Thomas Banner

The Amateur Pizza Experience

2012-03-11T21:45:00.001+01:00

Blog detour or blog fail. I am writing about pizza!

I have never done a pizza before in my life untiltoday and I decided to make an Italian style pizza with a tip of thehat to Napoli (southern Italy). The Margherita. It turned out great!..after four attempts.. ish..

So I am writing this on my blog so Ican remember how to do it next time I want to make a pizza. Maybe itcan help someone else do a pizza too some day. Who knows.

Enough talking, let's get on with it!

Howto make a pizza Margherita Napoli style without a stone oven:

1. Shop ingredients. Ta da!

2. Make the dough 3-4 hours in advance(you don't have to wait though but try it first)

3. Do the tomato sauce in advance so itcan cool down.

4. Pre heat the oven on maximum settingand make sure the oven tray is inside!

5. Take half the dough and roll it intoa disc shape but make sure it is very thin!!

6. Add tomato sauce from the middle andout (not too much)

7. Add cheese

8. Bake for 8 minutes-ish. Keep an eyeon it. When it is almost done you can give it a minute under thegrill. But basically just take it out when it looks done.

9. Add the other when the first one isdone.

That's it!

The Pizza dough:

15 gr. yeast

200 ml. water (lukewarm)

300 gr. Italian wheat flour Tipo 00 (Ididn't have ordinary Durum flour so I have yet to try that)

1 teaspoon of salt

1 tablespoon of olive oil

First, stir water and yeast in a bowluntil it is mixed. Add salt and oil and stir. Add the flour a littleat a time to the mix. Put in fridge or leave on the kitchen table. Ifit gets too sticky when you make the disc simply add a little bit offlour.

The tomato sauce:

1 can of chopped tomatoes

1-2 cloves of garlic with peel(optional)

Olive oil – be generous

Heat the oil in asmall pot, add the garlic for a minute on a low heat, and then youadd the can of tomatoes. Keep it on low heat for about 20-30 minutes(if you have the time). Take out the garlic and do a quick blend andlet it cool down.

The cheese:

1 ball sizedMozarella - (I used the ”fresh” mozarella. The pack of shreddedmozarella you get in supermarkets made it look like a pizza fromDominos, we are not going there. Go for the white balls.. hehe.. )

Basil leaves

Not completewithout it! Add 10-20 leaves when you take it out of the oven.

I could write moreabout this or maybe I should have written less. Either way, no one isprobably reading this anyway. But it was fun, and not difficult atall. Just don't use whole grain flour, even though it is Durum. Thatwas my first attempt.. a whole grain pizza. Never doing that again.Hehe..

Highway

2012-02-19T18:58:00.001+01:00

Here are some images from one of those projects that I will never finish and was started for no serious reason. You know, the type of personal projects that doesn't have a deadline.

I made a highway with a lot of props (moving cars, junk piles etc) in Maya and have rendered some WIP stills (composited). The set is not finished and it will never be but fun to show what could have been. Maybe some day I will finish it. It was done in Mental Ray and I hope to convert it VRay so I can work with it more easily. Did I mention that I love VRay? Hehe..

Making of Bionicle Vakhi printed in 3D World

2012-01-10T21:56:00.004+01:00

I found this scan of an article posted by 3D World a while back about the making of the LEGO Bionicle Vakhi TV commercial I worked on whilst employed by VFX house Ghost (Copenhagen). Good memories. I worked on the look and compositing of the whole project but also did some misc 3D (modelling, shading, lighting).

My favourite shot was the last one where they all appear through the fog. Later on I graded the shot for a Bionicle music video (which was great fun too). Unfortunately for unknown reasons the music video was uploaded ungraded and made officiel even though I had graded the whole thing. What a shame.

Toyota RAV4 in Free Format

2012-01-06T22:19:00.004+01:00

Here is a video from a CGI project I had a major role in at Storm Productions. The end result was fantastic to experience in real life. There was a stand in the Copenhagen Airport in 2006 where the company Vizoo had an installation with a real life size car projected onto a "transparant" screen. I had never worked with Free Format before. I don't think a lot of people had at that time.

