And Now For Something Completely Different

"Certified All Natural

MANDLES

1% Wax

And

99% Testosterone"

Robot Legs On The Run

My first attempt at making legs move in 3Ds Max. I was going to go for a more humanistic jive, but after playing around with various steps I thought the robot walk was looking most bad ass

Project 1: The Second Self: Mood Board

Here is my first attempt at a mood board for this project. I found the process quite easy because I already had these pictures on my hardrive and have been looking at them as a source of inspiration since starting the project. They all in same way or another relate, connect or make up part of who I am and some of them are originals, others I've grabbed from the internet.



I haven't actually used this website this time, but I will for the next mood board to help formulate some ideas.



Music: Pink Floyd - Money

Born To Fly, Icarus Reaches The Sun

I've finished this little project and I'm very pleased with it. I had finished a few weeks ago, but not properly. I painted something really random and horrible that served no other purpose than to be there blocking the sun. Now that it's complete it will be there serving its purpose and admired by every eye lid that opens to begin a new day.



Tomorrow morning the sun will come through and I will see my work in it's entirety. Pictures will go up soon after.

'Night.

Update: 02/03/08








Music: Eskimo Farm - Headache and Wake Up

P.S. The title suggests my own opinion of the story. Icarus was flying higher and higher to reach the sun, a realisation that no-one before him had the skill or courage to do. This is a story of an Icarus who believed in himself great enough that if he was given another chance he would have made it to the sun.

Second Life Diary - Week 2

The mystical magical wondrous adventures of Darth Nikitin take place in a mystical magical wondrous world that is Second Life. I don't mean a word of that, I can't stand this program!!

I haven't been able to find anything interesting or do anything remotely useful in Second Life this week. Once again I have spent my time flying around and generally annoying anyone I can for some weird personal amusement/to take up my time.
It seems that I can't even meet up with anyone from the real world in there either. I tried this with Kez Beardmoore (Kez Whelan to us Earthlings) but it seems that we get put on different "worlds" that look/are mapped the same. As I spoke to someone who had the same problem, which confirmed my beliefs.

Next week I will read some of the tutorials to see if I can either find some new land, meet more people or at least people who haven't just arrived like I had or go about finding a gun and kill as many unlucky people as I can. I've been told you can do this by some people on MM. You think it's weird, but they're not real so there's no problem. >D


Music: Tim Buckley - Dolphin

Alter-Ego/Avatar Design [2]

I came up with another idea for an avatar last night while thinking about photographs that I want to take soon. This led me to the graveyard on Mansfield Road and so my second alter-ego/avatar will be the Existentialist :D
Pictures coming soon...


Music: Genesis - Sledgehammer

A Tree in 3Ds Max

A quick 3D image I made of a tree in a very simple environment. Here is an animation...

New Recording [3]

Hello,

Yesterday I felt compelled to learn a new song, song I learnt how to play Hejira by Joni Mitchell. I've always loved that song but could never work it out myself. This is because of the strange tuning she uses; C G D F G C, which I believe is an open C tuning. Soon after finding out the tuning I learnt the song.
I kept the guitar in this tuning and started to develop my own ideas and here is the first. You can find it on myspace and it's called Joni, but without the cigarettes


Music: Festina Lente - Summer Notion

The Future?... An Answer

Please watch the following video...



Last month we were asked to predict the future use of this product. Having just watched 2001: A Space Odyssey I have been thinking about the future a lot and here is what I predict to be its future use.

My own personal belief and prediction of the future is that virtual reality will be the main form of communication. It will turn the mobile phone into a "cool-retro item", the webcam will be long forgotten and letters in the post will be remembered as somewhere in the middle ages, like it had something to do with pigeons maybe?

I think virtual reality will come in the form of a visor complete with headphones, microphone and of course this new gizmo we see in the video. I think it will be used as a way of tracking the direction you face and turn to. For example, if you are at home, say in Nottingham but in the virtual world you are in front of the Eiffel Tower, Paris, with your Dad (who is actually on holiday/business trip in New York) and you want to look up at the Eiffel Tower and then look at him, this Moveable Projected Displays using Projector Based Tracking will be the technology to do it.

Because we are still in the age of communication, I think this product is inevitable and we should encourage and look forward to its arrival.
I only wish I had the means if inventing it myself!

I also believe that the first step, before the virtual reality visor reaches the public, we will see the following on a much wider scale...







The concept was first thought up by Douglas Coupland (if I remember correctly). But brought to film by Steven Spielberg in Minority Report.

The Watershed [4] - Playlist

Best show i've done so far, here's what I played...

1. Sigur Rós - Starálfur [Ágætis Byrjun]
2. Wilco - Muzzle Of Bees [A GHOST IS BORN]
3. Moutin Reunion Quartet - Red Moon [RED MOON]
4. Captain Beefheart - Ella Guru [TROUT MASK REPLICA]
5. Can - Halleluwah [Edit] [TAGO MAGO]
6. Neu! - Hallogallo [NEU 1]
7. Dave Holland Quintet - Wights Waits For Weights [THE RAZOR'S EDGE]
8. Duracell - Space Harrier [Live]
9. Elliott Smith - Because [AMERICAN BEAUTY OST]
10. Edith Piaf - Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien
11. Al Jolson - Anniversary Song

I'll have more ear candy at the same time, same place next week.


