Thoughtful Preparations: Media Spin Blog

In 2012 I was contacted by filmmaker Jason Cohen’s Associate Producer Zand Gee about using a few of my photographs of punk rockers for their film project.  I didn’t ask and didn’t receive details about the nature or story behind the film in progress.  We worked out the details of the photo usage and I delivered high quality, high res copies of the photos for the film.  Another obscure, wacky film project… end of story.  Or so I assumed.

An email arrived a few days ago from Zand, notifying me that their short  film, FACING FEAR, has been nominated for Best Documentary Short in the 86th Academy Awards 2014 Oscar Nominations.

Wow! What happened?  These guys must know what they’re doing!  Had I been more of a film festival follower, I would have caught FACING FEAR at the Mill Valley Film Festival last October.  I haven’t seen the short film yet, but I’m looking forward to seeing how Jason Cohen edited my images into his film.  The photo at left is of Lee Ving, front man singer for the 80’s punk band Fear, and is one of the shots included in FACING FEAR.

The other photo in the movie is one of my best, a chance moment in time, of punks slam dancing also in the early 80’s.  I’m grateful to have participated in a small way on this project.  Zand and the FACING FEAR people were great to work with.  It’s rewarding to know that many professional members of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences have viewed FACING FEAR and nominated it for this category.  Congratulations to Jason Cohen and the Production Team.  It’s truly a wonderful accomplishment.

I’ll be cheering for FACING FEAR during the March 2, 2014 Oscar Awards!

The UI for my 1982 photos of U2 at Headliners in Madison, Wisconsin has needed an overhaul for awhile, so that’s been taken care of.  Also there were a number of reasonably decent looking shots that had not been published on Media Spin that seemed worthy of sharing at this point in time.

There are 3 pages of photos, starting here with U2-1.

There’s an excellent website, u2gigs.com, that documents the tour dates and even the playlist of U2.  Here’s this show’s details.

 

Here is a link to many of my illustrations represented by SuperStock.com – https://superstock.com/stock-photography/1428R-

My collection has grown to over 400 images there, and quite a wide variety.  I try and strike a balance between scientific medical illustrations and imaginative human conditions that tell a story.

I use Autodesk Maya, SmithMicro Poser and Adobe Photoshop in my common illustration workflow.

SuperStock markets my images all over the world, for books, magazines, and other media.

 

From Leica Geosystems’ Press Release

Produced by industry leader Leica Geosystems, three (3) new educational videos provide an easy-to-understand introduction to the basics of 3D laser scanning. Topics include how the technology works, applications & benefits, field and office aspects, and what options users have for taking advantage of this increasingly popular technology.

As the use of 3D laser scanning (also known as High-Definition Surveyingâ„¢ or HDSâ„¢) for fast as-built surveys, detailed scene mapping and related applications spreads, an increasing number of professionals are investigating it. This new series of short, professionally produced videos provides this introductory education via the convenience of YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0td7rOVk_IWwYh5GDTKjP–nTu3n0WzK&feature=plcp).

Divided into three separate chapters, each chapter helps educate people who are researching the technology for the first time, plus those who may have some familiarity with it and want to clarify their understanding.

Chapter 1 – “The Basics” provides an overview of the technology and includes film footage of its use in the field for rich data capture and in the office for processing laser scan data (or “point clouds”) into deliverables such as drawings, models, etc. It also describes common applications, benefits, types of deliverables, and options that users have for taking advantage of the technology.

Chapter 2 – “How It All Works” describes how laser scanners work (including informative animations), what scanner features are important to consider, the topic of “registration” or stitching multiple scans together, and what kind of support is available for implementing the technology.

Chapter 3 – “Simple Projects and Complex Projects” helps newcomers understand how to apply the technology for simple surveys and deliverables and what laser scanner and software features help users take advantage of the technology for more complex sites and advanced deliverables. Several visual examples are included.

