Day 55 - No Dice

Was completely out untill around 2pm when i just relocated myself to the basement sofa. Didnt loose the hangover untill 7pm. I had alot of production planned for today wich now got postponed.
Shitty day.

In addition.
The day actually shaped up decently around the late pms. Still need to get my hands on a serious 3d particlespray for afx. Really annoys me we havent gotten any serious results in our group so far. Need to put together a good showcase to screen sponsors with. I had both saturday and sunday planned out to be good productiondays but it ended up in reverse. Leaving me with a strong feeling of discontent. Ontop of that there is something else moving around in the back of my mind giving me a feeling of unrest around the whole current situation. Not sure what it is or what to do about it but i hope with a couple of strong titles laid down on the road behind me id feel at peace again.

some stuff that put me ablaze this week:

The biggest LEGO set ever, the $499 Ultimate Collectors Millennium Falcon, is now shipping, 5,000-pieces and four-pound ring-binded manual included.

A Timelapse video of nerdarmy converging onto this model in a massive assembly party.



There are also trailers up for andersons there will be blood featuring radiohead soundtrack amongst other promising aspects.

last and least this lego nxt robot is pretty impressive.

Day 51

Its been a while.
Its about a week and a half into the second Hyper Island module called Experience Technology. Had some pretty rough days past weeks. Still atleast 12-14 hours a day in school but alot more sleep.

Autumn has hit karlskrona but its still reasonably warm. Heavy winds and sporadic showers almost always coming in a horizontal vector for maximum annoyance. The island feels smaller at the same pace the weather gets worse. Trying to compensate the lack of personal development from august and september with more computer quality time set aside from school projects.

Dubmood put one of the posters i made him in the mail splashed onto what might be a considered ridiculously large print the size of an average bed. Not sure about what wall i could nail it on yet as it probably outweighs whatever means i have of plastering it to a vertical surface. It should be arriving sometime next week witch gets me thinking about my espresso again. Its been 6 weeks and no delivery. Perhaps i should give old posten a heads up of my whereabouts by putting my company logo on the mailbox. My name should suffice but 6 weeks says it does not.

Anyway, anyhow. This weekend should be spent around the computer screen in contrast to previous brawls. Alot of raw motion material to produce and a lot of technology to pick up on. Taken upon myself to create a multitude of animated shorts that goes into our module exhibition installation. On top of that i also claimed responsibility for developing the flash platform that picks out and plays these clips inside the 360 screening room we are building for the installation. Not only are they displayed in and with flash but they are also going to be sliced and diced decided by witch way the visitor moves under a motion tracking device sitting ontop of the booth facing downwards. The basics of this technology is in place but i feel this module will turn into a rough 20-80 as no one in my crew has a history of either or.

The group works nicely now. I took up project lead and the others seems happy with a more strict project management. We still have to do almost daily followups to levels of ambition and involvement witch has been our biggest problems in the past. Not everyone in the group shares the general ambition but i feel it has nothing to do with the group as such but more of the assignment we got handed to us mixed with the feeling of alienation we all feel at times at this place. Im quite confident this project will be our best sofar, wich in fact does not say that much but our first ambition as a group is that we should leave this module satisfied and with something really breathtaking to put in the portfolios.

Should have a lot more material to splash here by the end of next week but this is what i came up with for concept sketches last night. Some stills of the motion introducing the visitor to the installation.

Day 36 - IS Aftermath

Our presentation got a fairly good reception. I was quite embarassed over delivering yet another rushed halfassed unfinished production but there was no helping this time. Finished around 4 and had maybe 4 hours of sleep to my name at a point where i didnt think i could shorten the average night any more. This became more of a project than i had anticipated, but i kept at it, trusting that hard labour and late nights somehow furthers the endresult. Wich it did in a way, but not what i hoped for. I should really learn to take control of theese modules at an earlier stage. I ended up making the motionconcept, teaching 5 people how to use the software as well as making sure they did it in the end. Not exactly what im used to or happy with but in any case, they were not choices that could be avoided. Still its all good in a way because my brain is making good use of parts that has never seen such before. Where a dirty citchen and commonareas serves as an impromptu type of office and serious work in the am:s is again standard im finding myself at peace with my enveroment for whatever reason.

Getting home before 6 for the first time in weeks a hammer of sheer exhaustion came down on me as i was preparing hot food at home, wich i havent done since adam came to visit almost 2 weeks ago. I find myself in a constantly distressed but yet cheerful state in wich i usuaully felt uncomfortable in. This has now tilted me into a new default and i picture myself around the building grinning foolishly about nothing at all because i probably am doing just that. Passed the store on the way home to stack up on tomatosauce and tuna wich should be a good supplement to the olive and cheese-sauce ive dieted on since i got here. To quote a good book i just red i feel i live in a cloud of satisfaction that the previously lost cause is panning out into. The only constant downside this week has been the not so pleasant lack of espressopods in my mailbox.

Having eaten and kicked back at home the only unrest i have left is the feeling i want more that spending two weeks with schoolprojects in AfterFX left me. I would love to go back down to my big computer to gun myself down the streets of resourceful but stress-free creativity. Knowing that being as attuned to my surroundings is only on a limited timeline with the amount of sleep i have behind me this week i should probably concentrate on getting a reasonable nap before heading out for some beers. Knowing myself eaven further im quite aware that spending too much time around the motioncreation as its turned out to be lately will put me in a mood that will create a wall beetween me and further progression. The feeling of a good week of work behind you including all the weekends between now and last month makes you feel quite deserving of a good pint or atleast a cheap lager wich is usually the case here. Quoting that same book again, "Life is more difficult for the serious artist. Time is money but also money is money." Wich leads me back to the not so comfortable thought of spending a good 600 on a put together 9 hour traintrip to the westcoast and back this weekend.

The only downside i can think of that my newfound love for moving pictures has created is that it will most probably push my plans of starting some clothingdesign eaven further into the vague future. Just thinking about it makes the parts of my brain that comes up with theese ideas snap back into almost-anxious about the future mode again. I know that at this stage the best thing i could reward my in and out comming sense of creativity is to jot down theese ideas i have on paper and stash them someplace not too far away but still not present enough to kill the inspiration from seeing them to frequently. And at the same time i want to invest in a billboard to nail some inspiration on at the wall of the room. Just to keep it fresh and in my constant presence.

Feeling this is leading into another mindless lackofsleep rant i end right here with a hint of tuna and a promise of endulging in reasonable amounts of beer to celebrate a completed and successfull module at Hyper Island.

Day 36

Its 03:30 in the morning and we are still finishing up on the information societies module. Rendering the 12minute motion we threw together to avoid talking too much about the papers we wrote too many of. Its been quite an interesting day. In general i think we saved the presentation pretty well but the turnaround came abit too late.

Day 35

This would be my 35th day at Hyper Island, and my 1st weblog entry here. For a more straight to the point productionrelated weblog go to acetate.elapse.se

As im not a fan of this medium i might be abit cynical about the whole idea from time to time but as things look now i will still try my best to entertain you and meet the purpose of this site wich is more of an assignment than something id choose to do myself. Its a rough trip to balance a personal place like this between what you want to write but cant cause it hurts people, what you cant write but do anyway and what you write that doesnt interest anyone but yourself. If anything it might be a good way to get stuff off my chest i wouldnt put anywhere else. If someone find themself in this blog presented in a way they cant agree with please tell me and i will adjust the content accordingly. That being said, onward...

The first module, information societies and the motionweek ontop of that, is both coming to a close. My first AfterFX-production is done and so is the one made in my group.
Took me a good part of the weekend as i had a ton of other stuff to produce. And i had to learn the software aswell. I really love the adobe syndication thats been going on since mid 2000. If you know one of their programs your learningcurve with the others is pretty nice.

Its been a tough two weeks adjusting to peoples general level of skill. Im not used to working with and around people that has no clue what to do and when not told exactly that its a hit and miss game where they just end up standing around doing nothing. I dont mind helping people with software but after a couple of weeks i see myself becomming the one dude to ask about just anything. Makes my skin crawl when some individuals just goes straight to the questioning without eaven spending a minute to think for themselves or just google whatever.

Added to this my espresso order from switzerland is now 3 weeks due and im obliged to return to the perculator. Lack of coffe, lack of sleep and lack of general productionquality in the teams all adds up to one cynical erik. Its been a rough 2 weeks with this module overlaping the motiongraphic assignments. On average id say ive slept 5 hours a day if not less. A regular day is usually starting around 8:35, then its shower and breakfast at school close to 9. Lunch at 12 just or later just to avoid the crowd. Back to producing or in reality, just spending countless hours setting people straight and on track. Then its the daily hassle trying to interpret the often confusing and missdirected briefs from the staff, keeping people out of the room, trying to eat in an orderly fashion and not fall back into my old habits of vegetarian junkfood after 3 years of descent living. Around 8 the place is usually emptied of the more flagrant students and the rest of us gets more productive. Ive really come to like that enviroment where the same 20 people stay around untill 12-03 in the night just doing what they like the most. Creating. So that usually concludes my night and i return to sleep for another 5 pretending like i dont need more.

In general the motionweek and the related stuff has brought to my attention a better world of cgi than ive previously moved around in. Its in a way what i always wanted to do but never got around to. Its not been around for long but i remember when the first talented people moved from flash animated motiongraphics to AfterFx around 2002-2003. I wish id jumped on that train then and gotten on par with what the good people do now. But i ended up animating UI:s in flash and sticking to print graphics. The irony of all this is that just when ive gotten my interest peaked for this motiongazeebo my biz in printed posters and flyers start to pick up. Within two hours today i got offers from some big names in france and canada to get gritty with some heavy production. My old canadian asociates aproached me with offers of a 2-3 flyer a week deal for some major clubs over there. Not big money but descent for just doing what i love most. Its largely in the line of what that i used to do in 99-03 wich is a style alot more technical and digitaly oriented than the vintage grungestyle ive gotten into lately. In a way ive missed it cause its more of what i feel i developed for my own as its what i did during the early years of online digital media and not as scene-influented as my latter prods. Its gonna be really nice getting back to that underground houseclub style again with a million layer and some fucked up coloring. I got a bunch of fonts ive wanted to put to good use for a while now.

Anyway.
The week is already comming to an end in a way becuase both modules deadlines wed-thursday wich leaves me friday - monday off to get back to some work ive been pushing ahead. Looks like im gonna detour back to gothenburg on sat aswell to pickup some stuff i conviniently packed into 3 shoecartons marked "important stuff" but ironically got left behind. Its not my ideal weekend to gun myself on that train for 4 hours each way but i have to at some point. Looking forward to a good thursday out if anything, as the previous ones more or less turned out brilliant. Other sidetracks this week is getting dubmood some more webmaterials, doing some research in what people might be interested in getting a bigger place to live in together. And added to that, almost finishing the gibson book a started 2 months ago. If my delayed espressopods would arrive prior to the weekend or atleast waiting for me on my returning, sunday, this would be a descent week. Up till now its just been a long, drawn out test of my patience in unorthodox productionmethods and lack of sleep.

Well i guess that concludes todays lesson kids. Excuse me for the bizzare sentences aswell as the spelling. Lifes been rough on me theese past weeks. For the productions i mentioned previously, check the stuff below.

A take for the data airlines festival site:

720x576 25fps version here.