flora n fauna.

i took photos, of all sorts of pretty plants that live in my mothers garden.
you can see them all here.

just stumbled across...

on computer arts.

some very nice pretty illustration.

pillowhead.net

it's pretty.

every now and then

you come across a website that's really pretty. that says "Yes, there is more to the internet than myspace".

the website i came across (or rather visited for the first time in ages) is brendan dawes' website. he changes it every five minutes but i really like the current layout. it's nice and clean, and the current interface with it bouncy pixels makes you want to interact with it. once rolled over the bouncy pixels which reflect how many comments the post got, turn into a clear image. it's all to do with visualizing blog activity.
another little thing he's made that visualizes blog activity is the info mouse thing where you click and drag your mouse across the page, and as the words appear the black ink in the mouse depletes. it's COOL.

another pretty website i found today is flight404 which features some damn sexy work done with processing.

someone please teach me processing now.

please.

new shiny work area

for me and liam to develop our ideas and try things out and stuff.







and i'm a pretty fairy.

i've scanned in stuff from my pretty book, "where's my space age?", and liam has posted what he's found wondering around second life, and sketches of some of his ideas.

i want one!!!

ALAVS

these... are... so... cool...

ALAVS (Autonomous Light Air Vessels) are amazing pretty little blimp robots that are really quite cool. they FLOAT. and they're pretty.

ALAVS 1.0 had three programmed behaviours; ALAV with a person, ALAV with other ALAVs, and ALAV alone. when an ALAV is alone for a while it emits a call, to find the rest of the flock and get some attention. if a person wants to interact with an ALAV they have to wait till they're hungry (which is shown by the colours of a dangly LED thing), and then the person can feed them with a pretty light.

ALAVS 2.0 use mobile phones to let people interact with the ALAVS more than just feeding them. using an IVR system (Interactive Voice Recognition) a person can interact with the whole group of ALAVS or one. their behaviour changes depending on wether or not the ALAV percieves the person as a friend or foe.

there's also BLUBBER BOTS!!!
they also respond to mobile phone activity, so if you wave your phone about you can attract their attention, and they'll respond with a song or a dance. they also seek put the strongest source of light and flock when in a group.
best of all you can buy them.

i want one so much it hurts.

electroplankton

it's FUN.

it's the kind of computer game i like because it isn't really a game. there's no high scores or items to collect or any of that palava. you poke at the screen and clap you hands and say random words into the microphone and things happen.

it's creator, Toshio Iwai, was obsessed with looking at things through a microscope and playing super mario bros. on the NES as a child. he also liked fiddling around with a tape recorder and a synthesizer, all of which he managed to incorporate into electroplankton.

the game has two modes, performance mode which lets you play around, and audience mode which lets you kick back while the little plankton do all the hard work. there's ten different kinds of pankton, there's tracy which follows lines you draw on the screen, hanenbow which bounce off leaves, luminaria which follow arrows, sun-animalcule which grow and fade, rec-rec that record what you say into the microphone, nanocarp that respond to your voice and claps, lumiloop which you spin around really fast to make sounds, marine-snow that you disturb, beatnes that remember beats you tap onto them and volvoice which distorts your voice. it's all good fun.

pretty colours O_O

pretty.

since i've had to abandon the bunny costumes and pantomime cows, i've decided to go something a bit more katamari-ish, and have a trippy rainbow sequence with some of the characters from the shows on CBBC on sunday morning. i've finished cutting out most of the characters i'm going to use (need to see if my mac has recorded anything else useful when i get back to it). now i'm starting to create the other elements (PRETTY RAINBOWS!) i'm going to be using. i'm creating them in illustrator, and i'm planning to make the move around and get bigger etc. in after affects.

here's one of my first attempts (keep in mind i barely use illustrator so need to get used to it again!)

i've taken the colour scheme from the cover of my notebook for now, may change it a bit.

on the sound design side of things... which is really making me worry abit and making my head hurt... rahrahrharhahrahaahh... i've been thinking making something along the lines of this... or this.... or this. only not as good as i'm not that talented.

oh someone please kill me

childrens tv is incrediably mind numbing.

oh it's painful.

i'm slowly going through the shows i recorded during the day looking for stills i could possibly use in my ident. yesterday it was chucklevision and arthur (i don't mind him, he's cool). today it's best of friends, the cramp twins and krypto the superdog.

so far today i'm half way through best of friends and i want to start banging my head against the table. it's actually quite hard to find a clip or still that could be used, i wanted to use the presenters but may end up using the characters from the intro instead. the show itself is quite strange, one group of children are pelting a middle aged man with sponges and the other group is being tested on it's cake icing abilities.

i'm supposed to be able to export the clips from my tv card program thing as ipod movies, so i hoped i could use some footage and sound from what i've recorded but for some reason that option has decided to grey itself out.

on the side of things going well, the best of friends intro is pretty similar to my idea. there's rainbows. and pretty colours. and random characters that don't appear in the show.

so... yeah...

pretty still from a pretty film by shynola about a pretty leaf. i really like the style in this image, and would like to do something similar, but with more bright colours.... and rainbows.... yeah.

i love katamari

here we see the king of all cosmos and his family with their little animal friends, running rampant around the world spreading stars, clovers and mushrooms where ever they go. i love the brightness and randomness of the katamari game intro animations, the previously relatively dull world transformed by the arrival of the family, now complete with rainbows, giant flowers and dancing pandas.



the part i really love of this animation is the spinning circles and the kaleidoscope effect at the start, which is quite hypnotizing. I also like the inclusion of everyday events, such as doing the washing and chasing after their son. although the animation itself is relatively simple, the inclusion of so many elements makes it look extremely complex.



this is my personal favourite, i love this version of the soundtrack. i love the hearts created by different objects at the start. i think the use of still images in the intros is done really well, although the images are mostly static the editing makes the intro fast paced, and the inclusion of some animated elements on top of the static image creates a nice effect.

oh god...

they're releasing this on xbox 360.
that makes me want to cry.
and want an xbox 360.
that's not fair.

meet yoshimi

she now exists in two realities.

my humble abode

it's pretty.