TV bumper rethink

After finishing my animatic for the 30secs bumper about myself, I have decided to make a small change. I was quietly pleased with the outcome, and thought that the comic book styling worked well. However, if I were to use photographs from my past as planed, I believe that all the continuity of the styling would be lost, as I would be mixing both real life images with cartoon illustrations. So to hopefully improve the overall quality of the piece, I have made the decision to replace all pictures which included myself, or my wife, and use the Jay character I created, and a new character to represent my wife, instead. The Jay character has become, and will continue to be, a fundamental part in my own personal online branding and persona, therefore the final piece will also be able to become an exercise in self promotion, should the final quality be as high as expected.

Vids and Pics

Just wanted to point out that I now have my own YouTube channel and Flickr channel where people can view my work, but more importantly to get myself out there and link back to my website.

These links will obviously be two way once I have finished the redesign of my website, and both channels need to be filled out more which takes time.

Stonehouse pragramming test

A few images which show our group working together on test sketches for the Arduino board.

My toy hack

Just a small post to show some work I have started whilst NOT being in New York.
After talking through our ideas as a group we decided it would be best to have a wireless system going from the traffic signal to the Arduino board, rather than simple wires. So a cheap solution was to try and modify an electronic fart machine, which would give us a wireless transmitter and a sound would be produced which could act as the input for the Arduino.

Below are some pictures of the device, along with some test footage I made, just showing the range and parts of the device. I apologize for the quality as was done with mobile phone.

New Directions

After the past few lectures, which have focused on the Arduino boards, and new ways of looking at currently existing products and what you can do with them by breaking them down to their base components and uses, we have decided to change our direction of our group project.

The past few lectures have completely changed my thought processes, the simplest idea of just reusing existing products and technologies, and taking their uses for different purposes, frankly, had just eluded me. The example of a cheap key ring which flashes and makes a sound when you whistle, being broken down to give you a sound sensor as an input, with a light and speaker as outputs, sounds obvious because that is precisely what the technology is, I had just never thought of it in those terms before. However by changing your thinking this way and combining that thought with the capabilities of a piece of equipment like the Arduino board, you open up a world of possibilities.

The first idea involves the old theatre in Union Street and camera trickery. We still plan to use Union Street as our location, however the rig we would have needed to achieve our previous idea was impractical in every sense, including financially, and the outcome would not have been worth the input. Another reason for changing our project was due to the time of year. Our previous idea hinged on the images fading in and out based on the inputs, which were random, so by aiming for the commuter hours of between 5pm and 6pm the image may have been completely invisible due to the combination of a low input and the daylight at that time of year. So we have decided to change to incorporate the Arduino and these simple ‘hacks’.

To start this process we have decided to come up with separate ideas first, then join together as a group to use either one or parts of these separate ideas. So my idea would be to use a wireless device like a computer mouse and hack it so it acts as an input on the Arduino board. This input would come from attaching a light sensor to the left mouse button, then placing it on the red traffic light signal so when the cars stop the light input clicks the mouse and tells the Arduino board to tell the computer to start the projection for our now captive audience. To link it to our original idea of bringing the history of the area back to the present, the projection will start by displaying the famous red curtains of the theatre, these will open to reveal images which represent modern world data taken from ‘worldometers’, which hopefully depending on how it is represented, people will find these images interesting, artistic, and shocking. The show will stop after a short delay when the lights turn green, with an old fashion TV shutoff style effect back to black. This on off effect will also hopefully mean people will want to stop and wait for the next show.

Also to find out more about low tech toy hacks visit ‘tinker.it’

My TV bumper animatic

This is my TV bumper animatic. I chose to tell the story of my life so far in a comic book style which highlights the most important events that have happened. I wanted to pack in a lot but have it moving at a quick pace to hold the audience's attention, the music also enhances this effect. To me the bumper really shows what the final product is capable of being, however in the final piece I intend for all the images to be of a much higher standard, created by mixing real footage and photographs in combination with tools like photoshop and illustrator to give them a more comic/pop art styling.

First step, Twitter

The first thing that I have done is to redesign my Twitter account. I was amazed at how much I use Twitter, compared to how much I thought I would use it. The redesign of my website is a huge undertaking so will be done over a larger time, whereas to change this port which a visit frequently only needed me to have completed two elements in my new theme, but would achieve great effect.

The first part was to finish my new little avatar, along with the character which I hope one day will become synonymous with me and my work. Therefore below are the finished designs.





Shown below is that change in my Twitter account, from using a template theme and previous (amateur) avatar, to my new custom made theme with my new avatar, which will be the launching point for my new designed website. All following my new plans very closely, which a lot of effort and thought went into.