D-SLR - Improvised Studio Shots Part II

I never thought I'd need to make a "Part II" for these posts, but it turns out a few days later, I learned how to set up more improv studios around my house. I made another setup, which was based around my desk:

Here, I have set up a model of the solar system, on a black bristol board as a backdrop, and the fluorescent lamp for lighting. I used side lighting mainly here, to show contrast, and to easily make out the planets and the sun in the model, defining shape. From this setup I got these shots:

Afterwards, I decided to use a wooden set of a study and an airplane as my subject. However, the side lighting proved too harsh on the wood, the contrast being too high. Instead of getting a reflector, I used a piece of white bristol board instead, ending up with this setup:

And from it, I procured these pictures:

Lastly. as I was putting the wooden sets away on a shelf, I realized how good the composition was. However, when I tried to take a picture, the lighting was too strong, so I decided to try and get even lighting all around. After a couple of tries with two pieces of of white bristol board and lots and lots of tape, I was able to set up a poster board, the kind you use for school presentations. Even then, I had to use a lot of tape, some sticky tack, and a couple things falling down. The end result and setup are shown here:

I finally got the nice even lighting in the end, although it wasn't the best. But with a few post-production tweaks, one could be able to fix it.

Logo Concept - Connections

I've decided to pass my time during my summer break to start fleshing out ideas and designs in my sketchbook, more importantly, the logo designs I've drawn in it for the past year. Here's the first of them, "Connections".

D-SLR - Improvised Studio Shots

Recently I've been practicing more and more with my D-SLR, and I realized that a lot of my subjects would be a lot better and well framed if I had a studio to work with, to choose backdrops and to change lighting around my subjects with. But since I'm not interested in buying any professional grade equipment any time soon, nor do I have the means to, I decided to settle with an improvised low-cost studio that I easily set up in my own bedroom.

Pretty much what my studio was.

I took a couple of practice shots with my new ability to change backdrops, but since my space is severely limited in my apartment, I doubt I'd be able to provide backdrops to anything larger than what would usually be considered macro or small subjects. Below are a few shots I gleaned from my short time with this small studio.

The last one was a bit more abstract, and even a hint morbid almost, but I'm sure it won't ruin anybody's day. It's a portrayal of electronic life, how the plug is "hanging" itself with the wire, and you can make many different messages from this picture. I hope it's thought provoking for you too.

Creature Concept - Planet

Here is a short description of my creature's planet, which I rendered and made on Photoshop with the "Flaming Pear" filters.

Iugosus

Iugosus, as I have named it, or literally, "mountainous" in Latin, is very loyal to its namesake. With most of the geography across this planet being mountains, plateaus, lakes, and plains, the lack of oceans make Iugosus a very barren place. The gravity is 0.9 G, just 0.1 G less than our own planet Earth's gravity. Due to the smaller amount of gravity, Iugosus has a thinner, but similar atmosphere to Earth. The climate ranges from temperate, alpine, semi-arid, sub-arctic, and arctic. The average temperature is cooler than Earth's own 13 degrees celsius, averaging out to around 11 degrees. The orbit is is 1.1 AU, just slightly further to its sun than our's.

Flash - Notitia Animation

Recently I've discovered how to embed .swf files into my blog posts, so I've decided to put this animation I've made for myself from last year into this blog post. You might have to wait for the .swf file to load beneath here. It might lag, so give it some time.

Creature Concept - Textured

Following along the lines of the technique used by Neo Ramjet in his Making of Snaiad page (http://www.nemoramjet.com/sndmakingof.html), I used a texture (below) of what is supposedly elephant hide on Google Images, the closest thing that I thought would fit my creature.

I slowly layered this texture with Photoshop over my line drawing of my creature, which I posted a while ago in May (http://notitiaproductions.blogspot.com/2010/05/creature-concept.html).

All this layering and warping to create a believable and realistic skin texture and a seamless appearance took a lot of layers to perfect, which eventually amassed to 36 layers that I had to navigate around with. Although I guess that isn't as bad as some of the collages I made for Junior High's Grade 7 year (for me) Yearbook, which in some files reached 72 layers.

I might plan to fully add in a background with a sky and everything, depicting what it is like on its virtual planet, but that's for a later post.

Flash - Website

I've been thinking about making a fully Flash website since December now, but I haven't gotten much further than the pre-loader until now. But don't worry, I'll include a link on the website that leads back to this blog anyways, so it's not the end of this blog. All the layers and ActionScript is going to take a while, so don't be surprised if I take the summer to finish! Here are a couple of in-progress screenshots:

Here's the pre-loader that got me started on the idea of a website in the first place.

I tweaked the layout for a bit, but eventually I settled on a navbar docked to the left.

Here is the home page, complete with glowing effects on the buttons when you hover your mouse over them, as seen here on the "Blog" button, which (should) links back to the blog right here. No worries, I won't abandon this place anytime soon.

However, after further adjustments and adding ActionScript to the buttons, things started to go a bit... out of plan. Things didn't work out the way I wanted them to, and I'm not sure if there's a way back now:

Everything plays at the exactly same time, running in order on the Flash timeline instead of by what the ActionScript dictates. I'm probably missing some code, but the Compiler Errors detect nothing that I typed wrong. I'll look into to see if I can get someone to look what I've done over.

But, in the end, I started this simply as an experiment, so I guess I'll learn as I go along. Hopefully.