00681 InstaRockets

Instead of doing something practical this weekend, I wasted a couple of hours making this for Instagram theme "on repeat":

What a square.

00680 Zoetropes

So I got to making another spinner, this time with a stepper motor and sticking images from After Effects on the platter and filming them with a bright light and a high shutter speed, so that they work like a zoetrope of the olden days. Turned out nice:

And here's the images that made two of the animations:

00679 Spinny spinner

Stick a motor on a bit of wood and screw it into another bit of wood, glue a big bit of cardboard to the top and program an arduino with a MOSFET to control the motor speed.

And ... SPIN!

 

And repeat.

00678 Mars or bust

The bookies are giving surprisingly good odds on bust.

00677 Balls

Secret Santa this year and the anti's been upped. It's a man in a box picking up balls of light. As usual.

 

 

 

 

00676 Video wallpaper

Comes in 5m rolls, 80 cm width.

Used for a dance night down the road. Also an experiment into taking large text files and flowing them over the top of video. I thought about sticking the whole of a film script over the top, as it's just a copy/paste kind of thing, but in the end 80's song lyrics seemed more appropriate. As they always do.

The paint in water stuff is from the last post. The ripples underwater are from my bath:

0675 Video stuff

I completely forgot to post up the experiments with paint and water, as well as any 3D stuff I'd done (which wasn't much, as most of it's work stuff).

So here's the paint and water things:

#water and #paint #video

A video posted by Lenny (@thisguycalledlenny) on Apr 19, 2014 at 10:17am PDT

#water and #paint #video

A video posted by Lenny (@thisguycalledlenny) on Apr 18, 2014 at 5:07am PDT

It's the plastic packaging from my GoPro, filled with water, stuck in front of a black background and lit with my bike light. Filmed with a 5D mk2 and a 100mm macro, then messed with in After Effects.

The other bit is some car headlights from Cinema 4D and it's just a test to see how to make trails in After Effects:

#thisisatest #video #headlights

A video posted by Lenny (@thisguycalledlenny) on Apr 18, 2014 at 3:15am PDT

Random.

00674 Scottish Holiday Videos are GO

Generally, when I'm in Scotland on Holiday, I make a film of the whole thing.

When I'm not in Scotland, I don't.

There are limits.

00673 Because Mandala

Sometime I just draw Mandalas:

But most of the time I don't bother.

0672 Tip in the box

When you go to a restaurant, you should always tip your waiter

... by making a little box and putting money in it, along with a note asking your waiter to text "yes" if they find the money.

... and then making a bigger box and putting the smaller box inside it.

I do it all the time now.

... well, once anyway.

0671 Scottish Pooh Sticks

Scottish pooh sticks are go!

 

Glenmore this Summer.

00670 Pooh-pooh

More pooh sticks, both at Petit port.

00669 Pooh!

 The world has gone to hell in a handcart. Thank goodness the pooh sticks just keep on coming. You have to be able rely on something in this crazy mixed up place. Here's six months worth:

 

 

00668 Creative Awards Trophies 2

I fell into a massive Instagram shaped hole and forgot to post for ages. So this is the second half of the Creative Awards Trophies.

As it turned out, I had to scrap the whole idea of the stamp because they wanted a perpetual award and many smaller awards.

In the end, I opted for a "Digital Timecapsule", which seemed to fit the conceptual bit of the brief. Basically, I stuck memory sticks in the base of the awards which are terminated in a mini USB plug, so that the pictures of the work that won the trophy could be uploaded into the trophy itself. It also meant that the Perpetual trophy would contain the work for the winner each year, intead of having those tiny plaques on them for each year's winner. The trophies were supposed to have the judges comments in them, but it looks like people got a whole load of busy and couldn't provide any. So I stuck a placeholder in, containing images of how the trophy was made along with a video with a message to make up for the vacancy inside:

Inside the trophy from ThisguycalledLenny on Vimeo.

Here's the build images. 

The large dowels were CNC lathed and the end caps and glass for the tops were water jet cut.

Water jet cutting just rules.

