My experiments with the concept of timing led me to create a newtons cradle animation. I'm attempting to illustrate the idea of "easing" in and out of the key frames on this clip. Admittedly I began to lose patience with the fiddly aspect of producing this. Hopefully I will be able to engage more easily when my skills with the software improve and I am able to increase the complexity of the stuff I'm making.
I really like this advert cause it emulates the effect of a flipper book very effectively. Nice.
Here is a little piece of animation I am impressed with as they have clearly seen my own attempts and DELIBERATELY copied the style! Imitation is the sincerest.. blah blah. Seriously, I think it's been really well put together if a little gloomy. Reminds me of a short that David Shrigley and Chris Shepherd directed called Who I Am and What I Want. Don't listen to the music though, it's a bit droney and liable to make you weep.
Following on from my idea of moving body art I found some guys who offer this service already! When quizzed about safety concerns over implanting lcd screens under people's skin, one reassuringly replied, "Hey dude, we're here for a good time, not for a long time!"
Clearly there's room for refinements (currently the procedure is illegal!) which will surely come about if there turns out to be a market for it. One issue that needs to be addressed is the power supply. These guys have come up with a rechargeable battery pack but they don't say what happens when it fails! Ouch!
Below is what I think such a device or techniqe would look like. The type I created in the print workshop at Vernon St by setting the traditional way and printing by hand.
This is the work of Alberto Seveso, an Italian graphic designer I discovered on the pages of a magazine. I love the way he combines the human form with illustration in Photoshop to create this haunting effect. See the sidebar for link to home page.
It's given me the idea for a kind of animated body art which would use nanotechnology to create a moving tattoo.
The combination of photography and illustration reminds me of the sort of look found in Dad's Dead which mixes up cartoons with live action. Great look.
Is this the future of clubbing? Software currently exists that can take songs bought from the internet and, using algorithms, blend them together with a result that can be compared to that of a professional dj. It is marketed as an alternative to the mix tape which could be played anywhere from your mp3 player to a party. Millions of cds are bought every year that give a professional dj's choice of music in this format and it allows the consumer to become the prosumer and put their choice of tracks together in this way without the time consuming acquisition of the necessary skills. Go to MixAlbum.com to find out more, link bar. If we look forward 10 years we see that a technological replacement for the live DJ is quite possible using the principles in this application. A robotic DJ would be able to perform every task that a DJ does now. What does this mean exactly? What does a robot need to be able to do? (Apart from turn up late/pissed wearing a yellow polyester shirt and proceed to insult the host by propositioning his girlfriend) Are DJs just glorified jukeboxes? The answer is no. Even the lowliest wedding DJ needs to tailor his choice of music to the event he is playing. A superstar jock is paid good money to encourage an audience of (largely) well informed and critical music lovers to shake their booties on the dancefloor. Whether this counts as skill or talent is one thing, replicating it in a mechanical device is quite another.
My first ever animation! Yay! Investigating the concept of weight. This is going to be a crucial issue in any work of my own as without believable (not necessarily accurate!) weighting viewers will find it difficult to get involved in the story.
Been picking up a couple of techniques on Photoshop. Look at these:
I found out how to change the colours of the dots I've been using for About Me the easiest way after spending hours looking for a colour replacement function. Of course, it's much better to fill a new layer with the colour I want and pick the blending mode that changes the colour of the dots! Thank you Mike (Flower)!
And yes, obviously, there is no quick way to create a line art or comic book effect from a photo with a filter. So you have to trace with the pen tool and use a brush that makes it look like a pen and ink was used! Easy enough, but time consuming! Melissa Clifton explains the technique in her tutorial linked to in the side bar.
As usual the creative team promoting Guinness have produced another stunning visual for the Rugby World Cup campaign! Drink it in... It's got a kind of Tim Burtonesque gothic feel to it, which seems a little incongruous for a sporting subject but somehow works brilliantly.
Benday dots are a technique Lichtenstein used to create a kind of half tone effect in his work. I aim to emulate this pattern in my About Me piece so I have been looking at ways to achieve this effect. I had some difficulty, ironically, producing this in Photoshop but had some success with a program called GIMP, an open source version of the Adobe package. I should be able to emulate this in PS but here is a sample of what I did in GIMP:
This would be the basis for a colour halftone which I will layer into the piece to give that comic book feel. I noticed that Lichtenstein normally uses it in his comic book works without giving it any kind of gradient as he is interested in the abstract composition of the space more than creating any kind of perspective or depth to the image. I will aim for the same feel to my work.
This is my idea for the composition of a piece about me. It will be a self portrait with the thought bubble filled with an interest of mine. I plan to process the image in Photoshop to make it resemble a fav artist of mine, Roy Lichtenstein, who used the comic book style to express abstract notions of form and composition. I am using a close up shot of myself as this is one of the techniques Lichtenstein appropriated from comic book artists.
See the example I have picked out below of how Lichtenstein tackled this idea:
This is a virtual reality game in which the collective will be presenting an exhibition of our work on emerging technologies. You are able to make changes to your character's appearance in the game and this is the result:
