18-October-2009 Update

Well, Nothing like old news refreshed, Death vs Sensible is getting a fresh start in the editing process, because it is a short movie things are going well paced, Im going to make also some videodiaries of the production entitles «The Sensible Diary». I will post them as soon.

As many know i have a day time job doing other type of films, (institutional, educational...ya know for kids...) So For some news about those go to the Research Center where i work.

For know another great News is that the Evil Goth (Gotico Malvado) will also return in the form of short episodes, the major turn was that some of the data (models, Sets, textures and sound) Where lost after 2 backup harddrives got mechanical problems. The Data was saved because it was on 8 dvds (5 were damaged) and it came out the possibility to recover the two missing ones.

God help make them come true again.. :P

Death vs Sensible short

Hey guys, here i am after a summer like every other, the short was delayed due to external work pressure but its now on the way! Yuppy!!! Cheers and keep up the smiles and Roses flowing....

Julio

Hello people,
Here i am again, making another movie without any warranty or budget, this time is an animation short called «Death vs Sensible».

Don`t worry, Fractal is still on the way (on sound post production)
Cheers...

Julio

Julio Ramos Portfolio

To Those who stumble into my private site and want to see a portfolio or a Resume go to the above link:

Para Aqueles que vêm parar a este site mais pessoal e desejam aceder a um Portfolio ou Curriculo Vitae Sigam o seguinte link:

http://portfoliojulioramos.blogspot.com/

JR

THE LAST SCENE OF THE FILM

Monsters, concepts and a few more cg stuff

My work yesterday, a nude female, its not finished..

A Comic Book inking and pencil from «The shadow of the Scarecrow»

Another Zombie Rabbit from Fractal

A Zombie rabbit concept for Fractal

The «Man with the Gay Power» from Gotico Malvado

Violet`s Room from Gotico Malvado

Boris the Russian Terrorist from Gotico Malvado

A city from Gotico Malvado

Machado of Gotico Malvado

Gimp Character in Gotico Malvado

Gotico Malvado low poly character

The Hellguardian used in Fractal

Car Concept(unfinished) for a scifi film

The Came Sub from Gotico Malvado

An unfinished concept for a spaceship

Fractal Zombie Rabbit in between mutation

A Concept for a Trash Film

A Digital Double never used in Fractal

A concept not used for the zombie rabbit in Fractal

Ciber Dido from Fractal

Some evil garden props

Characters from the short Gotico Malvado

Fractal New Posters

Well, here are some new posters for the film...

Editing finished, but no ending...

Yeah, thats a problem, Fractal was edited and its reduced to a well paced hour and a half, the problem is...The ending...Still trying to see what works the best for the film. I can go to an easy solution or an hardcore one..

I had two distintive problems, the beginning and now the finale.the problem was introduced while screening to people, my ending had to finalize three diferent plots, and the pacing suffers a lot as the final moments slow down.
Hardcore or Easy?. Well, im a little bit tired ...Dont know what to do at this point...

Going to Extreme editing

All of this side plot was deleted

Thats right, at the moment the film goes into an extensive editing process...Many deleted scenes (that were incoherent in a story process), From a 2 hour and a half feature im slicing almost an hour of effects, side plots, character developments...Reason? Well, pacing its an important thing. I dont want people just to comment it was a boring thing to watch. I want to keep it fluid and enjoyable. As for the soundtrack, most of it consists in the work of a black metal legend- Bloody Pyne (from the music project «Floresta Infeliz»)

He will need my final version of editing for scoring reasons.

Soon i will post new stuff for my visitors.

Art installation-Abe the threecentenial Android

This was my end of degree work, Abe is an Android, or in this case an animatronic puppet i`ve built who mumbles, Abe is an alegory about eternal life, the end of life to be more specific. Its an ironic object who pretends to emulate old age man as an entertainment, after the sex dolls, the pet dolls we have an old Android doll who can never die. Who suffers and dreams of demented thoughts (there was a tv set connected to the Android by cables, it represented his dreams in a video installation).

February 6-Fractal

Thats it, the film haves a completion date, February the 6 here in Caldas da Raínha!

There are still no supports or entities envolved beside me and my co-workers but lets try and be positive...

Fractal Graphic Novel on the making

Its the Prequel to the film Fractal, i actually made this graphic novel so that i could understand some Characters in Fractal. Well, if the movie eventually gets out as i wanted, there will be the probability that the graphic novel also see the light of day, these are the first two pages of the Story called Fractal: Dark lullaby.