It was tricky to do the video because the car had to drive somewhere but it couldn't be in another environment because it was inside the installation box at the airport. So I came up with the idea of making animated HDR images showing the environment more clearly as it the car moves along. I think it works very well. It also needed to align perfectly compared to the viewing angle of the people passing by. It was very interesting to work with. I hope they had uploaded a better quality video by I guess we have to make to with what we have.

Just to mention again, this video was to be experienced in real life, and it was a fantastic pay off to get to the airport and see the final result. I hope the video shows the idea of how it was to see.

Crowd Control in french VFX showreel

2012-01-06T21:55:00.001+01:00

Here is a showreel by a friend of mine from France, Manuel Souillac. I had great fun working with him on The Ugly Duckling and ME. He surprised me recently by adding one of Crowd Control's tracks to his new reel. I think it kicks ass! Well done, Manu'!

Space Cadet's Laureline et Valerian reel

2012-01-06T21:44:00.002+01:00

Here is a video I made with my brother Jesper Banner back in 2001. It was hastly done in less than a month. We made the music and added sound FX. Thinking about what we can do today it isn't much but it was fun to do. It is losely based on Laureline et Valerian (the french sci fi comic book).

ERGO Direkt

2012-01-06T21:07:00.002+01:00

Last year (2011) I worked on a German TV commercial at Gungho VFX. They created some terrific CG elements and I got the job of compositing some of the shots. All of the shots were collaborative so I can not take sole credit for them. Either way I am pretty proud of what I and the other guys did so here are some pics and the video.

Old CGI stuff from 2001

2012-01-06T20:42:00.001+01:00

Going through my library of old cgi pics I have done I found several head of head shaking quality and a couple of pics that actually has some good qualities.

This one is from 2001 and I actually don't think I have composited it more than the Effects panel allowed me in 3DSMax R4. It was never used but made in connection with a project called Laureline é Valerian (based on the famous french comic book).

The second one is a simple picture with the Centauri cruisers in close formation. I like the grey backround and the lighting. I believe this is also from around 2001, maybe earlier.

The third picture is a spaceship which I designed and built and is rather funky to look at. Not very detailed but I like the fattyness of its shape. What the picture doesn't show is the many thrusters on its backside that has a nice orange glow. Reminds me of a ship from the show Farscape. This is also from around 2001.

Beat the Speed of Light

2012-01-06T15:46:00.000+01:00

This is a front cover the Crowd Control band members put together for a special edition of Popular Mechanics magazine. The money earned here went into getting a set of Genelec loud speakers. They are awesome! Anyway, never give the client the layered PSD file. We ended up with a front cover where they removed the look and grading and was pretty much shite compared to the original below.

Beat the Speed of Light

Credit also goes to Jesper Banner and Jan "Stewart" Sørensen

Crowd Control Visuals

2012-01-06T13:52:00.000+01:00

In the "busy" days of Crowd Control I did some 3D with our band tank. Here is one of them. I also made a quick little video with it. Perhaps something to post?

Model of "Palads" - Well known Copenhagen cinema

2012-01-06T13:49:00.000+01:00

Here is a model I did of the historical cinema in Copenhagen, Palads ("Palace"). It was for a video commercial for a disco called "Nord". The front was supposed to be black and grey but I don't think they managed to get permission to change the colors. Here's a picture of the model.

Most of the area around Palads and the area Vesterbro was built. Some building were simple mockups with slap on textures but this needed to be built since we are flying straight in the through the doors of the disco. There is actually a statue on top of the building but due to limited time it would be mad to build it since we we would hardly notice it in the video flythrough. See video below..

First post with links

2012-01-06T13:26:00.000+01:00

Hello and welcome to my first blog post!

Here is a link to Crowd Control - the latest band I have worked with. Electronic music and dub is the flavour:

crowdcontrol.dk

My normal website with my current showreel exists here:

thomasbanner.com