Vendors in the laser scanning industry participate in various ways and each video also educates viewers, with increasing depth, about how Leica Geosystems fits into the overall picture. Each video is under nine (9) minutes in viewing length.

[end of press release]

The planning and writing of these videos started in January of 2012 with a small team of us at Leica Geosystems.  Part of the task in preparing for the video edit was to gather existing laser scanning videos from many customer’s presentations.  Also, the computer animation examples we found, although scientifically accurate, were out-dated and in need of redesign and expansion for our script.  So, I had the fun of converting a CAD database of the Leica Geosystems C-10 scanner and bringing into Maya.  After that I was able to load in complex models generated from laser scanned point clouds, to create animations simulating a real world scanning situation (see in Part 2 video).

Last night the local NBC affiliate broadcast a news package about police using Leica scanners and software to capture data at crime scenes.  Link to NBC Bay Area News.

Here’s the short form of the Prezi sales presentation I built for Leica Geosystems, announcing the release of Cyclone 8.0, their point cloud editing software. I designed the new logo and opening splash screen, and that will be the subject of another, more detailed blog entry.

Mediaspin.com, my very first website, has undergone very little change or update over the past 4 or 5 years.  It’s been online since 1996, and the home page has changed very little.  Media Spin Interactive, Inc. was dissolved in 2002, and since then the site became a kind of archive of various work in illustration, animation, photography, and blogging.  In order to build a new portfolio of my work, it was easier to create a clean, new website, ahgdesign.com and populate it with specific content on a limited number of pages, than to overhaul the mediaspin.com site.

Design concepts have been sketched out, but nothing has stuck as worthy of the effort.  The idea of a Flash animation, randomly spinning content and media appeals to me, but it would be sad to not have it appear on non-Flash platforms.  I want to be original, so website templates seem to be too stylish, slick and overly commercial for my taste.  The plan is to preserve many of the current pages and URL addresses, because hundreds of links and citations have been made over the years, and would not want to break them.

A modified WordPress template or Squarespace might work as a pathway to a website update.  I have to research the impact of these a bit further, and most of all put in the sweat involved.

I sprained my wrist trying an advanced yoga pose.  Imagine being in a shoulder stand and lowering your legs down while propping up your arching waist with your hands.  If done slowly, carefully and with enough flexibility, your feet touch the ground as your hands support your lower back in a sort of shoulder stand back bend.  I was able to do it, when I last tried it ten years ago, but I lost some flexibility, and the bending put a strain on my wrist.  So I decided to explore the anatomy of the hand in a series of recent illustrations.

I rendered these Zygote models in Maya in a variety of lighting and camera positions.  The detail is an anatomically correct female hand and wrist.  The fianl renders were 8K in the longest dimension.

I had another concept, “Breaking out of the Box”, an inspirational illustration of a struggle for freedom.  The figure was done in Poser, imported into Maya, where I added the lighting, surface texture, and added dynamic cloth to the cube faces that are being stretched.  The skeletal Facebook “like” sign, is just having some fun with Poser, which for me is always fast and simple for working out ideas with.

By the way, the wrist is fine now, but I’m not trying to do that advanced yoga pose again, for awhile now.

 

There’s been a lot of noise from some people who do not want affordable healthcare, in the form of the Affordable Care Act aka Obamacare.  There are outcries such as “Get your hands off my healthcare!” which to me would only make sense if you were a CEO or shareholder of a crooked insurance company enjoying the benefits of gouging powerless little guys.  Of all the noise from this group, its unclear exactly what they are complaining about.  I’ve heard the complaint that the bill is too large and too detailed.  Well, sorry folks, there are many complicated problems that cannot be solved with a bumpersticker.  A space program that took us to the moon and back numerous times could not be calculated on the back of an envelope.  People who are employed are familiar with receiving healthcare benefits, and most employers assist in paying health care coverage.  So, these people would likely not even be affected by Obamacare.  So, where’s the rub?  It seems as though the dissonant voices are those who simply do not like anything our current President Obama and his administration does.