The film as its paper prequel will be concluded simultaneously...

Cheers...

JR

Ambassador

Ok, its official, I am a Truespace ambassador folks!!!

If any user of Caligari TrueSpace have any questions regarding interface, modeling or animation please feel free to ask some help

Fractal cell Shading sequence completed

Hi guys!

Here`s the latest news, finally the cell shading sequence has been completed, it still needs some fixes in the color and sound correction side. It is a different aproach within the film. I can wait to see everything together but there are still 3 more scenes missing in the final film(a great amount of scenes were deleted and rewritten).

One of the challenges in this sequence was offcourse my hand, it was broken and bruised, but i still got all the models and animation in time. ooooohh the pain!

Here are some pics i captured to show to all my excellent visitors!

a diferent night to break the ice

While making fractal, i was invited to make an exibition on a small underground gallery called «The gheto», i had an idea envolving a private party, in the place where im from there is a great amount of these private parties, and actually i never got invited to those, so i decided to make my own.

there were posters spread all over school saying only Julio Ramos-Keywords:Sex, Star wars and Lord of the Rings. So some people were curious and expected to see one of my cheesy films.

I ve talked to my friend Lisandro Mota (that made a parcial score to Fractal) to make some awfull techno transe musics while i made the worst Vj projections of my live, those mixed hardcore scenes with lord of the rings stuff.

then a friend security guy was called to guard the entrance, like a real usher. the invitation cards had the name of the guy that invited me to exibit, offcourse he didnt knew a god dam thing about it.

Theatre students were also invited to give some mood to the party, we had a «Martini Man» Type as Barman and a lesbian show orgy also.

As people could not enter we set a pair of red velvet fabric as curtains, so people could only peek trought a small entrance.

After a while as everyone smoked an sweated the thing looked like a strange aquarium. People outside wanted to get in and we wanted to get out because it was unbearable.

People unsatisfied went into a private party of themselfes as they surround an improvised fireplace. Some of them never forgave me for that performance but it was a diferent night.

the chromakey part of it

Blue screen photography can be a nightmare or a fun experience, i pretty much enjoy the entire process,but it all depends on the overall quality of your system, lets just say that having to film a sequence like this is painstaking when it comes to a crappy sony handicam with only one ccd...First of all the blue is photographed as a gray with a small amount of cyan.

This was the day in wich we filmed the flashback scene envolving the dead sister
then everything as to be color corrected, even the definition in therm of pixel quality is poor... somethimes entire areas have to be rotoscoped and cleaned by hand so that the effect stays more closer to desired.

this is a smal montage or the steps in acheiving this shot, a small sequence that is fantasized in the mind of Ed Jr who is doing a comic book about the life of my character, everything is overreacted and overacted,...Elements like smoke and and gunflares are designed to be more like a comic book element. Also the monster and the scenario are a hellblazer meets Tim Burton Style.

I had a lot of fun doing this sequence since its diferent from the overall of the film, only comparable to the cell shading sequence that represents the actual comic book

The problem within the conflict

Things are diferent now since the mist unveils a second layer to a project as this:

- Fractal stands in a few ways as something new in the way i work, not as someone who wants to make movies but as someone with an approach in teling a story, first of all it haves more than 2000 cg shots, not to glare into the viewers but to serve the purpose of the film story.
-It is a story about loss, the loss of a first love, the loss of a son, the loss of a sister, and its about the way people deal with it, some dwelve in the past, others fight their monsters, Fractal is about that...
- But this story is not offered in a plate, the thing i try to show to people is the interior layer of a persons mind, and that may look strange or sometimes a bit schizo, some things are more expressed in sounds, faded images or frenetic cuts than with words, the word is powerfull, but the sensitive has many doors when faced to a problem, and everyone has a different reaction when a conflict ocurrs, many prefer not to use words to express.

A year has passed...

well, its official, a year has passed on this production, full of awfull episodes, first, I AM NOBODY!, well thats what people in the film medium told me when i went and asked for a loaned camera,...

Even when in a june morning i went into the ministry of Culture, i slept well, was full of inpiration and took my laptop among with the hard drive with the only copy of «fractal» and entered the big building to present my proposal... i guess i am too much naive, but not stupid.

i was attended in the public relations office, and mounted my laptop into the only plug that was available . The woman looked at me as if i was somekind of alien that had dropped on her office.

