Victoria Nece

Peeling Gold Leaf Effect

Victoria — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 23:36:02 +0000

So I’ve been experimenting with BCC Reptilian. It’s normally used to make lizard skin-style textures, but I discovered some other interesting things to do with it, and this was the most realistic effect I managed:

It’s a nice look if you need to create some peeling gilded text on the base of an old statue. It’s also great for a faux antique gravestone or building ruin. And the type is still fully editable so, I dunno, evil posessed statues can come to life and write things? Some archaeologist could unearth something demonic? Okay, I admit it. I actually have utterly no idea what to use this for, but it’s pretty cool looking so I thought I’d post it anyway. And all you have to do is change the typeface and it looks like an artifact from a completely different era, so it might actually have some practical application after all.

The basic setup is a mix of BCC Reptilian, Fractal Noise, Bevel Alpha, two instances of Roughen Edges and a lot of hue-sat tweaking. There’s also a Gaussian Blur adjustment layer with a Fractal Noise solid as its luma matte. And then there’s a vignette. Because there’s always a vignette.

If anyone’s interested it I can make this into a preset or upload the project file.

“Snowbot” — New Animated Short

Victoria — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 21:57:06 +0000

One of the Android blogs I follow had a video contest, so I put this little film together in an evening. It’s all After Effects + Illustrator, and done on my teeny tiny S10 netbook. Animating an HD film on a 10″ screen is probably insane, but at least it saved me a trip to the office!

Alas, much of the evening was spent dealing with render errors (lesson: overflow volume settings are REALLY IMPORTANT on a netbook), so I only managed to upload the rough version before the contest’s midnight deadline. Oh well, maybe an extra couple hours is ok?

People are clearly pretty intense over their entries though… within seconds — seconds! — of posting the rought cut I had a flurry of one-star votes and comments like “GARBAGE.” Oh YouTube. At least no one’s claiming that my film is an Obama conspiracy yet. But seriously, if you’re that into winning a Nexus One, just go buy the thing. It’s a phone, not fifty grand.

The snowed-in robot idea was suggested by Chris Needles (thanks Chris!). I simplified it into something I could animate in a couple of hours, storyboarded it out, then found an .ai of the Android logo (which is Creative Commons licensed! Hooray open source!) from which to build my puppets.

The sledbearing penguin is just the robot colored black and white, with the addition of pointier arms and a beak. And he’s not an intentional Linux reference, although I’ll take the free geek points. He’s actually there because my stuffed Android tends to hang out with a penguin-shaped pillow, and they make a cute pair.

Rigging the two puppets was unbelievably easy… no knees or elbows or hands or feet or even a neck to worry about! All I had to do was move the anchor points to the right place and parent everything to the torso. The backgrounds and snow piles are just shape layers and a couple of gradients, very simple stuff… even the effects don’t get any more complex than default CC Snow and a standard vignette. Still, it’s pretty incredible to me that I can start storyboarding at 7:30PM and have a minute-long film before bedtime.

It’s so rare I do anything narrative, and I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the process. Having to figure out the quickest, clearest way to get the story across — with no time at all for experimentation or style research — is an interesting challenge. You’re really forced into being decisive in ways that bigger projects don’t require:

“Okay, I can use two characters, but they have to be built from the same model.”

“Do I have time to make three sets if one is just a wiggly shape? What if I use the same basic background for all 3?”

“I need a couple title cards, but there’s no time to animate them. Plain text it is!”

The crazy thing is, it’s actually fun having that kind of rush deadline! Normally I’d tweak things endlessly and fiddle with unimportant elements for hours on end, and not just MAKE SOMETHING. But this time I followed my original storyboards almost exactly, and even ended up putting back the only thing I’d initially taken out. And I went to bed with a FINISHED FILM. When does that ever happen?

Abstract Cube Wallpaper

Victoria — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 23:16:54 +0000

Finally, another big batch o’ wallpaper for your enjoyment!

If anyone’s interested I can post the After Effects project that produced these.

They’re all 1920×1080.

