@Blog

New blog

2010-07-17T19:30:00.001+01:00

From now on I will be using a wordpress blog based on my website! Check it out by going here:
http://www.amythornley.co.uk/blog/

Javascript GDA converting

2010-07-16T17:43:00.001+01:00

I am trying to figure out some very basic javascript, the hope is that eventually we may be able to construct Louise's(http://www.louiselawlor.blogspot.com) 3Cubed project which examined peoples intake of food and placed the results in ingredients tables(http://www.louiselawlor.co.uk/3cubed.htm) into some form of interactive website. However Javascript is very new and quite difficult to me, also unsure of whether we'd need something like PHP to store the results while they send to a result... and how much customization we can get with Javascript. (Trying to present them in the same way as her original projects)

See the quick example I've had a go at thus far, which converts the number of packets of crisps you've eaten to tell you the ammount of fat and the % that is of your GDA
http://www.amythornley.co.uk/testconvert.html

Obvisously this is very simple but hey I'm a beginner. If you have any advice how we'd go about building this just give me a buzz

Old school internet

2010-07-13T23:39:00.003+01:00

I am currently trying to collect lost things of the internets, right click warnings, dodgy gifs, midi files and pages made on the express page interest me. Do you remember angelfire, geocities, lycos, or maxpages? Did you adorn webpages with guestbooks, counters, animated gifs and brightly coloured and massively padded tables?

http://web.archive.org/web/20000229121827/expage.com/

If you have old internet junk you wish to share with me please email it to me@amythornley.co.uk

P.S. Do you remember frames? http://victorian.fortunecity.com/brambles/4/frames/

DIY Screen Printing

2010-07-13T18:31:00.005+01:00

Reblogged from Louise Lawlor's blog:

This is mine and Amy's first attempt at screen printing. We made the screen using a cheap photo frame and a mesh fabric stapled over it and then covered each side with the emulsion and exposed the image onto it using the sun (which took several attempts to get the timing right)
For a first attempt I think it was a great success, needs more work to get the timing just right, also the material we used was a little too thin so it let ink through even with the emulsion on it.

Stay tuned for the 2nd attempt!

Clone Troops dancing to J-Pop? Check!

2010-07-11T20:33:00.001+01:00

This is possibly the best thing I've ever seen.

Repeat-x, Repeat-y backgrounds

2010-07-01T21:42:00.001+01:00

Submitted a few backgrounds for repeat-x, repeat-y

See more here:
http://www.repeatxrepeaty.com/

ID3 Final Show: Sync

2010-06-09T13:21:00.001+01:00

Went to the Interactive Design final year show last week, it was really amazing! They had an interactive turntable piece were you moved small circle shaped markers to change how a music piece sounded, as well as everyones work on an interactive website and another piece called 'Circuit Breakers'. It was a really great night and definately something to attempt to match next year!

And here's a small video of the making of filmed by Jamie Gregson:

Jump!

2010-06-01T12:20:00.000+01:00

Went to Sheffield to see one of my college friends final show, there was some really good work there. However I do not have any photo's of the work, I have this rather silly photo taken near the train station of myself and some of my friends doing a classic "mid jump" photo.

Unknown Pleasures

2010-05-24T10:05:00.000+01:00

Taking some time to enjoy Joy Division today listening to Unknown Pleasures, one of my favourite music covers ever. What a design!

Books

2010-05-24T00:14:00.004+01:00

New books finally arrived today, I initially ordered Rafael Rozendaals 'Big Long Now' in book format, simply a book of doors. But because the order took so long I also got the latest edition of the atomic acitvity books as well. A really odd book which the cover lends nothing to the inside! To read more about it click here: http://www.atomicactivity.com/activity/the-girl-with-the-blanket Pretty nifty! ooo sound!

Barts Blackboard

2010-05-19T14:27:00.000+01:00

Really love this by the work club who invite a different artist to decorate their blackboard in their studio every six months.

Every single line ever written on the Springfield Elementary School blackboard! 2 days, 20 white markers, 288 lines and 7,697 characters.

Check out the wall at http://www.work-club.com/blackboard

Star Wars in Lego in 2.5 minutes

2010-05-11T12:33:00.000+01:00

An animation of for the original star wars trilogy made of lego, in 2.5 minutes. Fast and funny!

Processing website

2010-05-10T16:08:00.002+01:00

http://www.amythornley.co.uk/ps/index.html
Here is a website with all of the stuff on from my processing project. Enjoi!

Break your socks!

2010-05-03T15:04:00.003+01:00

Went to a fun little night on Thursday organized by Johnathan Robertson and a few other 3rd years to raise money for the Interactive Design final show. They had live screen printing, illustration and a few audio visual presentations including a great light piece by Mike Tierney which you can see properly here: http://www.vimeo.com/11384068

Here are a few photos from the event

I also bought this screen-printed poster, Jurrasica park ftw!

Video tracking

2010-04-30T19:08:00.000+01:00

Have been tracking today with videos and webcam feed, pretty cool stuff I have to say. I've got quite a few results, you can have a go yourself by downloading one I've made here: Webcam motion tracking

Note: You can use this if you have a webcam or video camera, you may have to open something like photobooth or imovie before hand for it to recognise your device is on as it picks up the last used device.

This one detects the colour red and follows that. Hence the rose.

This one follows the motion, the first one is the video itself as the object(s) following the motion. The webcam can be turned on and off but the motion still tracked.

This one follows the motion and fades away.

Another experiment I wanted to do was to try and track the white ball in a game of snooker. This is actually harder than expected because there are other areas of white or motion on the table. Here is a quick example of how it worked anyway:

(image may take a while to load)

Pong

2010-04-29T16:55:00.000+01:00

Today I have been playing with: http://www.trsp.net/teaching/gamemod/ which encourages you to create your own game mod for pong by playing around with a few figures in the code. Really interesting stuff! Heres a few results I've come up with:

Ext. applets and More:
http://www.amythornley.co.uk/applet/pong1/index.html
http://www.amythornley.co.uk/applet/pong2/index.html
http://www.amythornley.co.uk/applet/pong3/index.html
http://www.amythornley.co.uk/applet/pong4/index.html

Strobelight

2010-04-29T14:00:00.002+01:00

Made a simple strobe light effect using vectors and rotation with a few for loops in processing:

Click the mouse to alter the colour

Ext. applet:
http://www.amythornley.co.uk/applet/strobelight.html

Type and Code

2010-04-27T21:18:00.004+01:00

Today I've been experimenting in processing with text, simple stuff but with some nice results even just as eye candy. I was inspired by this workshop called 'Type and Code' (http://www.yeoahn.com/typecode/index.html) and decided to play around with some of the techniques it covered on the website.

Video of some of the animations can be viewed below, the quality has suffered a bit but for the record the white dots are @'s and probably my favourite. Now if only I could remember how I did it:

Hope to experiment more soonly!

Snake Experiments

2010-04-24T18:17:00.002+01:00

I am trying to build one of my ideas from earlier in the year during the 'show us something' project.

Show us something minisite

Ofcourse I am not trying to do this in processing. I'll be honest I may have torn half my hair out today. Stress! I've produced a few results though but am a long way off making it anywere near close to the imagined result.

Here is a version of it simply following the mouse:

As you can tell it's not perfect and I couldn't figure out how to distance the image apart equally (Still can't!) I've since made a version were you control the movement of the dot with the keys.

Use the a key to move left
s to move right
w to move up
and z to move down
Note: MAKE SURE YOU CLICK INSIDE OF THE APPLET

or view it externally here.
http://www.amythornley.co.uk/applet/snake4.html

And here is one that was an accident. Use the same controls but have a sonic like movement instead! This is wrong but it was an accident achieved while trying to get a trail to go behind the dot, of other dots.

View it here:
Sonic snake!

Still stuck on how to do this so have had to resort to asking on the processing forum! Really hoping I am able to achieve this, even if not an actual snake game just having a trail would be nice.

My Favourite Blogs

2010-04-24T12:22:00.001+01:00

Decided to post this list of a couple of my favourite websites/blog stops. Most of these I visit everyday for an injection of inspiration, knowledge or laughs.

Geekologie
A blog for geeks and all things geeky. Mostly for laughs, great, great website! Recommend it to all who find anything to do with star wars, super heroes or random things on the internet funny.

It's Nice That
Another fairly well known blog that posts a host of lovely design things found across the internet.

Today and Tomorrow
Most of you probably know this one, one of the best blogs out there for art and design inspiration.

Mental Floss
A website for knowledge junkies, has lots of top 10 'interesting fact' type things that are really interesting.

Technobob
A blog about gadgets and gizmos galore. If you love technology this is the blog for you.

Johnson Banks: Thought for the Week
Blog of the design company Johnson Banks. Lots of inspiration from a top UK design company.

A couple of other random favourites:
Grafik Blog
Site Inspire
Data visualization
Rafael Rozendaal's Blog

Bits and Bobs

2010-04-23T19:54:00.000+01:00

Few more experiments I've done with processing:

Ball experiments using objects in separate tabs, main different with these is the coding:
Horizontal and vertical balls
Diagonal balls

And a really simple experiment from the other day just using random animation of squares. Hurts your eyes a bit but is cool.

And that might be it for today, brains melted a bit. Have a lot more to learn and it's difficult as it feels like I'm getting nowhere with the visuals atm as it's all about the syntax.

Moving cats

2010-04-23T16:27:00.001+01:00

Made these simple moving cats using the object code from the previous post but spruced up a little. Next stage is to have objects in separate processing files.

Ext. applet and source codes:
http://www.amythornley.co.uk/applet/cat.html

myBrain.explode();

2010-04-23T16:10:00.003+01:00

If you're wondering why I havn't posted much on processing in a while it's because I am currently learning probably the most challenging and uncreative part of the language. I am learning syntax essentially and how to make the code easier, and to be able to move further on with the code.

The two bits I am racking my brain to try and thoroughly understand atm are objects and functions. A function in processing is something like a square or a circle, something that processing knows how to draw. Creating your own functions means you could create a collection of shapes or a new shape, then make it into a function so that it can be called like a normal function.

For example, if I made a collection of shapes to represent a cat, and made it into a function I could then tell processing to drawCat; appose to having to write rect(100, 100, 200, 100); etc.

Objects I'm still just beggining to fathom. The idea is you can put the variables (attributes of something, for example the attribute of a cat may be it's size and colour) the setup (start the cat) and the draw (draw the cat, it's colour and size) into one code instead of putting it into the processing code in seperate areas. In other words it's all about keeping code clean, tidy and easier to understand and edit.

Example:
//Declare the cat exists
Cat myCat;

//Start object
void setup() {
size(400, 400);
myCat = new Cat();
}

//Draw background
void draw() {
background(255);
//Draw cat
myCat.display();
}

//Cat variables
class Cat {
color c;
float xpos;
float ypos;
float xspeed;

// Giving the variables values
Cat() {
c = color(0);

// dividing the width and height by 2 makes the position the center of the canvas
xpos = width/2;
ypos = height/2;
}

//Then add a function to it to draw the cat
void display() {
ellipseMode(CENTER);
fill(c);
ellipse(xpos, ypos, 100, 100);
ellipse(xpos, ypos+120, 170, 250);
triangle(xpos-20,ypos-30,xpos-35,ypos-60, xpos-45, ypos-20);
triangle(xpos+20,ypos-30,xpos+35,ypos-60, xpos+45, ypos-20);
}
}

This will give you this:

Which fair enough we could get ordinarily anyway by using just the simple draw function. However you can now load that object as many times as you want, and you can create a new processing file specifically for the cat so that it doesn't clutter up your main proccessing document. Just a way to keep more organized and make it easier. If you also change the cat code to include arguments (similar to variables or attributes) you will then be able to load the object in again and also change aspects of it. This is what I am learning atm. It all seems very complicated for the sake of it but trying to power through in the hope it will make my life easier when it comes to making more complex things later.

Title Sequence

2010-04-22T21:49:00.001+01:00

Title sequence for the 80's film 'War Games'. I recreated a computer's DOS effect along with similar computer graphics for the radar system used in the film to create the titles. They were then re-filmed to make them look more authentic.

I then used lots of footage from in and around the cold war as the film was made around the end of the cold war and about missile's being launched between Russia and the US.

Finally added the sound of 'Two Tribes' by Frankie Goes to Hollywood which is again about war.

Gravity!

2010-04-16T17:25:00.001+01:00

Playing around with gravity and speed in these simple ball interactions.

This browser does not have a Java Plug-in.Get the latest Java Plug-in here.

Click the balls to stop and start them bouncing. Gravity and speed varies according to how long you leave them to bounce and how they bounce in accordance to each other. If you leave them they will eventually cease to bounce.

This browser does not have a Java Plug-in. Get the latest Java Plug-in here.

And the first one I did was a simple click and the ball starts, click again and it stops type thing.

External Links:
Single ball
Coloured balls

Buttons

2010-04-15T12:57:00.003+01:00

Starting to work out basic buttons, these are very mundane examples but just getting the gist of things. These should work on the blog. Will go back to links if they don't though.

This browser does not have a Java Plug-in. Get the latest Java Plug-in here.

External links:
Fading buttons
Moving button

Showreel 2010

2010-04-15T11:11:00.004+01:00

Showreel of my work from years 1 and 2:

I got 99 posts but a...

2010-04-14T21:45:00.000+01:00

This is my 100th post!

GIFFF!

2010-04-12T17:13:00.002+01:00

my gif is finally on I AM NOT AN ARTIST. yayy. Also check out the rest, mah00siive update. lots of cool ones.

http://iamnotanartist.org/gif.php?id=243

Calculated Movements

2010-04-12T10:31:00.005+01:00

Early video art by Larry Cuba in 1985. Extremely cool!

Angelo Plessas

2010-04-11T13:17:00.002+01:00

Just found another great flash artist this morning a little similar to Rafael Rozendaal.

A lot of his work is very abstract like Rafael but great interaction and really interesting. He also posts a lot of the source to his work which is really good of him, so if you like a piece you can probably find the code for how he did it.

A few screenshots of my favourite pieces:

His website: http://www.angeloplessas.com/index.html
His blog: http://www.angelosays.com/

Decode 1

2010-04-11T13:09:00.001+01:00

Went to London yesterday along with Louise to see the Decode exhibition at the Victoria and Albert museum (http://www.vam.ac.uk/microsites/decode/) It was a really great day and exhibition was awesome, it showcased works from interactive designers across the globe. There was an awful lot of inspiration to gather from it and it really put my mind at ease that what I'm doing has some worth in it. There was a lot of work involving processing too so really helpful for my self initiated brief.

I'll post some photos in a few days when we develop the films (we forgot cameras so had to buy some disposables, hopefully they'll turn out!)

For now here are a few photos of the programme we got, which is lovelly:

And an @ sign I bought from the V and A shop. Thinking I may turn @ into my design identity for when I leave uni.

More soon!

Star City

2010-04-08T10:19:00.001+01:00

Went to the Nottingham Contemporary for the first time with some friends yesterday to see an exhibition called star city, which was about the future under communism. It took some influences from the Cold War so it was kind of helpful for my title sequence too. There was some great work there including a ginormous astronaut that you could walk inside of.

Can't see these too well on this photo, but I really liked the prints of the jewels in the background. They had photographs to represent communism with lines over the top to create jewels. Simple but nice. Also that big structure there was made from cardboard tubes and you could sit on it, bit creaky mind!

Probably have more photos soon as well from one of my friends cameras [=

Click here to see more about the event

mouseX > width/2

2010-04-06T18:35:00.004+01:00

Experimenting with Boolean expressions today. They control things which are either true or false, for example if '15 is greater than 20' is false, so if x was 15, and y was 20 'x > y' would be false. Not sure this makes any sense at all. But I've experimented with some simple animations that move and change in accordance to the direction of your mouse. So when the mouse in the left side of the screen = true for example it moves the animation accordingly and changes it's size.

Applets and source codes:
Experiment 1 - Squares
Experiment 2 - Coloured circles

Learning Processing: Day 02

2010-04-04T16:06:00.001+01:00

Here are other results, aside from Drog that I've achieved thus far. Very basic things but I am learning after all. It's begging to get trickier now so results may begin to slow!

Few screenshot examples:

Links to applets:
Excercise 2 - Loading Fonts
Excercise 3 - Line thickness controlled by mouse speed
Excercise 4 - Mouse clicking
Excercise 5 -Growth
Excercise 6 - Animating using Variables

Drog

2010-04-03T15:07:00.002+01:00

Just done the first chapter exercise from my book. Design a creature/monster using lines, points, ellipses, rectangles, fills and strokes. Here is the final result. I name him Drog, the cross between a Dog and a Frog. A surprising amount of code in this but really got me understanding the basics such as co-ordinates and RGB. Great fun!

For applet and source:
http://www.amythornley.co.uk/applet/excercise1.html

Book!

2010-04-03T09:27:00.003+01:00

My processing book arrived today. It's called 'Learning Processing: A beginner's guide to Programming Images, Animation and Interaction. It's thicker than I imagined, good thing or bad thing?

Poster

2010-04-01T15:56:00.000+01:00

So I got bored and made this poster for war games, using the same aesthetic as my title sequence.

Art and Code: Processing

2010-04-01T11:16:00.000+01:00

Video with Ben Fry and Casey Reas discussing processing and showing the many things it can be used for. Very interesting. A tad long though, only watch if you have 40 minutes to kill. The last 20 minutes or so show the more interesting work.

ART && CODE SYMPOSIUM: Processing, Ben Fry and Casey Reas from STUDIO for Creative Inquiry on Vimeo.

Title Sequence Progress

2010-03-30T23:55:00.001+01:00

Trying to plough ahead with my title sequence but I've hit a bit of a wall trying to get the text as I want it. I've been trying to film it from an old crt tele, managed to stop it flickering and get the lighting right but for some reason the camera is adding a jitter almost as if I was hand holding it but it's on a tripod. Here's a screenshot. Visually gorgeous, but not working as an animation. Hoping I can fix it as the digital vector just does not have the same effect.

