Trapcode Form spiral

Great little mini-tutorial on Trapcode Form. Must find a place to use this.

Stop motion yarn

Downright impressive and beautiful, this stop motion creation was produced with 1 km of yard, some simple lights, and a huge amount of imagination.

Man v Wife

Here’s a little promo the team built to advertise our marriage series, Man vs Wife. Playing on the whole “I now pronounce you man and wife” / “step into the ring” / etc. vibe we decided to go all UFC-y with the series branding. I like the way it came out.

Man vs Wife promo from Ken Wilson on Vimeo.

Reactable

Reactable is a new music app I picked up recently for iOS. It’s modeled faithfully after the physical interactive surface the Reactable table (which you can see in action here), from reading the wonderful depths of its manual I would say it has real potential as an artistically valid performance platform. I’ve found it to be a little cramped on the iPhone, but this demo of iPad usage is pretty impressive and the track feels complete (even if there are apparent video cuts and edits in the final recording).

G.I. Joe names

My kids have been playing with my childhood G.I. Joes for several years now. Just the other day I held this guy up an my daughter replies “Oh, that’s suspenders-Man.”

Really? I totally would have gone with “Antenna-head.” Maybe she sees so few suspenders these days that that’s what sticks out. (of course, I don’t know how many antennas she sees protruding from people’s heads).

Maybe this has to do with the generation gap.

Anakin goes to Catalyst

Whenever I go to a conference or travel away from my family I take one of G’s toys with me. The toy and I document the trip and I send back periodic photo updates. It’s fun for me (explaining to people why I’m photographing Legos) and keeps us connected while I’m away.

This year I attended Catalyst in Atlanta and Anakin Skywalker (plus an occasional Storm Trooper) came with me. Here’s some of what he experienced.

Grover / Old spice spoof

I couldn’t resist, this is just awesome.

non-scary Jurassic Park

Wouldn’t it be much more fun if the dinosaurs said “hey” rather than growling and screeching?

Why I wish the monotron wasn’t on such a long back order

I’m fascinated by small music creating devices. I love software, it’s great, deep, endless… but it lacks those tactile controls of a hardware device. Unfortunately most analog hardware devices are a little bit pricey for an average joe like me. Enter the Korg Monotron. It runs about $60 USD, it won’t take up a room in your house, and that probably explains why it’s so far back ordered. And with the right capture/looping infrastructure here’s an example of what one can do with it.

pt_Mutiplane script

What an awesome automated script for creating multiplane layers in After Effects. Of course, if you don’t work in After Effects, if you don’t like automation, or if you have never heard the word “multiplane” just disregard this post.

I also like how he uses the word “zed axis.”

Keep clear of moving parts

Evernote power tip

Here’s an Evernote tip for the home theater owner. Take a snapshot of the back of your receiver and other components before you wire it up and put it in place. Then, when you’re feeling around in the dark you can use your photo as a reference guide.

And 3 years from now when you’re changing out a component you’ll have an archived photo so you can identify by feel where to plug something in.

Fat for sale

Now I’m convinced you can buy anything from Amazon, even a pound of fat.

Everything is a Remix

Loved this, and it’s only part 1 of 4. I especially loved the use of my favorite all time band (if you force me to choose one), Led Zeppelin.

Sampled apple

The other day I decided to sample the audio of one of Meg’s childhood toys, the happy apple. It has an interesting gong-like tone. This was captured quickly through the mic-in of an iPhone headset… nothing hi-fidelity here… but the results were interesting.

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One of the more interesting things I saw today

And here it is, doubly iPhone processed.

Troika ESPN rebrand

There’s a dizzying amount of complexity going on here, amazing. Even though I’m not a sports fan I can really appreciate the shine and glow and even slightly-sepia tinted beauty of this masterpiece.

iTunes 10 reverted back to iTunes 9

Not loving that shiny new iTunes 10 look? Fear not, you can revert it back to it’s pre-10 glory, colorful icons and all with this handy guide. Took me all of about 2 minutes to get it back.

Hint, this link was the most useful.

DocuCam After Effects Preset

Camera shake. We all love it, right? Now you could try the “create a null and motion sketch on it and parent that element to your camera, dealing with the lack of z-position date” method. Or Kramer’s infamous motion track real handheld footage and use that movement to jitter your elements method.

Or maybe I could suggest using DocuCam from Weave Creative. It’s a free preset that I’ve found to be easy to use, functional, and in a pinch makes a big difference for little time spent. Give it a shot. Here’s an example.

Falkirk July 2010 set

The other day I came across this DJ set by Falkirk and after digesting it thoroughly I am blown away. First off, you can jump into it at nearly any point and find something amazing. (But I suggest 5:15, 13:46, and 17:03 as my favorite points). Also, it’s available as an mp3 to speed up those early morning jogs.

Falkirk – July 2010 Panic! (LIVE DJ set) by Falkirk