conigs

Just how good is the iPad’s color?

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 08:40:50 -0500

FXPHD set out to test the new iPad’s color reproduction. Spoiler: It’s remarkably close to rec709.

If you use Alfred on OS X, I’ve decided to post my Kill AE...

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 11:58:02 -0500

If you use Alfred on OS X, I’ve decided to post my Kill AE extension. Functionally, it does the same thing as AE Suicide: force AE to crash and save a copy of your project. This is just another way to accomplish that, but from the keyboard with Alfred.

Week 14 of 52 Works. This is my reel.

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 15:46:26 -0500

Week 14 of 52 Works. This is my reel.

For week 13 of 52 Works I decided to dig a little deeper into...

Sun, 01 Apr 2012 21:49:13 -0500

For week 13 of 52 Works I decided to dig a little deeper into the Arduino I received for Christmas. After some tinkering, Google searching, patience, and experimentation, I got it to do this. Bonus points to anyone who can name the song it’s playing.

Late in posting, but this is week 12 of 52 Works. Justin Younger...

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 10:18:24 -0500

Late in posting, but this is week 12 of 52 Works.

Justin Younger posted this link on Twitter the other day. After some digging I found you could download high-res files of these views (and more, up to 4096x4096). I wanted to do something with them, soI downloaded all of January 2012 and got to work.

In the end, I’m not fully satisfied with this, but part of the rules for 52 works is that when the week’s over, it’s done. I might revisit this and maybe even try to grab a full year.

On text on the iPad

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 11:11:31 -0500

On text on the iPad:

This. Very much this.

chartier:

Tom Royal, a tech journalist and developer working on the British Journal of Photography iPad app, argues that “it’s just a big JPG” iPad magazines (like the garbage you get from Adobe’s Digital Publishing Suite) are less about copy protection, and more about getting the right layout:

I very much doubt the people who make The New Yorker have ever considered rasterising text as a method to prevent copying-and-sharing. Preventing the copying and sharing of magazine content is depressingly difficult once you’ve printed it. I’d put money on them having chosen it for the same reason that many others have: because they’re working on a magazine.

I salute publishers for wanting to nail the right layout (i.e., get something right) when dragging their magazines into the digital realm. But this goal requires sacrificing far too much else in the end user experience. All the typical complaints still stand or get even worse in light of the iPad 3: these “giant JPG” magazines run poorly on the iPad 2, and are even worse on the iPad 3. They’re utterly inflexible, especially for readers with special needs. Download sizes are an absolute joke, and Adobe’s suite in particular seems to produce apps that can’t even download these massive files in the background; if you switch from the app, the download pauses or sometimes, at least in my experience, stops altogether and needs to be restarted on the next attempt.

In the digital realm, publishers need to get out of their comfort zone and let go of some core assumptions if they want to truly do right by their readers. Stop thinking about magazines in terms of perfect columns. Don’t give us massive images, give us gorgeous text that flows for our needs. Throw out the concept of “pages” or, at least, update it for a device that can scroll, flip, and turn in any direction. Web designers did it decades ago. Publishers can too.

So Long Milwaukee and Thanks For All The Beer

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 16:51:00 -0500

So Long Milwaukee and Thanks For All The Beer:

For the past several years I’ve had the privilege of working with some of the best video and advertising talent in Milwaukee. Most of those years were spent holding residency at Civilian Edit, then Wonder Wonder, but also freelancing for additional projects. Milwaukee is one of the only homes I’ve known, both professionally and personally. As of May 2012, that will no longer be the situation. […]

Original Article

So for week 11 of 52 Works, I strayed a bit from the rules. This...

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 12:00:00 -0500

So for week 11 of 52 Works, I strayed a bit from the rules. This is the week I signed the offer from Code 42 Software and have a lot going on. But I put my signature on it, so I’m counting it.

Obey the Unicorn! Week 10 of 52 Works involved a photo I took...

