randomly moving stuff around in Photoshop sometimes makes cool shit

Resurrected this character from an old school project. Plugged him into what was on my mind.

7″ Sleeve

Like any shameless designer/musician this sleeve is going to be for my own band…although, we haven’t written or recorded music in…approximately three years. That’s okay, in my mind, we’re still kicking ass.

Now, (in make-believe land) we are about to put out a 7″ for two unreleased songs, the A-Side track is titled “I scorched my memory to forget your face…” which, although a bit melodramatic, I am using as the inspiration for the packaging.

Due to my omnipresent desire to make packages be artifacts with a life-after-first-use, I became determined that the sleeve of the album ought to be folded-down from a large poster, which after the vinyl was removed, could be reclaimed. I also kept considering that 7″ records have (what I consider to be) humorously-large center holes, and I began to fixate on somehow underscoring this point. Finally, I was trying to create a conceptual/narrative connection to the music, and as I thought about the idea of scorching and forgetting faces I began to think of cutting out the faces of ex-significant others from photos, or this landmark scene from American cinema.

Also, while considering that the poster would need to be folded down into several squares, and that the center ought to have a hole in it, I had a passing thought of paper-snowflakes—how you fold them, cut them and unfold them, and then they’re cut all over—and I thought this would be a nice effect, when you unfold the sleeve, it has holes all through-out. But…I don’t really have any consistent way of cutting a hole…OH WAIT, REMEMBER THIS?? Cutting is for the birds, I’ll just BURN a hole…and since it’s a square, it will be in the center of EACH panel. So, while it may lack the organic interest of a paper snowflake, I can recoop some cool-ness by exploiting the grid.

So, if I use a handful of photos to represent the “memories” mentioned in the album name, and I center a face from each photo within it’s grid-square, when the poster is folded and “scorched”, each face will be “forgotten”. Folded up, it will be burned-through letting you see through the album. Unfolded, it will be burned-through all over.

In the gallery are a few of the photos I am considering, with a scribble to represent where the scorch will lay. Some are better than others.

I’ll update with my CD idea sometime soon.

inching my way towards a final.

EDIT:this was intended as an embedded HTML window…it no work.

Initial Diagram for Non-Visual Wayfinding

Well, there are some other ideas out there, this is in no way new, but I was thinking about a project I’ve been considering—a website for blind children where they can explore interactive audio books with a non-visual interface—and the idea of wayfinding with sound came into my head. I know it sounds sorta goofy, and I am not the first person to consider it, but it’s an interesting idea, and somewhat related to the non-visual web interface, so I am trying to build a prototype using Construct, which is primarily for making games…BUT I figured, the prototype will be 2D, so maybe I could incorporate it into my next game…OR maybe it will develop a proof-of-concept for my non-visual web interface…but any way, here’s a little diagram for how it might work…

Distance is broken up incrementally, where objects in each radius would produce a pitch, the closer the object, the higher the pitch. In addition to this, proximity would control a totally analog volume attenuation, the farther away, the quieter the volume. And of course the positions of object would be mapped to the left or right of you, so that the tone is emitted by the left or right channel. I am still trying to figure out how to convert the object/person angle into a dynamic panning intensity (how far L or R the volume is).

A scan wouldbe taken of the left and right fields simultaneously, producing a balanced pulse every second, rather than a dizzying sweep from L to R. Unfortunately, construct exports to .EXE files…but I’ll try to post video captures! Here goes ANOTHER side project…

This is my final test of Round 1 for a 3D effect. I spent 0 dollars, used 2 borrowed iPhones, Automator on the mac, and just a little help from After Effects to kill the color and export to frames. I’ve concluded that the best use for this method is to isolate an instance of stop-motion, pause on that instance for a 3-D effect, and continue with a standard 2-D stop-motion. Round 2 of experimenting will be an attempt at creating an interesting and valuable piece of stop-motion that contains a handful of 3-D instances.