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Friday September 19, 2008
Aloha! It's Friday once more and I'm here with the weekly dose of artistic doings and computerized chaos. The topic this week is animation and the focus will be on political humor. 2008 is an election year in this country and the the overall effect is like being caught in hurricane when you're downwind from a manure plant. There are some fun and funny animation satire sites out there and I'll share some that I found topical and timely. JibJab gained lots of attention and got some major press in the last few years. The cool cutout animation and great music make for some prime political parody. Political cartoonist Mark Fiore has posted a number of very sharp and appropriate animations on his page. I like clean and slick drawing style and the slightly left-of-center viewpoint. Kevin Kallaugher (KAL) is the editorial cartoonist for The Economist magazine of London. His animated offerings give us a glimpse of the American political system from the outside. I was particularly impressed with the 3D animations, but all the works show a fine sense of style and British wit. And that's about it for this week. Send me a link if you find any other places on the Net to view animations or humor in a political vein.
The picture of the week was created using Project Dogwaffle.
Click on the image for a full-sized view
The loops of the week are some expansive synthesizer parts.
The PC game of the week is MechQuest.
Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it.
Bye for now!
Friday September 12, 2008Greetings and Happy Friday! We're on the verge of autumn and the evening is cooler. The topic for tonight is music and the focus will be on recreating the sounds of old instruments and computers. There's something about the limited sounds of yesteryear to get the old synapses firing. The synthesizer plug-ins listed here are all in VST format, so they'll work with the majority of modern Windows music program. For a real 1980s flashback you can download Ymvst, a nice Atari ST sound chip emulator, or 38911, which does a splendid job of recreating the sounds of the Commodore 64 SID chip. I never had the bucks for a hardware synth way back when, but thanks to the efforts of some gifted preservationists, I can play with a virtual versions of a Minimoog and an Arp2600. MiniMogueva and Arp2600va are highly detailed and produce some marvelous sounds. The next time you're putting together a track, try adding a bit of vintage vibe to your mix with these modern emulations.The picture of the week was created using Anim8or.
Click on the image for a full-sized view 
The loops of the week are some retro synthesizer blips.
The book of the week was Death be not Proud by John Gunther.
Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it.
Bye for now!
Friday September 5, 2008
Hi again! It's another warm summer evening and I'm here with the weekly dose of artistic and creative doings. The topic for today is Graphics and the focus will be on UV mapping. I gained an interest in UV mapping after reading about it in a chapter from a book on creating digital dinosaur 3D models. UV mapping is a graphics technique in which a 3D model is projected onto a flat surface image. You can then use the 2D flat map to apply colors or textures to the faces of the original model without warping or distortion. UV maps can also apply to bumps, specularity or reflections. If your favorite 3D modeling/rendering application doesn't include UV mapping you can use the excellent UVMapper program. The free “classic” version of UVMapper is comprehensive enough for all but the most demanding work, while the “pro” version offers more features. I intend make use of UV maps in my future animated efforts and 3D scenes. Give it a try!
The picture of the week was created using Spatch and Bryce.
Click on the image for a full-sized view
The loops of the week are some junkyard drum riffs.
The book of the week was Modeling Digital Dinosaurs by Ken Brilliant, a step-by-step guide to creating realistic 3D prehistoric creatures.
Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it.
Bye for now!
Friday August 29, 2008
Greetings and TGIF! I'm back on this fair if humid Friday evening with more interesting and creative stuff. The topic for tonight is music and the focus is making music with loops. I'm certain that most of you have heard the fairy-tale/fable Stone Soup. The basic idea is that a flavorful soup is created seemingly from stones boiled in a cauldron of water when in fact it is a collection of small contributions that makes the complete meal. With that lesson in community cooperation in mind I set out to assemble a short song from free musical components. The first place I looked for free loops was Acid Planet. Acid Planet offers a weekly selection of free loops called an 8-pack, which has 8 related Acid-ready loops and a project that uses them. You can get the current 8-pack from the Tools menu on the main Acid Planet page. The next stop in our search for free loops is Free Samples n Loops. There's a small but tasty selection of categorized loops to be had here. My soup pot is starting to look full so I need just a few more ingredients. You're in luck cause every week at this very location I offer a set of Acid-WAV format free loops in a handy zip file. I went through the now vast catalog of loops that have previously been posted and selected some fitting parts. I used Acid to sequence the loops and Sound Forge to finish the piece and that was it. You too can make a short song in about an evening from free components that you find on the web. Give it a try and see if you can better my effort at making soup from stones.
