I have been excited about Obama since his speech at the DNC in 2004 and said then if he ever ran for any office I could vote for, I would support him. So here we are in 2008 and I am still excited about it and him and his potential for what he could do for this country. For the 1st time in my life, I have donated to a presidential campaign (and a number of times at that), partly because I am in a place financially where I can afford to do that, but mostly because I feel very strong about this.
So anyhow, I made this lil motion piece ages ago and just slapped it in my reel and never did anything with it. If anyone wants a quicktime of it or anything, just email me on the comments page and I’ll get it to you.
And although I know no one really reads this blog who doesn’t know me, I would like to ask and urge people to do what you can to help get this man into the White House. Donate, make phones calls, register people to vote, talk to your parents and explain to them why we don’t need another crotchety old white man running this country for a change.
Myself and two co-workers are trying to get some video and motion graphics projects going for fun and learning and to cram into our future reels. So we are attempting to team up and pool our creativity and talents in order to create such things. These will be our “After School Specials“.
This lil motion piece was just something I whipped up after seeing a trailer for The Brothers Bloom. The movie looks mildy amusing, but no where near as good as the directors (Rian Johnson) first film Brick. But I digress… I enjoyed the treatment of some of the word bits in the trailer and decided to try and recreate them.
And I have…
This was also an excuse for me to try out a new WordPress FLV player plug-in FLV Embed, which should make putting up FLV’s easier AND work in IE, which my previous technique did not.
It’s the time of the year for shameless self promotion! Once again, DJ Mag has opened the polls to vote for top 10 VJ’s of the year. After many years of being ignored by the Academy and the Golden Globes, it would be nice to finally get some recognition.
The polls close on September 24th, so hop to it! If I win I promise to honor all my campaign pledges and to pack the supreme court with VJ’s and video artists.
Since I made the move from VJ’ing with a huge bin of VHS tapes to software, I have mainly used Modul8 (and also dabbled a bit with Arkaos and Livid Union). In many ways it resulted in me re-thinking most of the way I VJ’ed and also the style and types of content I would make and use.
Recently I started playing with the free version of VDMX and just last week I purchased it. I think I can safely say that it is making me re-think everything again. It really opens and a whole new world of ways to mix and manipulate my clips, and is making me think about my content creation in a new light as well.
At first glance it seems really intimidating, but once you get the basics down, it all starts to fall into place. I feel like I have hardly scratched the surface of the what it can do.
I have yet to perform live with it, but I think that will happen soon enough.
I made this motion flyer for my friends new night at a bar in San Francisco. I was going to put it on Vimeo but I think it may violate their terms because it is an advertisement. Maybe I’ll slap it up there after the night is over… then it is just “retro” video art.
The night is the SemiSexual Record Label Night, at 222 Hyde, in San Francisco.
Just messing with my logo and trying out some things gleaned from a few Video Copilot tutorials.
I also put it up on Vimeo but I wasn’t happy with the quality, so I put up my own flash version here.
Apparently this was done using manly displacement maps in After Effects. I’m not quite sure exactly how it was done, but it is enough of a place to start experimenting and see what I can come up with. I have found most cool unique things in AE from just tweaks and playing. If I come up with anything, I’ll post it!
In my recent quest for better video cable organization, I came across this nice looking unit.
I’m not sure how many cables it will nicely hold but I think it would be good for the average VJ gig. Or at least MY average gig, as I don’t tent to have huge set-ups.
You can get it here for only $25, and it comes in green, which is an added bonus for me.
On that same note, I recently discovered the wonders of Velcro reusable cable ties, to keep my vid cables wrapped and organized and happy. Seriously. These things are like 6 bucks for 100 ties. They work great, hold very well, and don’t seem to pick up lots of hairy linty bits like other velcro.
I know it maybe be silly to post about such things, but it has helped me not only to keep things organized while while just sitting in my studio, but also helps me keep things a bit tidier at gigs, and that is also huge.
Recently I attended a great party with a whole host of good visuals. For most of the night, my pal Satsi was on the beamers. As always he did great stuff.
I also had the pleasure of meeting and watching DangerMarc, a live digital painter. He uses a gigantic Wacom tablet (more like a table), a laptop and Corel Painter. It is really cool watching him create in a live setting and being immersed in the things that are influencing him, be it the people, the music, the lighting, the mood, the space itself.
Marc is presently selling a print he made of Obama, with the purpose of selling enough of them to donate the max amount of money one person can donate to his campaign, which is $2300 I think.
It is a very clever idea. I really love that so many artists and regular people are coming together to help get Barack Obama into the White House, and are joining the political process, many for the first time.
Check out the print at sketchbook.dangermarc.com
