Blog (page 26)

If you’ve heard of artist Royal Robertson, chances are you heard of him the same way I did: via Sufjan Stevens. Sufjan’s most recent album, The Age of Adz, was inspired by Royal Robertson’s art and features one of his pieces on the album cover.

Robertson (1936-1997) was born and lived most of his life in Louisiana. He left school at age 13 and in his late teens apprenticed as a sign painter in the western US. Later in his life, when his wife of 19 years – and mother of his 11 children – left him for another man and took all their children to Texas with her, he descended into paranoid schizophrenia. He declared himself a prophet and began to record his visions in his paintings. Frequent themes in his paintings included spaceships and aliens, futuristic cities, Biblical and religious references, numerology and misogyny, the latter apparently spurred by his wife’s betrayal.

In this video, Sufjan Stevens talks about Robertson and performs “Get Real, Get Right” with some of Robertson’s images appearing on the screen behind him.

As we get closer to shipping SVK, there’s a bit more appearing about it.

Matt ‘D’Israeli’ Brooker, our incredible artist and co-creator is interviewed in the pages of the Judge Dredd Megazine this month.

Alongside insights from the man himself about working with Warren, the technology and techniques he employed to illustrate SVK – there’s a bit of a scoop…

…in that there’s a sneak peak of his awesome cover art for SVK…

Another Friday, another round-up of the various things that have been flying around the office mailing list this week.

Core 77 are running a feature on visualisations of The Metropolis in comics. Part 1 is all about the night:

Simon sent this around – a video from the camera mounted on each of space shuttle Endeavour’s rocket boosters:

Timo sent around the trailer for producer Amon Tobin’s live tour:

Matt Jones sent around Olafur Eliasson‘s latest exhibition ‘Your rainbow panorama‘ – a 360 degree viewing platform ‘suspended between the city and the sky’, which looks incredible.

Denise pointed us to this (via @antimega), a wonderful video of dust devils lifting plastic sheets from strawberry fields:

Finally, as the sun’s out here in London and music features fairly high on our agenda at 6pm on a beautiful Friday evening, Matt Webb sent around this video from Brighton based duo Rizzle Kicks – a superbly produced video, and quite a nice track as well. Enjoy!

Icon magazine asked us to contribute to their monthly “Rethink” feature, where current and commonplace objects are re-imagined.

We continued some of the thinking from our “Media Surfaces” work with Dentsu, around how retail receipts could make the most of the information systems that modern point-of-sales machines are plugged into…

A little quote from our piece:

We’ve added semi-useful info-visualisation of the foods ordered based on “what the till knows” – sparklines, trends – and low-tech personalisation of information that might be useful to regulars. Customers can select events or news stories they are interested in by ticking a check box.

We think the humble receipt could be something like a paper “app” and be valuable in small and playful ways.

Read all about it in this month’s Icon #97, available at all good newsagents!

A library is many things. It’s a place to go, to get in out of the rain. It’s a place to go if you want to sit and think. But particularly it is a place where books live, and where you can get in touch with other people, and other thoughts, through books. If you want to find out about something, the information is in the reference books—the dictionaries, the encyclopedias, the atlases. If you like to be told a story, the library is the place to go. Books hold most of the secrets of the world, most of the thoughts that men and women have had. And when you are reading a book, you and the author are alone together—just the two of you. A library is a good place to go when you feel unhappy, for there, in a book, you may find encouragement and comfort. A library is a good place to go when you feel bewildered or undecided, for there, in a book, you may have your question answered. Books are good company, in sad times and happy times, for books are people—people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book.

E.B. White in a letter to the children of Troy, Michigan, on the opening of their public library.
via Letters of Note

SVK is at the printers…

Here’s what several thousand ultra-violet torches and comic bags look like, which will join with the printed book imminently.

If you haven’t signed-up yet, you can at http://getsvk.com.

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Stand-by for action!

So, week 312, and we’re into the first week of June. We’ve got a very full studio this week, so a lot of weeknotes… here we go.

It’s Simon’s first week here! He’s our new Project Manager, and has been getting to grips with everything we’ve got going on in the office – having lots of meetings with everyone to work out where we are, and working some magic to get us all in order. This is a good thing.

We’ve got Tom Stuart working with us for a few months too. He’s currently working on turning Dimensions 2 into a real life thing, which is totally fantastic to watch as it grows and develops. He’ll be working on a few other bits for us in the coming months.

Matt Jones has been working with Jack & Timo on various aspects of Chaco, keeping an eye on Dimensions 2 as we make progress, and speaking to a lot of people old and new for various projects.

Denise has been working on the production and operations of SVK, which is tantalisingly close to being an actual product in the world. She’s also been working on various bits and bobs for Barringer which continues to bubble along nicely. It’s so nice seeing people smiling at the things on her screen.

Joe finished work on Uinta last week, so we went to the pub. This week he’s got his head stuck into certain aspects of Chaco – drawing a lot and looking at nice books… it’s already looking very, very interesting. That’s why I love this place.

Kari is working on what we now know as ‘the usual’… which turns out is a massive, important, complicated list of things that keep the office and the company running, and us all sane. She also baked some cakes for Simon’s first day on Tuesday which were pretty tasty.

