site meter

Well we've broken the 200 visitors mark!!! HUZZAH! thats a big deal for someone whose never had their own blog before. Admittedly most of those hits we're probably from me and my mother...but still, i'm excited ok! So after breaking this new record of mine, i thought i'd find out a bit more about where all these hits were coming from, so i added a site meter. Then i realised ,y site meter wasnt actually recording anything...sigh. So i tryed again, and HOORAH! This time it worked. However, never having used a site meter before, it was a tad confusing to begin with. After much head scratching i eventually worked out what all these statistics where about and what they meant for my site. Turns out that most of the visitors to my page come back again! Thats a good sign, right? I also found that the majority of people leave my site by clicking on the links i've provided, so there's some interest in the topics i post, another good sign. However, the traffic through my blog is a little slow, so i began to question how i can increase the traffic flow...other than by telling all my friends to go to my site. So i took a look at a feature of Bravenet (my site meter host) and attempted to increase my traffic flow. Well the results are yet to be tallied as i only tried this recently, but we'll see what happens, and watch the hit counter intently.
So wish me luck! And tell your friends to check out this site.

Children R Skary

Just pointing this website out

http://skary.net/

Animation, black humour, Grim fairytales (what a pun).... this is always good.

"Perfect Drug" clip...How did dom know i'd like it?!

I do love that NIN clip for "Perfect Drug"! How did you know? Quote: "Some of his work includes the Nine Inch Nails music video for "Perfect Drug", which i love" (see Mark Romaneck post)... It's directed by Mark Romaneck and you can check out his site for information on the "Perfect Drug" clip and more of his fantastic film clips by clicking on the link in the Mark Romaneck post further down this blog. By the way...just for the record...i don't HATE NIN...i...well...i dunno. Some of their stuff is great! But "Perfect Drug"? I find it drags on and is kinda repetative. Please don't hate me for that.

Picking Gems from the World Wide Receptical

Today's Gems: Music Videos
Today's Receptical: YouTube

Gary Numan - "Cars" and "Healing"

Cars is a very "electo-pop" song, straight out of the 80s. It was a hit.


Now consider the fact that he's still making music and playing that song live. Because of his 80's electro-pop music, he's now considered to be the Godfather of Industrial Music. Trent Reznor (of NIN) apparently listened to one of his albums every single day when recording their hit album "Pretty Hate Machine".

If you don't think that the man that made the above song is hardcore with industrial music, check out "Healing"!


Nine Inch Nails - "Starf***ers Inc." and "Perfect Drug"



Keep an eye on the blonde woman in the Limo with Trent. Especially towards the end of the clip.

I know my darling headless penguin would love "Perfect Drug", because the clip is all arty, and she likes that kinda stuff (Don't get me wrong, i like arty too, but she's not a big fan of NIN... yes, it's odd, i know. Next thing she'll tell me is that she doesn't eat seafood, or that i shouldn't be in a car with a guy who drives at least 20 kph over the speed limit.)

I LOVE YOU KIAH!! :P


Billy Corgan - "Walking Shade"



Yes, a lot of people did not like Billy Corgan's solo work. I liked it a lot, and anyone who doesn't can just shut the hell up. And don't give me that "He broke up smashing pumpkins" stuff... He *was* Smashing Pumpkins, and Iha & D'Arcy just didn't like Billy's attitude. AND THAT'S OKAY, No-one has to force them to like each other.

Marilyn Manson - "mOBSCENE"



He may be weird and a tortured artist, but you gotta love his dress sense.

Bitey Castle Animations

I appologise for the lack of interesting posts in the past couple of weeks. The posts below are assessment requirements for my Multimedia course. So i thought it's about time that i included something of more interest...so BACK TO THE ANIMATION!!!

This week, i wanted to share the work of Adam Philips and his website Bitey Castle. These Flash animations are quite good, and his water effects are excellent. Check out the 30 short animations in the top right hand corner of his website, funny stuff. Adam Phillips' characters are cute and quirky and definitly worth a look.

What is aesthetics?

aesthitics refers to how elements of an image work together to produce a subject that is overall pleasing to the eye. Aesthetics examines what makes something beautiful, disgusting, entertaining, pretentious, harmonious, boring, humorous, or tragic. Although broad rules apply to making an image aesthetically plaesing, the final judgement is subjective and will vary from individual to individual. This is beacause the aesthetics of an image produce different reactions in different people, depending upon their personal experiences. As mentioned above, an image may conjure feelings of disgust, beauty, humour or tradgedy. Which emotion is conjured for the individual is heavily reliant upon their personal experiences.

