working on creating a new shop for thinktank clothing powered by zazzle.  stay tuned.

this time hosted by the new jazzsequence community network site. w00t.

verily it was decided that it was time for a makeover of the thinktank site.  this came down from on high because we went to some other web designers’ sites and realized most, if not all, our contemporaries tended to be a lot more conservative in their presentation on their own website.  now, this seems counter-intuitive to me — i mean, it’s your site — you should show off how insanely badass you are.  but no, most of them are fairly boring, professional-looking sites.

well we didn’t want to do that.  but we did want to make it a bit more like what other people were doing.

so i had a brilliant idea to try to find a script or something that would allow for a dropdown menu that would choose the theme for the thinktank site.  so you could pick which one you were looking at.  not only would it be cool just for the cool gadget factor, but it would showcase our skillz and make us look more badass and give a lot of variety to the site.  it would (in theory) be as good a representation of what we can and do…do…as the portfolio itself!

BEHOLD!  thinktank-studio.com and the glorious dropdown of awesomeness!

(as a sidenote, we’ve been watching way too much how i met your mother recently…..)

i’ve got a couple more themes for the thinktank site in the works and erin’s gonna make some so it should be pretty sweet.

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in other news, it’s not quite done yet, but i’ve created a kickapps community for jazzsequence.  you might remember me talking about kickapps a couple weeks ago in this post.  mostly this was an experiment to set it up, get it working, and know what it’s about so i can start building it for other people.  but it’s also cool in its own right and i think could take the place of the now-dead forums and such if, you know, i still *have* a community….if you have a login on the jazzsequence.com blog, you should already be able to log into the members area with the same info.  if not, make one, and be awesome.  there’s blogs and message boards and stuff (at least when i set it all up).  you can see what i’m talking about at members.jazzsequence.com.

see here

need pic for age 4. that’s pre-school if that helps. i have one that might work but i’m looking away from the camera and it’s really small.

edit: here’s the rough draft

after seeing the rough in action i think i need to crop closer and not make it square since my face is long.  i’m also thinking about darkening the background.  and i think i need a better pic for 22…

i totally redesigned the portfolio page on the thinktank site.  it now looks super-hot and uses lightbox 2.0.

check it out.

i added some cool stuff to the thinktank studio site.  it’s like wallpaper and avatars and graphics and stuff.  you should check it out.

also, if you feel like lol’ing, this is f’ing hi-larious. and check out the archives, too.  good stuff.

(erin found a neat photoshop tutorial on creating bling text)

part i

my pre-ordered from the nin website copy of ghosts i-iv arrived yesterday. trent said that they went into making this album with the intent that it could/should be the soundtrack to something. on march 13, he announced a ghosts film festival on youtube. holding the actual release in my hands, i noticed it was published under a creative commons license. this makes sense for the film festival thing, but also sets of a sort of chain reaction in my brain about a whole lot of other stuff…

creative commons basically means that you can use it freely in your stuff without having to find the copyright holder (often a faceless agency such as a publisher or distributor when it comes to music, not even the artist themselves) and ask permission. and as i am listening to the cd, instantly i start playing scenes in my head from movies that don’t exist yet, and, also, from my senior project translucent…

part ii

i used a couple tracks from the fragile (at least one) for specific dramatic impact in translucent. i used several other copyrighted songs in it without permission. i’m a bad, bad boy. but i also knew i wasn’t ever going to do anything with the movie and there’s only 3 songs in the whole of it that used big label artists (nin, radiohead, and the cure). everything else was fairly indie and i figured i could probably actually contact the artist and get permission. as part of the group project i got a full album of music submitted from one of my students that i always wanted to use in the soundtrack (since, you know, that was the intent). and i made some music, too, that would work.

so, this idea of putting ghosts to film made me start thinking again about revisiting my movie, which, yes, regurgitating something old is somewhat uncreative, but i was never fully satisfied with the result and i always knew i could produce something a lot better given more time.

part iii

i graduated in may 2001. translucent was part of my senior project which means that 2011 will be the 10 year anniversary. granted i finished the film before may, but we’ll call may 2011 the 10 year anniversary. so, i’ve decided that i want to produce a 10 year anniversary edition of translucent. this entails:

• re-capturing all the recorded video
  • this means getting a new video capture device or somehow making the old one i have work — it’s no longer supported by just about anyone
• editing all the footage
• adding in soundtrack stuff
• doing any other post-production stuff like special effects
• re-recording voiceovers (i wanted to do it myself the 2nd time around so i could take more time and rewrite the script. i don’t think my voice is that different from peaches’ if it’s disconnected like a narration.)
• digitizing the results and creating a dvd
  • i’m also thinking that i want to digitize my 3 super 8 films that i hand-edited from my first film class to put on as “bonus features” and of course include the making of video. maybe even director’s commentary if i can figure out how to do alternate audio tracks. that might be a bit of overkill though…

basically all the fun stuff. okay, making the movie is the fun stuff, but post-production is fun too. and while this is yet another project on top of an already-busy schedule, my timeline is to be done by may 2011, which is far enough out that i think i can do it. and gives me (hopefully) enough time to work on making it actually look good. hell, maybe when all’s said and done i can sell copies.

so the plan is to use ghosts, myself, peaches’ soundtrack, and any other creative commons music i can find, in addition to stuff i can actually get permission for for the soundtrack. and maybe i can even look into entering it into some kind of film festival. i’m not gonna do sundance, but something, maybe. we’ll see…

i’ve decided to do a new project.

i turn 30 this year. i have a lot of “oh god i’m getting old” feelings about this, probably because i have very clear memories of my dad freaking out when he turned 30 (i guess it’s a good thing gavin and lilah won’t have that experience). anyway, regardless i think it’s a pretty important/monumental occasion. so i decided that i want to do something creative to sort of commemorate the event in a positive way.

thus, the 30 project.

objective: create an animation (will either be a really simple flash or an animated gif — possibly both if i’m ambitious enough) to commemorate my 30th b-day.

method: use 30 (or 31, possibly, using my newborn pic) pictures with a clear headshot that i can crop down to the same size so that when animated in sequence it shows a sort of age progression thing.

requirements: pictures. 30 (or 31) of them. some of them i have. some i don’t. i’ll also need to do some homework to figure out when stuff was taken, so for some of them my class/school photos might be best — of which i don’t have very many. also, they need to be digital. and my scanner died earlier this year (or, last year i guess it is now). so another requirement will be a Scanner That Does Not Suck (preferably one that isn’t f’ing huge).

so this is where you all come in. see, cuz i’m assuming that if you’re reading this you know who i am and probably you’re my parents, so you can send me pictures, right? and maybe try to do some figuring out of when they were taken when it wasn’t obvious. i know grandma has all that stuff written down and if not, it’s in her head cuz she’s frickin’ amazing like that. and if you’re not my parents, you’re probably technologically inclined so you can possibly suggest a Scanner That Doesn’t Suck[tm].

i will go through the pics i have digital already and then try to compile a list of age pictures i need and post that. i think from high school on i’m probably good, so it’s just the stuff before that that i’m a bit spotty on, but i have some of those also, i just need to figure out when they were taken.