Matt Webb’s been chatting to Simon a lot as we start to hand over project management to his capable hands. He’s also catching up with Dimensions 2, and doing a sterling job keeping us as a company running along.

Nick’s been speaking to a lot of people about Chaco and working with Jack, Timo & Andy on the next few weeks, and working wonders with Availabot & Weminuche.

Jack’s been working on Chaco with Timo, Joe and a few others, and with Timo on a new bit of work.

Andy’s been working on Chaco as well, doing a lot of wrangling with hardware manufacturers, and prodding people about PCBs.

Timo’s also been working on Chaco… doing a lot of prototyping and design exploration which is looking incredible. He’s also been working with Jack on the upcoming bit of video work.

I’ve been working on a couple of last bits for SVK, and getting back into Dimensions 2 – working with our researcher and Tom to help pull everything together, and a bit of Chaco. I also popped out on Tuesday to the LCC for my last session on the project I set some 2nd year FdA students, which I’ll hopefully be writing about on here when it’s all handed in.

James has been working on various aspects of Weminuche in the back room with Nick, Tom and Andy – which I hope we’ll see in our Friday demos. He’s also got a snazzy new pair of trousers.

That’s week 312. A busy studio, a bit of sunshine, and a lot of work. All is well.

So I’m terribly pleased to announce that this week we are formally joined by Andy Huntington. We’ve known Andy for many years and began working with him as “Schulze & Webb” on the Olinda project. More recently, for the last year or so, he’s been designing and prototyping products with us.

Andy’s joining us as a Hardware Producer & Designer. He’ll be shifting between the design landscape and the dark pit of component sourcing, board design and manufacture. No doubt he’ll rub shoulders with Nick too in embedded software stuff. Initially his focus will be split between physical prototyping on Chaco and internal new product development on Barringer.

I first knew Andy during our studies at college. I sat at the next desk. Much of Andy’s work is around design of sound installations and musical instruments. I can only hope that his indentured servitude here can pay back a small percentage of the psychic debt he incurred at college during the development of his tappers project.

tap tap tap……..

tap…

tap..

*solder solder*

tap tap tap…

I still wake up screaming from the taps.

He’s a great force and I can’t wait for him to punch products into the world.

It’s Friday. Here are links to some of what’s been blowing around the studio this week.

There’s an interview Geoffrey Hoyle about his 70’s book 2011: Living in the Future looking back at looking forward with some lovely, yet not altogether pleasing to the author, illustrations. via @futuryst

Jones pointed us to filmonpaper.com, Eddie Shannon’s extraordinary archive of film posters.

Datamoshing rears it’s glitchy head again with Yung Lake – Datamosh via @philgyford and kottke. ‘sCool because it’s nerdy…. And made better by a bit of context in the form of a how to and David O’Reilly’s first compression transitions in 2005.

Timo points to Bluefin labs, an ambitious initiative growing from the Speechome project, building on Deb Roy’s work. Couple that with this and we should be about ready for an O’Reilly Baby Hacks book.

Glorious hues are revered from the golden age of comics and despised in 10 modern movies that are better in black and white.

And if you’re trying to make the most of your space too just be glad you don’t have this much stuff on your desk.

Of course, no week would be complete without an elaborate machine, and this human powered helicopter is quite something.

Happy Weekend!

So. Week 311. A full studio, even without everyone here. Not too full to prevent the entertaining of visitors though.

Timo is away today in Berlin, braving the ash-related disruptions which threatened to keep me out of the studio for the last part of the week. Ash hasn’t kept Chaco away either – here for another couple of days workshopping with Jones and Jack.

Joe has been fleshing out some lovely UI ideas for Uinta bringing this phase to a close. This might leave him with some spare headspace for Jack to fill gleefully. It’ll be great to get his eyes on more things in the coming weeks.

Denise and Alex are valiantly making those final shuffles towards pressing the big PRINT button attached to the SVK machine. There’s black light at the end of the tunnel. Not. Long. Now.

Kari mentioned in our weekly all hands meeting, that this week, like most others, she’ll be doing the usual. We asked her to elaborate. A (partial) explanation followed: year end considerations; ordering parts; chasing project activity; payroll; contracts; property searches; insurance admin… leaving us all somewhat stunned and wholly grateful – spontaneous applause followed.

Nick’s engaged in high and low level project discussions in addition to briefing early-riser Tom Stuart who’s here to add some additional code sauce for a while.

Matthew’s been in contract negotiations, meetings around town, working through project timelines and architectures while bemoaning the lack of a compiler on his laptop. Still, he’s got iTunes and he’s not afraid to use it. Thursday morning’s BPM have nary been so high.

There has been more material exploration, sketching and treatment writing at the hands of Jack and Timo. Jack’s also been working with myself and collaborators to map out the next few weeks for Barringer. Lots of little pushes on a project with many, many parts. Such plans cause me to think in lists – something which has infected this week note.

Jones? Well, in addition to his (extensive) usual, he’s mostly been having his picture taken with William Gibson. Visitors are good.