I'm on the verge of completing the film I've been working on for the CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) film competition. Here is a list of Freesound sound credits that I have used in the project.
I will post the film up on my blog in the near future...
Downloaded on October 29th, 2011
S: Free At Last.wav by Phr4kture -- http://www.freesound.org/people/Phr4kture/sounds/71066/
S: 20070918.galloping.horse.wav by dobroide -- http://www.freesound.org/people/dobroide/sounds/41180/
S: white noise citypark 9 pm sunset.wav by klankbeeld -- http://www.freesound.org/people/klankbeeld/sounds/118824/
S: 061810_park.wav by sagetyrtle -- http://www.freesound.org/people/sagetyrtle/sounds/99500/
S: LondonTraffic.wav by pcaeldries -- http://www.freesound.org/people/pcaeldries/sounds/103026/
S: forest spring birds windy 3bft 1pm.wav by klankbeeld -- http://www.freesound.org/people/wanna73/sounds/20291/
S: Thailand Jungle Cicade.wav by Greencouch -- http://www.freesound.org/people/Greencouch/sounds/103563/
S: ambience01.wav by yewbic -- http://www.freesound.org/people/yewbic/sounds/31904/
S: The Begining has End.wav by Proxima4 -- http://www.freesound.org/people/Proxima4/sounds/104318/
S: modulated_radio_static.wav by Incarnadine -- http://www.freesound.org/people/Incarnadine/sounds/16997/
Saturday, 29 October 2011
Monday, 17 October 2011
Thursday, 13 October 2011
So it begins...the third year! My plan of action..
Third year. The final year. Our last year. (On our Digital Animation BA for those of you who may not know what I'm on about.) Its a little bit scary but also very exciting!
To summarise my statement of Intent for this year: I will be focusing on the following areas:
Concept Art, Backgrounds/Environments and Compositing.
These are areas that I enjoy working in and also where my strengths lie. I'm not directing for now as I'm currently finishing off directing an animation for the campaign for Nuclear Disarmament film competition (Deadline: October 31st.) I'd also like to try specialising as up until now I have been very generalist. On the side, I'm hoping to work through 'The digital matte painting handbook' by David B. Mattingly and learn the basics of Nuke.
Concept Art, Backgrounds/Environments and Compositing.
These are areas that I enjoy working in and also where my strengths lie. I'm not directing for now as I'm currently finishing off directing an animation for the campaign for Nuclear Disarmament film competition (Deadline: October 31st.) I'd also like to try specialising as up until now I have been very generalist. On the side, I'm hoping to work through 'The digital matte painting handbook' by David B. Mattingly and learn the basics of Nuke.
This sketch sums up my work situation at the moment:
So long as I maintain a zen-like equilibrium calmness in my day to day life I will manage to work successfully on all the projects I have chosen/been chosen to work on! Its early days at the moment so naturally I'm optimistic and very determined. This sketch makes me realise that I should practise drawing hands - they're meant to be big as I was playing with the perspective/fore-shortening but they look a bit funny!
Here is a brief rundown of each project I'm working on at the moment :
Here is a brief rundown of each project I'm working on at the moment :
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) Film competition
This is something I have been chipping away at since July working with my friend Carl Norris (a recent UCF Illustration graduate.) He has designed and painted all the backgrounds and done some animation of a butterfly (stop motion.) I have written the script, done the layouts, produced animation of a horse running and currently I'm compositing. My little cousin Brenda (14) has done the voice over (of a girl aged 8ish.) Tom Gameson is helping me out with the animation of the little girl. At the moment I still have to put together 2 more scenes, re-render an apocalyptic version of the first 2 scenes and create the final piece incorporating the voice over and sound effects. For now check out Scene 1 below:
Here is a still from Scene 2:
I am working hard to get this in on time, it will be great to free myself up for the other projects.
London Riots Animation
This is Tom Gameson's project continued on from Summer where he worked on it at Newgrounds in America. In exchange for him helping me out with some animation for the CND project, I'm helping him out by producing a couple of backgrounds for his animation. The animation shot I'm doing the background for can be seen here.