First the entire movie would not be presented, i had a small presentation similar to the ones in youtube, it was completly ignored,..them this woman called for someone in the office who knew more of computer stuff.....FOR CHRIST SAKE...

The guy walked in and the first thing he said to me was:-Go try ICAM! (who is the institute of cinema in portugal)

I had tried icam but with no one would listen to a guy with no producer, no nothing and a movie 60% completed...

then the guy that understand computers just walked away and pretended to be busy searching stuff in yahoo, another woman walked in, this was the head of the public relations department, she told me again, no producer endorsing your project, no bigshot, no support for culture. She told me a sob story about the lack of money the portuguese state was giving to culture, i almost cried, but the point was, .... i just needed a better camera and some stimulation...

I was back in square zero since the school in wich i am graduating (i have finished the degree with an incomplete work) did not support anything for fractal, cameras werent loaned because i was a visual arts student and not an audiovisual student, the sound boom was denied for me also. I was trowned into my apartment, mounting a homemade chromakey studio, having to isolate the walls with egg packages so that the sound reads ok in my handycam,...well, handycams are not so handy since they are complete crap for sound recording...

then people that are supposed to appear as characters in the film dropped off, or worse, never talked to me again, i gave up trying, but scenes needed to be reshot with a diferent cast, i have tried to call some people ( especially from theatre course) who said the routined:-Yes, offcourse, and didnt answered the phone in the next few days...Well, the girl that plays my sister has been a trooper, her name is Andreia Prino, and she made all of her scenes with good spirit and timing...

i continued to search for somepeople that could at least loan a Xl1 or hd camera, but most of them just gave me a familiar feedback, i will post an example:

Tv Stations:

Rtp-We do not take proposals, try ICAM

Sic-We are closed in the proposals, but did you tried icam?(i said i did), well, sorry but we cannot help you.

TVI- (this station has contacts for anything, but never answered my emails)

From several film and tv production offices there was no answer...

Well, things got worse and worse... The main problem is that i am fighting a dream and i dont want him to go away, i feel that im so close my objective it stinks, i can loose it at any moment, not because i dont work,... But working for a dream cannot be quantified, doesent have a mesure, i cannot say to people:- hey guys, i have spended more than a 20 000 man hour doing the job of 30 people, look at me... instead, i got bashed every time i tried to get for some support...

i did my birthday in the 19 of July, and after a very sad and desappointing moment my sanity just west for a suicidal act, i punched a brick wall and broke two bones in my hand. That has brought me to heart as never. the movie could not stop but i should be more cold to the way i do my stuff in the future,...Nobody wants a poet, they drown on theyr own suffering, i should walk a diferent path, and that is the surgeon method, go and cirurgically try to find and isolate the things i can never do in this project, and after that try to keep things doable, even with the crappy camera, or the shitty sound. i just wanna make a god job in my limitations, the main limitation has allways been, money....

Now that my hand is almost cured i start to erase secondary plots and entire characters, as a human guy should...

more monsters from Fractal the movie

4 Hours of low poly work

Concept art for the videogame industry part I

Fractal cell shading sequence

This is a test for a sequence inside Fractal the movie, in this specific part of the story we enter the world of the comic book artist-Ed Jr, and we watch an animated sequence of his boards..

My Shorten Story

Short(en) Story

My full name is Julio Espadanal Ramos and i am a workaholic!

Both my fathers knew each other while studying Visual Arts

- Since i was a kid my dream was to be a movie director, because i was a shy lonely boy i usto make foam dinossaurs for stop motion animation and used GIJoes as my main cast, the plot was drawn as a comic book, then i knew that the storyboard was allready invented.

-When i had my first camera and computer it was with the help of some friends that i started to make little films, some never got finished but the skill and the experience allways pays off.

-I began computer modelling & animation in 1999, that was the time i knew that visual effects where more closer to reality in everyone`s house.

-Tried to be admited in film school but left out because of some hollywood influences.

-Decided to follow dad and mom and went to Visual arts School, since then i chose video-art as my main medium.

-Now ifinish my degree as i try to complete my feature lenght film «Fractal»

Welcome to the Julio Ramos Online

Welcome bloggers and curious folk, here in this webspace i will post some of my work for the world to see, well, i will be equally happy with the visit of a smal amount of people.... have a nice blog and dont give up living...