White Glove Tracking

2010-03-30T23:45:00.001+01:00

Another interesting processing find I think you'll enjoy. Users were allowed to track the location of Michael Jacksons white glove in an old live video performance. The tracking co-ordinates were then used to generate all types of imagery to sit on the tracking area, for example another image, movie, a shape, using the tracking to generate something. Very cool project which once again shows the diversity of processing at an advanced level.

http://whiteglovetracking.com/

Let there be Block

2010-03-30T23:38:00.002+01:00

I've started to research Processing online for my self negotiated brief, it really is an incredibly flexible language with very many interesting results. Here is something I found earlier which I found particularly interesting. It's sort of like a processing tetris, but you can drag to have more blocks, create anti gravity, shake the blocks and many more things. Really lovely. Drag the mouse to start: http://www.openprocessing.org/visuals/?visualID=7686

Really looking forward to sinking my teeth into processing. Going to be extremely challenging but I'm hoping something good will come out of it. There is a lot of inspirational work to access, and seen as it's all Open Source once I understand the basic premise I can download other peoples work and play with it myself. (hopefully) This kind of stuff probably a bit out of my depth but good inspiration.

Animated Gif website

2010-03-28T00:37:00.001Z

I am not an artist is animated gif paranoia. Very very cool to sit and watch, and play with. You can also participate by uploading your own gifs which will be added to the page. I've uploaded a few as well including my jelly beans one and a funny one of me and louise

http://iamnotanartist.org/

Airbrushed for change

2010-03-27T01:26:00.001Z

Website were people submit their own version of the infamous David Cameron poster that is everywhere nowadays. It's now also broadened out to just generally mock the conservative campaign... worth a looksee if you don't like tories, or even if you do, it's pretty funny.

http://www.mydavidcameron.com/

Orange

2010-03-27T01:17:00.002Z

Randomly spiffed up my blog a tiny bit, very tiny bit because Blogspot CSS annoys me.

$$$$$$$$$orange

My Virtual Space

2010-03-22T18:20:00.001Z

Final(ish) piece for 3 cubed project. Few bits I'd like to work on but pretty pleased for now:

My Virtual Space from Amy Thornley on Vimeo.

Storyboard sneakpeak

2010-03-20T12:36:00.003Z

Here's an example of a few storyboards/concept art for my title sequence. More to come soon!

P.s. Working on 3cubed in after effects has driven me insane

Whip it! Whip it Good!

2010-03-13T23:31:00.002Z

They don't make em like they used to...

Memoirs of a Scanner

2010-03-13T09:08:00.003Z

Very cool video filmed entirely on a scanner to create a sense of a story.

Memoirs of a Scanner (Martinibomb Version) from Damon Stea on Vimeo.

3 Cubed Progress

2010-03-11T21:36:00.003Z

Spent all day Wednesday in the studio taking some photo's for my 3cubed project. Still only about halfway through even the photographing progress but it's going okay. Managed to get the toolbox animated and photographed the objects to represent music, documents and video files on my computer. Unfortunately the documents arnt going to work as I'd wanted so I've got to redo those as something else not week a long with image files and my macbook.

Here's a photo from the studio

And one with the background removed ready for animation:

There's a few light changes throughout but it was really inevitable using stop-motion for this part. Overall looking pretty good though. (:

War Games

2010-03-11T21:26:00.004Z

Our latest project for our digital practice class is a title sequence. I've chosen to do War Games. Won't release any snippets of my idea yet, but here's a trailer for those of you who havn't seen this classic:

3cubed animation test

2010-03-07T14:21:00.004Z

Quick test I've done for my 3cubed project of showing how the vinyls etc. would build and animate. Think I'm going to also do them from slight angles to add a bit more interest. Also going to try and work on giving the background a bit more depth.

Go here to see: http://www.amythornley.co.uk/stuff/records.html

If everything on your computer were real...

2010-03-03T11:31:00.003Z

It may look like this:

Click for detail. Also ignore the squares on such things like after effects, couldn't work out for the life of me how to draw a projector, typewriter or overhead projector from above.

Animated Alphabet

2010-02-20T19:19:00.001Z

Alphabet.. done!

www.amythornley.co.uk

2010-02-13T12:29:00.001Z

My website is now online at www.amythornley.co.uk

Has a selection of my work on from the last two years.

Let me know what you think.

Code as Design, Stewdio, Rafael Rozendall etc.

