My Blog has Moved – www.Billatron.com/blog

I am now hosting my own blog over on my website. It is currently a work in progress as I try to create my website and a personal wordpress theme. I will keep posting regularly.

Check out www.billatron.com

Enjoy!

Bluetooth in Stonehouse

The next step in transforming stonehouse. Taking something from our surroundings, changing it and then reimplementing it in a new way.  “They took from their surroundings what was needed and made of it something more.” (Primer,2004) Best film about time travel i have ever seen, really great movie. Any chance i can to get a quote from this movie in and i’m taking it So we have a list of bluetooth names we recorded using another mobile phone wile walking down our chosen area of union street. Here are the names we recorded.

Andy
Marcus P
Not Assigned
Smurf
Hoegarth the..
SGM – E2500V
C920
Saunders
x * Kath * x
Lardass
Cool
Angel
SS230
X Lush X puppy x
007
Alex brav
Malteasers
Nokia 6700cla..
Bernie
Ali Kat
Mark James
Loui

Now they may mean nothing in this context, but i thought it was fitting to ad them anyways.  My favorite idea so far was from Becky who suggested we use light to project these names onto the floor, adapting this idea i thought we could use light pens and long exposure to capture them. This would keep in line with our theme of communication and light, and work well with my previous long exposure photo’s.

I also think an idea based on a high quality video clip recorded in stonehouse. It doesn’t need to be long just a slow motion pan and then have bubbles popping up to show the different blue tooth signals could look quite cool.

Database Cinema Essay

So finally completed my Essay on database cinema for my introduction to new media module. To be completely honest i left it quite late, simply because i don’t enjoy the topic that much however, it ended up being much more interesting than i first thought. Although I don’t think I will be adding Ken Jordan or Lev Manovich on Facebook any time soon . Finally done and its a massive weight off of my shoulders now just need to finish of this Chinese numbers game, hopefully my JavaScript will be nice to me fingers crossed.

One Month On…

So My first post in a Month and my first post of 2010. It was good to have a break over the Christmas holidays, and has taken a few days to get back into the wing of things.  I have lots of assignments due in over the next few weeks so busy busy. I am currently working on

• My 108 essay on Database Cinema
• Continuing on the Stonehouse project, now looking at bluetooth in the area and how what we cant see still affects us
• Working on my Chinese numbers JavaScript game
• Flash based Game ( still learning techniques)
• My 3D Model ( just started 3D studio Max)

Really looking forward to the Idat trip to New York next month should be a lot of fun.

Stonehouse in 3D

After we have taken the time to get a video from inside of the car moving through stonehouse i really wanted to work with this however the quality is bad and it wasnt really the right feel i was after. With out the detail it is hard to see the light and it all just looks blurry, the you tube link is in an older post. So with this in mind i decided to use the pictures i love so much that i took to create a different kind of 3D perspective. With my still limited knowledge of after effects i went about finding a way to turn a basic picture into a 3d environment which i wasn’t sure if it was even possible. I came across the idea of vanishing points, so i had myself a go at creating a vanishing point in photoshop and importing in to after effects. With some technical difficulty with setting and formats eventually i got it to work and started to play around with some key frames. After a while i got the look i have been after which is a fly through effect of an image. I really like how this had turned out and although it was not one of my original ideas i still think it has potential. Only downsides are after uploading the video i feel it runs slightly quick but i can sort that out in my next version.  This is just using one image and a quick play around with the key frames for the camera. I hope to make more improvements  using this idea, and to still work with video even if it means going back to stonehouse to record some more. I would definitely like a video filmed from a fixed position.

I am still working on an earlier idea i had with cutting out some buildings in images to just show wire frame cut out, i attempted this on a different picture.

More Lights

I wanted to show some of the nice aspects of the picture in cool way so stuck them together into a collage type piece, i think this shows the vibrance of colours captured really well and is pleasing to look at. There is much for your eyes to see and continues with the theme of communication through light.

Stonehouse White/black & light

So after looking through my pictures i took in stonehouse, i was really pleased with how they turned out, i got some fantastic shots. My aim is to use the light streaks formed by car tail lights and head lights and merge them into either the video stream or to create more abstract imagery. I like the idea of creating wire frame works of buildings normally used in 3D type stuff. My aim is to try and find ways to focus in on the light and make this the focal point of the image. I took my favorite image that i took using manual shutter and aperture settings, taken from the side of the road looking towards one of the roundabouts in stonehouse. I choose this area as it is slightly darker than when loser to the roundabout with less street lights and taller buildings, this adds more contrast to the light streams from the long exposure. Below is the orgioanl images i took as a raw file and slightly adjusted the setting on import to give a nice natural effect. My favorite part about this images is how the focus is really crisp on the dance studio and the street light has a nice yellow light feel, without taking anything away from the light streaks in the road which are still bright and vivid.

To add extra effect i wanted to remove some of the importance away from our side of the road and focus on what we where viewing. To do this i started to trace around important features with black lines in illustrator and imported them to my photoshop file. I mapped out the area on the left and created the white block type image buildings. I am really happy with how this looks and think it gives a nice alternative to the original image.

I would like to do both sides of the street but i dont want to take away from the lighting on the dance studio or fake the light streaks, so i left it how it is now.

Stop Motion

Just started playing around with some basic stop motion stuff. Decided to draw some stick men and animate them using stop frame, Its nothing special but it was fun and its a platform to stand on as i improve. I know i really need to keep the camera more still because it is all over the place but still looks cool.

Long Exposure

So i know as a group we took down an SLR to stonehouse and although i did have a try i didn’t get any good pictures. I think light art is great and i have always wanted to create my own work. I decided to take out a SLR camera from the media hub and go down to stonehouse by myself to practice taking long exposure pictures. I read up on the manual and just started shooting. I was really surprised and happy with the results i got, i got some good long exposure shots and i cant wait to get them into after affects and play around with them. I will add some below just to give you an idea of how i got on. Bear in mind this is my first attempt ever.

More Inspiration

I often find really exciting pieces of work but forget to pull them in and comment on them. One of my aims for improvement is to work on this area and regularly bring other peoples work that i find interesting  into my blog and share my thoughts.

First are a couple of ideas we where shown in the tutorials but i really liked them.

This video i find completely amazing, i really enjoyed how the whole environment is completely made using 3d software. Although this dosnt directly relate to the direction i am working towards i think the idea of the hologram type image is cool and could be used with some of the light based work i like so much.

I really want to work to create a video like this horizontal abstract, i think having multiple times recorded works really well. showing only certain areas at any one time  you can draw the view in to see what you want them to.

Another great work using 3d imagery can be seen below, the quality of this work is amazing and many of his other videos are also well worth watching. It wont embed so follow the link below\

Box Animation from Jordan Clarke on Vimeo.

Moving on to a couple more ideas i like, first is kinetic typography. Now i have been looking at tutorials on how to this and i cant wait to have a go. below is one of my favorites.

Last but not least is top motion. The video below is awesome and way longer than something i would try to create, but the basic idea is the same.

I hope you like some of these ideas also.