible. When DVD was introduced I bought every nice animation production on the market - I still do! Then I bought the book Adventures in Ray Tracing and I was instantly in love with the 3D computer animation technique that let you render images on a computer, based on mathematical formulas. The included computer program POVCAD (it still exists) needed about one night on a 486 computer to render a marble ring. A few weeks after that, I read an article about LightWave 3D v4 in a magazine and I decided to buy the program on sight. It wasn't cheap, but not as expensive as others. Then suddenly there was Pixar with Toy Story. I was very exited to see so many 3D features, that were also available in LightWave, in a fully 3D animated movie. This was the start of my love affaire with LightWave 3D and it still continues after soo many years. Learn more about the history of LightWave 3D on YouTube or Wikipedia or in the Appendice of the LightWave 3D 2019 documentation. In those days ILM stood out with their first Jurassic Park movie and Pixar expanded their business. With every movie production, their results (and our tools) became better and better. |
At work, over the years I moved from Avionics to IT to 3D to AV, Narrations and VFX to Interactive 3D.
At home, there is also music and dance.
Combined together, it is a vibrant cocktail of activities and possibilities that offer eternal inspiration.I'm preparing for an independent 3D animation project that includes singing, story development, acting and voice acting, and of course animation. To support this production I'm developing my own tools, LW-link for Vegas Pro and Legato for LightWave 3D. MoreView this introduction to Legato for a quick demo of one of its most important features: transferring keys from a compatible character in an external scene file that acts as a library. Producing entirely in 3D would be overly ambitious. Instead, all backgrounds will be VFX compositions with footage from cameras. See also this early exercise. Nowadays I'm experimenting to improve skills and help in hatching a number of ideas. There are still a few older exercises on my Vimeo page. I can relax in our garden at Amstelglorie, far away from wall outlets and large computer screens, and we love to visit the theater at Het Concertgebouw and the Nationale Opera & Ballet in Het Muziektheater.
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I want to produce at least one animated short before I die. And I hope to pursue the necessary skills from the animation style of the 1940s which I love so much.
Even if I fail, I really hope to have fun en route!
Jump to project statusAdam Backwards is the 3D character that I've had in my head for a long time. Although he is sometimes underestimated by his small size, it often turns out to be his great strength. His somewhat unusual solutions are not always well received, but he always means well.
Welcome to the universe |
