hmm....

Okay, so again I didn't post anything for a while...
Somehow I've been quite busy with lots of stuff and I haven't really found any time to do much.

To do show you something I made this:

I used one of my old photo's and made this small animation on it. :) again it is in the style of Dmitry Maximov. I hope you like it :)

Then I continued further with my watch!, I got nothing to show yet, which is also a reason for not posting yet, but hopefully I can make some pictures soon.
In the meantime I found this site:
M E M E N T O

It has an awesome look, And I'm seriously considering to apply something like this to my watch :)

Graduation is also coming along, I hope to bring out a questionnaire soon. Which I will also post here, Just in case :).

Too much things and not enough time.

Hello!!

I guess it has been 2 months now since I posted anything over here. I guess it has been good, but then again it hasn't been very productive. The reason that I didn't post anything anymore is that I got kind of overwhelmed by all the things that I needed to do for me, my graduation project, and my social things. And because of this I was just running from place to place to get everything covered. But it wasn't really nice.

So now, with the new year I decided that I should slow things down a bit and don't do to much. So I stopped my sports, I do run occasionally (but not in the snow). And I started to work less at IKEA, which helped things a lot!

'But', you might ask 'Then, if you changed all this at the beginning of the year, why the hell haven't you posted anything yet?' (Ok, this doesn't make that much sense as it did in my head... but anyway :) ), Well I also needed to move from my old trusty home! So all in all I just recently started to do some cool things again, which I will now show you :)

First of all is something that I always wanted to have done in my life and that is to make an elastic band ball!



This takes painstaking hours of work and concentration (read the irony! :) but it did take hours!) to pull this together. The label of the elastic band package told me it were about 120 elastic bands, so that is what I'll tell you :). it is a 120 elastic bands elastic band ball!

I also once found that art of Dmitry Maximov, which is really cool. Especially his use of colours, photos with lots of depth of field and the contrast of the images. This made me think that it would be awesome to create something like this as an animation.
So this is what I did :)



Here you can see the result: a bit shaky. But I like my first try :). Also you can see my new room in it, although maybe you don't really see it.... but that is my new room.

So that was all!
till next week! :)
cheers!

The 'Thing' and my new RAM!

Hi,

So suddenly after seeing two videos I had some inspiration to create something with the pile of electronics that I had lying around.
I still had a breadboard full with awesome components lying around with which I would experiment to see how it would affect the behaviour of the solar engine. But nothing came of it, because some other things we always more important or interesting to do. So it wasn't really making any progress.
But then I saw this video:



In which someone creates really cool objects. And you see one of his prototypes which he makes with small wooden beams. And that was something I liked.
I also saw this film:

Zimoun «Sculpting Sound» : The Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, USA from ZIMOUN on Vimeo.

Again of Zimoun of which I really like the simplicity.

After seeing these two videos I decided to make something myself. This weekend I finally had some time to do it, So I went to the DIY shop and bought myself some small wooden beams, some wooden rods and a little saw :).

This is what came out (it is already really dark so it the pictures aren't that good.)





In the last one you can see a wheel which is driven by the DC motor. The wheel has a rod on it, which isn't centered, and it pushes a beam up. When it goes up it will hit an other wooden beam that will hit the bell, creating a nice soft 'Ting'.

Up until now it has only been misty but it already works a little bit. The wheel moves, pushing the beam up. But not with enough speed to make a ting. So now I need to wait until the sun will shine to hear it.

Aesthetically I'm not really pleased with it. The electronics were just an after thought and you can really see it. The wooden components look good, though not really straight, and work well. So next time I will need to take more time to get the electronics to be a part of the whole.


I also got my new RAM last week and I put it in my laptop today, so I haven't really tried it out yet, but until now it is still going smooth.


Also, on Thursday I will kick off my Graduation Project. It is a research project in which I will research how to implement metaphors in products in a successful way. This means that some products use a metaphor, some are quite successful and other aren't. This can have a couple of reasons. I will research which reasons it has and also how to do it better, or at least in a good way. So I will provide guidelines which should be able to tell you how to make great product with metaphors.
I will come back on this I guess. :)

untill soon!
frank

TEDxDelft, Wallet and a new watch

Okay,


I went to TEDxDelft yesterday and it was awesome! :) The first three blocks were a bit boring with some good talks in them but the last and fourth block of presentations was amazing! :). Most of the talks were really good and I really like this part. But I won't go into detail, because that is a bit boring.. :) it won't do the talks any justice. :)

I also finished the wallet! Last week I went to a shop to buy leather, of which I maybe bought about half a square meter! And the day after I started to sew. This is what happened:

This is the wallet when it is closed, the texture of the leather is really good and cool :).

If you flip it you can see that the press buttons and elastic form some sort of face :).

And this is the inside! One part is the cards side (Digital area) and on the other side is the real money part (analog area ;) ). The coins are kind of kept in the pocket by two push buttons, which are now obscured by the 10 Euro :).
I fairly happy with this wallet. Maybe, when I have time, I will buy a nicer looking felt and try to create a better design in terms of formgiving. I like how the wallet works, but some details can look nicer and better. So maybe some day I will do that :), but for now i'm happy.

And to jump to another project right away, I had an idea together with a friend of mine to create a watch that has a laser cut body. I would be made out of wood vineer that is cut by a laser printer. And we would just put a standard watch part in it.
I first wanted to prototype it. And I found an old watch I still had from an old company:

I learned from the neighbor of Aurora how to open it, so I tried that:

It worked! and I was really happy :) But then I wanted to get the time setter loose so I could take it out. So with two pliers I tried to unscrew it, which failed miserably, destroying the connection:

But hey I wanted to continue, so with my stupid head I wanted to get the fingers or arms loose so I would be able to remove the plate. But of course, it isn't really made for that. So I also destroyed this:

But anyway, I think I will still make the first prototype to see how it will look. So next I will cut some vineer in the right shape.

So come back next week! :)

cheers!
frank

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