2010-02-12T23:45:00.004Z

I recently emailed Stewart Smith of Stewdio(http://stewdio.org/) who I was inspired by for his piece Pong, which uses popup windows as the actual game pieces. I was inspired to use it for a weekly assignment for university called 'Show us something' which you can view here: http://www.amythornley.co.uk/showussomething/index.html

He very kindly got back to me and recommended some websites I should look at. All of these were design companies or more specifically individuals who are creating design or art largely involved with programming or coding. One of the websites he linked me to was the website of Rafael Rozendall who is an artist who creates websites as pieces of artwork. His work is inspirational and definately worth a look at.

A few of my favourites:

Colourflip is a simple little flash piece where you pull away the colours. Lovely.

Big Long Now is a piece where you simply open a door one one side, and close it to the other. In short a never ending door. What makes this so great is the way you can pull a number of doors and they'll stay then the speed at which you pull your mouse with the next one, boom you can slam them all. The little details are what makes this piece so great.

Finally Cold Void is another fantastic piece, maybe my favourite. It's a bit like a spider web you can break apart, it moves really fluidly and is very intuitive.

visit his website for more here: http://newrafael.com/

Very inspired by his stuff, has made me think more about what I may want to do for future self initiated briefs and made me look at learning some new web languages such as processing(http://processing.org/)

Website

2010-02-11T11:05:00.003Z

I recently bought www.amythornley.co.uk and am working on the design, should hopefully be online fully within the next couple of days, here's a sneak peak:

Alphabet development

2010-02-04T18:38:00.001Z

More development of my alphabet today. Managed to get the video camera recording after a bit of pestering the technicians at uni. I fed the picture of the letter into the TV via my mac, and then recorded it with the old camera, I played around with the focus and shutter a bit which gave me some cool glowy effects.

Looks quite nice when like above, but sometimes it was a bit too overpowering so I may just use it a little, if at all.

After filming the letter with the old VHS camera, I then set up a DV camera (too many cameras!) and fed the VHS camera into the TV via scart.

As I fimed it with the DV camera I used the tracking, pause, skip frame, rewind and forwarding to try and create some cool effects. It involved a lot of mashing of various buttons to work out what worked best. Skipping between pausing, rewinding and forwarding is particularly effective.

Here is a little bit of a film to show what kind of stuff I got, this is my favourite bit I captured.

Hopefully do some more letters tomorrow.

VHS Fun

2010-02-02T10:51:00.002Z

We have been set a project for our Digital Practice/Media Through Time lesson to create an animated alphabet. Something along the lines of this:

This is an amazing piece of work created by dropping the letters into a tub of cornflour and water.

I'm interested in the idea of playing with VHS tapes and seeing what type of effects I can get by altering the tracking, fast forwarding etc. Managed to find this old VHS camera in the studio that tapes normal size tapes.

Bought it home and it still works, just need to keep it plugged in! I wanted to use it to feed into the TV though so bought a normal red, white and yellow to scart cable and then an old VHS from a charity shop (teenage mutant ninja turtles yeah!)

And it works! Later today I'm gonna try the old selotape over the edge trick and try to record over the tape with a sample letter. First of all I need to get a DVD or something to get the alphabet onto the TV... or to be even more geeky, I could try and feed my mac into the tv, then feed the tv feed into the camera... confusing? Very!

Adidas Originals: Star Wars Advert

2010-01-21T12:07:00.000Z

Awesome advert for the new star wars collection coming from adidas, can't wait!

A to B

2010-01-13T21:40:00.000Z

A to B Documentary from Amy Thornley on Vimeo.

This is the documentary from our A to B Project, which went horribly wrong in many respects. Makes for quite an interesting watch never the less.

Faux Photos

2010-01-09T10:50:00.000Z

Found this post on weburbanist, which showcases 43 stunning faux photo pieces of art. Some of them are simply amazing.

Check it out: http://weburbanist.com/2009/10/22/faux-photography-43-stunning-super-realistic-works-of-art/

Its Snowing!

2009-12-19T19:24:00.000Z

It's snowing on my blogger page!

Thanks to: http://www.schillmania.com/projects/snowstorm/ and javascript.

Harry Potter Information Graphics

2009-12-19T17:48:00.000Z

Finally redid the design of these to look a little nicer for my information graphics earlier this year, looking a lot spiffier. Gonna try and get this down to a nice size and get a preloader on it sometime.

Green Screen Project

2009-12-10T20:42:00.000Z

For the last six weeks me and Louise (http://louiselawlor.blogspot.com) have been working on our green screen project. We based our idea for our human interface on the idea of someone changing from something quite likeable and light to someone quite dark and manipulative. To demonstrate this we wanted to take a real life example, so we based our piece on Charles Manson.

