nathan hackett

About 1 year ago a friend of mine Tadashi asked me to add some music to his album. Tadashi was making his debut album under the name Zaion (http://zaionrecordings.com/). I met Tadashi in Japan in 2005 when my band ettouchi (www.myspace.com/ettouchi) was playing at Milk in Ebisu. Tadashi is 1/2 of a band called 13cm (www.myspace.com/13cm) who was playing the same show. We fell in love with their music, went to all the shows we could after that and were so happy to have met Shotoku and Tadashi.

Then in 2006, Tadashi moved to San Francisco.

This was about 1 year before I even considered moving here. When I finally arrived in SF I was so happy to have someone to go to shows with, talk music and just happy to be around Tadashi again.

So anyway, last year Tadashi asked me to add some sounds to his album and I jumped at the chance. I worked on the song “Nomadic Landscapes” which is the first track on the album. I had only heard the version I had given to Tadashi which was unmastered and hadn’t yet been integrated properly.

This week I got my copy of the album “Nomadic Journals” by Zaion and it is beautiful. I am not sure if it is available in the USA at the moment but you can buy it from http://www.zooooo.jp/

Have a listen on his website and tell us what you think… I was so happy to be playing again and even happier to be doing it on a beautiful project like this…

Thanks Tadashi it is golden

Tags: music zaion japanese music instrumental guitar 13cm nomadic landscapes

I have been trying a few new tutorials and styles recently to help me get faster at photoshop and better at design.

This is a simple design i made last night for fun… I think I will do more to it soon, but for now… meet the Lantastic

Tags: photoshop vfx design

Sometimes something comes along and reminds you how beautiful things can be. This short is basically a movie of buildings, beautiful places shot in beautiful ways, but one of the things that blows me away is that it reminds me of when you walk into a beautiful place and your mouth drops… a little smile comes and you are in heaven.

And then you find out that this beautifully made short is…. unbelievably all cg….
watch it and fall in love with design again…. fall in love with buildings…. loose your breathe.

Compositing breakdown

http://vimeo.com/8200251

Tags: design vfx art compositing architecture smile

I have recently found the work of Matthew Lyons ( http://matthew-lyons.blogspot.com/ ). His style is amazing and his use of colour and form blows me away…

I am really starting to get into design and am trying to suck up as much info and tutorials as I can to get better. I think design is really one of the big things that can hold a VFX artist back. I can use a lot of amazing programs but without the creative magic that designers can bring, I am only one piece of the puzzle. I need to work on this so over the next few weeks I will try to post new designs and stuff that I do to get peoples opinion and just to better myself.

If anyone has any suggestions of designers, tutorials or books please let me know… I am eating this stuff up at the moment and am hungry (^_^)

Tags: vfx, design matthew lyons motion graphics art

For a bit of fun….
This is the original intro for my 2010 demo reel…. it got too long so i cut it down to what you see in the reel, but it was pretty fun to make
thanks to the lantastic for being a sport with the camera….

Tags: intro, stop motion vfx demo reel

The piece is based upon a 3d tracking technology developped at the Ishikawa-Komuro laboratory in 2003, using a laser diode, a pair of steering mirrors, and a single non-imaging photodetector called the “smart laser scanner” (for details, see here). The hardware is very unique: since there is no camera nor projector (with pixellated sensors or light sources), tracking as well as motion can be extremely smooth and fluid.

More info on the markerless tracking marker laser things (http://www.k2.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/perception/SmartLaserTracking/index-e.html)

Tags: vfx tracking lasers 3d tracking music electronic music

When I was a kid, my brother Peter taught me a few things… one of them, was that Germans and Russians make great cameras…

He would back up this theory by showing me is baby, the minox c spy camera (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minox). I would oogle at this bad boy for hours.

This Christmas, he gave it to me…
Gold, pure gold.
I have hit ebay buying old microfilm (8x11mm!!!)… I will post results when I have them…

What a MERRY CHRISTMAS

Tags: minox minox c photography spy cameras german camera