• Experiments with Geometry

    In the downtime yesterday whilst waiting to get my pass to get onsite i decided to do some experiments with 3d geometry rendering out only in black and white. Its always difficult to get the ideas in your head down on paper or rendered as theres always the process of learning how to do such a thing. There are so may tools available and so many different ways of doing things that its never as straight froward as it first appears. Heres some digital doodles I came up with whilst spending time trying to figure things out.

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  • W6&7 d45 Friends, family work and play

    The title perfectly describes the past 2 weeks perfectly. After finishing the big stint of work in Sept/Oct I thought I had a couple of weeks free to sort out general live but as soon as I said I wasn’t busy I was back at Stage One for a few days, setting up computers and helping here and there with the mammoth amount of work they have at the moment.

    These are only some of the computers, which needed setting up configuring and checking before getting shipped to Russia in prep for the winter Olympics.

    I’m due to be away till the end of the year now and this was my only real opportunity to actually sort my accounts, so I took all my paperwork with me and spent a not very exciting evening in the days in Wetherby (where I was living for few days) correlating and sorting all my paperwork into a sensible fashion. Buying a bottle of wine helped the process greatly.

    When I was in the hangar it was nice to catch up with people and chat to Jam. It never fails to amuse me when Jam (Jamie) is working with his goggles on and turns around and looks at you.

    When I was going through the cupboards I found one of the units we made for the Cirque show Zarkana. These were voltage regulators and DMX buffers for a couple of hundred meters of stage “step lighting”. They didn’t have a name at the time but after a night out having a few beers in Weatherby with Smithy, and it being the fashion season of Jeggings (January 2010 ish) and all the girls were wearing them they became known as the “Jegging Isolator” for no other reason than we found it entertaining. I’m not sure the Americans in Vegas understand the joke though.

    Later in the week I was of down London again and because I had an early start I traveled down the day before and stopped at one of my friends houses I hadn’t seen in ages in St Albans. Steve had recently moved down south from Newcastle to work in London and live with his girlfriend. They cooked an amazing roast and it was really cool to catch up and see their new pad. They both have a good eye for pretty stuff and I especially liked the tiny carved animas on top of the hi-fi speakers.

    The following day was a trip to the Truman brewery in Shoreditch for a site visit for one of next year’s installation’s of re-rite.  We will be doing the installation in a area known as the Loading bay, it was great to see the space and make a start on planning out how were going to fit everything in. I had a laptop with me to drop off at the 59Productions office. Richard offered to drop it off for me so in return I decorated the bag into a face.

    I was back north that day for a couple of days and I decided to cook a Spanish tort. I had eaten allot of this when I was in Santander and was actually quite missing it. The whole thing was really easy and I was actually surprised how well it turned out. 12 eggs, 1 potato “Potato”, 2 cans of tuna I oil, some salad cream, pepper, salt, and olive oil.

    Whilst I was up north in Newcastle I was staying at my good friend James’s house and it was great just to sit down with some wine eat tort and chat for the evening.

    Fast forward to Thursday I was travelling back down south again to Canterbury to look at a truck, which the Philharmonia orchestra is looking to refurbish and turn it in to a travelling, interactive, music education platform. This is due to roll out next year and sit down in various places round the south west coast. It was a productive day with Hans going over technical things and figuring the way forward with this.

    On the majority of the days I wasn’t working I was over at my parents as (a) I haven’t seen them for a while, and (b) by sister was over from Australia for a few weeks with the kids. It’s always mad seeing how much they’ve grown, as it’s been a year since I last saw everyone. Hopefully it wont be so long a gap between catching up with everyone again next time.

    This picture has no relevance to anything apart from I like it, if I were being arty I would probably say the image has an intriguing composition to it and the industrial feel of the natural lighting creates appealing artifacts.

    Yesterday, Saturday 9th November, I caught up with an old school friend Gleddy, real name Jonathan Gledhill who I hadn’t seen for a year and we just had a good old wander around Newcastle and having a good old natter. We wandered over to the Ouseburn where I forget how nice it is over that way with the pubs and river down there. On the way there was another bin face, this one almost looks like Jack Skellington.

    That’s me done for now, currently sat in Heathrow for my flight to Istanbul and then Sochi!

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  • 5.0 The end of a busy 2 month

    What a silly busy two months it has been since the beginning of december and now its came to an end. Its been back to back a comibination of 2 different gigs, “The Five & The Phropercy of Prana” & “LosMiserable” with both gigs spread across London, Derry & Santandare. I think I’ve spent enough time on Ryan Air the past 4 weeks to last a year although I think I’m actually getting used to the checkin and boarding procedure, it really is just like catching a bus where you must forget to print out your “BusPass”

    The last week on LosMis was spent tweaking the show and balancing levels and making stuff better. There was opportunities to get out and about with a couple of later starts and on some of those days the wind was blowing and there was some cool kite surfing going on, just a little jealous.

    One day I had a wander round with Tom and Christian and there was this part of the coast where people would just run up to it and touch the wall and then run back. So on the final day before flying hat afternoon I decided to do the same by doing a run along the coast. Its been a month of more sitting around than any real exercise so this was a bit of a shock to the system!

    The final week wouldn’t be complete without more HAM AND CHEESE!!! Aulthough twe discovered a “Thicker” ham and cheese sandwich “Lumo y queso bocadilo” the ham was too thick to be bacon and too thin to be gammon. The Mahou lager in the background was obligatory after a long day.

    After flying back from Spain i landed in Stanstead and picked up mu little fiat 500 hire car and drove to Cambridge where one of my good friends Nickin was doing the visuals for Jamie Cullum. It was ace to catch up and see what he had been do’ing, I’m not a massive Cullum fan but the show was good and the visuals/live cameras, tricks and treats fitted in perfectly, good work Mr Nickin!

    After the gig i drove into london where Mr Hillel kindly put me up for the height and the next day  was off to buy a new macbook as its time for my 18month upgrade. I got the 15inch 2.3Ghz i7 and i can happily say its F*ing fast in all respects, yesss! This definitely means faster rendering and being able to easily handle those huge Sketchup and Autocad files i get sent more and more!

    That afternoon i drove to Harpenden to catch up with Amy and James, it was quit a civilised evening out which as quite sup prising as generally the past few times we’ve been out together its gotten quite fun messy! The following  day (Sunday) i drove north to newcastle to see friends and family aulthough not before spotting this Face in James and Amy’s flat!

    I got into newcastle around 18:00 and saw my parents, bot sisters and all the nieces and nephews. Its quite amazing as this rarely happens and it was ace to see how much Jessica and Caitlin my Australian Niece’s had grown since the last time I’d seen them which was about a year ago.

    That same evening i was of down to Doncaster to help my good friend James who was relighting the Ballet Lorent show Rapunzel. It was also a good opportunity to catch up with Graham and Simon who i hadn’t seen for quite a long time! It was quite a ling day and possibly could have gone a little quickener but we got everything in where it needed to be.

    Right now I’m stopping at James’s house before I head down to Stage One tomorrow, James has just gotten some kittens, and I’m the only person in the house. They are the most curious kittens ever, I’m generally not a cat person but these little moggies are a well-fun distraction. They just sat here waiting me to open my laptop lid again, brilliant! 🙂

    Its been a helluva few days of doing stuff and catching up with people and i don’t think its going to slow down anytime soon!

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