The picture of the week was created using Project Dogwaffle.Click on the image for a full-sized view
This week I'm sharing the short Stone Soup composition made from free loops. The file is an MP3 format download. The loops of the week will return next week.
The book/graphic-novel of the week was The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi.
The movie/DVD of the week was The Terminal starring Tom Hanks.
Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it.
Bye for now!
Friday August 22, 2008Hail and hello to all! It's Friday again and topic for tonight is books and reading. This summer I have a backlog of books to read both fiction and otherwise that are filling my shelves. Most were bargains and blowout sales or plunder from book sales at the local library. As much as I like finding a book on the cheap it's even better to get your reading material for free. To that end I've found some sites where you can read or download previously published works. You can find a well researched list of sites at the Aussie site Free Books. The links are all quite current and the libraries are varied. Project Gutenberg is perhaps the best known repository of public domain books. This is a good place to find classic works in plain text. Authorama is another very cool site that offers a good selection books in HTML format. I've been a science fiction reader since my teens and I was delighted to happen on the Baen Free Library. Aside from the generous number of free offerings at Baen there are also books offered for sale. Take some time to read a new book, either printed or electronic, and you'll be the better for it.
The picture of the week was created using Project Dogwaffle.
Click on the image for a full-sized view
The loops of the week are some big bass parts.
The PC game of the week was Unreal Tournament 3 again.
Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it.
Bye for now!
Friday August 15, 2008
Greetings! It's another fine Friday and I'm back with usual mix of mirth, pith and ideas. The topic for tonight is programming and once more I've turned my attentions to the Euphoria programming language and my long-delayed Musubi/SDL project. Musubi is a project I started a while ago to simplify the use of the SDL graphics/multimedia library and the related SDL libraries with Euphoria. This week I've jumped back into coding the remaining demos and writing the manual. There are some 52 functions and procedures I've included in the Musubi and as of this writing I've added over half of them to the documentation. I really don't know why the project had stalled for so long, but I think that like all artistic endeavors it is a matter of mood and timing. In any event the project will likely be wrapped and ready to go by month's end. Euphoria remains a rather obscure open-source language and I don't know what the response will be, but I'm driving on to complete it for the sake of closure. Even belated, I like to finish what I start if possible. I'll post a link here on this blog, and add an entry to my web page when it's ready. Stay tuned!
The picture of the week was created using Bryce.
Click on the image for a full-sized view
The loops of the week are some exotic percussion loops.
The PC game of the week was Unreal Tournament 3 again.
The book of the moment is Irish Folk Tales, edited by Henry Glassie.
Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it.
Bye for now!
Friday August 8, 2008
Hello Again and TGIF on this lovely and hopefully lucky 8/8/8. The topic for tonight is graphics and the focus is on tutorials for my favorite free/open-source applications. First off there is a very comprehensive set of lessons on using the POV-Ray 3D/Ray-tracing program at the Online POV-Ray Tutorial page. Users of Project Dogwaffle and the various descendants and variations thereof can try a wide range of tutorials that cover the gamut from starting out to mastery. The last of my suggested sites for the week is a very cool selection of tutorials on Jonatan Bijls' Anim8or site. Jonatan has included lots of links to other Anim8or tutorials in addition to his own. No matter what your skill level is, it's good to learn something new, and these tutorials will give you a lot of info for just a small investment of time and effort. Give them a try and send me a comment if you have any other free graphics tutorials or applications to plug.
The picture of the week was created using Project Dogwaffle.
Click on the image for a full-sized view
The loops of the week are some simple piano loops.
The PC game of the week was Unreal Tournament 3.
The DVD/Movie of the week was Batman: Mask of the Phantasm.
Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it.
Bye for now!