Here are a few screenshots:

A-B: Signs

2009-12-10T19:59:00.002Z

Another hour and a half project, to create a signage system from one point to another using only signs. We decided to re-interpreted arrows as hands. Heres a few photos:

A-B: Text

2009-12-10T19:50:00.000Z

This was an hour and a half project were we had to create a signage system from one point to another in Thomas Parker House. We decided we wanted to play with the idea of perspective. Here's a few photos of what we did:

I like to copy

2009-11-03T00:55:00.001Z

Click here to have your face melted

We rule

Playing with Numbers

2009-10-27T21:21:00.000Z

Here are the final screens for my playing with numbers project. Pretty pleased with them, some may need a little tweaking, background colour changes etc.

Click for larger versions.

How to do a two step wallflip

2009-10-26T09:37:00.009Z

Work for this weeks Information Graphics deadline. Had to create instructions in the form of text, audio, pictoral or diagram for an extraordinary task. I decided to do a two step wallflip (the one where you run up a wall then flip backwards)

Here are some of my outcomes, click for detail!

Pictoral:

Diagram:

Text:

Playing With Numbers

2009-10-22T10:03:00.006+01:00

From a project called 'Playing With Numbers' where we have to create imagery in flash using action script.

Here are some of my first experiments from the first week:

Got some more complex code to play with now....More to come!

Rainbow Cake

2009-10-19T23:56:00.003+01:00

Then we made rainbow cake.

What I did over the summer

2009-10-19T23:40:00.006+01:00

Fear and Loathing GUI

2009-10-19T23:34:00.005+01:00

Graphic User Interface based around the book/film of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Used the idea of LSD Tabs, each one being a drug trip or event in the book.

Obama Badges

2009-10-19T23:27:00.003+01:00

Quick first year project creating badges to celebrate Obama being elected president. Took inspiration from one of his speeches and used the idea of Obama supporting all types of people.

Documentary of Me

2009-10-19T23:24:00.001+01:00

Documentary of me from Amy Thornley on Vimeo.

Documentary of me, showing my work throughout ID year one.

Gestures GUI

2009-10-19T23:18:00.004+01:00

Graphic User Interface design based around the idea of hand gestures, using characters to explore the personalities behind them. Hopefully will get this online sometime, just need to try and downsize it a little and/or create a pre-loader.

Animation to Sound no.2

2009-10-19T23:09:00.005+01:00

Animation created in flash to a sound file we were given.

Click here to view the animation

Animation to Sound

2009-10-19T23:06:00.004+01:00

First year flash project, stop-motion to sound. Based around the idea of 'hurrying'

Excess

2009-10-19T23:03:00.004+01:00

Finally decided to update my blogger, posting some old work from the end of my first year in uni.

A website based around the idea of an excessive ammount of time wasted on the internet. Website best viewed in full screen.
Click here to go to the website

'Kern' game

2009-02-18T17:11:00.006Z

Found this cool game which is a little like tetris only using typography to create the correct 'kerning'. It's a game that has been made for the iPhone and looks like great fun, and very well designed too!

Source: http://technabob.com/blog/2009/02/17/kern-the-game-for-typography-nerds/

Dan Hero

2009-02-09T14:44:00.001Z

Though this blog hasn't been updated in a while I still really like the work on it, doodle-a-day is just that, some kind of doodle per day, usually an illustration but sometimes animations, models etc. Very cool style.

This is my favourite:

Jeffries loves the Vengaboys. Click the little fella to see him dance.

Click here for the website.

Street Installations by Mark Jenkins

2009-02-01T09:18:00.003Z

Found these cool street installation works and found them pretty interesting. I think they're made from layers of sellotape, and possibly bubble paper? But they create this cool translucent effect. I particularly like the ducks.

Check out more of his stuff @
http://www.xmarkjenkinsx.com/

Jackson Pollock

2009-01-29T21:46:00.001Z

This is a cool flash website that simply lets you paint lots of different coloured paint splatters and lines by moving your mouse across the screen and clicking to change the colour. Simple and very effective.

Check it out here:
http://www.jacksonpollock.org/

Her Morning Elegance Stop Motion

2009-01-28T20:10:00.001Z

Oren Lavie - Her Morning Elegance
Uploaded by IgnitionVM

Amazing stop-motion animation that uses the bed as a platform for lots of interesting animations, with the woman asleep playing them out.Really clever and creative!

Mini-Bot USB Sticks

2009-01-23T14:26:00.006Z

Found these really cool little gadgets, USB memory sticks that are made into characters, particularly robots. This example is c3po from star wars but there are also a lot of original designs.
Very dandy little gadgets, shame about some of the prices though, eeek.