Work in progress/sketches:
Tom would like the riot-ridden city to be a bit overwhelming, looming over the character. I will keep working more to the style of the 1st piece as he prefers this one. Other things to bear in mind is that it is cental London (ie. Tottenham court road) and its after the sun has gone down so a colour pallet of mainly blues/greys. He also mentioned I could put in some bright colours - ie. a Dixons store front etc. There should be some smashed windows but nothing to dramatic and no landmarks/iconic London buildings. Incidentally here is a good video of the London riots put together by Mike Skinner from 'The Streets'
This could come in very useful for reference..
Wife left home. Director - Tom Gameson
This is Toms Final Major Project idea. He would like me to create backgrounds inspired by a mix of Ralph Steadman, The Beano and The Iron Giant. Its going to be a working class love story set in a town. Tom mentioned that he would like to do it to this song:
Sketchbook work (inc. inspiration from Ralph Steadman):
Specimen Paisley. Director - Olly Skillman-Wilson
This is going to be a 3D animated film that is Science Fiction but with some allegorical reference to our current energy situation. It involves an ambitious lab scientist, a cat and some Amazonian eels. My job is to be a concept artist and work on the environments and characters. Its great to have the opportunity to do some concept work. I will post work up soon.
Shell & Paddy. Director - Thomas Spettle
This will be done in the style of Loony Toons. So it will be a 2D animation with some great cartoon characters and visual gags. Thomas would like me to produce the backgrounds. I will post work up for this in the near future.
Dissertation
Hopefully I will just chip away at this on the side comfortably and with great interest! My title is "Analysing Animation as a powerful, effective and free art form in Music Videos." Music videos are a great area for the more Avant Garde side of Animation.
To finish this post on a random note. Here's a cool photo I took yesterday morning.
The light was caused by a recycling van that woke me up!
Wednesday, 12 October 2011
Some Art I did before term
This first image I made following a Photoshop tutorial from the magazine " Illustrate with Photoshop - volume one" by a chap called Magnus Kjall. I thought it would be especially useful to go through to get a feel for matte painting. I found it quite satisfying to produce.
Here's an album cover I produced for my friend Nathan. The music is a groovy blend of trip hop and ambient electro. Nature is a theme that features strongly in his work. He wanted something a bit Kandinsky. You can listen to the tracks for free here..
This is a painting I did (using Gouache) of the view outside my bedroom window. Its quite vibrant for a car park! After doing the drawing, I got the paints ready at which point I looked up and the car had gone. I decided to paint the rest anyway - I quite like the look of this. Gotta love serendipity.
Tuesday, 23 August 2011
Summer - Inspiration, art work and thoughts..
This Summer I have had the opportunity to do some research into the industry and the chance to re-assess my approach to the world of Film and Animation. I'm going to specialise in the artistic and design side of Animation and Film. So that means concept art, matte painting, environments, storyboards and character design. These areas cover where my strengths lie and what I enjoy.
Whilst wishing to focus on the areas above, I should add that I am also experienced with compositing, editing, 3D modelling/texturing, working to sound and 2D animation. The reason I mention this is to highlight that I can be helpful in a project from start to end. I have directed before as well but I'm currently unsure whether or not I will direct for the third year.
Inspiration has come from various sources. I came across the work of Dylan Cole recently and his concept art is amazing. His work has appeared on numerous blockbuster films including Avatar:
I also like a lot of the stuff that comes out of Passion Pictures. Theres a concept artist and matte painter named Romain Jouandeau who works for them, his work is more stylised and suited more for Animation then film/live action. Heres one of his pics:
Also at Passion pictures they created The Journey to the East - the Beijing Olympics animation spot, which is a visual extravaganza. I know I've put this up on my blog before, but hey..
A chap called Lucasz Pazera was one of the chaps who did the matte paintings for 'The Journey to the East.' An example of which is below. This shows how important use of composition can be in creating a suitable space for the animation to take place and getting the audience to anticipate the action. The colour creates a warm and appealing atmosphere. This painting can be found at 1:12 on animation above.
