This is the website of Jan Morgenstern's audio production company, wavemage. Jan is a seasoned composer and sound designer who works for film, TV, video games, and advertising. To get an impression of what he has to offer in a few minutes, just watch his current demo reel:

2009-02-20

Andy Goralczyk's "Creature Factory"

Renowned 3D artist Andy Goralczyk has created an extensive tutorial set that covers the development process of a complete 3D animation from conception all the way to final rendering in great detail. Based on a hollywood-style 90 second trailer, aspiring modellers and animators can can look over Andy's shoulder and follow his expert production techniques.

The material is accompanied by an epic orchestral score created here at wavemage. You can watch the trailer in the portfolio, on vimeo, or download a high resolution version in AVI format (40 MB).

Royal Huisman relaunches its site with music by wavemage

Established in 1884 and bestowed the Royal Warrant in 1984, Royal Huisman is a highly respected, family-owned, custom yacht builder. To emphasize their ability to push the boundaries of new technologies, their website recently underwent a thorough redesign. In order to give various website elements and image films a distinct sonic signature, Royal Huisman and its design agency SHP Redpoint chose wavemage as their audio production partner.

Nominations and awards for "Big Buck Bunny"

The CG film Big Buck Bunny recently got two awards on the renowned Holland Animation Film Festival; it came out top in the votings for the MovieSquad and the HAFF audience awards. It was also part of the program selections in the prestigious Netherlands Film Festival, as well as French Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival. The film was also listed as one of the most significant achievements of 2008 in CGSociety's 2008 CG retrospective, right before PIXAR's Presto. Quite a flattering company!

Lots of new videos in the portfolio

Many items on the portfolio page now feature embedded videos of the respective projects, so you can watch them right away on this site!

Jan tweets

Readers who have a passing interest in music technology can now follow my unfocused ramblings on Twitter.

2008-06-06

"Big Buck Bunny" — complete score available for download

Following last week's acclaimed online release of the CG cartoon Big Buck Bunny, the complete music score of the film is now available for download in MP3 and Ogg Vorbis formats. Please head over to the Music page, where you can find all tracks as separate downloads, as well as the entire score in a ZIP archive. Enjoy!

2008-05-30

"Big Buck Bunny" released on DVD and on the web

It's done! After 7 months of hard work, the computer animated cartoon Big Buck Bunny is finished. Similar to its predecessor Elephants Dream, the second open movie that originates from Dutch production studio Blender Institute is being distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution license, and as such can be freely downloaded, copied, and modified by everyone.

The film is directed by Sacha Goedegebure and was brought to life by a team of exceptionally talented 3D artists from several continents, who gathered for 6 months in Amsterdam. The open production is the brainchild of Ton Roosendaal, producer and head developer of the free 3D suite Blender. Following a very successful cinema premiere in april, we spent another 4 weeks on creating the DVD, which was then sent out to more than 1700 supporters who ordered in advance. Since then, Big Buck Bunny has already caused quite a stir within the CG scene. As of today, the film is officially available for download in various video formats and resolutions on the project site.

In addition to the film downloads, the DVD stays available for purchase. The double-DVD includes the movie itself in NTSC, PAL and various HD formats (up to 1080p) as well as lots of extras, commentaries, and on top of that, all 3D source data that was used in the production! DVD revenues will be invested in future open content ventures, so every sale helps the promotion and advancement of free media. You can purchase the DVD safely and hassle-free in the Blender E-Shop.

As the film's audio director, I was responsible for the production and mixing of the entire 5.1 soundtrack, which includes a full-length orchestral score. Composition, foley recording, sound design and post-production took place at the wavemage studio from January to April 2008. The isolated film score is currently in mastering and will be released in its entirety on this site very soon, so stay tuned!