00667 Creative Awards Trophies

So I got asked to make these trophies for work.

I suspect they wanted something made out of bits of junk, but I asked if I could get a little bit of funding for the materials and machine time to make them  using CNC stuff.

And they said "Yes".

Which was nice.

They originally wanted ten trophies, one for each category and then changed the brief so this post is all about the lead up to making the categorised versions.

I had this idea that the trophies should all be cylindrical, made from wood and glass and that each one should be a kind of stamp, so that, in the unlikely event that the winner should want to show off their award on paper (like on a cv, for instance), they could use it to stamp the trophy graphic onto paper. Also, the trophy was going to be used to "make itself" - on one end of the cylinder was to be the stamp and on the other would be a piece of paper stamped by the base, covered by glass in a sort of circular window.

So I ran some tests with a local firm who do laser cutting and got them to etch the stamps onto birch plywood. The idea was that the birch ply would form circular end caps, the base would be the stamp and the top would be a circle of ply with glass inset through which the print could be viewed.

And, yes, I did forget to mirror the stamp (duh). That's what test are for, I guess.

   

But of course, I ended up doing something completely different.

00666 Mandala

Having the ill over Christmas meant staying in and just about managing to do  this:

But not having enough energy to post it.

00665 Tower on a rock in a box

It was supposed to be a Secret Santa, but it just got waaaaay out of hand.

The documentation reads as follows:

Operation manual

Thank you for choosing or unwittingly receiving

Tower on a Rock

The box is made of reclaimed timber from a shed in Perelle
The glass is from a greenhouse behind the Fermain Tavern
The three pebbles are

from Petit Port

 

 

 

The instructions, such as they are, read like this:

The on/off switch is located at the back of the box. Switch down to turn on.
Once the box is turned on you can switch on the light by placing one of your fingers on each of the coins on the top of the box.
Two or more people can turn on the light by holding hands and forming a line. The people at either end of the line can then each place a finger from their free hand on one of the coins.
Note: any flesh contact will work, but always observe basic rules of hygiene and decency.
The box also works as a lamp, but because of the hasty nature in which it was assembled, it will only function for around 5 minutes at a time before the power regulator overheats and shuts itself down. To operate from mains power, plug the power supply into the socket on the back of the box and switch on the power supply. Then switch on the box.
Do not touch the coins when the power supply is connected as this will shorten the lifetime of the LED.
It is also recommended that the lamp should not be left on for extended periods of time as it's probably really dangerous to do so.
The box is battery operated and the battery can be replaced by removing the back plate. To access the battery, place your finger in the hole on the left hand side of the back plate and pull as if hinged near the switch. Replace the back plate using the same procedure in reverse.

Should the light begin to flicker, do not be alarmed. The voltage regulator is overheating and needs to cool down. Leave it for a while and it will go back to working normally.

00664 SPOTY

For reasons best known to themselves, work asked me to make a replica of the Sports Personality of the Year Award trophy for thier annual conference. Like you do.

I said "Yes" before asking about any of the details, which is pretty much how I ended up getting married.

So this is how it ended up (although it would perhaps have been better if I'd taken time to photograph the end result properly):

And this is how it got there (although technically, it was in a van):

   

 

Strangely, twenty minutes later, someone else asked me to make trophies for an altogether different event. Mind you, I had heard that there was a trophy commissioning pandemic sweeping the land, so it was no great surprise.

00663 More Learnings

Well, haven't I been busy.

No.

And here's the proof:

So, if the Devil makes work for idle hands and I'm self employed (in my time off), does that make me, like, the Devil?

00662 KAPPAGOGO!

The combination of Autumnal winds and holidays have led to an upsurge in the frequency of the resurgence in KAPing. Madness is too small a word for it. Perhaps a longer word would be better. And maybe one with a different meaning.

First there was the mostly insane Fort Cloncque, Alderney:

Then Fort Tourgis, Alderney again:

Then, more recently, Moonfleet Manor Hotel on the South Coast of England by Chesil Beach

 

Clearly, holidays bring out the KAPer in me. I should do it more often.