Liam Parkinson's Hub

FMP so far. . .

2008-04-18T11:21:00.004+01:00

Ok so this is my sketchbook so far. At the moment i have established a rough backing story and where the level i am creating will be set. Essentially it will be set underground with tunnels leading to buildings on the surface. I want the level to consist of 3 main parts. A section where the people underground would live, a sewer system that they use to get around to the tunnels they built up to the surface and then i am thinking a library would be a rather nice and relevant setting for the surface part of the level. I am currently looking into the art direction i would like to follow. I have very dim lights, open space within the living area but obviously plenty of thin small areas around the sewer system with plenty of cover and shadows (as it is a game level after all) The library will be battered about a bit with book shelfs tipped over. I would like to make it raining on the surface part as i think it will give it a nice touch.

Images that i have looked out for art direction and textures so far can be found HERE They are all under the date April 18th.

At the moment i am also trying to establish the space in which the player will navigate. This can be seen in the images below. This and the art direction at the moment are where i am focusing.

Comments?

tumblr

2008-04-06T23:59:00.001+01:00

ok i finally got one :D

http://parkinsonliam.tumblr.com/

Adobe Cards

2008-03-03T23:29:00.001Z

Awesome, i played with this for ages

Adobe Cards

Character

2008-02-22T12:49:00.003Z

Ok so here is a couple of renders of my character and the scene, any thoughts?

Part way through i decided to drop the light beam picking up dust particles. Although visually it is really nice it increases the rendering times by a significant amount so i decided i will use it on some large renders for the boards and do the animation without it. Although i do really like the light beam :(

Visual Hub

2008-02-07T17:00:00.001Z

lolage i love this app!!

D&AD Brief

2008-01-12T16:32:00.000Z

Just to inform people there is a separate blog for the D&AD brief. Sam decided it would be a good idea to have a joint blog so we can both post work we have done and give each other feedback while we are not at college. find the link below.

Solar

Video of the Touch TV

2008-01-09T17:57:00.001Z

WANTS :D

insertsilence

2008-01-09T09:10:00.001Z

Insertsilence.com seems to be a very website but i think its awesome. I really do not have a clue how this was made. I sometimes am able to get my head around how atleast part of things work but this has me really well stumped. For that reason i really enjoy this site. I am not going to say to much as this is the site i am using for my presentation...

Insert Silence

ZCam

2008-01-09T00:22:00.000Z

This is so cool. I think of it like a mega updated version of that playstation eyecam thing. the camera monitors your finger tips to see how you want to interact with the current interface. Click the link to take a closer look, its even being used for a boxing game by the looks of it, could this rival the wii? seeing as you dont need a controller i think if a gaming platform introduced this it may just do that...

Read

Surface

2008-01-06T23:47:00.000Z

Ok its something i should have put up ages ago but something stopped me, i don't know what because this seems like it will be absolutely awesome in the long run.

MS Surface uses a very cool and by the looks of things simple touch interface. The interface is even that simple that to add music to your zune all you do is stick it on the table and drag them to the actual device. It all seems rather ingenious assuming the get it to work. It will bring a new element of interface design once this technology starts to develop. People may no longer have to worry about explaining interfaces or making them simple. You could in theory start to go crazy because as long as the basic gestures remain you cannot really lose.

On another note i actually liked the site as well. Visually it is appealing to me, its a simple interface and i would be shocked if anyone could get lost. Granted it uses flash which not everyone will have, but in there defense anyone i imagine who would be taking a interest in technology like this wouldn't have such a old machine that it would be without something as everyday as flash now is.

Second Life Halo???

2008-01-04T17:55:00.000Z

Why do we have a huge Halo around the island? Just curious :)

BD Recruitment

2008-01-04T14:54:00.000Z

This is a site i have been looking at to find out what sort of thing the industry is looking for within creatives etc.. thought it may be worth a look for anyone that needs it.

BD Recruitment

Gish

2008-01-01T17:00:00.000Z

Found a really nicely done flash game called Gish. It has some very nice physics involved such as making our ball of tar heavier, sticky and slide. The way it moves around is very fluid and the transitions between different maneuvers are really nice. Felt this was a very nice piece of interactive flash work and i imagine it has taken a lot of work.

Huge Interactive Goodness

2007-12-31T15:23:00.000Z

Stumbled across an article on engadget. Huge interactive multi touch screens. These things would be so handy used for navigation (such as in the image), as help desks in shopping centres, interactive maps. This could have such a big impact on a public usage scale. I know the tech has existed for a while but it is still nice to see it being implemented in a sensible way.

