Elvis Deane - Astounding Adventures

(January 2007)

Elvis Deane is founder of Astounding Adventures and is one of the more active members of the particleIllusion software community. He is also a preeminent animator and independent filmmaker. Many wondertouch customers know Elvis from his role the past three years as a Creative Cow forum leader where he continues to offer online creative support to users of the various particleIllusion versions. He also holds the distinction of having created a title in the new video training DVD series from Creative Cow called the Creative Cow Master Series. This title, "The Apprentice Magician's Guide to particleIllusion", is the most comprehensive set of video tutorials created to teach novice users every aspect of particleIllusion 3.0 [Note: please visit http://training.creativecow.net/ for additional information.]

Some of you may have also met Elvis at one of the entertainment technology trade shows that wondertouch has exhibited at over the past few years, including Siggraph and NAB, where he has provided enthusiastic demonstrations of particleIllusion at the wondertouch booth.

Deane has been working in animation for the past six years. He traces his beginnings in animation to childhood. "After I watched the making of Wallace and Gromit in "The Wrong Trousers" in a high school media studies class, I thought becoming an animator seemed very attractive."

At Dawson College in Montreal, Deane took an animation course while focusing studies on television news production. Following, he enrolled in a year long 3D animation course at Humber College in Toronto.

He first learned about particleIllusion after reading a product announcement on a visual effects news site which motivated him to immediately download the demo of Version 1.0. "I played around with the demo a lot, and have been intrigued with the software ever since."

During the next two years Deane began using particleIllusion on a daily basis, both to create emitters to use in his short film projects, as well trying to replicate visual effects he'd seen on television or in movie theatres.

In 2002 Deane posted some of his experiments using particleIllusion to the company's mailing list and emailed wondertouch founder Alan Lorence about his interest in writing a book about the software. Impressed with his work, Lorence contacted him shortly afterwards about joining the beta test team for particleIllusion 3.0 and also enlisted his services as a demo artist.

When asked how the Creative Cow tutorial series came to fruition, Deane comments: "After initially contacting Alan about writing a book, I realized over time that many of the software books on my shelf were gathering dust, and that video tutorials were a far better medium for showing how to work a program. The folks at Creative Cow were in agreement that visitors to the site would benefit from a tutorial on the particle effects application and we moved ahead from there. It's been highly successful," he says. Deane is also the producer of another tutorial, a self-published CD entitled "Cooking with particleIllusion" that focuses on teaching users how to create different pyrotechnic effects from scratch.

wondertouch users can also find Deane's free tutorials on the Cow website which are geared towards explaining more complicated issues in particleIllusion or aspects of the software more specific to a problem -- things he says that artists don't necessarily require in their every day work but that are fun to do. Titles include "Relighting an Actor," "Orbing and Beaming Effects," and others.

In addition to providing wondertouch with feedback about the latest iterations in particleIllusion, Deane also provides the company with sample emitters that are considered for the library of emitters provided monthly to particleIllusion 3.0 and particleIllusion SE customers free-of-charge; typically about 20-30 emitters per month. "My methodology when I make emitters varies," says Deane. "Sometimes a project I'm working on leads me to create something I need, but oftentimes I'll start by experimenting with an existing emitter until something cool happens that I've never seen before."

Deane continues to experiment with new animation styles and effects for his own animated shorts and independent films. His production arsenal is comprised of particleIllusion 3 on both the Windows and Mac platforms which he uses in conjunction with Softimage|XSI, Adobe AfterEffects and Sony Vegas.

His most current project, a short film called "Reste la Même," relied heavily on particleIllusion to create transition effects for backgrounds in a few key scenes. The film follows the story of Martin, who visits a psychiatrist when he begins to see objects in the world around him changing. When the doctor's odd therapies start to create more confusion in his mind, Martin realizes he may have to take matters into his own hands, no matter the consequences.

Deane explains that in various shots in the film, objects in rooms and exteriors get changed around as part of the story in terms of placement, color and background patterns. "In one shot, I specifically wanted a door behind Martin to change color and distort. I didn't want the new color to just fade up over the old one, so I used a custom made particleIllusion super emitter effect to drive a displacement and color map on a 3D object in Softimage|XSI. In other scenes I created similar effects using particleIllusion, for example, to allow a wallpaper pattern to "creep" and cover up the existing color on the wall.

"In my work on short length projects, the flexibility in particleIllusion and having access to the presets is what makes it such a robust program. In one moment, I might use it to create clouds, rain and lighting, conjure up explosions and fireballs, or use it to make some mellow background motion graphics effects. For me, there's simply no other program that is as easy or fun to use!"

In the years that Deane has been using particleIllusion, he notes that "The Get Color From Layer" feature has been the one he's relied on heavily. "This feature really took particleIllusion from a program that can add things to video to one that can really interact with video," he explains. Which future features in particleIllusion is he most excited about? "I look forward to the 3D support that Alan has mentioned will likely be incorporated into particleIllusion 4 and anything like Forces that will let me better take control of my particles."