If there is one thing that life is teaching me right now is that you just never know what might be coming. It's not easy being on the other side of the planet from friends, family, and loved ones. I'm making friends over here, but it gets a little lonely at times. But it is at times like this that life can bring you wonderful surprises, and I'm incredibly grateful for this latest twist in an already "twisted" life.
I got into work Friday ready to do some digital sculpting and texture painting, but I also knew that I would need to do a bit of organization for an Actor Laser Scanning session that was going to take place in Los Angeles on Monday. I've supervised numerous Scanning sessions such as this, so consulting on this type of project is common for me. It's afforded me such surreal opportunities as driving out to Will Smith's house on a Saturday Morning for an on-site scanning session. Surreal. The vendor who will be doing the scanning is a company that I've worked with many times, and I know most of the people there personally, so I was looking forward to talking with them and finalizing the details for the session. The actors slated to be scanned Monday and Tuesday were characters that would only have digital avatars who would not look like them, so the scans would be used only for basic reference. However, I quickly learned that, as often happens in production due to schedule conflicts, the actors tentatively planned for were unavailable, and production had replaced them with the two stars of the film. They would appear in the film as digital avatars with their exact likeness - quite a more difficult scanning challenge.
When building exact duplicates of actors on the computer, one uses a combination of head and full body scans as well as traditional plaster life casting techniques. To make this even more difficult, the characters will be appearing in the film in various stages of undress. Again, I quickly updated the document I'd been preparing and mailed it off to the vendor.
I called my producer Fay to speak with her about these new changes in the plan and the added complexity of the scanning requirements. I asked if we had anyone slated to go to represent Double Negative (the company I work for). Experience has taught me that these sessions are too important to not have someone there to quality control and approve the data. With my Supervisor out of town, she quickly suggested that I go. I had not planned on going to Los Angeles for the weekend, nor was my inquiry in anyway an attempt to wrangle a trip. In fact, I had a fairly full schedule of events planned for the weekend and the following week. I still plan to get back to London in time to go see GI Joe Thursday night at a special screening. However, the oportunity to travel home, if only for a short while, was a very attractive one and one that would be very helpful at this time as Tony has been pulling together a lot of details back home. Fay would need to get it approved by production, so I excitedly hoped that I might hear good news by the end of the day. Los Angeles businesses don't come on-line until almost 5pm London time. Around the time I was about to head off to the local Pub to meet my coworkers for the traditional round or two on Friday night, I got word that I would be catching the next flight out on Saturday morning.
I know it is going to be a wiz-bang trip, and it may be strange stepping back into the life I set aside 2 months earlier, but as I am riding the plane and blogging at 35,000 feet, I am excited about seeing Tony and my two dogs, Bentley and Pepper, who have matching yellow Paddington Raincoats they received as gifts to protect them from the London rain. I didn't think I'd get to walk with them on our street in Los Angeles again, or get to see Bentley howl at the Squirrels that live in the Carob trees. I look forward to BBQing in the backyard and having some of the Fuji Apples off of the apple tree I planted. There are also a lot of friends that I hope to touchbase with and see time permitting. Not to mention quenching my hunger for some good Mexican food.
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