Free Sky Textures from Dwarfed Films

Okay, no need to get too excited!
Here are a couple of sky textures I made that you can use freely for whatever you want.

They are 1280X480 pixels in size and are supplied in a small JPEG file size. I made them in Terragen 1, by the way.

I needed to make lots of differnt sky's for "Office Hours" so thats why I have some 'leftovers'.

Just click on the images and save them to your computer once they load. As I've said, they are very small file size and should load really quickly.

Express Burn: free DVD burner that works under Vista

Yesterday I was trying to back up some Office Hours files to a disc, but I ran into a few difficulties. I was using Windows Vista and was attempting to burn a DVD using freeware program Final Burner. Final burner is usually so reliable - well it is under Windows 2000/XP - but with Vista it just kept failing to write. Annoying.

Anyway's, I went looking on the internet for a Vista Compatible alternative and came upon Express Burn.

It has a nice simple interface, can burn Audio CD's, Data DVD's, Video, and even BLue Ray and HD DVD discs. And it's free! Most importantly it burned those important Office Hours files for me and I intend to keep using it. Maybe you should give it a try too.

You can download it here : EXPRESS BURN http://www.nch.com.au/burn

The people who make this software also do Wave Editor (the free audio editing program), so you can check that out too while you're on their site. Express Burn is not shareware, contains no time-linits or any crap like that, and it's adware free.

Remember to check out the Dwarfed Films Essential Freeware List for other top quality free software recommended by us.

NOTE: I just noticed today (Dec/10/2007) that my copy of Express Burn no longer burns to DVD/Blu Ray/HD DVD. As far as I knew, Express burn was "freeware" - with no restrictions or expiry limits. Well, guess what? It does expire after 14 days. This is pretty crappy, In my opinion. You can stil burn CD's but not DVD's. Just wanted to let you know - Shane

Office Hours: female image

Image from Office Hours of "evil" mannequin character.
"Works in progress" are just that - work's in progress, with lots of tweaking and changing of various different factors such as textures (the head will look more distrorted and damaged in movie)
Also the eye's are wrong and hair is not quite right - but lighting is alright!
Image is about 1/4 size of full renders (Hi Def: 1920X1080)

American Movie: watch this movie

Over the weekend I watched a few movies on telly - most crap or so bad there good. Take "Earthquake" for instance - what the hell were they thinking back in the 70's: Victoria Principal with an afro?!, Walter Mattheau as a jive talking pimp??!!!, George Kennedy as a cop???!!!He's too fat and slow to be a cop, let alone Victoria Principal's love interest!

Anyway, I put on a video (yes I still use video), a documentary I love called "American Movie". It's about a freaky dude from Wisconsin tryin' to make a feature movie called "North Western" but before that he has to complete a short he's been working on called "Coven". Real thrasy, cheesy yokel horror stuff: brilliant!
If you don't like documentaries, it doesn't matter. If you hate movies about the making of movies, that doesn't matter either. "American Movie" is great because it has great people in it and its very funny. The lead is Mark Borchadt, a mullet wearing film obsessive who his brother described as being a potential serial killer! Marks divorced Swedish mother and stern father are also in it, so is Marks best friend who is a complete tripped out recovering pill popper! Best of all is MArks grandfather, Bill, who spouts wisdom every so often amongst the other nonsense that pops out of his mouth.

If you haven't seen American Movie, you should. It's one of the truest depictions of independent movie making and human nature I've seen made. I had an earlier posting on films about filmmaking and I think I forgot to put it on the list. It should be - and at the top.

Office Hours: corridor shot

A corridor shot from Office Hours.
The image is very small but if you click on it it will get a little bigger(but not much).
We felt that earleir versions of the corridor were a little "uninteresting" and bland. I've made the corridors and settings much narrower, darker and moody. Steam will fizz out from vents and little extra atmospheric touches like that.

Keep tuned to the site for more