Watching: 2001 - A Space Odyssey

Second Life - Here I Am [Week 1]

Hello there,

Darth Nikitin is the name, alter-ego the game.
Finally signed-up to this virtual world to see what all the fuss is about.
So far I've spent some of the afternoon flying, falling, customising and chatting.
In comparison to vSide I much prefer it. Aside from better graphics it just feels like I'm using a much better/professional program.
Here are some screeny's I took while defying gravity and just chilaxing...


More of this to come...

Music: (In my head: Thomas Miguel - She Kissed Me In The Morning -If something is so crap, does that make it good??!!)

Flyer/Leaflet for Music Society

This is a very simple and informative design I thought of a few weeks back. I've printed about a million copies so that people will now know that there is a society for musicians!!
























Music: (in my head the theme music to Cannibal - The Musical. Why? I haven't got the foggiest!)

Multimedia Portfolios [SPP]

In today's tutorial Danny asked us to look at portfolios of professionals working in Multimedia. A quick search for "multimedia portfolio" in google come up with the following...

Multimedia Design: Online Portfolio: Alex Asigno



Brad Simpson: Web and Multimedia Portfolio


Wayne Roberts: Multimedia Portfolio sampler


i2i: Interactive Multimedia Portfolio


Kremlin Productions


MaxGrafx: Flash Developer/Interactive Designer




Music: John Scofield - Jungle Fiction

Fuck Buttons, Alexander Tucker & The Horse Loom

ATP, Damn You!, The Maze, Mansfield Road, £4.20, Last Night, Awesome!

The Horse Loom
The first song that came from this acoustic guitarist, reminded me of Jose Goonzalez and I began to think "Oh no, not someone trying to steal this sound again". Not that it's a bad sound at all, I really like Jose Gonzalez but it's strange to see anyone else BUT Jose doing it. It was the style of this song and the way he sang the vocal melody; especially the vocals, very Jose.
But as soon as the song was over and the next began, I thought we seeing something quite special. He wasn't imitating Jose at all and I began to see very interesting guitar techniques coming from this obviously very talented guitarist... from the North.
After hearing more of his singing, which I enjoyed a lot, I just thought that in some places it was lacking and he should either practice those bits some more to have them perfect or have some vocal training.
So the rest of his set was very good. He was well received after some technical audio problems that he made fun of and the last song just blew me out of my socks! I love coming away from a gig wanting to buy the bands music and If I had noticed there was a stall and bothered to look I would've bought his CD. But there's always next time, and I will definitely see him play again.

Alexander Tucker


The first time I saw Alex Tucker was at the ATP Festival in 2006 on a small stage and I could barely see him. But at the time it wasn't necessary. He was already creating an atmosphere so great that it needed no visual accompaniment. This guy is incredible. He is solid throughout and able with such ease to create a tsunami of soundscapes. Fortunately this time I got front row tickets and he was just as good as the last time.

Fuck Buttons



This is the first time I have seen Fuck Buttons and I had never heard their music before, but had heard their name crop up from time to time from friends. I have to say I didn't like them at first because I'm not really into this neo-electro scene? I don't know what to call it... repetitive? Well I thought they were bad enough to go out for a cigarette and I don't smoke. So after missing half their set I came back in and thought I should give them another try. So I stood up attentively and their suddenly burst out with this drum beat that reminds me of something... familier... that I like. I thought about it more and I realise it's from a film I loved very much some years ago and watched many times: Run Lola Run. A German film about different people and how their lives run into each other on this particular day. There is a recurring soundtrack throughout of an electronic drum beat, which emphasised the recurring theme of the race against time.
I also liked the combination of electronic and real drum sounds when one of them broke away from his keyboard/laptop and played along to the beat on a floor tom. So these two elements, for me, were best thing about them. Other than that, they can construct noise very well.

Thafe


Music: Mahalia Jackson - Amazing Grace
Pictures by Sophie

Posters for Music Society

This week has been CRAZY (craftily demonstrating the full craziness of my week in that font type as you can see) for me. I don't want to go into it in much depth, but it has consisted of understanding myself more, living in the world. By the ways of religion, relationships to others whatever ever type of relationship that might be and understanding that we are all part of one, a sort of cultural code.

On Tuesday I printed 20 copies of the Music Society posters I had designed onto a really nice glossy paper. Unfortunately they came out very pixelated because I didn't think about how it would look once it was blown up from the small size in my computer screen, to A3 size!





Music: Mogwai - Mogwai Fear Satan

Identities: vSide and my avatar [Part 2]

As I still haven't got round to setting up my SecondLife account in Waverley, I have spent tonight focusing on another virtual world program called vSide. I still don't like this because a. it focuses on music that I don't like and b. because it is simply a glamorised chat room. So I went in there with Realexis and we had some fun and here are some screenshots to show you the fun that was had...










As you can see there was a lot of standing on peoples heads.

After discussing my dubious thoughts for an avatar I have come to an understanding of this assignment and I will "have a go". The idea I have so far is to be a Magician.