Article

Ironic

2007-12-30T23:35:00.000Z

Was minding my own business reading fake steve jobs to ironically see a advert at the top for windows. Yes yes i know its all controlled by the content being scanned and "relevant" ad's being sent out but it still give me a chuckle :D

CocoThumbX

2007-12-22T20:47:00.000Z

This is a app i came across when reading through creativebits, It is basically capable of creating and removing thumbnails from the common image file formats as BMP, TIFF, TARGA, GIF (animated), PNG, JPG, PICT, PDF, EPS, ICNS, JP2, SGI ... text files such as DOC, RTF, RTFD, HTML, CSS, TXT and QuickTime supported Movies.

CocoThumbX

Cow Shed Productions

2007-12-21T20:30:00.000Z

I really do normally hate flash sites... honestly... but i can make an exception this time because i think this is beautiful :-)

I find the illustrations simply stunning and beautiful. It has a very appealing interface using the "landscaped" to navigate around but for anyone who this may confuse they have a quick links section at the bottom to help speed things it. Its just a rather quirky site that i enjoyed playing around with for a while. I may actually consider making a flash site for my second part of personal development and actually see what it is like. I have always had problems with them mainly due to limited target audience and the fact that they generally can take a while to load... hmm to be considered...

Cow Shed Productions

I think i love this site...

2007-12-11T22:40:00.000Z

and the car :P

I love the look and feel of the site. Normally i would dislike a flash only site but this pulls it off rather nicely. It loads rather quick due to it being clever. It firstly loads the interface and then piece by piece loads up other elements of the site, I imagine this is done using flash projectors? I can tell it is doing this as i can only click the text that turns white.

I love how smooth everything seems to move from one to another. It has some beautiful transitions and some rather nice yet basic animations. I seem to be a sucker for animation within a website....

now only if the web and world was ready for a 3D internet... oh well one day

Click for site

PACMAN TREE!!!

2007-12-07T17:36:00.000Z

OMGZ i want one..

Cinema Room

2007-11-30T18:24:00.000Z

Shiny :D

Idea basically is that when in the cinema your walking on water. You then sit on fio's funky chairs and watch some immense college videos.

Idea Mock Up

2007-11-15T13:53:00.000Z

This is not what we are doing for our final build but i thought it would be a good idea to mock up any ideas we have so we can see roughly what they would look like and look at any problems we may have with some builds.

Second Life Houses. . .

2007-11-15T10:31:00.001Z

I found this nice piece within second life. It is nice to see people not taking such a litural approach to builds in second life. By this i mean most other people would have built actual houses rather then simply a few images chucked together to make a town.

Second Life Galleries

2007-11-10T21:36:00.000Z

Well i decided to have a look at some galleries within second life and took a really good look around the Odyssey build we were shown during the briefing.

I first looked at Chris's gallery on the college island though because it slightly steps away from a traditional building and has a large open space in which to view work.

Then i had a look around a gallery i found a long time ago called space gallery. It has nice big open spaces but still remains traditional in the sense that it uses floors and stairs. This to me seems rather pointless considering we are within second life.

Then i looked at the Odyssey build as well as social network and had a little delve in to how the social network and second life interact with each other but i am going to take a closer look in to it before i post about it. I like the way it uses space though. It has nice open plan areas to view videos, shows and work. It is generally just a weird place with very few real life rules being brought in to second life. A tap dripping objects such as cars, floating seats and lights. Snapshots below.

Left or Right Sided?

2007-11-08T23:19:00.001Z

Found this earlier. Basically if you see the dancer spinning clockwise it means you mainly use the right side of your brain and if its anti-clockwise then you use the left. But if you focus elsewhere you can usually see it going the other way to the way you see it. Give it a try and let me know what you see.

Sneaky Advertising

2007-11-05T19:58:00.000Z

I went on Rainbow Six Vegas to play some games on live with a couple of friends. There was a update to the game so as usual i installed it as there always very small and take about 20seconds to install. When playing through the casino vault map i noticed what seemed like a new addition. Every 5 minutes the wall poster would change and it advertised movies and games that are coming up.

Advertising is everywhere. . . .

>>Cowers<<. . . . .

Billy Bussey

2007-11-03T22:49:00.000Z

Another rather nice website incorporating some simple animation. This guy (Billy Busey) intends on stepping outside the box on web design and wants to make it 3 Dimensional. My main grief with the website is the loading time between pages but this is made bearable by the nice animations to keep you occupied while all this is happening. I highly recommend anyone who is interested in interactive or animation to take a look. Also instead of just pressing enter press the intro button at the side. It is very nicely done as a piece of moving image and gives you a great feel for the work he produces. The website feels very peaceful to navigate around. Has very minimal feel and a rather calming soundtrack that shockingly enough does not get annoying unlike most sites with music (cough cough myspace) Take your time and have a careful look around his site.