"The End of the Rains" — a motorcycle journey through Africa

In May 2007, motorbike aficionados Herbert and Ramona Schwarz undertook an adventure journey on a then-unreleased BMW prototype model. The two set off on the journey around Lake Victoria, Africa's biggest lake. The trip covered 5087 km of sand, gravel, corrugated metal and mud — from the white sandy beaches of the Indian Ocean through the Masai steppe in Kenya, the savannah of Tanzania, the green mountains of Burundi and Rwanda, around the extinct Mt. Elgon volcano in Uganda and back to Mombasa.

Directed by Wolfgang Danner, this documentary feature was compiled from many hours of film that the travellers produced during their journey. Travelling independently with a tent, they had plenty of amazing encounters with the locals, and throughout their travels, they encountered African joie de vivre and hospitality whereever they went.

For the documentary, I composed and produced a vivid rock soundtrack with distinct ethnic undertones. The DVD can be ordered via the Touratech web shop.

FloDesign introduces next-gen wind turbines — with music by wavemage

Massachusetts-based aerospace engineering company FloDesign Inc. recently introduced their advanced wind turbine technology to the industry. The new turbine concept greatly increases efficiency of wind energy plants. In order to visualize the technical intricacies of the invention, 3D animator Bassam Kurdali created a computer-animated image film, for which wavemage provided a stirring and energetic soundtrack.

2008-02-12

CG movie "Big Buck Bunny" in production — wavemage provides score and sound design

Following the success of the world's first "Open Movie" Elephants Dream, producer and free 3D suite Blender's head developer Ton Roosendaal once again gathered seven of the world's most talented 3D artists in Amsterdam in order to tackle its successor project.
The ambituous venture, code-named Peach, aims for the production of a computer animated 3D movie for international theater and DVD distribution. As the stills suggest, Big Buck Bunny will be rather different from the avantgardist Elephants Dream in that it will feature a turbulent comic story.

The film premiere is planned for March 28th, 2008, in Amsterdam. The production is being documented for its whole duration on our blog, which can be found at peach.blender.org. On that site, you can also pre-order the DVD, which will contain not only the movie itself in SD and HD resolutions, but all 3D raw data that has been used for production as well.

wavemage supports the Blender Institute as an audio partner with film score composition, complete audio post production, and 5.1 mixing. You can find more information about the project and stills in the Portfolio.

Rotobee and dtp release "Kiss Before Midnight"

Just in time for valentine's day, Berlin-based development studio Rotobee released the romantic adventure Kiss Before Midnight. The player assumes the roles of various characters and has a go at captuing the heart of their respective virtual dream partners in a magnificent 3D environment.

The game is distributed world-wide by dtp and features a complete soundtrack in CD quality produced by wavemage. More information and further screenshots can be found in the Portfolio.

Demos for sampling libraries: "Gypsy" and "Ministry of Rock"

On the occasion of the launch of sample libraries Gypsy and Ministry of Rock, I produced three demo songs for renowned californian developers EastWest / Quantum Leap. The purpose of these demos is to emphasize on the sound quality and the professional standard of the libraries.

Ministry of Rock consists of mainly distorted guitars, electric basses, and rock drum kits, and enables its user to accomplish complete productions in Rock and Metal styles. My demo track Corporate Critters is a backing arrangement of a soft-rock song that mixes "traditional" rock patterns with modern "wall of sound" powerchord playing.

Gypsy features a collection of natural Gypsy and Flamenco instruments. My demos Atrapado en su fuego and Sin lluvia, sin sueño, an argentinian tango and a free-flowing flamenco piece, showcase the modern picking programming of the included acoustic guitars, as well as the authenticity of instruments like the tango accordion.

You can download all demo tracks in MP3 format on the Music page.

The Mancandy FAQ — Tutorial DVD for character animators

Convincing animation of organic characters is the pinnacle of 3D design work. In order to ease access to this complex field, experienced 3D designer Bassam Kurdali has developed a comprehensive DVD which explains all steps en route to a finished cartoon charakter animation by means of annotated production steps.

The pivotal point of the DVD is a professionally produced short film, which answers the most important questions about using the cartoon character ManCandy in a tongue-in-cheek FAQ style. For this film, I provided the music and the audio post production. The DVD can be ordered here.