A friend of my Uncles - Scott Mcinnes is a matte painter and concept artist that I've been in touch with. He now works at MPC. His work is definitely worth a look at. An example of his personal work is below:
Sketchbook work I have done over the Summer
Here are some sketches, drawings and paintings I have produced over Summer. I have used a combination of markers, gouache paints, pastels and pencils on these.
I have also taken hundreds of photos of textures from my holiday in Wales and my time living in Stroud - so lots of trees and rocks! I'm visiting London soon so I will add city textures into the collection. My next step will be to experiment working with these textures and try some digital painting. I also want to keep producing sketches and paintings from real life.
CND film
My friend Carl Norris and I have been working together on the CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) film competition. We're currently in the middle of production and have a couple of months before the deadline. For now here are some clips that I have produced. Carl is working on the backgrounds for this project (not the quick backgrounds I put together below.)
It probably seems a bit random now, it will all make sense once the film is complete :-)
Whilst wishing to focus on the areas above, I should add that I am also experienced with compositing, editing, 3D modelling/texturing, working to sound and 2D animation. The reason I mention this is to highlight that I can be helpful in a project from start to end. I have directed before as well but I'm currently unsure whether or not I will direct for the third year.
Inspiration has come from various sources. I came across the work of Dylan Cole recently and his concept art is amazing. His work has appeared on numerous blockbuster films including Avatar:
I also like a lot of the stuff that comes out of Passion Pictures. Theres a concept artist and matte painter named Romain Jouandeau who works for them, his work is more stylised and suited more for Animation then film/live action. Heres one of his pics:
Also at Passion pictures they created The Journey to the East - the Beijing Olympics animation spot, which is a visual extravaganza. I know I've put this up on my blog before, but hey..
A chap called Lucasz Pazera was one of the chaps who did the matte paintings for 'The Journey to the East.' An example of which is below. This shows how important use of composition can be in creating a suitable space for the animation to take place and getting the audience to anticipate the action. The colour creates a warm and appealing atmosphere. This painting can be found at 1:12 on animation above.
A friend of my Uncles - Scott Mcinnes is a matte painter and concept artist that I've been in touch with. He now works at MPC. His work is definitely worth a look at. An example of his personal work is below:
Sketchbook work I have done over the Summer
Here are some sketches, drawings and paintings I have produced over Summer. I have used a combination of markers, gouache paints, pastels and pencils on these.
I have also taken hundreds of photos of textures from my holiday in Wales and my time living in Stroud - so lots of trees and rocks! I'm visiting London soon so I will add city textures into the collection. My next step will be to experiment working with these textures and try some digital painting. I also want to keep producing sketches and paintings from real life.
CND film
My friend Carl Norris and I have been working together on the CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) film competition. We're currently in the middle of production and have a couple of months before the deadline. For now here are some clips that I have produced. Carl is working on the backgrounds for this project (not the quick backgrounds I put together below.)
It probably seems a bit random now, it will all make sense once the film is complete :-)
Thursday, 23 June 2011
Wednesday, 22 June 2011
Showreel 2011
Here is a compilation of my work throughout the last 2 years..
The work featured on the Showreel is listed below in consecutive order:
-2D flash animation project
-Personal work - 'Harry' the crab - 3D model.
-Post Production project - 'Super Bins'. Here I worked with Ryan Mace. My work on this was: Design and Animatic, Filming, Tracking and Stabilizing the footage, Matchmoving - placing the bins in the 3D scene, 2D Animated textures, Lighting the scene, Painting/Touching up the textures, Compositing, Rotoscoping and Rendering.
-Colours and Cogs - a clip from my Audio Visual piece as part of my Negotiated brief project. The music for this was created by Lazulene.
-Model of a ship for Projected History - my work for Simon Carter's Projection Mapping project.