Overall this is much better done then the previously posted Heeleys Gamer website. Let me know what you think.

Billy Bussey

Time Machine

2007-11-02T00:14:00.000Z

I got my hard drive so obviously i had to set it up and start up time machine. The initial backup took a while as expected. I then created a file, forced a backup, deleted the file and hit time machine just to make sure it works and obviously enough it did. Im sick of losing my work so this will come in nice and handy.

Fresh Start

2007-11-01T13:59:00.000Z

Ok so after some discussions with Anna it was decided that even though the deadline it would be worth starting again. So i have been illustrating away...

Old:

New:

BLAH!! SQUIRRELLY WRATH

2007-11-01T10:25:00.000Z

BLAH!!!!

This ident thing for me has been absolute shabber. If maya didn't betray me with the vector render thing then i would have not been in this situation. Everything would have gone according to plan but that would have been to easy. So i got stuck with illustrating and animating it. Could not get the look i wanted for the illustration at all, it was in my head just couldn't get it out at all. The animation is just shoddy and to be honest im rather embaressed by it but what can you do?

This is going to be one of them things i have to brush off as a complete failure and just be glad im a lot more interested in interactive design rather than moving image as i don't think we seem to meet eye to eye. So much stress from this, i feel an extremly long run coming after college. . . . .

Shabberness below..

dontclick.it

2007-10-31T23:23:00.000Z

So you have likely all seen this before but i am going to post it anyway. Its basically a website based around a theory that people cannot help but to click when navigating. It uses flash rollover interaction to help you navigate around the site. Any clicks detected will pop up with a question and from then on with a fuzzy screen. In a sense telling you off.

I really enjoy visiting this site from time to time. Its nice to see someone taking what we already have and having a different approach to it. Once you get passed to clicking stage you can play a few simple games that has been created and eventually using a mouse only interaction can become rather fluid.

Now obviously there is issues with this type of interaction as you may rollover a link or content you do not want and up it pops thus getting in the way. So i cannot really see this type of functionality taking over the old click method, especially in website design.

Anyway check out the link below and give it a spin.

dontclick.it

Mac Porn

2007-10-27T23:05:00.000+01:00

ooo leopard, initially i don't seem to have any problems with any of the applications i used to use so all seems good. Spaces is good fun, new mail with the imap gmail is working great and a lot quicker (although the rss thing in mail is annoying) new safari displays webpages so much better and seems to scream as opposed to safari 2. Im loving quick-look but not really using cover-flow in finder much, it just doesn't feel natural when scanning through so many documents. Might be good in just pictures folders and generally media such as movies but thats just me.

If you have a 64-bit system you certainly feel a speed increase in the general os. Not had chance to try time machine yet, just waiting for new external hard drive, don't know when i will be getting that tho....

Generally a easy upgrade, so no need to worry about adobe, final cut, maya incompatibilities or anything incase anyone was, all seems OK.

Free Googlemail IMAP

2007-10-26T00:48:00.000+01:00

Woo IMAP is now a free feature on googlemail as well as them upping the space to over 4gb.

Interactive and moving image.

2007-10-20T20:27:00.000+01:00

Sort of what i am interested in doing. I want to go down the interactive design route but i enjoy my 3D modeling still so this site is a rather nice example of how them to pathways can mix in with each other.

Heelys Gamer

Art Style

2007-10-18T13:08:00.000+01:00

rant

Well im annoyed. Originally i was going to create the scene in maya and render it out as a vecter render. Guess what? I can't... well not really anyway. Since the vecter render requires PPC i cannot render it. Trying to turn on the plugin just results in a wrong architecture error. Switching to maya using rosetta is not an option either as it seems to take 40minutes a frame which is a veeeeeeeery long time. Sensible of Maya to release there software as "intel compatible" and leave some of it as PPC

/rant

Now thats out of the way i can concentrate on what i have now started to do. Yes thats right, im going to illustrate the whole scene. Here is a start demonstrating the art style i will be taking. Just out for any comments to see if you think this is relevent or not...

Hulk PC Mod

2007-10-06T14:10:00.000+01:00

Some guy turned a 13" figure into a PC mod. Has to be one of the most creative tower designs i have ever seen. No problems with cooling as well :-)

Go the below address and click the image for a very nicely done presentation of the mod.

Click Here to Read

Kitsch Type Faces

2007-10-02T12:23:00.000+01:00

Just some Kitsch type faces i was looking at. I rather like the top two type faces but i shall try get Kitsch 'n' Sync typed up in a similer type face and see how it looks.

