I suffer from a common affliction where I can’t idle for long without picking up the nearest writing utensil and unleashing nonsensical sketches on an available drawing surface. While at Apple, often during meetings or monotonous support calls, I would lubricate my brain cogs in this manner — it actually helped me stay alert and attentive. During these spells I’m not really thinking much of what I’m making, I just let it happen.

After the jump, I’ve posted a selection of these ballpoint-on-notepad drawings scrawled whilst at the fruit company (most have enlargements if you click ‘em):

We won 2nd place for Ride Captain Ride in the first competition, but unfortunately just barely lapsed the submission deadline with Welcome to Nowhere (though it still screened.) The second competition really failed to capture the spirit of the first, as instead of a judging panel, the Drafthouse utilized an online voting system that was clearly exploited and undeserving submissions triumphed.

Both were shot with a pair of Panasonic DVX-100a cameras at 24p and edited in Final Cut Pro, very very quickly. The only “effect” present in either is a dissolve transition here and there, everything else was done on-camera.

As I had some trouble with Ride Captain Ride on Youtube (Warner Music Group apparently had it pulled, even though Mike Pinera — the singer — sent me a message personally with his support for the video), I am not sure how long Vimeo will allow these to live.

The prize was a license for the Pro version of the ToonBoom Animate software, and you had to use the regular version or a demo to produce the entry.

You can view the submission page/discussion here:
http://vimeo.com/groups/animatecontest2/videos/13836741

…and here are the rest of the entries from the competition:
http://vimeo.com/groups/animatecontest2/videos

View some draft sketches, after the jump.

The Animate software is quite good — it has a honed focus toward rapid production of traditional animation rather than the all-in-one dilution that Flash both benefits and suffers from, although the functional gap between the two products is indeed narrowing. Now that I have the pro version of Animate I hope to explore it further and will share interesting experiments here, with you, dear readers.

I imagine Mr. Reznor just nonchalantly scribbled “Jazzmutant Lemur” and “a couple of those monome things” on his daily gadget grocery list and they were placed at his feet, upon his nine inch nails.

Thanks, Deek!

It turned out to be a mutilated disposable camera, a basic pc microphone, and a tape recorder with the cassette door removed. The camera had a small electronic component soldered to its circuit board and spliced into a 1/8″ audio cable.

Although I had a pretty good idea of what this pile of junk did when it was all connected, I didn’t know who had sent me this mysterious equipment, or why they had done so. I poked around in the shipping box and found a contest card from Popular Science that I had filled out at the Austin Maker Faire in October. There was no other information about the stuff or why it had been sent to me. After a bit of looking about, I found a blog entry detailing the process of disassembling and re-purposing the very devices that I had received.

Here’s a basic explanation of what all this stuff is for. The microphone is connected to the tape recorder’s input. When it picks up a sound above a certain volume (say, a loud percussive sound), that sound is sent as voltage out of the tape recorder, through the cable spliced to the camera’s circuit board. This tricks the camera into thinking the shutter has just been activated, and it fires off a flash. To make this useful, set up a light-controlled environment and make it as dark as possible. Then set up a camera for a long exposure and take your shot, making sure that whatever you are doing to trigger the flash takes place before the camera shutter closes. Ideally, the sudden, audible event (a balloon popping, a bullet firing) that triggers the flash captures a very brief moment in time that would otherwise be hard to see or capture precisely with the shutter release.

I needed to try this out. I fetched some batteries, set up the little Canon Powershot for some 2.5″ long exposures, turned out the lights, and brandished my confetti revolver. 

Unfortunately my camera doesn’t have a manual focus mode, so it was hard to get sharp images.  I brightened up the images somewhat so details are more clear.  You can see whisps of heated confetti shrapnel popping out quite far from the gun. You can also see the light from the exploding charge passing through the rear of the confetti gun’s plastic shell.

Suzie on the trigger:

Here, I connected a different microphone directly to the handle of a sauce pan filled with water. I tossed in a little squirty toy and the sound trigger picked up the moment of impact with the water, rather than the splash:

Here’s a Youtube video showing the flash kit in action:

My thanks to the folks at Popular Science for sending me this fun little assemblage. I very rarely win stuff in contests, so this was a pleasant surprise. Although I could certainly spend some more time calibrating the Powershot, I’d like to try this with a more responsive SLR to get the best photos. Different sound devices can be used to generate different results and trigger speeds, and timing or delay circuits can be added to the camera’s flash for further control. If you don’t feel like rummaging around or dealing with ebay or craigslist to find the components, Make sells a kit to build your own flash controller box, and there are plenty of plans around the interweb for building one yourself from scratch.

Anyone who has already purchased the book should contact the publisher and demand a revised copy once Doug has got them to sort it out. A $50 textbook should not contain such a glaring problem, and I hope this is remedied before it reaches full distribution.

I have a chapter in a book that was just released this past week, authored and edited by Doug Easterly.

While I have not yet received my copy, it looks like a really nice compilation of artists working with Flash and I feel honored to have been asked to contribute.

In the book, I demonstrate how to build a simple sensory input device, connect it to the Teleo IO system from Making Things, and use that hardware to then communicate with and control a Flash project in real time. A prebuilt example is included, as well as a video demonstration.

I feel like a bit of a runt in comparison to some of the other contributors in the book. I’m really looking forward to seeing it in print and gleaning some inspiration from the other fine minds involved. More thoughts once I get my grubby paws on a tangible copy.