It’s still all about the girls here in the Secret Laboratory. Though not the way you think, which I guess is sort of unfortunate.
Nope, I’m continuing my work on a set of characters who are all retro-futuristic and are all, not to put too fine a point on it, Babes. Dames. Skirts. Frails.
I’ve done a bit more work with Crazy Bump, the normal map maker I mentioned earlier, and I’m liking it more than ever.
This thing just makes me happy. “Shake ya Boogie” is an animation by Czarek Kwaśny set to the song by Mocean Worker, AKA Adam Dorn. It’s got a terrific mix of thirties-style animation, dancing wrenches, and retro industrial madness – all with a good old scratchy film chaser.
The music (from the “Cinco de Mowo
See the animation here, or go for broke and get the “Cinco de Mowo
It’s been quiet in here lately, but for good reason; I’m working on a set of characters for a project, and character work always takes a lot out of me – although this part’s fun. Just don’t ask me about rigging and skinning them. I get nightmares.
This is a space pirate and I have indeed been having a great time working on her. She just needs hair and that rigging-and-skinning process that I mentioned I have issues with.
While I was working on her ray gun I experimented with the beta version of Crazy Bump, an excellent normal map generator. Back in my game days we always used the Nvidia normal map plugin for Photoshop (there wasn’t much else to use) and I wasn’t ever exactly thrilled with what we were able to get out of it.
Crazy Bump, on the other hand, has several tools for analzying your texture maps. It can look for large 3D shapes in the image, and it can find large, medium, or fine levels of detail in it. Once it’s discovered all of those things you’re able to mix their levels together, as well as the overall strength of the normal map, to get just the shapes you’re after. You can blend images together, and you can edit existing normal maps, too. Very nice!
It’s free standing (so it works for any 3D app) and during the beta, it’s free.
I’ve been concentrating lately with the retro-futuristic side of my brain, but look what popped out this weekend: two new Celtic art designs for my Saga Shirts site.
“Do Not Meddle in the Affairs of Wizards” is of course Gandalf’s famous advice about, you know, not meddling. The consequences are grave – witness the frog (“You Are Here”) and the rest of the quote: “For they are subtle, and quick to anger.” As are we all, I expect. Like all the Saga shirts these are available in loads of colors and styles.
“Visit Scenic Annwn” is what you might expect from the Otherworld Tourist Advisory Board: first, an invitation to spend your vacation time in Arawn’s kingdom – which lies just on the other side of those fields we know – and then, a few tourist advisory notices. Don’t eat or drink anything; don’t make any bargains; don’t take or offer gifts; and, above all, watch out for the hounds.
Once again, it’s Retro Rocket Thursday – that holiday of long standing that we get every week, so long as I remember what day it is.
Today’s retro rocket is the Space Tub Rocket
But aside from air raids, it’s a great, bulgy, more or less streamlined cartoon rocket that stands proudly on top of its plume of exhaust. Nice one!
Slow week? Consider your options for the Top Ten Ways to Destroy the Earth at Live Science.
For sheer outrageous foolhardiness, my hat’s off to #4 (“Meticulously and systematically deconstructed“). I’m pretty sure that about the time you’d dug up, say, Australia, and fired the chunks off into the Sun, someone would show up and give you an unreasonably hard time. Though this would obviously not be the Australians.
Anyway if your work week is leading you to waver between plans for world domination and schemes for utter and complete annihilation, this would be the article that might tip the scales.
I mean, each scenario even has its “You Will Need” bullet point. It’s practically a recipe.
Here’s the latest short animation from Michael Sormann’s ongoing “Theme Planet” project. “Bunny Situation” is available in three flavors:
“Theme Planet” is a 3D animated planet that is completely covered by a theme park. One attraction after another is piled high and wide, to cover the whole world’s surface. The story centers on a couple of maintenance workers who live there (the Pig and Elephant characters who appear in this short).
It’s exactly the sort of huge ambitious personal project I most admire even though my own H.A.P.P. is likely to consume me. Or maybe because my own is likely to consume me. Very highly recommended.
The worthy gadgetophiles of Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories have taken a 1950’s “Fraction of an Inch Adding Machine” and turned it into a do it yourself project.
This reminds me of the proportional scale that I still sometimes use. What this one does is to make it simple for you to add fractional measurements (like 1/16″ + 5/64″). Still a useful, old school device in the workshop.
Note: Always remember to Measure Twice, Cut Once.
Here’s a fun thing: a music video for MC Frontalot’s ‘It Is Pitch Dark’ (you are likely to be eaten by a grue). It’s an homage to the Infocom text adventure games of yore, and it even features a cameo by Infocom designer Steve Meretzky (above right). Meretzky has been idolized as a Game God by PC Gamer Magazine.
Steve Meretzky was the author of the text adventure Planetfall – which I think, after 24 years or so, is the best computer game I ever played.
I think that because I’ve never encountered another game that came so close to being a new narrative art form. The form is necessarily different from prose fiction or film because the medium is unique.
The game uses a form of storytelling that is interactive, and therefore doesn’t even exist until its audience takes action; but unlike almost every other attempt at interactive storytelling Planetfall and some of its Infocom siblings manage to create feelings other than fright or shock. It evokes an actual emotional response from the player as a result of things the player has chosen to do. And while it may have been a primitive thrust in the right direction, that is exactly what interactive, narrative art needs to do. And has not done.
Imagine that thirty years after the invention of the printing press, nobody had time to write because all they were doing was designing new typefaces. That’s exactly where digital entertainment is today.
A cast resin icon, the Bolts Blast Rocket
Its name (“Bolts Blast”) sort of signifies that it’s the smoke-enabled version of Brewer’s classic “Bolts Rocket
