Moleskine Projects

I love Blender, i definitely think it’s gonna change this industry for the better, because so many people will download it and then just the hardcore will get good at it. It’s an amazing tool. That is basically what my summer is dedicated to, learning Blender. I have The Essential Blender, and i’m working my way through that, and then i’m gonna learn animating, since the book is just sculpting, through the wiki online. It’s a free manual online at http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Main_Page.

Working my heart away on that, and i have a storyline in my head. A young college student walks into a library, he reaches up and picks a dusty volume out of the shelf, he starts reading, it’s King Arthur, he imagines himself as the hero, he does the same with other books, eventually stacking them up and checking them out, he walks out and goes into the world, he helps an old lady across the street, and then at a shop window sees a display of cans fall down, an old man who owns the shop starts to clean them up but he runs in and helps, eventually i want him to find a girl who’s like him, for him to fall in love, and for him to stop reading the books and actually start experiencing life. It’s gonna probably be my first project with Blender.

Today i realized,

The beauty of the simpleton,

Goes beyond our eyes.

I’m falling in love with poetry, not the fluffy unicorn or the pompous description poetry, but the genuine poetry i can connect with.  If you head over to mindsprocket.com you can find what i mean. Search the barber and you can find a very disturbing beautiful piece that reminds me of Sweeney Todd.

As for animation, it’s slacking, i’m working on Blender more, and plans for a mind sprocket commercial are starting again, at least on my side. My brother, and head of Mind Sprocket is coming home soon, so planning will take less time and stuff. I’m looking forward to his face when he sees how much i’ve grown.

And this is amazing:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=BToZCbf331c

I’m gonna get CS3 pretty soon, proposing to experiment with flash animation, graphic editing, and anything else i feel like. I’ve been using Blender, an open source animation and game creation platform for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Best thing about it is that it’s up to date. It has the best documentation of anything i’ve seen, every summer they use google’s Summer of Code to document it, write manuals for it, and basically make incredible strides with interface, physics, and stuff.

While i am trying to conquer the world with that, I’ve also started planning on a 2-D animation with Mind Sprocket. Though the last video wasn’t the best marketed, i’m pleased with it overall.

Cool websites that captured my attention:

http://www.buildyourwildself.com/

http://www.bornegames.com/

http://blender.org

Dilbert Comic 400×300

So i saw the amazing video of the mirror, and resolved to discover it, as i am a magician i find it hard to let go of unsolved mysteries. So take a look and see if you can figure it out:

SPOILER!

At the first the mirror is a mirror, as his head is in both the video and the reflection. But note they say that what you are ABOUT to see is a continuous shot. Because it is. But, it’s not the same shot as the shot before.

What they do is take the mirror and replace it with a window, the identical scene being set up on the other side. With identical watches he reaches around the short wall and uses his hands on both sides at once. The wall would have to be incredibly small. At the end when he puts down the cup the reflection comes a fraction of a second later.

The illusion is based on misdirection, the idea of the mirror and it’s reflection, the reenforcement, the head leaning forward and the continuous shot message, and the prestige, the banana disapearing by way of either knocking it down behind the book and the ‘reflection ‘not doing that or, more likely, a hand or a wire reaches behind the wrist in front grabbing the banana and whisking it out of sight.

This is an amazing and well done video.

Seriously i want to knight this guy. He’s amazing. Because of him i’ll be able to shoot the Mind Sprocket Commercial with my brother’s Nikon D50 which is incredible. I’m just gonna buy Toneup, $15 software, to remote capture it, and then use that to take the frames! Yay!