I particularly like this miniShroom design:

Check them out here: http://www.mimoco.com/shop/

Floppy Disc CD-R's

2009-01-15T19:01:00.005Z

Just found these over at technobob. Pretty neat idea, creating CD-R's that look like floppy discs. For people who can't quite let go! (like me)

'These CD-R discs may be square, but they’ll work in a standard CD or DVD drive despite their non-round shape. Of course, cutting corners on the discs means that they don’t store as much as a standard CD-R. These ones only hold 200MB, but that’s still over than 138 times more than an original 3.5″ floppy.'

Pop Goes The Weasel

2009-01-02T18:05:00.003Z

One of my all time favourite stop-motion animations.

Inspired by the 50 greatest stop-motion animation lists over at: Smashingmagazine which I am currently working my way through. I didn't see this on the list so thought I' post the thing here at least.

Transformation posters

2009-01-01T15:43:00.003Z

Here are a few of my final results for our typography - transformation part 3 project.

+ happy new year everybody!

Star Wars Wii

2008-12-21T21:05:00.002Z

Wow! This is a customised star wars wii! I'd love to own this personally, shame it's like $500. Though that's not bad considering the effort somebody's put into making it!

Features:
· Custom Black Case!
· Eighty-Five (85) Fiber Optic Stars
· Some Stars Fade In and Out
· Custom, Red Light Bar!! Which looks like its breathing!
· Hand Painted Death Star, X-Wing, and Darth Vader Tie-Fighter!
· Star Wars Logo in Brass!! Backlit with Yellow LED's!
· You Can Change the Fading mode to Constant ON!
· Wiimote and Nunchuk have Custom Red LED Lights in them!!

Sourced at geekologie

Ebay auction is here: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=110325376401, it seem's nobody bought it!

Giant Street Tetris!

2008-12-21T20:59:00.003Z

Awesome street-sculptures! Who doesn't love tetris?

Click here for more info.

Owl City Website

2008-12-06T09:40:00.003Z

Just realised I never posted my website on here, so here it goes. This was for my digital practice lesson and it was to make a website using HTML and CSS for a music artist/band. I chose 'Owl City' an unsigned solo artist (despite being one of the most viewed on myspace) he makes cutesy electronic music which I took a liking to. I also thought it generated a lot of imagery ideas that I could use.

Here is my main page:

And here is a general walkthrough of my website:

Click to enlarge.

Projection Art

2008-12-06T09:27:00.003Z

Cool video that shows lots of different projections onto various 3d environments using some sort of 3d mapping system. My favourite is probably the projection of the buildings lights going on and off, simple but very clever.

You can view the website here

Salt Sound Waves

2008-12-06T09:23:00.001Z

I have no idea how this works, but it's pretty cool. It's an experiment using salt to physically represent sound, as the pitch gets higher the salt moves around and creates different patterns.

Warning: I'd turn your speakers down!

Project 77

2008-11-27T20:43:00.005Z

Although this takes a while to load, it is really fascinating and beautiful website. It has a number of photographic and arty projects on it, which are pretty interesting. However the bit I really love is when you first enter the website: there is a rather amazing video/animation that uses actual film combined with child-like drawings that animate before your very eyes.

Check it out: http://www.protect77.com/

Cutout type books.

2008-11-24T14:43:00.003Z

Books that have been cut into and painted over to create weird effects. I particularly like the one above as it looks a bit like a maze.

See more from Brian Dettmer here

Yes you can!

2008-11-23T18:02:00.006Z

click for full size.

I really like this poster because it involves interaction, and rewrites itself. Cool concept.

Found @ FFFOUND.

Copy experiments

2008-11-22T17:53:00.005Z

Today I decided to play around with my printer, which has a scanner/copier function on it! Not just for the heck of it obvisously... we have a photocopying/xerox brief to see what type of things we can get to represent movement!

Only fooling around but it gave me some pretty interesting results.

Dr pepper bottle with water in, rotated across the screen. Kinda cool cuz the water makes it look all ripple-y:

2p coin pushed across the surface: (The line is where the scanner seems to stop halfway through)

My hand! believe it or not:

Visible Sound

2008-11-18T20:02:00.003Z

Cool sewing machine that is able to represent sound through the height of stiches it creates. I particularly thought this was interesting in reguards to our new soundscape project and the sketchbook work.

Found via infosthetics.

Shaz Madani

2008-11-16T15:40:00.005Z

Really cool designer, who does a lot of interesting stuff with typography. I particularly like this piece to the side as they have used the text to create a kind of illustration. I also like some stuff they have done with cutting lots of paper out to create 3d typography.

Check out the website for more: http://smadani.com/