-Background removal for Barista - Alex Jolliffe's project
-Pool Ball party - Virgin Ident project
-'Dave' Level 1 final film project. Here my work was: Directing, Storyboarding, Design and Animation of Dave, Design and Layouts of environment. The Artwork was rendered by Patrick Meharg.
-Colours and Cogs - another clip from my Audio Visual piece.
-Personal work - Glass spinning
-Clip from the a Music Video I worked on with my friend Nathan Hacking (music alias - Lazulene) Nathan featured in the film and created the music.
-Maya environment project
-Colours and Cogs - another clip from my Audio Visual piece.
-2D animation project - capturing a change of emotion.
-Life Drawing
-Chai - a character I created for our Pitch project
-11 second club competition entry. Fox and Chicken.
-Stop Motion Smarties caterpillar and Origami bird I created and animated as part of our experimental music animation project.
-Colours and Cogs - final clip from my Audio Visual piece.
As you can see there's quite a broad range of things going on, I have not put myself into any one particular area but enjoy the wide range of innovative/experimental/visual possiblilities across all areas.
To narrow down where I believe my skills lie and what I enjoy - it would be in the following areas: compositing, storyboarding, character design, concept work, layouts, motion graphics, 2d Animation - key framing and audio-visual work.
The work featured on the Showreel is listed below in consecutive order:
-2D flash animation project
-Personal work - 'Harry' the crab - 3D model.
-Post Production project - 'Super Bins'. Here I worked with Ryan Mace. My work on this was: Design and Animatic, Filming, Tracking and Stabilizing the footage, Matchmoving - placing the bins in the 3D scene, 2D Animated textures, Lighting the scene, Painting/Touching up the textures, Compositing, Rotoscoping and Rendering.
-Colours and Cogs - a clip from my Audio Visual piece as part of my Negotiated brief project. The music for this was created by Lazulene.
-Model of a ship for Projected History - my work for Simon Carter's Projection Mapping project.
-Background removal for Barista - Alex Jolliffe's project
-Pool Ball party - Virgin Ident project
-'Dave' Level 1 final film project. Here my work was: Directing, Storyboarding, Design and Animation of Dave, Design and Layouts of environment. The Artwork was rendered by Patrick Meharg.
-Colours and Cogs - another clip from my Audio Visual piece.
-Personal work - Glass spinning
-Clip from the a Music Video I worked on with my friend Nathan Hacking (music alias - Lazulene) Nathan featured in the film and created the music.
-Maya environment project
-Colours and Cogs - another clip from my Audio Visual piece.
-2D animation project - capturing a change of emotion.
-Life Drawing
-Chai - a character I created for our Pitch project
-11 second club competition entry. Fox and Chicken.
-Stop Motion Smarties caterpillar and Origami bird I created and animated as part of our experimental music animation project.
-Colours and Cogs - final clip from my Audio Visual piece.
As you can see there's quite a broad range of things going on, I have not put myself into any one particular area but enjoy the wide range of innovative/experimental/visual possiblilities across all areas.
To narrow down where I believe my skills lie and what I enjoy - it would be in the following areas: compositing, storyboarding, character design, concept work, layouts, motion graphics, 2d Animation - key framing and audio-visual work.
Tuesday, 14 June 2011
Geneva - Audio-Visual and Mapping Festival 2011
I have recently returned from the Audio Visual and Projection Mapping festival held at Geneva, Switzerland with my mate Simon (3rd year animation student at Falmouth.) This was a great experience and really helped me to put a face to this niche industry. Not only was it a good chance to have a merry one but it was also very insightful, interesting and useful to meet other professionals in the field of Audio Visual production.
