TED talk on Fractals

Seriously I am not sure why I constantly stumbled on things that I have posted here before. Anyway I am glad it happens and I always come across information that particularly interests me.

I had posted about Loren Carpenter's fractal algorithm last year and today I came across this wonderful talk by a mathematics legend Benoit Mandelbrot, who talks about fascinating fractals forms which can be found in plants, clouds, human body, painting, architecture, and even in finical statistics.

It is amazing to see forms that can be created in Adobe Photoshop or After Effects with few clicks have so much complexity yet simple and related to our universe in various ways.

Classic Matte Painting resources

I remember I had posted few resources on the Albert Withlock back in last year. I just came across these videos about the craft another great master matte painter Peter Ellenshaw. Thanks to one of the member called Thomas on mattepaiting.org for posting these highly valuable videos.

It is amazing to see that how matte painting techniques overlapped so much with overall compositing process of the film. It never stop to amazes me that basic fundamentals of the craft always remains the same while just the tools and techniques advances.

Somehow I also stumbled on a really great blog by Peter Cook with quite lot of articles on classic matte painting. This is a must bookmark for people who are fan of all classic matte painting masters.

http://nzpetesmatteshot.blogspot.com/

I had mentioned about some great resources hosted by vfx artist, Domingo Lizcano in my last post but now I saw his blog which also have few interesting and informative articles on class matte painting.

Do check that out too http://domingo-lizcano.blogspot.es/

Another video on Happiness Culture

Well, I just came across this interesting talk by hotelier Chip Conley on happiness based business model. After my recent rambling on the same, I was very intrigued by this talk as well so as usualI am just bookmarking it here in my blog.

Cool youtube vids on color space

Check out these couple of videos color space. The first one explains three dimensional visualization of color in XYZ color space. In the second video John Paul Caponigro explains Color Spaces in a very interesting way balloons.

It is important to note three dimensional representation of color because most of advanced color operations works on this principal and it is very much crucial when it comes to color management as well.

Enjoy the videos :)

A different perspective on Internet piracy

Last year I wrote about my thoughts on online piracy and now it's good to see Youtube shares similar views on the same :)

Another cool Pixar article

Its seems like I can't get enough of it... I just came across another cool article on Wired about the Pixar process and if you think I'm just obsessed with their success stories then take a look at this quote for instance.

“It’s important that nobody gets mad at you for screwing up,” says Lee Unkrich, director of Toy Story 3. “We know screwups are an essential part of making something good. That’s why our goal is to screw up as fast as possible.”

The Happiness Culture

I saw this cool article called "The Happiness Culture: Zappos Isn't a Company -- It's a Mission" on fastcompany.com. It is a very interesting article about the business culture at an e-commerce company called Zappos and it discusses ideas of CEO, Tony Hsieh who have wrote book on the same topic.

According to the article, here are there main core values of the company.
1. Deliver Wow Through Service
2. Embrace and Drive Change
3. Create Fun and a Little Weirdness
4. Be Adventurous, Creative and Open-Minded
5. Pursue Growth and Learning
6. Build Open and Honest Relationships with Communication
7. Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit
8. Do More with Less
9. Be Passionate and Determined
10. Be Humble

What really made me intriguing is that it's seems a lot similar to Pixar's culture which I discussed in one of my last posts. Apart from the above points they even have a similar training program for all staffs irrespective of the position when they join the company.

Here are few interesting quotes on Hsieh which I found personally interesting

"I think we're just at the beginning where companies are becoming more and more transparent whether they like it or not. People are becoming...just because the information is everywhere and it's pretty hard to control now. So I think moving forward it's going to be only the authentic companies or people can win because everyone else will eventually be outed."

"In the end, the culture is about more than money. "It's not me saying to our employees, this is where our culture is. It's more about giving employees permission and encouraging them to just be themselves."

"There's three types of happiness and really happiness is about being able to combine pleasure, passion, and purpose in one's personal life. I think it's helpful and useful to actually think about all three in terms of how you can make customers happier, employees happier, and ultimately, investors happier."

Take a look at the interview which this article was based on.