More Kitsch Style

2007-10-02T12:04:00.000+01:00

Some of the crazy over the top wall designs.

Kitsch Style

2007-10-02T11:55:00.000+01:00

Above is the sort of style that i would feel to be relevant to the style i am after. It has some of the old kitsch items in it but not everything. I am interested in the crazy walls they used to have with the weird pattern type designs. It does contain some appliances that may be added into the final scene.

Storyboard Idea

2007-10-02T11:34:00.000+01:00

I had the idea of using a dripping tap because i find the sound of a tap dripping rather relaxing. I actually came up with the idea because i was sat at the dining table struggling to come up with ideas and the relaxing sound of the tap was about the only thing keeping me sane.

I initially planned to do it as pure video and just time lapse it to music but after later thought and discussions it seems more appropriate to do it more as an illustration due to the 'kitsch' feel that it needs to take.

Ideally the tap will drop causing waves in the water which in turn plays the music. The tap continues to drip to the rhythm of the music and after a couple of seconds it slows and the ripples in the water die which kills the music. Then one final drip hits the water as to which brings the Kitsch 'n' Sync title and VH1 logo to the surface.

w00t w00t! will it blend? but can it play doom?

2007-09-30T00:41:00.000+01:00

Simple way to solve the title...

if (blender == plays doom)
{
console.write('woot');
}
else
{
console.write(':(');
break;
}

if (blender == blending 360)
{
Int32 devidebyzero = 1 / 0;
//Oh shi-----
}
else
{
console.write('not so woot');
}

Next Gen Screenshots

2007-09-25T00:12:00.000+01:00

I know we have all seen them QT Virtual tours online but when it comes to upcoming games all we ever see is flat screenshots that do not really do a game much justice (or in some cases it does it more justice thanks to a little post work) but this was a first for me to find.

A 3D screenshot from the new COD4 game. Just download, open the zip and open the .mov in quicktime to rotate around. I may be alone in the world on this but i was rather impressed.... yet i am also rather sad haha

Download

Fight For Kisses

2007-09-18T12:08:00.000+01:00

Well this made me laugh, great CG, funny advert, and how can anyone not find a baby acting like Bruce Lee funny?

Flight Sim in Google Earth?

2007-09-07T17:29:00.001+01:00

So i just recieved an email directing me to a post on Mac OSX Hints about an apparnt flight sim in google earth. Well a hidden one anyway.

Check out the article here

As i do not really bother with google earth can anyone confirm what this is like and maybe grab a few screenshots of it?

Usually i do not post things like this...

2007-09-06T10:57:00.000+01:00

but i just felt i had to have a little rant.

So yeh i found out the iPhone had droped $200 while reading engadget this morning. Sounds like great news doesn't it (for when it hits the Europeon market anyway haha) and it is good news! Price drops are always good news right?

Well not exactly to some people, i was reading the comments and discovered that people who had already bought the phone are highly annoyed and want there $200 back. Now i don't know about you but that phone was not worth $599 to start with. So if you went out and purchased it for that price then tuff. You obviously thought it was resonable, you could afford it and you "needed" it. Price drops and increases happen on hundreds and thousands of products a day.

If you did your grocery shopping one day and a month later all the items you bought where half price, would you pester for that money back? Yeh ok it sucks when you spend money on something and all of a sudden it drops in price, but as noted above, you thought it was worth that high price tag and you felt like being an early adopter.

If it went up $200 i bet you wouldn't run crying you want to pay the extra $200 would you ;)

/rant

Not Happy....

2007-09-02T18:05:00.001+01:00

I think my XBox is broken lol....

oh well, off to the repair center we go

Spider pig, spider pig...

2007-09-01T13:09:00.000+01:00

does what ever a spider pig does, can he swing from a web, no he can't, he's a pig, looook ouuuuut, he is the spider piiiiiig

OK got that of my chest now... been stuck in my head for ages, was a very lol moment for me :D... OK i shall bow my head in shame.... *bows*

Content Aware Image Resizing

2007-08-22T23:37:00.000+01:00

Great tech based on "simple" principles im surprised it wasn't thought of earlier...

Click here to read more

Nice Animation and Typography..

2007-08-21T12:53:00.001+01:00

Original Design Gangsta

2007-08-21T12:50:00.001+01:00

Provided a couple minutes of entertainment...

Lightwriting

2007-08-15T15:28:00.000+01:00

Lightwriting in London by the Lichtfaktor crew. An amazing new technique achieved by setting the camera to long time exposure and writing with flash lights on the landscape.