Web aesthetics refers to what makes a web page functional and easy to read and navigate. This refers to everything from the colours used to the type of font. For example:

This web page uses a dark, busy background, making the small font difficult to read and the overall page confusing and difficult to navigate. This isnt helped by the choice of red for the font colour which is difficult to read for the best sighted person. Confusion and distraction is added by the choice of boarder, alos red, which clashes with the busy background.
Simplicity is the best choice when it comes to web aesthetics as it creartes no confusion, is easy to read and can be navigated through easily. The best example of this is probably the search enigine, google:

This web page uses simple text, with very few page elements. This avoids confusion and makes the page easy to read. This site is used by millions of people around the world every day, and couldn't be simpler to use.

What is RSS and XML?

An RSS (Rich Site Summary, Really Simple Syndication or RDF Site Summary) feed is defined by wikipedia as a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blogs, news feeds and podcasts. In other words an RSS is a format for delivering regularly changing web content. Many news-related sites, weblogs and other online publishers syndicate their content as an RSS Feed to whoever wants it. An example of an RSS feed can be seen in the side bar of this page, which links the user to any recently updated information added to my del.icio.us account (see below). For more information on RSS feeds, how they are used and why, see whatisrss.com

XML stands for Extensible Markup Language and its primary purpose is to facilitate the sharing of data across different information systems, particularly via the Internet. XML is used for documents containing structured information. Structured information contains both content (words, pictures, etc.) and some indication of what role that content plays (for example, content in a section heading has a different meaning from content in a footnote, which means something different than content in a figure caption or content in a database table, etc.). Almost all documents have some structure. A markup language is a mechanism to identify structures in a document. The XML specification defines a standard way to add markup to documents.
For more information visit O'RiellyXML.com

My del.icio.us account

Check out some of my bookmarked links in my del.icio.us account

MPI104-2007 McCarthy. K 11362975

Del.icio.us
I currently have 40 links bookmarked in my del.icio.us account. I have found this site to be very useful in organizing my bookmarks, as well as finding useful links to topics relevant to my studies in the MPI104-2007 subscription, as well as through the other subscription I have joined. I have found that networking has also been useful in this respect as I am hoping to build my network over time to include other del.icio.us accounts by people in the VFX101 and MPI104 courses. However, I feel I have neglected this aspect of the site which I believe could be very useful and hope to build on my network in the future.
I have attempted to add interestingness to this page by bookmarking a variety of sites of different topics and through my descriptions of these sites. I also hope that by progressively adding more bookmarks I will have increased the interestingness of my del.icio.us account. Each time I have found a site I am interested in or think would be useful to revisit, I’ve added it to my bookmarks, and, over time, have compiled a useful collection of sites which I revisit often.
I have also found that the ability to add descriptions has been useful as my previous bookmarking system did not have this feature, and I often found I had difficulty distinguishing which bookmarked site I was looking for as I had many sites listed of a similar subject. Using the description feature I am able to record what it was I found interesting on each site, making it easier to revisit particular information later.
I have integrated the use of tags easily into my work and find them of particular use when searching for information for a particular subject, such as VFX101 or MPI104. I have used tags which help me to easily look for sites related to a particular subject as this has helped organize my bookmarks in a way that I find useful to my studies as I can easily access related sites. I have also used bundles to assist in this.
I have easily integrated del.icio.us into my workflow and find it of great use to my Bolgspot account. When searching for something to blog about, I often found myself visiting my del.icio.us account to look for interesting sites I had bookmarked previously and used these as the basis the subject of my blogs.

Blogspot
I am very happy with the progress I have made with my blogspot account. I found I struggled with the idea of blogging to begin with as I had never done this before. However, over time I have become more comfortable with blogging and find it a useful way of documenting my interests. I enjoy adding page elements (such as the news and video reels in the side bar), pictures and videos which I believe add interestingness to my Blog. I also believe having a co-contributor has added to the interestingness of my blog as it provides some variation in the writing style and subject matter.
When selecting a template for my page, I wanted something neat and simple as I hoped to put many pictures and videos into my blogs and I felt anything with a brightly coloured or patterned background would detract from these. I chose the current template as I thought this was the best style for the type of blog I was writing.
I have found that the network of MPI104-2007 blogs has been useful in my workflow also, as many I was able to find some very interesting blogs by people with similar interests. An example of such a blog is Monkey House, on which I have left a comment which I believe to be one of the more interesting comments I have left.

Flickr
I have only recently started using Flickr, as I have not found much need for this site. I find the site confusing and messy and not particularly useful to my workflow. Perhaps over time, with more use, this site will become more useful to me, however, I prefer my previous method of storing, organizing and uploading photos as it is more relevant to my needs and work processes.
The networking system I find a little more useful as I have found a couple of pictures which I have added as favourites, and this source of images may prove to be useful in the future. However, I find my images to be unorganized and irritating to sort through. This is a problem I have tried to rectify through adding sets, but I still find this to be limiting to the organization of the images I have uploaded. Again the tagging system has its uses when searching for images, and I have added tags to assist in the organization of my images.

