May 28, 2006

Kid Baron's First Music Video



The Remains of the Day



A few casualties this week. Spongebob was destroyed, Batman was disassembled, and Mr. Incredible 2 was beaten within an inch of his life... the junk pile continues to grow, but from the trash heap comes new shapes and forms, mutant hybrids arise from its depths to challenge us... with the aid of a glue gun we will help them in their rebirth!

May 27, 2006

Discovery

I’ve stumbled upon an awful, incredible truth!

Jonathan Bauer (of Who's the Boss?)
and Jack Bauer (of 24) are ONE AND THE SAME!

FACT!
Is not 'Jack' often used as a nickname for 'John' or 'Johnathan' ?!?
FACT!
Is not 'Jonathan's' history between 'Who's the Boss?' and adulthood a COMPLETE MYSTERY??!!
FACT!
Do they not have a similar devilish gleam in their eyes and share a STRIKINGLY SIMILAR POSE ???!!???

These photos are PROOF!!!!

What does this all mean??

May 26, 2006

Bat-Jedi

Here's an article written by my roommate back in college. After all the endless nights of house fires, stress-ball biting, choking on cafeteria food, rescuing cats, climbing trees, jumping out of 20 foot-high windows, dodging trains, driving other roommates to insanity, living with psychotic alcoholics, and fending off burglars, we were most fond of coming up with little projects like this to waste time in the late hours of the night.

From Russia With Gloves

Nikolay Valuev

Alias: Beast From The East
Birthplace: St. Petersburg, Russia
Age: 32
Reach: 85"
Height: 7' 0"
Weight: 323 lbs.

World Rank: 2 / 1104
43 Wins, 31 Knockouts, 0 Lost

This guy is for real!
An undefeated Russian Champion who's made his way through every British fighter that dared to stand in his way and now his sites are set on the U.S. He's a modern-day living barbarian, a giant, hairy, ogre that crushes any other guy in his way, I can't wait to see him win the World title... THEN he'll come
to Collideascope to take on any
challenger at arm wrestling!








YuYu

Another amazing short film by Adam Phillips.

May 21, 2006

Greg Duffell

Legendary animator Greg Duffell paid us a visit at Collideascope. This 30-year veteran gave an incredibly informative lecture about character animation timing know-how and the history of timing for animation through out the ages. We were very lucky to have him and listen to his stories of infinite knowledge.

Humans

Absolute genius:

May 20, 2006

Bravia

Here's a wonderful commercial. Dozens of cameras plus thousands of rubber balls plus a catapult machine equals great footage. Keep in mind NO computer-generated animation or compositing was used here at all.

and the beat goes on...

The toys and figures took another beating today.
Jacques master-minded an intricate system of frankensteining body-parts from the old broken figures into new hybrids, it was a grand success.




Inspecting the targets from afar with binoculars to ensure safety.







Amputated feet!


Shot straight in the back!

The junk pile continues to grow.

May 19, 2006

Slo-Mo-Photo

High speed camera capturing the action of bullets shredding through stuff!

Shark!

I'm a sucker for sharks-flying-above-water footage.

I'm for sale...

Curtis snapped this picture of a sign in Dartmouth, as you can see, Ron meat goes for a good price.

May 18, 2006

Planetary Pyrotechnics

Due to several requests, here's a quick, simple, easy-to-do tutorial on making exploding planets. With this tutorial, we will be working from photos of dried cracked mud, so go to google images and search for "dried mud". It works best on pictures with top view shots so we can see the cracks. Alternatively, you can use any of the images below. (Click to get larger size). Please note that the results may differ if your image is significantly different to the one I'm using in this tutorial, so experiment, different photos will yield different effects, and the higher the resolution (dpi) of your image the less extreme each filter will have on the image.

I'll be working on the 2nd image. Based on that image, start a new document 700x500, or whatever size you want, you can crop it later.

Now open up the mud image, do a CTRL+A to select all, then go to the new document you just created and press CTRL+V to paste the image.

The cracks are dark, so invert the image so it becomes white, this will give it a better explosion effect. So go to Image->Adjustment->Invert (or press CTRL+I).

Now use the eliptical marquee tool and make a large round selection on the image. Hold SHIFT while you create the selection to make a perfect round circle.
Click to view larger image

Now go to Select->Inverse,
Then hit Delete so you are left with a circle from the mud image.
DO NOT DESELECT YET.


Now, while you still got your selection, go to
SELECT->INVERSE
again to select the shape.

Now go to Filter->Distort->Spherize. Set amount to 100%. Then do it again, this time, 50%. You can now deselect.

Now lets fill the background layer (the layer underneath the mud layer) with black.

Then go to Layer->Flatten Image

Now go to Filter->Sharpen->unsharp Mask.
Amount: 500%. Radius: 1.7px. Threshold: 122 levels


Go to Filter->Distort->Polar Co-ordinates.
Options: Polar to Rectangular.


Go to: Image->Rotate Canvas->90CW.


Apply: Filter->Stylize->Wind
Method: Wind. Direction: From the right. Hit CTRL+F to re-apply.


Go to: Image->Rotate Canvas->90CCW.


Finally, apply Filter->Distort->Polar Coordinates.
Options: Rectangular to Polar.


There you go, now all you do is just play around with colors, by either using Image->Hue and Saturation, or Image->Color Balance. I used color balance in the image below, sometimes I do a bit of both.

Make sure the colors don't get washed out, create a nice balance of light and dark values. This tutorial will work for basically any flat image with textures such as cracks. Here are a few variations.

Before:

After:


Before:

After:

To add a bit more spice to it, make a background nebula.
Change your front color to red and back color to black.


Create a new layer.
Apply Filter->Render->Clouds.
Then
Filter->Render->Difference Clouds.
Hit CTRL+F (once or twice) to re-apply.


Set the layer's Blending Options to Lighten.
You can experiment with other layer settings for different whacky effects.


There you have it.
This same process can be used for many other effects in different situations.
Change the numbers and settings at each step for variety.
Use the smudge tool in the Liquify filter to stretch
some light streaks outward for more intensity.

I hope this has been helpful to anyone interested.