Blender Conference 2007 — Logo animation

In October 2007, the annual Blender Conference, the international and most important meeting of Blender users, took place in Amsterdam. For this event, renowned 3D artist Andy Goralczyk developed an industrial-styled conference design. This encompasses a logo animation, which was being used as separator and distinctive feature during proceedings. For this trailer, I provided an appropriate industrial sound bed that leads over to the audio logo.

Travel documentary CAN2MEX released

CAN2MEX is a travel documentary that follows an eventful motorcycle voyage across North America that leads motorcycle aficionados Herbert Schwarz and Ramona Eichhorn from Victoria, Canada, all the way to the Mexican border. The film is directed by Wolfgang Danner, can be ordered in the Touratech Webshop, and features a stirring rock soundtrack produced by wavemage.

Tuning manufacturer BRABUS welcomes customers with wavemage music

For the revised entrance area of their web site, BRABUS uses music produced by wavemage. Established in 1977, BRABUS is a world-renowned manufacturer of exclusive modifications for luxury cars.

2007-03-09

CGEmpire interview

CGEmpire, a UK online portal and game developer's forum, has recently conducted and published an interview with me. With composer Nikolas Sideris, I'm discussing trends in sampling and sound synthesis, linux in the audio realm, software copy protection and DRM insanity. You can find the complete inverview here.

2007-03-01

Kiss Before Midnight - a romantic adventure

In Kiss Before Midnight, players take on different roles as they experience romantic adventures in Paris, the city of love. Their goal: Winning the heart of their respective counterpart. Macho men, beautiful women, wallflowers and sultry vamps - players will not only meet a wide variety of people, but also face real challenges in the field of love.

This emotional adventure game is created by German developer RotoBee, who was awarded two German Developer Awards for their previous title "Singles".

The game, which will be released by publisher dtp in Q3/2007, will feature a complete music score composed and produced at wavemage.

From Vancouver to Tijuana - Touratech announces CAN2MEX

Directed by Wolfgang Danner, CAN2MEX is a documentary road movie that accompanies two adventurers on a motorcycle journey across the USA. The six-man film crew started its trip from Vancouver back in november 2006 and arrived at the Mexican border in december, capturing breathtaking images of nature and people in between.

The result is a documentary for travel, motorcycling and nature aficionados that will be published on DVD and distributed internationally by Touratech.

As of now, the movie is in post production. wavemage is in charge of providing the complete music score for the project.

UFA and Siemens release "Master of Maya"

As the first of its kind, the massive multiplayer game Master of Maya brings the concepts of trading card games into the mobile realm. The game was introduced to the public at this year's 3GSM exhibition taking place in Barcelona, Spain. For developer UFA and publisher Siemens, wavemage developed a complete, cohesive audio concept, ranging from the ingame music to audio material for various related media like trailers, tradefair presentations and ringtones.

Elephants Dream - news roundup

In August 2006, German mastering house Imagion AG published the CG short movie Elephants Dream in HD-DVD format, thus making it the very first HD-DVD title on the european market. If you want to see the movie in full 1080p resolution with numerous HD specific features, you can order the HD-DVD here or via Amazon. The movie is also available in various formats up to HD resolution both on our own DVD and the download page.

For the high performance computing experts at Netherlands-based SARA Computing & Networking Services, this didn't seem to be large enough yet; they rendered parts of Elephants Dream in a resolution of 4096x2160, which is suitable for projection in large digital cinema facilities. They're using the movie to showcase their 4K technology.

Last but certainly not least, we're excited about some awards and nominations Elephants Dream got in the last quarter. In October, the project was awarded by the juries of the UK Linux & Open Source Awards and the Webcuts film festival and nominated for taking part in German BitFilm festival; the people at CGSociety voted Elephants Dream to place 6 on the top 20 list of the 2006 most significant developments in CG world.