Amusing Phrases from Spam Commenters

Victoria — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 20:16:47 +0000

Akismet does a wonderful job of blocking all the spam comments my site receives. (I get a ton!) And part of the fun is reading the posts it has blocked, particularly the ones with dummy text designed to hide a random link. Here are some recent highlights:

The Generic Blog Comment: “I was studying something else about this on another blog. Interesting. Your perspective on it is diametrically opposed to what I read in the first place. I am still contemplating over the various points of view, but I’m tipped to a great extent toward yours. And regardless, that’s what is so great about modern democracy and the marketplace of ideas on-line.”
Travel-related comments on a Photoshop tutorial: “Fellow Tourists April should be good for a Long Island Romantic Getaways .Options are many- I grew up near that area, so I would definitely like the Places to visit in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Until my financial situation improves, you can’t beat the Places to Visit in Florida Any thoughts?”
Full, detailed rules of Backgammon, too long to post here.
The purely baffling: “After the sewing machine needle has continued in its’ upward motion to a point at which it is above the fabric, the feed-dogs rise”
Ditto: “Bgure hurrying through the rain. Down the steps and along the corridor, to take the buy cialis online day—of the rain! I punched up the”
In response to a post about my inflatable cube-frog: “Hey Wassup? My name is Jett I’ve been browsing these forums for a long time now, and I finally found something worth writing here:
I bought my wife a motorscooter, repaired our kitchen |,but the thing that excited her the most was without a doubt my intention to Buy Loose Diamonds for our silver wedding anniversary. These Loose diamonds are Emerald diamonds,and are engaging. The Diamond has reached to our home via messanger.”
And that age-old question: “So true, with so much to stay on top of though how do you balnce it all?”

How do I balnce it all? Well, spam filters help.

What have I been up to lately?

Victoria — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 19:24:06 +0000

Things are busy here at The Documentary Group.

I’ve been working on several different projects over the past few months. The biggest one is Lafayette: The Lost Hero, an hour-long documentary which will air in April on PBS. Here’s the trailer:

Click here to view the embedded video.

I’ve also done a lot of animation for three Constitution Project films: two about Supreme Court cases, Ledbetter v. Goodyear and Edmonson v. Leesville Concrete Company, as well as one about the Bill of Rights which will be turned into an interactive game. Once these have made it through the final online edit, I’ll post some of the fun things I’ve made for them as well as links to where you can watch online.

Next month, I finish up Ledbetter and start on a project about jazz and American history. Meanwhile, DocGroup is embarking on their biggest-scale production since I began working here (big enough we’ve run out of office space!), and I’m really looking forward to it. It’s a four-part PBS series about the history of TV called America in Primetime, and I’m really looking forward to working on it.

Crochet an Android Robot

Victoria — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 00:45:52 +0000

I love the Android logo guy. He’s adorable. So I thought I’d make a stuffed one!

I improvised the entire pattern as I went, so this is a bit of a rough how-to, and can be adapted to make robots of all shapes and sizes.

You know that little flash widget thing Google gives devs that generates infinite random robots? It’s like a (much slower) version of that.

To make your own cuddly little robot, you will need:

Crochet hook: Size K (6.5mm)
Tapestry needle
Yarn: 1 skein (170 yards) Lion Brand Vanna’s Choice in Fern or other worsted weight yarn, and a small amount of scrap white yarn
Stuffing of your choice. I don’t know how much, I just have a giant pillow-size bag of polyester fiberfill I grab by the handful and never seem to run out of.

He’s basically all single crochet, and intentionally a little asymmetrical and off-center, as I wanted to add a bit of softness to a very geometric design (also, not having to count stitches is quite satisfying). This was a quick project – took about two evenings of work. You can make him as big or as small as you like, and you may want to get extra yarn just in case — I used almost exactly one skein.

Step 1: Body

Chain 20, or as many stitches as you’d like his body to be tall. Then work back and forth in single crochet until you’ve made a a tall, skinny rectangle for the body. Keep going until you have a piece long enough to wrap into a cylinder roughly as wide as you’d like his body to be. Mine looked something like this:

Using a tapestry needle, stitch the two short sides of the rectangle (red in the illustration) together to create a tube.

Step 2: Neck and Head

The neck and head are crocheted in the round directly on top of the body tube. It’s essentially a matter of expanding and contracting the circumference of the cylinder.

Neck
Row 1: To create the neck, start with a round of FPsc stitches on the inside of the body’s top edge.

Row 2-3: Work each round in sc, with enough decreases throughout to shrink the circumference a bit. (I think I skipped a stitch every five or so?). If you want a deeper notch for the neck, add a couple more rows here.

Row 4: Work a round of FPsc stitches on top of the previous row.

Row 5-6: Work each round in sc, increasing by the same number you decreased by previously. Continue adding rows until the base of the head will be the same circumference as the body.

Head
If you want a hard edge at the bottom of the head, work the first round in FPsc on top of the neck. For a softer edge, work in sc.

Work each row in sc in the round. I shaped the head by skipping an increasing number of stiches each row as I went, first one for every 15 then one for every ten and so forth, using bigger decrease increments when I wanted to round the head faster. I don’t think I had a precise pattern, but I did end by skipping one for each five, then four, then three and two stiches, until I’d sealed the top of the head. Just do what looks right — you may have to experiment a bit to get it right.

When you get to the top, stitch it closed and pull the yarn tail through to the inside.

Step 3: Appendages

Arms
The arms are basically little sausages. You’ll need to make two of them, unless your robot is a little unusual.

Chain 3 and join. Work 2 sc in each stitch until you have them as wide as you want them, then work 1 sc in each until the arm is about as long as you want it to be.

Stuff it, then decrease back down to seal it off. Pull through the last loop, then leave a long enough yarn tail to sew the arm to the body.

Legs
The legs are similar, but shorter and squatter, and I didn’t sew them shut before I attached them to the body. Make two.

Chain 3 and join. Work 2 sc in each stitch until the leg is a bit wider than the arm tubes.

Crochet one FPsc row on top of the work, then work 1 sc in each st until the leg is as long as you want it to be. You don’t need to decrease like you did the arms — the unattached legs look like little baskets. Pull through the last loop and leave a tail for later.

Antennae
To make an antenna, crochet two rows of SC, fold them in half and slip-stitch the halves together. Make them as long or short as you wish, and leave a little tail yarn.

Step 4: Assembly and Finishing

Attach the arms to the top edge of the body using their tail yarn, one on each side. They should flap around pretty nicely.

Stuff the head and body, then fold the body fabric over on itself at the bottom, tuck in the corners, and sew it shut. This will make your robot a little more rectangular.

Stuff and sew on the legs. On my android, the legs are attached toward the front of the body instead of directly on the bottom — this way, they point slightly forward so I can sit him down.

Attach the antennae. You may want to try pinning them a couple different places before you decide where the best spot is.

Add eyes. I just stitched on some scrap fuzzy white yarn with a tapestry needle, but you could use buttons or even those plastic googly eyes if you’re so inclined.

And that’s about it! I’d love to see anyone else’s attempts.

I usually write Photoshop tutorials, not crochet patterns, so let me know if there’s anything confusing and I’ll try to explain better.

How to Talk to a Graphic Designer in Six Easy Steps: Part One

Victoria — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:21:43 +0000

All design projects have different needs, and individual clients and designers are very different people and have different ways of working, thinking and talking about their work. But having a general framework for interaction can help prevent people coming across as, say, a “nightmare client” or a stubborn artist unwilling to stray from their “vision.” With permission, I’m going to use a small design project I did recently for a workshop performance of Kevin Clark’s opera Summer’s Twilight as an example. This is a long piece, and it may sound like a complicated process, but it is far less scary and involved that it seems — the example project only took a few hours over a couple of days.

STEP ONE: INITIAL CONCEPT

One thing I’ve learned from working in documentary is how important it is to have all the facts BEFORE you begin, and getting everyone on the same page early on will save time, tears, and money. First, and most important rule for both sides: be honest. I used to think that the hardest clients to work for are people with absolutely no idea what they want. In fact, the most difficult clients are the ones who either claim to have no idea what they want, but secretly have something very specific in mind, or the ones who demand something with great specificity, but actually have no clue what they’re asking for and afraid to show it. If you really don’t know what you want from a designer, SAY SO. We won’t judge you! If you don’t know anything about graphic design and have never hired a pro before, SAY SO. We’re happy to walk you through the process. And if you don’t understand technical jargon we use, don’t be scared to ask what we mean. And that goes both ways — if you’re a designer and you don’t understand a brief, SAY SO. If something is far easier or harder than a client realizes, SAY SO. (And don’t be scared to mention things you think they may have left out, for that matter, or a creative alternative they might not have considered.) Ask for a fair rate and explain your charges — do you charge by the day or hour, build in rounds of changes with additional ones extra or just have a flat final figure? Get a contract.

