Michelin Man Road Twist Ad

When I check my stats for this blog I'm always shocked to see how many people got here from a google image search of Michelin Man. Apparently when you search for Michelin Man, an image from this post is a top hit. If you look in the comments you will see I even have people asking me for the 3D model. And of course I cannot give it out because I do not own it.

However, since it seems to be a popular item on my blog, I figured I would post our latest Michelin Man ad that we did a little while back. I posed Bib (Bibendum is his official name) to appear as if he is wringing our the moisture in a road surface which required a modeled road, particle effects and a matte painting to bring all together. The Art Director wanted to show different types of weather conditions, hence the dry/wet, sun/cloud mix in the image.

CLIENT:Michelin
POSING/MODELING: Mark DeRidder
LIGHTNING/RENDERING: Damian Fulmer
MATTE PAINTING/RETOUCHING: Dean Armstrong/Matt Sommerfield
EFFECTS: Dennis Fraser

Photos from the chase!

Sorry it took so long, but I have finally gone through my pictures and chosen a few of my favorites to share on my blog. The only enhancement made was contrast levels. These pictures are a great representation of the type of beauty severe weather can behold! This is why I chase storms.

Storm Chasing 2008

It's time. After six years of missing the chase season every May, I am finally heading back to the great plains to chase some of the most amazing storms mother nature can produce. My timing seems to be good, as the convective outlooks for the next 6 days indicate a potential for severe weather over the great plains, the ideal chase location. Nothing but flat land and big sky as far as the eye can see!

There is a slow moving low pressure system sandwiched between a deep trough which is bringing warm moist air from the gulf into the plains where it will collide with cold dry rocky-mountain air. I don't think I have chased such an ideal system before. And this time I have some help... as I will be taking Pete Reynolds and Bruce Spike with me. No more solo chasing.

I leave this afternoon for Kansas, but stopping tonight somewhere in Iowa to get a good nights rest. My target area is Hays, Kansas where the dry-line is expected to hit right around 4pm tomorrow. It's gonna be a lot of driving to get there at storm time, but we can do it. Stay tuned to this blog for daily updates on our adventure.

Wolf Lake Ranch

My wife decided to make my birthday gift a surprise and told me nothing other than what to pack (from long johns to a Hawaiian shirt!). We hit the road and headed north. Two hours in she finally tells me that we are going horseback riding for the weekend at Wolf Lake Ranch!

Heidi knows I love horseback riding and that I always ask to go whenever we are on vacation. Since Heidi has never ridden a horse (except once at my uncles house with me pulling the horse around), she usually isn't too excited about the idea. But being the sweetheart that she is and the good sport, she booked this awesome trip! Not surprisingly Heidi was a natural on the horse and was Cantering in no time.

Check out my Mac gallery for images from the trip!

The DeRidder Haunt 2007

So we geeked out a bit this year for Halloween. Every year we put up some sort of display in front of our house but it is usually a rush job. This year we were inspired early! We made a new tombstone (Sir Edward Poe) and expanded our old creep fence to cover a large portion of the yard. We also added a few new gouls to give it some life! Check out the pictures and let me know what you think.

Unfortunately our house in Royal Oak gets about 5-8 tricker treaters each year, but we are hoping our display will help generate more kids.

And here is an image of Heidi and I as Shaggy and Velma (and Topper as our Scooby Doo!) from the CEA Halloween Party Friday night.


UPDATE: I counted roughly 40 kids that came to our door this year! Might not sound like a lot but when you average about 8 kids a year, this is a nice jump. Hopefully we can keep that trend going :)

Heineken Bees

Here is an ad we just did for a Heineken sponsored Music event in Europe. The concept is that the bees are attracted to the music like honey.

I oversaw the job as well as modeled a lo-res version of the bee created by Henry Goeke and plotted all the little bees on the speaker also modeled by Henry Goeke. The large bees were posed by Cy Kalcevic and the image was lit and rendered by Pete Reynolds.

This was a fun job to work on and showcases our ability to do non-automotive work at Armstrong White.

Here is an image of my good friend Bibendum, or as most know him, the Michelin Man. Armstrong White has had the great fortune to be a major provider of Michelin Man ads for the past year or so. I have posed this 3D Michelin Man many times for many ads as well as animated web ads. It's always a pleasure to get a Michelin Man job since it is a character and not a car. Plus he is a 100 year-old international icon! At AW we are pleased to be currently holding the torch for this guy.

This image was posed and modeled (tire arms) by me, rendered by Damian Fulmer, and retouched by Lou Szvercsak. Everything is fake.

CGI Ford Mustang

Created as a sample for a local photographer, I lit and rendered this car using an HDRI background shot by John Roe. Shaders were created by Damian Fulmer and the image was retouched by Dean Armstrong. This image was featured as a two page spread in Elemental 2.

I hand modeled the Mustang from images of a die cast model as opposed to using CAD data which we traditionally do at Armstrong White. Play the video below to see a breakdown of this image from modeling to rendering, to retouching.

Autodesk selects Armstrong White imagry

Armstrong White has a really good relationship with Autodesk, the biggest CG software maker of for the Entertainment, Gaming and Design industries. They make 3Ds Max and Maya which is the backbone of our opperation. They have selected one of our pieces along with 7 others from the Film, Gaming, and Design industries to represent some of the best work made with thier software this year.

The above image was created by Joseph Brancik (CGI car), Dean Armstrong (retouching) and John Roe (background photo) and will be featured as a HUGE banner at the San Diego International Airport for this years SIGGRAPH, for the whole month of August. SIGGRAPH is the big industry conference for the CGI industries listed above. People from ILM, Pixar, Blue Sky, Apple, Intel, and many others go to this conference to show the latest work, software, and thinking.

This will be a big year for Armstrong White at SIGGRAPH as not only do we get a huge congratulatory banner, but Autodesk will also feature a Video Profile they created of us at the conference and my buddy and co-worker, Damian Fulmer, is teaching a Masters Class for Autodesk as well. Each year we get more and more recognition by the industry which is a great thing to see happening.

Stay tuned for the video profile which I will post on this blog as soon as I get my hands on the final version. Myself and a few other AW folks were interviewed for it.

Harrison's First Day Movie Poster

HFD_poster
Originally uploaded by Mark'n'Heidi

Created as a promo for the Salvation Army to send to local schools.