Working in digital media – Ron Crabb
This weeks lecture was cancelled we had to watch 3 videos and write in the blog. I watch Ron Crabbs one
Ron Crabb had his own company I think and and he works freelance now i think “Ron Crabb fine art”
He first starts off to talk about his workspace. He has worked in Hollywood working on Motion Graphics for film and television. His wife like this island in Wichita and and they would go there to visit friends and as the time progressed they started to like the place. The wife wanted to move over ther but Ron couldnt be far away from his work which was in hollywood because he needed to be there to direct the company or give first hand advice for projects he was working on. He did end up moved to the island and started to work freelance instead and he would just upload his projects, he sometimes still goes to Hollywood but only if he has to for say like meetings.
Ron wanted to be an Illustrator and he applied for the fine art course at the University of Illinois but for that you need 2 years of foreign language. because he couldn’t do that he went to Junior College which he didn’t like because it had nothing to do with art and he left and moved to LA.He worked in a sports shop and one day somebody came in with t-shirts to print and the company he worked for had an opening for an artist. He got recognized by his old work and through a friend of a friend he got an interview at KABC. they used to still do everything with hand as there where no computers around back in that time, about 25 artist had to work together cause the News needed alot of graphics but when the Quantel Paint Box arrived and they got to use they sacked a few people
Ron wasn’t really allowed to stay after this came in because he was still new to it but they decided to keep him as freelancer and he worked at nights. He had a Quantel Paint Box computer to himself and only had to do like 1 or 2 graphics a night because the other ones where done throughout the day by the people that worked there full time, and becasue of all the free time he started to mess around on the computer all night and this is how he got into Motion Graphics.
He says in this video that from KinderGarden he always wanted to be an artist and everyone would be asking him to do drawings and draw maps and stuff like that. He says that he drew on the creativity of the world around him like the texture of the bark on trees or light shining up though a frozen lake. He says that an artist made him an artist, the greatest artist of all, I think he means GOD. He draws for everyone so that people can relate to what he drew.
His passion is Matte Paint which is like making a background to a scene by paint cause its to hard to make it, or to costly. then he would draw the scene. sometimes its mixed with live-action footage. Star wars (best movie ever! 
) is good at showing this of, the planets in space arent and this was at the time computers didn’t have even paint ,someone would come in and make an oil painting on glass and then a Matting process(no idea what this is) would be done to the glass so it works with camera. Ron’s first Matte PAinting was on X-Men 2 he was an concept artist on the project already. He made a Matte Painting of the Dam at the end of the movie when it broke After that he worked a bit on The Last Samurai, it was challenging as because it had to look very realistic and old.
Ron Crabb said some cool things cause we have it so much more easier then the people from before the computer we can change this with just a button or undo things with no loss of time or anything .I didn’t know that Matte Painting was used in movies so I did find that out and especially the quality of it cause I didnt know there was a matte painting bit in the last samurai.