2006-08-06

Music for the Siggraph Blender Demo Reel

This year marked the first time the Blender team had their own booth at the world's largest computer graphics fair, the Siggraph 2006. Just like for previous Siggraph visits, Blender's own news anchorman in residence Bart Veldhuizen edited a Demo Reel that consists of the best works from the Blender community. For the Blender Foundation, I contributed the music for the 13-minute Demoreel, which can be downloaded in Quicktime format on the Blender news site blendernation.

2 new mobile games by Infospace/Elkware

Games developer Infospace/Elkware published 2 new titles this month containing music and SFX by yours truly. The games Pimp my Ride and Cubis are available now for lots of mobile phone platforms.

2006-05-28

Elephants Dream released on DVD and the Web

Following a successful premiere in march, the CG short film Elephants Dream is now finally available on DVD and can be downloaded in many formats from iPod video to a full HD resolution release from the project's website. Shortly after the release, the server was blown to pieces by avid downloaders - not at least due to the large amount of media responses (reports were to be found, among others, on Slashdot, CGSociety, Newsforge, Wired, Wikinews, digg.com and countless larger and smaller blogs), but meanwhile, the site - along with all download links - is available again.
Cautious estimates (as lots of mirrors and Bittorrent seeds are involved, we can't be much more precise) suggest something between 500,000 and 1,000,000 people who downloaded the movie.

Elephants Dream - music score released

In unison with the web release of the movie, I put the complete music score from Elephants Dream up for download. On the music page, you can find all tracks as separate downloads, aswell as the whole score in a ZIP archive.

Article in UK magazine "3D World"

And even more Elephants Dream stuff (I'll shut up in a minute, promise): As a part of our ongoing production diary in the UK-based magazine for 3D design and animation 3D World, I contributed an article that explains the tools I used for the sound design, aswell as the positive experience of our international collaboration, in some detail. The two-page article can be found in the june issue (#78).

Andy Goralczyk arranges face lifting for wavemage website

Regular visitors of the wavemage site might have already noticed that the old header graphics that distinguished the sections disappeared. They made room for strikingly better-looking, professional marquees, which are courtesy of 3D artist Andy Goralczyk, who thus gave the wavemage website a new face. If you don't know his fantastic works yet, you should definitely check out his site. Thanks, andy!

2006-04-25

Elephants Dream celebrates premiere!

After seven months of work, the world's first open movie, the animated 3D short film Elephants Dream has finally been completed and was shown to a public audience for the first time in march. The film tells the story of an uneven pair whose paths are crossing in a bizarre machine environment on their way to a place where they're safe from the uncanny death traps in their environment.

Elephants Dream was created with open source software and is distributed under a free Creative Commons license - including all production files. The film will take part in various festivals and can be ordered on DVD in the Blender E-Shop. Apart from the movie in PAL, NTSC and HTDV resolutions and full 5.1 surround sound, the two-disc DVD includes the production files, lots of extras, and audio commentary tracks with the director, the producer, the art director, and myself.

You can find more information on the movie and my contribution as sound designer and music score composer in my portfolio.

Music for Infospace Games / elkware GmbH

The first results of a promising cooperation with the successful developer of mobile games Infospace Games / elkware GmbH are now completed - the brand-new game titles Marble Galaxy, Master of Maya and Dirk Nowitzki's 2 on 2 belong to the first elkware products I produced music and SFX for. More information on the projects can be found in my portfolio.

We're surrounded!

During the course of my work on Elephants Dream, the wavemage facility has been equipped for native 5.1 surround production. From now on, we can offer our clients perfect productions in every channel format up to 5.1 - thanks to a Dolby(tm) certified AC3 encoder also directly in the form of audio tracks suitable for DVD mastering!

2005-12-22

Season's greetings!

Download God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen (Jan's Vectorized Dub Mix) (MP3, 3.9MB) now!

We wish all visitors of our website a merry christmas and a happy and successful year 2006!

Blog article: Sound design for "Elephants Dream"

In a recently published article in the blog section of the Elephants Dream Website, I'm explaining some technical backgrounds of the movie's sound design. Considering a given scene description as example, the article illustrates how the distinct sound effects were created by using automated signal chains by means of the DSP environment Reaktor.

2005-11-08

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