The festival itself was held over 10 days, we got a ticket just for the last weekend (Friday and Saturday.) It was at 5 different locations - A cinema and adjoining night club (Cinema Spoutnik and Zoo/Usine), a warehouse (Le Fonderie - near where they kept all the buses,)an art gallery (BAC) and a couple of other places I didn't get time to go to. I went a bit OTT here and made a lovely little diagram mapping the locations of the festival:
Le Fonderie
Here, they accommodated the MadMapper workshop. Unfortuantly, Simon and I were a bit late to join in for this (plus neither of us had the required Macbooks needed to join in.) MadMapper is a new software that allows you to project onto any given surface - its pretty cool stuff. We entered what looked like an abandoned warehouse to find a bunch of guys and a few girls on laptops testing it out. The architecture inside was ideal as there were lots of different surfaces, walls and pipes to project onto and sure enough there were many projectors in action. We wondered around a bit - mingling with the people who were trying it out before heading off to the cinema Spoutnik to catch the VJ competion. We came back again later to see it in action. Here are a few pictures I took:
VJ competition
A key event for me was the VJ contest held at Cinema Spoutnik over 2 days with around 20 participants. It was great to witness this art form being performed and exploited to its full potential by other like minded practioners. Below are some videos showing examples of work produced by the 2 finalists.
VJ Kobored:
VJ Suave - this video is from the first round of the Mapping festival:
VJ Kobored was the winner and won a belt and quite a lot of other stuff! (see below)
It was great to sit back and watch this with so many like minded people that treated VJing as a recognised Art Form. VJ suave has a very cool hand drawn and artistic animation style with some great characters. VJ Kobored had a range of 3d, live action and 2d styles. VJ Electroiman incorporated some performance art in his work using people who were made up and in costume. VJ Fader used an iPad as his main input - literally tweeking the visuals by the touch of his fingers (practically like playing an instrument.) It was an audio visual feast experienced in the comfort of a cosy cinema!
Another highlight for me was the BAC. The gallery was fully kitted out with interactive and visual projection sculptures. On top of this we attended a conference there.
The Conference
One of the speakers talked to us about a program he had worked on called VVVV. This software serves as a node based compositing platform between coding and rendered animation. Its not something I'm particularly interested in but those of you who are into coding would find it very interesting.
United Visual Artists talked to us about their work and the creation of their latest software 'd3' which ties in texture mapping/modelling/and projection mapping into one program. There was a lot of interest in this. It will be around a year or so before we see any sign of its release. UVA are known for supporting bands like Massive Attack with visual installations. They also talked about their projection work on a Bentley sports car and some permanent visual sculptures they had done.
Another one of the speakers was Shantell Martin. Shantell works as an Artist, VJ and Illustrator. She likes to draw directly onto people in real time using a Wacom tablet and Sketchbook Pro. The theme of her work is to directly interact with people, performing her work at exhibitions and clubs. I found her to be quite a free spirit and very inspiring.
The Art Exhibition
There was some fantastic work exhibited that made you go 'ouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!' Here are some of the pieces:
Enigmatica III by Kit Webster
Further experimentation into new forms of synesthetic sculpture.
Continued from ENIGMATICA vimeo.com/9842123
www.kitwebster.com.au
Of course to see it in real life is something else as it utilises the dimension of physical depth. It is quite a sensory overload!
Cityscape 2095 by Legoman, Mandril & Thomas Vaquie
This city was awesome. It was a composited array of bits and pieces of various cities projected onto from behind. You could see it was timelapsed as it went through day and night. As you can see - someone had worked over it using art materials giving it more edge..
This tracking installation attached a little creature silohuette that floated around your silohuette as you walked across - it made me giggle :-) Apologies for not knowing who created it..
There were other installations but the three above were my favourite..
Zoo/Usine Audio Visual clubbing
This was a nice extra of the whole event for me. I have to say that the music was not totally up my street - (mainly electronic and techno) but it was fun having a bit of a boogie. The visuals were generally fairly basic - patterns, a mouth jumping around, written statements and I have to say that they didn't do much for me. I found the VJ competiton a lot more interesting in terms of visual content. Still it was pretty fun and of course there were drinks : D Highlights include seeing 'Da Krew' - the french equivalent of The Beastie Boys!
Other stuff
Phew! This is quite an epic blog post! I think it has to be to reflect the epic-ness of the trip! I forgot to mention on our first day we accidently walked into France! oops! Its ok though we made it back.
