Day 58 - No Espresso, Data Airlines

Nope

But i made some tshirt screenshots. Shot kim with a dummy on and faked the print onto it.
Cant say i did much else eaven tho this made me quite content. Dug up some fresh deephouse that eased me out of my cold-induced pessimistic mood. Went to a meeting that demonstrated why everyone in the exhibit group has been so confused about everything to this point. Seems we cut ourself a big enough slice of the room to actually go through with our installation as intended. Got back from the meeting too late to catch anyone from the staff to check out my projector i was supposed to use over the weekend. Almost everyone else from my gang of cool people are up in stockholm this weekend to attend the launch party of that branch. Leaves me with almost no company to motivate drinking. But the people left are the ones that makes you go back to photoshop and afx so i think i could come out on top of this weekend as one of the nicer ones in a long time. Hopefully they will go with theese prints or close to them aswell as picking a good quality shirt to smack them on. I wouldnt mind showcasing some of my throwups on a tee.

Day 57 - Little Big Adventure, Data Airlines

Not sure how i should describe what school looks like this week. Its more like everyones back in upper grade school doing carpenter assignments again. Peope are using glue, paint, drills and wood instead of traditional digital media appliancies. Im not entirely happy about spending 2 weeks on building something out of cardboard or wood but some just got that look on their faces saying this is what they wanted to do in the first place. I cant say this has been a week with good focus nor productions but its all on me still. Not too satisfied with the slow pace the group is experiencing right now either. But i cant really push them as i havent made that much progess myself, nor am i happy with that particular outcome.

I must say im suprised by the quality i see popping out of emil in particular today. He unearthed something really spectacular in afx i wasnt exactly expecting, given his previous productions being abit unserious in nature. Kim and Carin is also finally at the productiontable doing some concentrated progress. Im still not used to pointing out to people what they should be doing when it comes to shear creative production nor are my groupmates used to not having theese directions given. I guess we will all level in the end. If its anything ive come to like about the school its being positively suprised when i least expect it. I wish this could be said for the actual staff wich continues to annoy all of us gravely.

Id just wish this would be behind us so we could get our hands on something closer to what we actually wish to acomplish at hi. Atleast the group progress followup came out nicely more or less. We basically ended up around 7-9s on the importance, motivation and ability 1-10 scales. One exception set aside but i feel its hardly the group at fault here nor the assignment we have been given that produces her reluctancy. She described it to us as a sort of alienation but i have a hard time figuring out what to do with it. She doesnt exactly embrace the production nor does she reject it. But still she seems, all though with some exepctions, extremely distanced to whatever we do. Moving in and out of our social sphere without leaving any trace as to how we could remedy this.

After a quick glance at our schedule it doesnt seem like its gonna happen next module either. Looks purely theoretic for the 3 weeks following this module. Enough ranting. On the flipside i might just be quite content with what we produced for this exhibition as far as pure mediacontent goes. I got some interesting stuff i can showcase in the afx folder. Not sure if i can look back at it in 6 months and say its actually worth anything but right now it feels like ive progressed to a atleast something. Wich in fact manifested itself in a buisiness offer today oriented around afterfx.

On the other hand i tossed up a 2 hour tshirt pitch for that same ol festival you probably have gotten tired watching me splash paint on by now. Might look good on a brown tshirt anyway. Might also be subject to heavy changes but heres the result of what my last 2 tired hours of a good 14 hour shift did to me. I know it looks just like the previous stuff but too my defence its still basd around the same theme for that same festival.

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.