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 11:33:43 -0600

Obey the Unicorn! Week 10 of 52 Works involved a photo I took of a Toki Doki Unicorno, After Effects, the DUIK script, some expressions, the puppet tool, and some tweaking.

For week 9, I decided to play around with ASTER elevation data...

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 14:47:49 -0600

For week 9, I decided to play around with ASTER elevation data after reading this story on Ars Technica. Matching up the photographic map tiles to the elevation data was difficult (it’s still a bit off), and it doesn’t seem there’s a lot of resolution to play with (1 px ≈ 30m). Though I was using a GeoTIFF and not the raw data.

Music: “Cold Summer Landscape” by Blear Moon

It’s no secret that I’m a heavy tea drinker. So for this week’s...

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 23:02:00 -0600

It’s no secret that I’m a heavy tea drinker. So for this week’s 52 Works, I decided to try tea in a new way: as a paint. This “painting” was made with nothing but tea and a paint brush. I’m pretty pleased with the way it turned out. (And yes, I used an actual tea bag to produce the image in the lower corner.)

I’m not entirely sue what I’ll do with this print. I might hang it in our kitchen (or my office). I’m also considering selling either this one, or more like it. If I did, would there be any takers?

Medium: Tea on Paper (9”x12”)

The Oatmeal & Piracy

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 09:28:25 -0600

The Oatmeal’s comic yesterday concerning the availability of Game of Thrones was spot-on. But if you want to “stick it to them”, don’t download the show at all. Imagine if revenue was down, yet piracy was minimal. There would be no excuse anymore.

(I am planning a much longer examination of this for a later post.)

Week 7 of 52 Works. Started playing around with projection...

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 14:00:27 -0600

Week 7 of 52 Works. Started playing around with projection mapping in Cinema 4D on simple geometry. The original image is of the Victoria Crater on Mars.

Music: “Neuro Science feat. Mouch” by B1t Crunch3r vs Killeralien vs Phonetic System.

"People complain about the cost of software, then act surprised when companies use free products to..."

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 17:11:11 -0600

“People complain about the cost of software, then act surprised when companies use free products to collect and sell personal data.”

- Marco Tabini

This. Absolutely this. A thousand times over, this.

(via chartier)

But It’s Just For the Web

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 13:44:22 -0600

But It’s Just For the Web:

Astute & convincing observations about why color correction (or grading) is important for even web-only videos. As the first commenter states “the web is such an oversaturated market, creators should be doing anything they can to get a leg up.”

Just a quick experiment again for week 6 of 52 Works. Shiny...

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 16:47:15 -0600

Just a quick experiment again for week 6 of 52 Works. Shiny cubes & physical render. This one rendered much quicker than last week’s, but I still don’t think I’ll be using the physical render for anything but stills. This design is actually based on a interior lighting concept that was pitched to Wonder Wonder.

Week 5 of 52: Broken. This was mostly an excuse to play with the...

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 21:45:49 -0600

Week 5 of 52: Broken. This was mostly an excuse to play with the physical renderer in Cinema 4D. It really takes a hit on render times, but that was also on a 2006 Mac Pro. I think I could see using this for stills, but not for animation in the immediate future.

I was also a bit disappointed in the way this turned out. Not my best work, but as they say… keep calm and carry on.

A short (simple) animation I worked on for Marquette University...

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 15:24:27 -0600

A short (simple) animation I worked on for Marquette University last week has officially been posted.

AE Feature Request: Local & Global Variables

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 10:35:00 -0600

AE Feature Request: Local & Global Variables:

I wrote up a post over at The Motion League about a possible way to include global & local variables in expressions. It’s just a mockup for a feature request and pretty nerdy.

This is last week’s 52 Works, just a bit late. I started...

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 07:42:00 -0600

This is last week’s 52 Works, just a bit late. I started thumb-nailing these last week but only got around to finishing up the artwork in Illustrator last night. These will ultimately be two pictures for our bedroom once we get it painted—which is why they’re shown framed. Some people will get it, others won’t. I haven’t decided what method I’ll use to print them (either digital or maybe screen). So I’m open to suggestions there.