Archive / Month / November, 2005

PAINTING ARCS

2005.11.18 @ 11:28

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I was playing around with Processing last weekend, trying ideas for some kind of random generated circular continuous line drawing code, but I got a bit sidetracked with happy mistakes and found myself with this little sketch.

I’ve got some interesting ideas for the original concept, but I don’t know when I’ll get a chance to do more on it, so may as well just post this simple thing here now as an aside :)

VIDEO EZY

2005.11.14 @ 10:09

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After a long time in limbo, and quite a few changes since I left it, the new Video Ezy website is up. Video Ezy is one of the largest video rental chains in Australia, akin to Blockbuster, and it was quite interesting following the process through the dealings with the franchisees.

I worked on it with Aaron and Pete while at @www, doing the page layout/template design, and also the 3D-but-not-3D ’store browser’ thing on the front page, using Blender, Swift 3D (ugh) and Flash. Although the client has now put some questionable things in their free content areas and the e-shop backend was postponed, it’s not looking too bad.

MUSEUMNACHT

2005.11.08 @ 05:30

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Museumnacht happened on the weekend - an open museum night in Amsterdam. Various events and parties were taking place at the many museums across the city, with an Erwin Olaf film exhibition opening here at Montevideo.

It was great to see Montevideo so alive, and a great break to get out from the usual weekends I’ve been having here. Here is my night, documented in pictures.

CYCLING, CANALS AND CHEESE

2005.11.05 @ 23:27

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And now, for a little update to break the recent drought of entries. Yes, I’ve been quite busy. A lot has been happening here in Amsterdam but I’ve only got so much time to spend writing, so here’s a brief run-down in point form.

We spent a week or so madly putting together the Elephants Dream teaser. It was rushed very quickly, the artwork is still in a preliminary stage, and none of the shots will be in the final, but it gives a nice preview of what we were aiming for.
Blender conference came and went. With the combination of insanely long nights (mornings) during the week leading up to it working on the teaser, the constant excitement of meeting old and new faces, watching their presentations, then going out afterwards each night to eat and drink until the small hours, it was a fantastic weekend. You can download videos of all the presentations, including the ones that we did: artists tutorial sessions and the small behind-the-scenes session we did about our project (yes, you can see how silly I look up on stage). I also did a little write-up on the event with photos over the at the Orange blog.
We’ve just finished our first ‘real’ animatic, with our final-at-that-stage broken down script, with low detail proxy models and sets, and rough animation. It was a bit of a push to get it done, and it’s good to see it all together, but I think seeing it has also been the catalyst for our collective dissatisfaction with various parts of the script, dialogue, etc to come to a head and cause a bit of a panic. It’s our last chance to really change this to make it much less bland and more exciting (not just for viewers, but for us as well), and I have faith that Bassam (working on it today) will help get it in a better shape than it currently is.
As part of the deal that secured our studio at Montevideo/Time Based Arts, we did a Blender training workshop last Wednesday, for 15 third year visual effects students from the Netherlands Film Institute. We were a bit worried, having spent our time on the animatic and not preparing our tutorial sessions, but it worked out pretty well in the end. Although they’d been taught Maya in their course, it seemed they hadn’t gone into much detail or complexity, so they were quite grateful that we were showing them more advanced 3D concepts, even if it was a lot to take in at once. I think they found it interesting, which is great.
Life in Amsterdam is continuing pretty nicely. I think we’ve seen the last warm days gone now, but maybe we’ll still be pleasantly surprised. It’s getting quite chilly as I bike to and from the studio - definitely jacket and scarf weather.
Kat came with Jo to stay in my apartment here two weekends ago near the end of their Eastern European jaunt. It was great, with rides on insane fairground things in the pouring rain, cosy evenings on the sofa watching zombie movies, home cooked meals in my lovely new wok, late nights, painfully trashy music, and more than a bit of a chocolate overdose. It was very sad to see them go.
A few interesting things going on these days. Tonight is museumnacht - all the museums in Amsterdam are going to be open till about 2am, with parties and events happening at them too (DJs and dancing in from of Rembrandt paintings at the Rijksmuseum sounds like fun!). But even better, since Montevideo (of which our studio lives at the top) has exhibitions and is technically a museum, they’re involved too, and apparently there will be a DJ/VJ event outside on the Keizersgracht canal tonight. I will be there and hope to document the occasion.
Like I always try to (but now, more than ever), as things happen, pictures will appear in my flickr photostream. So you can keep checking it or the little image log box in the top left of this page to see what’s been happening in photographic form.