Geneva is a pretty nice city, with smooth transport (trams) that run on time, a large and impressive lake and on the horizon surrounding the city are mountains. It has quite a cosmopolitan population with lots of rich banker types. Generally its a very affluent place epitomised by its 140 metre high water jet at Lake Geneva. Having said that our hostel was round the corner from the red light district so we also saw the sin city gritty edge to it.
We more or less lived out of Lid'Ls in terms of food and luckily for us City Hostel in Geneva had a little kitchen we could use. We also got free transport for the duration of our stay chucked in with our accommodation fees so a win-win situation there. We met some good people in the hostel and at the festival. One last random thing - we saw a Saturday night roller disco by the side of Lake Geneva! How cool is that?!
Some final photographs of our trip:
The journey there was a golden opportunity to shoot some cloudscapes.
Hello Geneva !
These faces seemed quietly confident...
The party was in full swing at Usine
Even the toilet was a visual sensation!
Walking back from the club..
Its a clock made out of flowers! Amazing!
This made us giggle..
Is that a regular curb or...
A little miniature curb planet!
Nothing says success like a 140 metre water jet.
Simon and myself on our last day. I had just eaten an amazing sandwich.
Yep. My camera does panoramas!
Some business cards from the various VJs and jewelry merchants we came across.
Our 4 day trip comes to an end. This airport scene looks relaxed but a few moments later we were literally running to catch our flight. (I had misread the times on our checking in sheets and assumed the plane leaving time was actually the gate closing time - luckily my name was announced on the intercom and we made it!)
So far this trip has got to be the highlight of my year. It was fantastic and I'd recommend it to anyone with an inkling to the more alternative/performance/audio visual/motion graphics/fine arty/experimental/projection mapping side of Animation.
The festival itself was held over 10 days, we got a ticket just for the last weekend (Friday and Saturday.) It was at 5 different locations - A cinema and adjoining night club (Cinema Spoutnik and Zoo/Usine), a warehouse (Le Fonderie - near where they kept all the buses,)an art gallery (BAC) and a couple of other places I didn't get time to go to. I went a bit OTT here and made a lovely little diagram mapping the locations of the festival:
Le Fonderie
Here, they accommodated the MadMapper workshop. Unfortuantly, Simon and I were a bit late to join in for this (plus neither of us had the required Macbooks needed to join in.) MadMapper is a new software that allows you to project onto any given surface - its pretty cool stuff. We entered what looked like an abandoned warehouse to find a bunch of guys and a few girls on laptops testing it out. The architecture inside was ideal as there were lots of different surfaces, walls and pipes to project onto and sure enough there were many projectors in action. We wondered around a bit - mingling with the people who were trying it out before heading off to the cinema Spoutnik to catch the VJ competion. We came back again later to see it in action. Here are a few pictures I took:
VJ competition
A key event for me was the VJ contest held at Cinema Spoutnik over 2 days with around 20 participants. It was great to witness this art form being performed and exploited to its full potential by other like minded practioners. Below are some videos showing examples of work produced by the 2 finalists.
VJ Kobored:
VJ Suave - this video is from the first round of the Mapping festival:
VJ Kobored was the winner and won a belt and quite a lot of other stuff! (see below)
It was great to sit back and watch this with so many like minded people that treated VJing as a recognised Art Form. VJ suave has a very cool hand drawn and artistic animation style with some great characters. VJ Kobored had a range of 3d, live action and 2d styles. VJ Electroiman incorporated some performance art in his work using people who were made up and in costume. VJ Fader used an iPad as his main input - literally tweeking the visuals by the touch of his fingers (practically like playing an instrument.) It was an audio visual feast experienced in the comfort of a cosy cinema!
Another highlight for me was the BAC. The gallery was fully kitted out with interactive and visual projection sculptures. On top of this we attended a conference there.
