Process notes, render diaries, software opinions, and the occasional teardown. Written between projects — short, honest, and useful to the next person at the same blank file.
Anodized aluminum doesn't read on camera the way the eye remembers it. A note on building a key, a kicker, and a fill before the shot exists — and why I almost never light to a HDRI alone.
Newest first. Reading times are honest — written, not estimated by word-count.
The model was finished by week one. The lighting took two more. Notes on the shots that didn't make the cut, and the one frame that did all the work.
Speed is a real thing, but so is the floor of the look. A short defense of paying the render-time tax for product work, and the two cases where I still reach for the realtime pipeline.
180 frames, three camera moves, one product. A frame-by-frame teardown of a recent launch hero — what's modeled, what's a card, and what's hidden behind motion blur.
I was skeptical. Then I was a convert. Now I'm somewhere in between. A working list of what nodes have replaced in my pipeline — and what's still faster done by hand.
What I ask in the first email, what I ignore, and the three constraints that turn a good brief into a fast one. Mostly written for the brands and founders I haven't worked with yet.
No newsletter. No tracking. Just the new entry, in plain text, the day it goes up. Roughly twice a month.