Its difficult how to start this new blog post in the new year after what a fuck up 2020 was, it would be nice to think that as its a new Gregorian year its a chance for a reset and the start of a more sociable era. I’ve got high hopes for 2021 though I don’t think were going to start the climb back up to the new normality until April depending on how the Westminster circus handles the vaccine rollout.
The year ended and started off very subdued, new years eve was spent in the flat watching Netflix, drinking whiskey sours and catching up with friends on the phone and the following day tidying and having a good clear out in the flat. This was a pretty different to NYD 2020 where i was on a plane to Vegas to work with the excellent guys at Pixway on the Nissan stand at CES2020.
For the Nissan booth at CES2020 we had a 16 projector circular projection surface, 8 bends and 8 overlays and we were using the disguise Omnical system to assist with projected image alignment. I’ve used Omnical a reasonable amount since 2018 on various jobs and have a good upstanding and experience of what s required to make it work well. The more accurate you can make your geometry in d3 the easier the process will be, for the CES booth we had a CAD model of the stand but generally on temp structures and especially a big cylinder which we have here there will be some discrepancies in the build and the cad. Before starting any projection calibration, Francisco and myself spent a good couple of hours taking a survey of the projection surface with several lasers and tape measures and I reconstructed the ad model to as close to the real world as possible. From the top don the projection surface was more like a oval than a circle after doing a survey, fixing these small solid foundations makes a HUGE difference further down the line.
We had I think 9 shows a day at Nissan over the period of CES and all went well with the client being swimmingly happy! Next to us Manuel was looking after the Audi booth which was beautifully designed. He spent hours programming the d3 timeline so the projection onto the frosted windows of the car responded to the car console stick and button operations, it was a really nice interactive part of the stand.
Outside the convention centre Paul and Delaney were looking after BMW, which was a custom built experience in a structure in on of the parking lots of the convection centre, it was incredibly slick just as you’d expect from BMW. Ed was over on Adaptive but I didn’t manage to get any pictures of his setup.
It was a good few days supporting the shows in Vegas and as allways, so nice to catch up with everyone over Tacos and Beer!!!! <– This place is amazing.
After the shows I stayed on in Vegas for a few days and one of my best mates Marley w as int he states for a few weeks and came to meet me in Vegas for a ROADTRIP!!!!! We hired a Jaguar F-type and after a chat with my American friend Charles about which part of the Grand canyon to visit he suggested Horseshoe Bend so we took his advice, stuck it in the sat-nav and headed North !
It was a fantastic drive each of us taking turns, roof down, hat and scarves on as it was petty cold once we left Vegas, i think it was around 16:00 when we got to the parking lot and then another 20min hike across the canyon get to the iconic site. There were quite a few people there and we spent about half an hour just wandering round taking photos and admiring the landscape, it was so worth doing the long drive to be there and take it all in.
After leaving Horseshoe Bend we stopped off at Glen Canyon dam to sight see just before last light. From here we headed back towards Vegas with the intention of finding a hotel on the way, but no real plan. We past a load of motels but decided to carry onto a town called Flagstaff we saw on the map. Upon turning up the street and seeing the sign for the Hotel Monte Vista we knew this was the place we were gonna stay. Its such a beautiful old building and our little venture round town for food and beers really made me want to go back there sometime.
I wasn’t sure how to start the first blog post after so long and its just kind of evolved into this which I think is a good start. Stay tuned for next week where ill be adding another post about current ramblings and possibly a lookback to 2020. Stay safe everyone.
