Nick's Blog

Small post this time! Bit busy with school work and some quality game time with some friends (haha!). A bit of inspiration I found last week and today, hope you enjoy because I did!

Sparkle* Reel 2010 ComputerArts Magazine Version

Some nice compilation of inspirational show reels by computer arts. It has some nice things in them, like the beginning with the paint liquid, looks so cool! And the drawn waves on paper together with a Chinese looking tower emerging from it, good idea for a stop motion video perhaps? Really nice video to get some inspiration.

Here

A very simple visual with nice colors that seem to work great with each other. The question is simple, yet it interests me to see what is more to this, a story or a advert perhaps? It seems to get my curiosity, yet it’s so simple, that’s good marketing

Delirium

So this is hand drawn, when I first saw it I didn’t thought it was drawn. The artist made a whole story with it that can be view if you click on the picture above when you will be taken to the source of this picture. I think this is well drawn and full of details. The most interesting thing about this is the lightning, just perfect and adds more interest to it.

Nikon advert

Al tough I’m a big Canon fan, I love this ad from Nikon. The ad contains the display of a digital camera where a man is standing, face detection is on and you can see multiple squares around the man’s head indicating some other things standing the forest behind him. I love these kind of ads, at first you don’t really get what it’s trying to tell you, but then all of the sudden you understand it and you break out in a laugh. Got to say that I am a sucker for laugh-ads, I like them and think better of the company that promotes it. It’s hard to make because it’s hard to think of something that is funny to a lot of people. I do think it’s the best kind of ad!

Hana-mi Lantern

A really nice photo taken by one of my favorite Japanese photographers! I love the soft colors in this photo combined with the reflection of the water and the lamp, fitting with the cherry blossom, and the blue tone in the bottom. It works so well, as well as the blur in the background which makes you focus on the lamp and the cherry blossom.

Rainy mood

A site that simply loops the sound of rain and thunder. It’s relaxing and you can use it for multiple thing, like enhance your music, get into your sleep, or just to close your eyes and relax (and fantasize!).

Create A Cute Creature Character From A Sketch

A great tutorial that show the process of making a illustration in illustrator, complete with how to use the pen and air brush tool and how to fill in your character when your done (using the live paint bucket tool). Going to do this tutorial when I have some time off!

Long time no post, I know Because of that a big post with a lot of inspiration sources! I plan to do this every week I am going to add a bit of text to every graphic so you can see why I like this so much, it’s also needed for a assignment for school

Walking on A Dream – Empire of the Sun Live Visuals

A lot of people know me as a rock and metal person, few people know that I like a lot of different styles of music! The only kind of music I hate is rap, r&b and that kind of music. I like this clip because of the colors that are in there and because of the space theme. Space is something mostly unknown to us, and because of that you can think and make anything concerning space. The music is also very nice, nice beat and good vibe!

70 Million by Hold Your Horses

Now this one is something special. It’s a clip that shows us a lot of different pieces of art made in history! It’s very creative, and the music is a lot of fun as well. The originality is the most important part tho, maybe it’s fun to do something like this in the future

instrumental video nine

This video is in this post because of the visuals, not because of the audio. The beeps and noise is more irritating then fun to listen to, but the video is really one big interesting project! Every piece of the machine shown is working very well with the music, it’s perfectly synchronized, something I like a lot!

Typophile Film Festival 5 Opening Titles

The above video is part of some research I did for a stop motion assignment I currently am working on for VID. You can see a lot of typing that is made with a lot of different materials and a lot of different video techniques. What’s interesting is that there are a lot of different fonts in the video, and because of that you can see the difference and importance of each different font. The nice color use is also very nice to see, and the music compliments the video.

The GazettE – LEECH (PV)

One of my favourite bands today. It’s a Japanese Visual Kei band. Personally I like this music, but I know a lot of people don’t, and I don’t care Anyway, interesting part of this video is the visual effects that are in there. Take notice of the women who’s hair explodes into a lot of leaves on 0:18. The clip is full of visual effects like these. Besides that you will see the band, that does a great job playing their instruments by the way, who are dressed different than other bands, that’s where the Visual Kei comes from (it doesn’t say much about the music mind you, but this band is metal/rock like). What do I like about this music? The instruments (guitar, drums, bass) and of course the vocals; Japanese is a beautiful language that is hard to understand and learn, and because of that it caries a mysterious vibe.

Crazy stop motion using chips

This guy made a stop motion using only chips, and it’s really original. It’s part of this post because I like the fact that he uses different materials then other stop motion video’s. It’s an inspiration for my own stop motion video, but I think it will be to much work to make because I just don’t have the time for that

Latitatio by ^taenaron on deviantART

Some space art which I really like. I made some space art myself a lot of years ago, and I just love it! As I said earlier, it’s almost limitless what you can make in the category, you can do whatever you want! You want to crash a sun in a planet, no problem! When I see such space art like this I make up stories with it. With this space art I think of somebody or something is stuck on a asteroid and this is his view until he is rescued or dies when the asteroid it collides. Making such story’s sometimes lead to other inspiration which can lead to some new work of art, that’s what happens when I made space art anyways

Non-embeddable videos:

UPular Remix on Youtube

This video is a sound remix of the movie called Up from Pixar studios. The tune is really catchy and original because it uses only sounds from the movie, as well as vocals. It sounds great and I have it on every day. It’s to bad I don’t do anything with audio, I think this will be a great inspiration! Maybe it’s useful for background music on a video or something.

Dropclock on Vimeo

A video that shows numbers that are dropped in water, together they form the current time in hours and minutes. Apparently it’s a screensaver, but the video it self is great to watch on it’s own! It gives me a idea to drop a object in water and take a picture of it when it’s still visible. A key element with that picture would be to use colors that are quite different to achieve a dramatic effect.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights on Vimeo

A video that explains the human rights using simple graphics and text. The text is animated in a original way and is used as part of a graphic most of the time. This video shows that you can do a lot with just text.

Found a wonderful game last night! It’s called Audiosurf and it works with your own music! You select your own music in the game and then the game makes a nice course for you to ride on. It’s really funny and quite addictive. I played it on Windows but I can see some reports that it is available for Mac also, checking that out right now.

You can find Audiosurf here: click

Another J-Rock song I really like very much! I’ve been following this group since this year actually and I think they are pretty good. Vocals, guitar and drums are really good and it sounds really great! Maybe some people can recall some English sentences in this song?

A lot of people don’t know that I listen to Dire Straits frequently, well it do! I am a person that has many different interests and favourites, I mean comeon, first Japanse rock music and now Dire Straits from the 80′s? Well, you may have noticed that I like guitar very much, and that counts for a lot of instruments like the piano and the saxophone! This video below is one of my favorite songs from dire straits, and believe me this live is better than the original and you don’t see that often Also, this video is dedicated to my dear dad who I miss very much.

This number is part of the Guitar Hero 5 game, it’s really a great song to play! The song itself is also very fun, only the music style and the band name doesn’t really fit together I thought. But, now that I’ve seen the clip I get it; everything is just wrong! With this band name you think of Death Metal, with music you think plain rock and when you see the clip you don’t know what to think anymore. Well just have a look for yourself:

Found this song yesterday. It’s a great song from a artist called Peter Fox. Some people may know him from the song Haus am See, but I like this song a bit better because it’s more energetic. I like the way the violin is incorporated in this song, the drums as well! Well, just look for yourself: