Am super super excited as I got the confirmation today that I’m being sent up to Austin Texas on Thursday for the SXSW festival!! I think it’s going to be an amazing week, some great talks, panels, films, parties etc! Will post up some more stuff soon + please let me know if you’re going to be there!: info@benhanbury.com
SXSW!!!
March 10th, 2009Motion tracking in After Effects
February 19th, 2009Another little experiment in AfterEffects, still messing around with Trapcode’s particular plugin but this time also using some of the motion tracking tools. I was pretty pleased with the results (a bit like the old ipod commercials)! You can find out how to do similar things on the very excellent videocopilot website
Visual Bookmarking with WeHeartIt
February 9th, 2009After a bit of research I’ve decided to go with www.weheartit.com for some visual bookmarking fun (getting an invite on fffound was too difficult!) it seems to be a pretty good service for finding and savings cool images and video, although it does seem to be going down a bit too often (though I’m hoping that’s just teething troubles). Anyway you can view my profile here, if you join up please add me as a contact so we can share the excitement! Here some of the goodies I’ve found recently:
Eva Duhamel
February 5th, 2009
Etch-A-Sketch GOD!
January 30th, 2009Part of me hopes these aren’t real due to stuggling childhood memories of crap drawings of houses (circular shapes were too difficult), however these etch-a-sketch drawings by George Vlosich seem to be the genuine article, one of which is currently showing at an exhibition in Washington celebrating the inauguration.
Beacon
January 29th, 2009My friend Chris O’Shea has recently worked with Cinimod Studio to build the amazing art installation ‘Beacon’ - “a kinetic light installation with a mind of its own. An array of emergency beacon lights interacts with visitors, tracking their movement through the space, creating an immersive and playful experience.” More information on Pixelsumo, also check out the video for a better explanation …
Head tracking using Wii remotes!
January 28th, 2009Messing around with long exposure photography
January 9th, 2009Had quite a fun night yesterday evening walking around the southbank playing around with the manual settings on my camera. Here are some of the better ones, more can be found on flickr
After Effects experiments: Particular 02
January 8th, 2009After Effects experiments: Particular
January 6th, 2009Have been messing around with the Trapcode Particular plugin in AfterEffects, here are some of the more interesting ones, mostly from various tutorials on VideoCopilot and Graymachine …
iPlayer news
December 19th, 2008So I finished working on iPlayer over the summer, but some of the last things I was working on have now been released which I think are really exciting, the first iPlayer Wii version released in October, in which the interface has been redesigned to work 10ft away with a Wiimote. If you don’t have a Wii you can see what it looks like here www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/bigscreen
Then today the big news is that the new Adobe Air-based version of the download manager has been released, it’s not based on Windows Media or using Peer-2-Peer which means no uploading costs from your ISP + IT WORKS ON MAC AND LINUX!! This is really great as it was certainly one of the big criticisms in it’s initial launch … I think it’s still got a few teething problems but it will be really exciting to see how this develops.
Another big release (which I had no involvement in) but looks really great is the children’s version of iPlayer – particularly good if you don’t want your kids watching some of the more edgy BBC Three programmes!
Music generated by facial muscles?
December 17th, 2008This is amazing! Though surely it can’t be real?! Electric Stimulus to Face: Test 3
Link found on Steven Diffey’s blog
Fun and games at BBC Audio & Music
December 14th, 2008So for the next few weeks I’m working at the Audio & Music Interactive department at the BBC in Regents Street, and on wednesday and thursday I was fortunate to get involved in a two electronics workshop which they run every now and again as part of radiolabs - I guess to try and come up with slightly more off the wall ideas.
It was a wicked two days, lots of people doing clever stuff with Processing, Arduino boards and various sensors - the brief was to create a device which measured how much a rock band ‘rocked’! Which ended up involving accelerometers in hats (to measure headbanging!), motion sensors under the floor etc.
Unfortunately my coding/electronics skills have become a bit non-existent since finishing uni so I tried to help out by putting stuff together on the display side of things, however it’s definitely something I’d like to try and pick up again in the new year! Anyway check out the photos on flickr or a video that I’ve put together of the day!
Lazy Oaf
December 9th, 2008The KIN exhibition (see previous post) was pretty cool yesterday, round the corner was quite a cool little shop called Lazy Oaf, I’ve got no idea how new or big this is but thought it had some really nice stuff - if the Mr.T Towel isn’t genius I don’t know what is?!
KIN gallery, soho
December 8th, 2008A new temporary gallery has opened up in Soho “full of affordable graphic art, sculpture, clothing, homewares and assorted ephemera, created by a host of illustrators, designers and printmakers such as Swifty, Rose Stallard of Print Club, Si Scott, Steven Wilson, RYCA, PhlAsh (Phil Ashcroft) and many more…”
Anyway you can find it at Unit 1.12, First Floor, Kingly Court, Carnaby Street, London W1 I’m going to try and head down there at lunchtime … More info on the Creative Review blog
Top 10 Listy Blog Posts
December 5th, 2008I feel every time I check out the digg/design page every other post is based around the ‘list-top-10-funny-cool-design-resources’ type blog (and no doubt we’ll see more of these as 2008 comes to an end?). Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoy them and I’ve noticed sites like Smashing Magazine seem to do these very well, generating an interesting/attractive title which gets people coming to your site for the first time? So here’s 10 list-based blog posts that I’ve enjoyed recently:
100 Top Horror Film posters
http://wellmedicated.com/inspiration/100-illustrated-horror-film-posters-part-1/
6 Menacing towers fit for a supervillain
http://deputy-dog.com/2008/09/6-menacing-towers-fit-for-supervillain.html
50 Beautiful Examples of Tilt-Shift Photography
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/11/16/beautiful-examples-of-tilt-shift-photography/
60 Beautiful music videos
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/11/16/60-beautiful-music-videos/
5 of the world’s best (drivable) wooden cars
http://deputy-dog.com/2008/08/5-of-worlds-best-drivable-wooden-cars.html
23 Signs you’re becoming a design geek
http://www.crestock.com/blog/design/another-23-signs-youre-becoming-a-design-geek–152.aspx
20 Artistic Architectural Optical Illusions
http://weburbanist.com/2008/11/29/architecture-optical-illusions/
11 of the lamest blogs
http://www.pcworld.com/article/153615/top_11_lamest_blogs.html
115 things that white people like
http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/full-list-of-stuff-white-people-like/
150 worst album covers
http://www.coverbrowser.com/covers/worst-album-covers
Interactive Video Object Manipulation
December 3rd, 2008DANG!! This is amazing! It’s so incredible to see advanced systems and techniques suddenly become very simple and easy to use?
Simpsons’ take off of Apple
December 1st, 2008So funny! My favourite bit:
Shop assistant: I see you’re admiring our myCube, fueled by dreams and powered by imagination
Homer: What does it do?
Shop assistant: You should ask yourself what can I do for it?
Homer: Ok, what can I do for you? Please I’m begging you!!
Shop assistant: Sir it’s not even turned on yet
Homer: But it’s glowing
Shop assistant: That light confirms that it’s off
Universal Everything Nokia Animation
December 1st, 2008YouTube vs. Googlemaps
November 28th, 2008How cool is this? mapping the location of a video on YouTube to Google maps (you’ll notice the example below is of the Ross-Brand incident from Broadcasting House on Great Portland Street)
