Thoughtful Preparations: Media Spin Blog

Almost every graphics project is a new experience, for a new platform, new application, or new users.  The Google Android mobile phone has a set of app icons that are arranged in a side lit pseudo 3D perspective.  If you have an Android app you are working on, you will want your icons to be PNG format with a transparent background.  Here is an enlarged icon frame I made to place the company logo for the Android app project I’m working on.  There are very few resources out there, so here is a free one to help other Android GUI visual designers along on their merry way.  Of course, the 240×240 PNG is over-sized for the app, so you have room to work with your own graphics on it. Enjoy!

48×48 icon

Android app icon, 240x240 PNG

ahgdesign.com screenshot

Just finished completed numerous content updates on my new Papervision3d website ahgdesign.com.  The first two galleries have still images that have been in circulation with stock photo agency, SuperStock.  The third gallery has images with links to  animation and Flash projects.  This is the first fully contained Flash website I’ve done in ActionScript 3.

It was more fun to build a brand new site, rather than overhaul the content grab bag of mediaspin.com.  Here I have simply updated some of its content, such as exporting movies to larger sizes using the H264 compressor in QuickTime.  Perhaps mediaspin.com will morph into something different, who knows if I have it in me to take on yet another media watchdog type web site, although I would love it.

The 3D World of the Five Senses

2008 has been a busy year starting with the launch of The 3D World of the Five Senses CD-ROM produced for publication by Teachers Discovery.  Contracting took me to some interesting places in San Francisco, the Peninsula and Washington, D.C., as well as telecommuting from my own home office.  I would have to agree with those who voted SAP as one of the top 10 workplaces.  Their Palo Alto offices are well stocked with grace and grooviness.

Not only am I suprised that 2008 is almost over, I’m surprised the first decade of Y2K is closing out.  Remember all that Y2K excitement?  Will your analog TV set blow up in 2009?  Don’t delay!  Order your Grebevision Blackbox today!

Above: Surrealists’ Circus painting by H. Grebe, 1976.  Below: AT&T Wireless ad by BBDO Agency, 2008.

Evidence that visual ideas are out there to be perpetually revisited and revised by artists.  I like the way the AT&T hand painting artist realized this visual illusion in the way I had previoously envisioned it. 

 

Thus spake Yogi Berra. Surely, the meaning behind this yogism pearl of wisdom, can be seen in the visions of the future as seen through commercial artists of 1950’s USA. Beyond the fallout shelter, technology promised to help us find a better tomorrow.

Many more of these entertaining images, a kind of retro Jetsons art gallery can be found at Plan59.com.

Oddly enough my gallery of R.E.M. photos has low visibility under Google’s image search, so here is where you can find them. These shots are from an early tour by the band, R.E.M. was just gaining traction in 1981. Have fun on the new tour guys… I don’t think I could get any better seats than these.

So here is my implementation (click image above to run) of the Weber Design Labs open source Flash coverflow app loading JPEG files and links from an XML file. The app was posted last September 2007 and there are now over 250 comments providing code enhancements and variations on the original Actionscript code.

Of course along the way there are fun things to be found. One is flame, a CoverFlow built using the PaperVision3D engine. Another fine diversion is the wise ass, You Suck at Photoshop series of online video tutorials, a slice of life of a Photoshop using human. Must be seen to be liked or disgusted by.

Recently worked on a Flash splash page for the Kapow Technologies web site that involved a lot of hand animation that could probably be done in Actionscript2 or 3… if I knew the code! So, working on expanding my Flash horizons and found these cool examples, some with source code. Most of these are in my pursuit to deconstruct the iTunes coverflow image browsing interface, and a few are purely inspirational. Here are the links:

• Papervision3D FAQ
• Papervision3D Examples @ dusanwriter
• Papervision3D tumbling cube @ The Flash Blog
• Papervision3D Carousel Example FLA
• 3D Wall using Papervision3D by Flashloaded
• Weber Design Labs Flash iTunes Cover Flow
• Flash Based Coverflow with controllers
• Coverflow using Fluid
• The World of Mekanism (don’t miss the cool LP record shop under About)

Ghost on the Highway: A Portrait of Jeffrey Lee Pierce and the Gun Club is out on DVD.

For me, viewing the DVD was a highly entertaining experience on many levels. Before his show at Merlyns Club in Madison, WI, Jeffrey was sitting quietly at a table. I asked if I could take a few photos. At the time I was at the top of my Tri-X shooting and lab processing game, and the resulting shots are still stunning to this day (see photo below with links to more from that date). Only after watching this excellent documentary by Andrew R. Powell and Kurt Voss did I make the connection, that Jeffrey was a huge Marlon Brando fan. Hence the intense brooding captured in this photo (part of collage left), complete with the leather jacket.

The DVD features many interviews with ex Gun Club band members Kid Congo Powers, Ward Dotson, Terry Graham, Jim Duckworth and Dee Pop, as well as close friends John Doe, Dave Alvin, Henry Rollins, Mike Martt and Peter Case that render a fascinating portrait of the complex personality of Jeffrey Lee Pierce.

On another level it was fun to watch the DVD and see where Powell and Voss chose to weave my photos of Pierce into the narrative. The filmmakers effectively resurrected one of the murkier, yet dramatic, photos of the batch (right) to describe Jeffrey’s collapse into alcohol abuse.

In the end, it is the intense recollections by those who knew Pierce that makes this a fascinating character study and interesting addition to the legends of modern pop, rock and punk music history. I was not a big fan and did not know much about Pierce, and I am grateful to the filmmakers to learn much more about the intense brooding character whose image I captured back then.

You can read more about the DVD and see video clips of the trailer at GhostontheHighway.com.