Tree, wallet and almost a not yet a Video

Hi there,

This time just in time :).

First of all I wanted to show a new sketch of which I already showed the plans.
This is called "tree":


Click here to go to the sketch (My computer doesn't like this site because of all the Java here).

"Tree" is my first program that is made to make a specific image that will vary little each time you run it. My roommate even thought that it is just an animation, but actually every time you run it it is slightly different.
In the end I want to have something that changes every time you play it, but is basically still the same. Only the branches change and the colours of the leaves will change. And it will be nice to see how the tree grows to its full self. Maybe something like a background or screensaver.

I also worked on my wallet, which still isn't finished... But now I used some fake leather from an old bag from my sister, to make the following version:





It is almost completely black except on the 'wrong' side of the leather and the dark grey patches of the felt. I guess that the final version of the wallet will get thicker than this one. This because the leather is still to weak to keep the shape, so the weight of the coins always kind of distort the shape of the wallet. I hope that tougher and thicker leather will help agains that :).

So I hope to buy some leather this week and to make the new wallet! :)

Lastly I wanted to work on a video, which I already shot but now need to edit. but apparently the codex of the camera is very difficult. it is AVCHD which Adobe CS3 doesn't like, so I needed to find another program to convert it :(... I found Elecard Converter Studio AVCHD edition,and I got the demo edition. It works fine (up to now :) ) and I converted all my video files for this small movie.
But then When I was playing with AE I found that it needs lots of RAM (Who would have though!?!?!) to use these shots, so now process is very slow, and I'm thinking of adding 1 GB of RAM to my laptop to get a little bit more space to work with. Hopefully I will have a bit faster computer and have a video soon! so fingers crossed :).

Cheers!
Frank

phew....

Ok, I thought that I would make more posts from last post on, but I guess I was wrong...

The thing is that working, and looking for a graduation project is quite time consuming, not that I didn't do things, but I thought that I could better spend my time on working on projects then on blogging... but yeah.... Documentation is needed in order to progress I guess so I should blog to document.

Another thing is that I wanted to show something finished, but my "Love" sketch is far from completion, it might actually never see the light, and other projects are also a bit dragging on. And other ideas pop up that I also want to start.... this combined with less time creates some awful conflicts.

First of all, I wanted to start making videos since I have a harddrive now that has 40 times more space than my laptop. I captured some shots of me and Aurora cooking, and now I need to process the video to be able to edit it in After Effects :D. Hopefully this will be done in a week, so I guess it'll take about a month :).

Second of all, I need a new wallet. This might not seem as the most awesome comment on this blog but this meant an awesome opportunity to create my own. Aurora already wanted to make a new one from some leather parts that she still had so about a month and a half we started sewing and cutting! And after a day I had this thing:

This is the folded side, It is kept closed by a elastic band, Moleskine style!

Here is it opened, a lot of felt is used, which makes it a bit thick.

And that is the biggest problem with this wallet, it is really thick... And I just started seeing the awesome wallet from Hard graft (http://www.hardgraft.com/products/phonefoldwallet-allgrey) which I really like and kind of want to recreate. So I started out with a paper protoype:

This was just the main idea of how I wanted to create my wallet and where everything was located. But of course the dimensions were a bit crappy so I made another one:

This one has its dimensions based on the size of normal credit cards, debit card or any other card that you find nowadays. This seemed the right size, so I grabbed a crappy jeans and cut it to pieces! ha! :) and I sewed this thing together to see how it would look, feel and work:


I've been walking with it for about a week now and it seems to work quite well... The only two things that don't really work are the coins part and the mulitple cards part. The coins fall out if you're not carefull, and the cards won't move when you pull the cord. but that is fine, I'll try to make it better:).
Next version will be looking better and will hopefully more practical.

So now that "Love" won't come along very fast I started looking at other ideas, and on notcot.org I found a video with this image:

link http://www.notcot.org/post/43731/
It is a a tree with lots of leaves, and it looks very peaceful. So I started sketching and I made these two sketches:


They show the process of how I want it to animate and start.


And another small news item is that I might have a graduation project!!! but hopefully more about that soon! :)

cheers!
and untill soon!
frank

Scribbling

Long time no see! :) Not that there is anyone to see,... but you know... for etiquettes terms :)

I went further with the processing sketches of my logo. And after showing it to some friends and seeing some cool logo designs I decided I should take it a bit further. I saw the logo designs that look like they are sketched and I thought that that might be a nice effect to achieve in a Processing sketch.

So I let the lines be scribbles, and created a new effect.

So above is the sketch which shows this. the lines are now scribbles that move everywhere, and also create some white spots when they are not there. And the lines "deflect" from the white areas so you can almost see them bounce :) This effect also makes it more apparent that it isn't just some lines underneath a white layer, but now they actually show that there is an immage underneath.

To let it work with other images I decided to change the sketch a little bit. The first logo lines sketch looked if there isn't a white pixel, and if there isn't one, it shows the pixel that is underneath it.

Now I let the point register it's first pixel colour, and then let it move and see what kind of colour there is on the new pixel. If that pixel colour doesn't differ to much it will paint it's registered colour. If the colour differs to much it will move towards its old pixel and try another direction.

This will create the effect that the scribbles can stay inside some colour.

This I had to try out with some pictures:

This is the real sketch showing what it can do. Places are picked and then the points move.

I almost made some others:

This shows how different image types can be used with this sketch! :)

Okay, so enough for this week.

Next week I hopefully will continue with the BEAM bot and with the LOVE sketch :)

cheers!

frank