Flickr Account

So i recently joined flickr as per the requirements of our MPI104 assessment, and im required to tell you what i think about it. To be honest, im not a fan. I guess i find the site a little pointless as i already have my ways of organising my pictures which works better for me. I guess i've only just started using it, but i find the site arkward to navigate around and just messy in general. I think i'll stick to my old methods of organising my photos. However if you wanna check out the picks i've uploaded feel free to visit my site.

Character Animation

This week, Andrew showed us a couple of character animations that i thought were worth adding. Here's a really good little animation that was shown to us in class by Cemre Ozkurt. I liked the character animation in this short piece, plus im a HUGE fan of pulp fiction and anything Tarantino, so i liked the use of Samuel L Jackson's dialouge



This short piece is called Alien Song by Victor Navone

Spiderman 3!

I just got back from the premiere of Spiderman 3! SO exciting! Animation students got free tickets to see the premiere today, and i must say i actually enjoyed the film, although many of my classmates would dissagree. This film had a lot more humour than the previous films, and athough very different to the others, still managed to retain the feel of the other films. OK, so im not saying its the greatest movie ever, but if your looking for an entertaining film, i recommend it. fans of the comic books may be dissappointed by this film, but chances are, if you really liked the original comics, you've already been let down by the other movies. I gotta say though, the Spiderman films are better than most comic book movies out these days which just seem to butcher the original comics by totally disregarding the story and characters. I think the Spiderman films, although not really comparable to the comics as they are such different mediums, manages to keep the original feel, and the 3rd installment doesn't take itself as seriously as the previous two, which adds to the experience.

Ray Harryhausen

so i see you've been introduced to my "significant other". Its about time he posted something! whats the point in having another administrator if they don't do anything? So anyway, here's some more stuff from me. So i thought its about time that i mentioned the innovative (for lack of a stronger work) work of Ray Harryhausen. I'm talking about the guy who is a cult legend for being a forerunner in stopmotion animation. The guy responsible for the famous living skeletons in Jason and the Argonauts. Harryhausen was first inspired by the work of Willis O’Brien in king kong, when he couldn't figure out how the ape was made to move. After discovering the world of stopmotion, Harryhausen began making his own models and, borrowing a friends 16mm camera, began working to making a realistic movement. A man obsessed with dinosaurs, most of his early work was of a prehistoric theme. His most famous work, of course, was on Jason and the Argonauts in which he created this famous fight scene (Please ignore the dialouge as its dubbed in another language, but you get the idea) .
This early stopmotion animation was created with out the ability for Harryhausen to see his process as animators can today. This meant that if Harryhausen were to stop work at the end of the day in the process of shooting the scene, he would have to take note of the direction each character was moving in order to stop confusion when returning to finish the scene. A truly inspirational man, check out Harryhausen's official site.

statue of medusa character from Jason and the Argonauts
statue of the skeleton characters from Jason and the Argonauts
The man himself, Ray Harryhaussen

Doms Progress Update 1

Powerful stuff.
Hi, I'm Screaming Headless Penguin's significant other. Non-screaming head-of-a-fox. Or something.

I'm here in Byron Bay, doing a Bachelor of Digital Media, Audio Engineering (and i'll have a minor in Digital Film Production).

I'm glad to meet you.

RDMA
Or: Rough Draft Mercedes Advertisement for short.


This Advertisement was made using a song called "All Systems Go" by The Common Code, and footage of a Mercedes "Kompressor".

The whole thing is a rough draft for an Ad i'm currently creating in my film class.
I will keep you good readers posted on any updates.

(I thank you for keeping in mind that it's just a draft of sorts)

Mark Romanek

So this is the work of Mark Romanek, legendary music video director, as well as having directed tv spots and, more recently, gotten into feature films. Some of his work includes the Nine Inch Nails music video for Perfect Drug, which i love, and closer. He's done music videos for Macy Gray, Weezer, Fiona Apple, Audioslave, Beck,David Bowie, Johnny Cash, Coldplay, Lenny Kravitz, Linkin Park, Sonic Youth, Madonna, R.E.M, Janet Jackson, Michael Jackson, the list goes on. All of his videos have a unique and rich visual style. I thought i'd just include some pics from a couple of Romanek's music videos. If you wanna see more, take a look at his site which has stuff on a heap of his video clips, including video stills, and other projects.

Abstract Animation By Richard Reeves

So this week i was introduced to the amazing abstract animation of Richard Reeves. When i first watched this animation, i didnt really know what to think. It didn't strike me as particularly unique or revolutionary as it had been hailed to be. However, once i learnt how this animation was made, it was mind boggling to think of the precision and dedication it must have taken to complete, and the unique idea and concepts behind it are intriguing. This animation was made by scratching with pen onto 35mm film using microscopic precision. Every dot you see in this animation has been intentioally scratched onto the film using magnifying glasses. The sound you here in the animation has been created when the shapes have been put onto the film, its interesting to listen to. Reeves' main interest is in how light works and this animation is an experiment in and study of light.