The Conference
One of the speakers talked to us about a program he had worked on called VVVV. This software serves as a node based compositing platform between coding and rendered animation. Its not something I'm particularly interested in but those of you who are into coding would find it very interesting.
United Visual Artists talked to us about their work and the creation of their latest software 'd3' which ties in texture mapping/modelling/and projection mapping into one program. There was a lot of interest in this. It will be around a year or so before we see any sign of its release. UVA are known for supporting bands like Massive Attack with visual installations. They also talked about their projection work on a Bentley sports car and some permanent visual sculptures they had done.
Another one of the speakers was Shantell Martin. Shantell works as an Artist, VJ and Illustrator. She likes to draw directly onto people in real time using a Wacom tablet and Sketchbook Pro. The theme of her work is to directly interact with people, performing her work at exhibitions and clubs. I found her to be quite a free spirit and very inspiring.
The Art Exhibition
There was some fantastic work exhibited that made you go 'ouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!' Here are some of the pieces:
Enigmatica III by Kit Webster
Further experimentation into new forms of synesthetic sculpture.
Continued from ENIGMATICA vimeo.com/9842123
www.kitwebster.com.au
Of course to see it in real life is something else as it utilises the dimension of physical depth. It is quite a sensory overload!
Cityscape 2095 by Legoman, Mandril & Thomas Vaquie
This city was awesome. It was a composited array of bits and pieces of various cities projected onto from behind. You could see it was timelapsed as it went through day and night. As you can see - someone had worked over it using art materials giving it more edge..
This tracking installation attached a little creature silohuette that floated around your silohuette as you walked across - it made me giggle :-) Apologies for not knowing who created it..
Zoo/Usine Audio Visual clubbing
This was a nice extra of the whole event for me. I have to say that the music was not totally up my street - (mainly electronic and techno) but it was fun having a bit of a boogie. The visuals were generally fairly basic - patterns, a mouth jumping around, written statements and I have to say that they didn't do much for me. I found the VJ competiton a lot more interesting in terms of visual content. Still it was pretty fun and of course there were drinks : D Highlights include seeing 'Da Krew' - the french equivalent of The Beastie Boys!
Other stuff
Phew! This is quite an epic blog post! I think it has to be to reflect the epic-ness of the trip! I forgot to mention on our first day we accidently walked into France! oops! Its ok though we made it back.
Geneva is a pretty nice city, with smooth transport (trams) that run on time, a large and impressive lake and on the horizon surrounding the city are mountains. It has quite a cosmopolitan population with lots of rich banker types. Generally its a very affluent place epitomised by its 140 metre high water jet at Lake Geneva. Having said that our hostel was round the corner from the red light district so we also saw the sin city gritty edge to it.
We more or less lived out of Lid'Ls in terms of food and luckily for us City Hostel in Geneva had a little kitchen we could use. We also got free transport for the duration of our stay chucked in with our accommodation fees so a win-win situation there. We met some good people in the hostel and at the festival. One last random thing - we saw a Saturday night roller disco by the side of Lake Geneva! How cool is that?!
Some final photographs of our trip:
The journey there was a golden opportunity to shoot some cloudscapes.
Hello Geneva !
These faces seemed quietly confident...
The party was in full swing at Usine
Even the toilet was a visual sensation!
Walking back from the club..
Its a clock made out of flowers! Amazing!
This made us giggle..
Is that a regular curb or...
A little miniature curb planet!
Nothing says success like a 140 metre water jet.
Simon and myself on our last day. I had just eaten an amazing sandwich.
Yep. My camera does panoramas!
Some business cards from the various VJs and jewelry merchants we came across.
Our 4 day trip comes to an end. This airport scene looks relaxed but a few moments later we were literally running to catch our flight. (I had misread the times on our checking in sheets and assumed the plane leaving time was actually the gate closing time - luckily my name was announced on the intercom and we made it!)
So far this trip has got to be the highlight of my year. It was fantastic and I'd recommend it to anyone with an inkling to the more alternative/performance/audio visual/motion graphics/fine arty/experimental/projection mapping side of Animation.
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