TRUE STORY: The single most horrifying phrase I have ever heard came four months into a freelance animation project, less than a week before final broadcast delivery date: “…can we do this in 3D?” I nearly fell over. And no one was happy with the final results on either side.

That said, where do you start? Get the technical details out of the way. A designer needs to know the scale of the project immediately — are we talking posters, a website, animation, just a logo? All of the above? Does the client need various design elements to use later on their own, or will they come back to you anytime they need anything else? Is it for print? If so, are you printing in full color, black and white, spot color? It’s okay to ask what your options are — and there may be alternatives that will give you everything you need faster and/or for less money. How big is the biggest thing you’re making? It’s fine if you grab your program’s inch-high headshots off of facebook, but if you want posters with photos on them, you’d better be able to get your source materials in high resolution. If it’s an animated project, what are your delivery specs? Are you working in 1080p HD but want to ensure your lower thirds are still readable on YouTube? Will your broadcast graphics need to be able to be converted into DVD covers and labels? And one last very important and often-overlooked question: do you have the rights to all the materials you want to use?

Next, what’s the turnaround time? How does that fit into the designer’s schedule? Is there a hard or flexible deadline? Is it possible to finish by then? For Kevin’s opera, there’s no chance of making posters becoming The Neverending Project — they have to be done and printed before the performance date. But talking out the design requirements led to us both realizing that it wasn’t just posters — there are programs and feedback forms to design, and the logo has to work everywhere from facebook to the cover of the score, so I need to give him a few extra variations on it (for instance, a solid black version that will photocopy well). And those logo designs have to happen sooner, so he can begin his publicity campaign as quickly as possible.

Once you have that settled, you can talk style. Piles of adjectives are good, as are references to existing designs you think have a similar look and feel to what you’re going for. Think color, tone, texture. How much text is there? Once I’ve talked through this stuff, I actually like to condense the conversation into a little summary to make sure we’re on the same page. Here’s what I said to Kevin:

You need to create a visual “look” to go with this performance. On a broad level, you want it to convey that this is a creative new approach to looking at a classical piece, and that it’s serious work but accessible and fun. And you want to look like *you’re* for serious as well, and that the music is central to the production. Finding the balance between all those elements is the biggest challenge.

Visually, you’re thinking things that suggest “nighttime” and “forest” would be a good place to start. Flexibility is also key — you need something that works in both B&W and color, so strong simple shapes are probably smart — you want to be able to make readable photocopies, if need be, and going the vector route will give you scalability. You also definitely need a logo delivered separately so you can use it in other places. If you want to create a consistent look for everything, you probably also want a few related elements that you can repurpose on their own (if, for instance, the poster was trees on a night sky, you’d also want the trees separately so you could make a B&W version that doesn’t use your entire ink cartridge), as well as a couple color swatches and a typeface or two to use for all non-logo text.

After we concluded we were on the same page, we decided I should start by sketching out a range of possible logo designs. His homework was to figure out the rough copy for the poster.

Stay tuned for part 2!

Help My Friend Start a Farm!

Victoria — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 22:41:34 +0000

Mihail is starting a farm in upstate NY, and he needs your help!

A quick blurb:

“We are a group of passionate horticulturalists who want to experiment with a new way of life and commerce. We are starting an organic farm on 110 acres of land and developing a collective of Earth-friendly cottage industries that will bring prosperity and food security to our local community.

Anyway, IdeaBlob has a contest where he can win $10,000 to help him get started. And all you have to do is vote for him.

You can read more about his plans (and buy seeds!) here.

Happy Constitution Day!

Victoria — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 17:53:32 +0000

You can now watch a bunch of the Constitution Project films online! Click here.

Protected: Edmonson Cartoon Effect

Victoria — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 20:04:15 +0000