Floating Logos

Have you noticed how often we are looking at advertising and government signage? Driving around a typical US town, you are constantly bombarded by instructions and advertisements. It has become so omnipresent that the brain tends to tune it out.

‘Floating Logos’ explores this ever present signage. “The poles are digitally removed from the image in order to give the illusion that the signs are disconnected from the ground as they ominously float above us.”

The same artist (Matt Siber), also created ‘The Untitled Project’ a great series of images that strip the text from signage, to create a surreal looking environment that could be anywhere in the world, and is eerily reminiscent of sci-fi dystopias like in ‘They Live’ and ‘Repo Man’.

Postcard Viewer

The quest for the perfect image viewer continues! Check out PostcardViewer.

This one is just for fun. It’s very simple: no preloaders, no thumbnails. PostcardViewer is based on a real world metaphor: a set of postcards shuffled onto a surface. If you would like to use it with your own images, instructions are here.

Useful Flash Extension Roundup

Here’s a roundup of the Flash extensions that I use on a regular basis. Boost your productivity with these handy extensions.

To use them you need Macromedia Extension Manager and Flash MX 2004. To install, just download and run the MXP file, then restart
Flash. Most of these extensions will add an item in Flash’s ‘Command’
menu.

Add Stop frames. Creates a Stop action in the selected frame. Joy!

Distribute to Frames. Takes all the elements in the selected frame, and places them sequentially in the layer.

Duplicate Layer. Does what it says on the tin.

Duplicate Folder: Doesn’t work for nested folders.

Frame to Symbols. Makes all elements in the selected frame into library symbols.

Library Manager Extension. This adds a menu item in your Window->Other Panels menu. The Library Manager shows all your library symbols as a list, and allows you to manage multiple export and linkage options.

Commercial Processing Site

  • Posted On: November 11th, 2004
  • Posted In: Web

This is a first – a commercial studio site built with processing. It also has a nice one-page navigation system. Right now the main problem I see with processing sites is the initial delay before anything shows up.

In other processing news, setpixel has been updated with a set of processing experiments in live-video recognition and manipulation. ‘Robot Mirror’ is especially cool.

Overshadowed Photoblog Presentation

Keith Kin Yan, the resident genius at overshadowed, has posted a presentation on how he achieves his fantastic imagery. As well as being a great photographer, he is also a master of PhotoShop manipulation. As he says: “I like making things look a little surreal, a little too over the top. Make things look like a scene from an early 90s Hype Williams rap video.”

Inspired by the master, I took some shots today in the area around where I work (“Hell’s Kitchen”). You can see them here.

Excessive Violence?

Check out this excellent ‘Metal Slug’ style flash shooter – Alien Hominid.
Great hand-drawn animation and very responsive controls. Warning – features extreme cartoon violence.

The game is so popular that the makers are porting it to an (as yet undisclosed) console.