JPEG XR Anyone?

2007-08-02T01:15:00.001+01:00

View JPEG XR (HD JPEG) Article

Thoughts and comments on a new standard? I have no problems with having a new standard if it has better compression and better image quality. Could be ideal for the web and replace the still often used GIF on the web. Still i can't imagin a new standard being easy to implement, especially as its a windows vista format at the moment.

What are bleeds and why do we need them?

2007-08-02T00:48:00.000+01:00

I imagin this is something nearly everyone on the course knows but just incase he's a nice little detailed pdf for anyone who finds themselves doing some print work...

View PDF here

Republic of Ideas

2007-07-18T20:22:00.000+01:00

Not completly sure what the site is going to be about, although it seems self explanatory

Republic of Ideas

sure has a nice style on the advert though.

Rather Nice

2007-07-04T01:21:00.001+01:00

A rather nice bit of creativity, i liked it a lot so thought i would share with anyone who actually looks at this...

Drawing with HTML Tables

2007-06-25T01:36:00.000+01:00

Ok so this guy has to much time on his hand, but shows of the most powerful program in windows.... notepad :P

Football vs Rabbit

2007-06-16T13:46:00.001+01:00

Nice animation in maya

Binural Recording

2007-06-15T15:50:00.000+01:00

A kind of audio recording i believe to be called Binural Recording.

This is rather weird...

YOU MUST WEAR HEADPHONES!!!!
Not quiet as effective with just speakers so get them headphones on and turn them up a little bit!

Thoughts and Comments?

Diary Entry Day 3

2007-03-25T10:03:00.000+01:00

So i woke up around 9am on Saturday morning as usual and went for a morning jog as usual. The weather wasn't to bad thankfully but could have been better. I ran up to Alwoodley Lane from Moortown and then back again. Not to bad i thought.

When i get back i got cleaned up and had a nice sausage sandwich for breakfast. Tried to get in touch with Bex to see how she was feeling but didn't hear anything until about 1:30pm. Guess she must be really ill to sleep that long, i went up to see her for a little bit, we started to watch a film but she kept falling asleep and looked really unwell so i went home and let her rest.

Later that day i went down to my friends house, we had a kick around and threw a rugger around for a bit. Then we had a couple of beers and watched the football game. The game could have been more exciting to be fair...

I got home and had my usual late night building usless stuff on second life, then watched CSI for a bit before falling asleep.

Diary Entry Day 2

2007-03-24T09:53:00.000Z

Ok, so a usual rather boring friday morning. Woke up around 8am to get ready for work since i started at 9am. Oh how i hate a 9 - 5 shift, i don't mind starting at 6.30 or 7.00 because i then leave between 2.30 and 3.00 because this means i don't lose my day.

After a usual day of work i was supposed to be going to see a movie with my Bex but she unfortunatly fell ill again. So she rested at home so i spent my evening on second life and playing on the 360. Caught up on Ghost Recon 2 which i must admit is awesome. Also watched spider man 1 and 2 back to back for some strange reason... not to keen of them just felt like it.

Diary Entry Day 1

2007-03-23T18:42:00.000Z

Ok. So this is Day 1 Thursdays diary entry for my personal development project. I spent most of my day at college today. In the morning we are timetabled to critical studies in MM1 but it appears that we have finished this project as Janine our tutor never menthioned we had any more essays to write or anything of the sort. In the afternoon Mike asked us to produce an iCal document and print it off with how we want to manage our time for the project. I think this is now going to become a trend now with all projects but who knows...

Thursday evening was a rather dull one really. I came home and went for a run. Then when i returned i continued work on a website that i am creating for my uncle's paving company seen as his site is a little outdated now. Then i created a CD Label to be printed for the video project. Me and Shakes figured that some little touches such as this wouldn't hurt. I had a lovely Tuna Fish Pie for my meal then i played some Pro Evolution Soccer with my dad on the xbox 360. He tried his best as usual but i managed to push for the win in all three games. I doodled for a little bit while watching Skins on TV, it was the final episode, was rather good, but had an unexpected ending i must admit. Then i raided second life for a little bit as usual, i think i need to spend less time on second life....

iCal Document

2007-03-23T18:14:00.000Z

We were asked to timetable our project in iCal so here you go...

Personal Development Brief

2007-03-19T09:07:00.000Z

I chose to do the website that is about a day in my life. I felt this brief could be very interesting with some strong creative ideas that could go in to it. I have also always had a keen interest in website design for a few years and i think it might be a good idea to try explore this further and learn some things i currently don't know. Maybe look into web 2.0 a bit.