Monday 25 January 2016
Wednesday 6 January 2016
ScandoCrime, murder, art direction and scandavian interiors porn
Like many in the UK I'm hooked on Nordic crime dramas on the TV. The Killing, Arne Dahl, Wallander, Beck and best of all The Bridge. The plots are great, the acting is amazing and it's pretty much always difficult to work out who did it before close to the end. But along with the plots and the acting is the design, both the production design in the way they're shot and, of course, those interiors. Almost nobody in a ScandoCrime drama seems to live in a house or apartment I don't want!
To take those in order, the production design is always wonderful, The Bridge has a great colour sense, muted palette pretty much throughout with Saga's car and coat sometimes the only splash of colour in the shot. Okay, with something as magnificent as the Oresund Bridge to keep using as the backdrop the visuals were always going to be something special though. There is also great use of the rural locations, either eerie empty birchwoods with treetrunks as far as the eye can see or vast open expanses of farmland or moor with nothing between you and the mountains on the horizon.
(image from https://burntretina.wordpress.com/2014/01/04/the-bridge-is-not-a-documentary/)
Sunday 3 January 2016
Destiny - I want that garden
As any regular player of Destiny will know, it's Iron Banner this week, which means playing loads of great games of crucible...and, for me equally importantly, it meant the Traveller's Walk was open and sometimes it gets dark. See, and this is probably not something uppermost in the minds of the concept artists, I want that garden. Or perhaps more accurately, I want that garden lighting effect. The design isn't that original, it's very much the sort of thing a modern designer might have come up with for a reasonably sized modernist home, central path flanked by two rills, flanked by two grass borders; various trees offset to either side. In daylight it's okay, but nothing special...but after dark the lights come on: horizontal side lighters on the two rills; uplighters on the buildings and the tree; various spots picking things out. It's amazing. The first time I saw it I was all about how much I wanted it. Actually, most of the tower comes alive after it gets dark. The game's lighting designer really got it right with various concealed lights picking out parts of the structure...and if you go down to the lower hanger where the keeper is there are lovely effects on the walls down there. I like wandering around in the rooms in the hangers too with all the armchairs and sofas (note to the game engineer, why if I can sit on the floor can I not sit on the chairs?), and views out of the windows. I love it.
But it's that garden with it's lights I really want!
Unfortunately the lighting effects don't really come through in a screenshot, but this should give you an idea of what it's like.
Okay, so we don't have a modernist home, it's a pretty conventional semi-detached house in a small rural town. But we could achieve this sort of look, we've got trees and large bushes which would take uplighters. Our pond is a wildlife pond so not suitable for lights but we're going to be adding more water features in the coming year which will be able to take underwater lighting.
I've been gathering things I like on my Garden Lighting pinterest..
https://www.pinterest.com/samspadeuk/garden-lighting/
But it's that garden with it's lights I really want!
Unfortunately the lighting effects don't really come through in a screenshot, but this should give you an idea of what it's like.
Okay, so we don't have a modernist home, it's a pretty conventional semi-detached house in a small rural town. But we could achieve this sort of look, we've got trees and large bushes which would take uplighters. Our pond is a wildlife pond so not suitable for lights but we're going to be adding more water features in the coming year which will be able to take underwater lighting.
I've been gathering things I like on my Garden Lighting pinterest..
https://www.pinterest.com/samspadeuk/garden-lighting/
Tuesday 29 December 2015
Why I deleted most of my pictures on DeviantArt
I've just gone through my DeviantArt gallery...and deleted almost all of the images in it.
Because, frankly, they just weren't that good.
It's not that I dislike them all, or that I wasn't happy with them after I'd done them; I just don't think the rest of the planet needs, or wants, to see them.
This was sparked by watching the film Sound City, which is very good (available on iTunes) and well worth watching. During the film Trent Reznor says;
"Now that everyone is empowered with these tools to create stuff, has there been a lot more great shit coming out? Not really. You still have to have something to do with those tools. You should really try to have something to say."
(I found the quote typed out here)
It's hard to argue with this. For years we've been provided with more and better tools to use the computer to produce art, much of it either very reasonably priced if not actually free. Video, graphics or music: anyone can now put their hands on tools which offer opportunities not even imaginable not so long ago. Digital cameras are really cheap with no costs in film and processing, and loads of people are now carrying 'phones' which offer great photography and video capabilities. There has never been a better time to use digital technology to be creative. But access to tools doesn't equate with ability, just because anybody can make and share their art and music doesn't mean that it's worth sharing. Note that I said 'worth sharing', art and music are always worth making because the process of being creative is just good for a human being. Years ago I said to somebody I knew that I was a fairly dire 3 chord guitarist to which he replied "there's nothing wrong with that...so long as you know that". On and off I've strummed for fun, but I've never thought my playing was something anybody else might want to hear.
Desktop publishing has allowed everybody to produce their own flyers and posters without the cost and time involved in getting a designer to put them together and a printer to produce them: but look at any notice board and while you'll see loads of adverts for clubs, societies, small businesses and events most of them are actually not that nice to look at. They do the job, but they don't do it elegantly. Think I'm being judgemental and snotty? Okay, take a magazine and find a print advert in it you like. Then go and look at the notice board in your university, or village hall or whatever and see how many of the flyers and posters look as good as that advert from the magazine. OK, so if you wanted to know when the flower arranging club meet or you're looking for a band to see this evening all those amateur flyers are going to tell you that, but they're not of the same standard as the professional ones. Because the professional ones have been put together by people who spent a lot of time learning what looks good and mastering the tools to achieve that. Youtube has hundreds of hours of video uploaded to it every minute: thousands of amateur filmmakers (though the term is now accepted to be 'Youtubers') producing content on a whole range of subjects which may be of interest. But once you get past the content how many of them have weird lighting, or poor framing, or piles of undone ironing in the background? When did you last see a professional video, or one done by a film school graduate with pairs of knickers drying on the radiator in the background without them needing to be there? You don't because serious filmmakers know how they want their film to look, have the skills to understand how to achieve that, and put in the time and effort to make it happen.
Which brings me, via my inabilities as a guitarist to why I deleted most of my DA content. See, the reason I'm still after all this time a dire 3 chord guitarist is simply because I don't apply myself to the guitar, I don't study the theory and above all I don't practice seriously. If I did those things then I'd improve. I listen to good players and don't want to be that good, though a bit of me wishes I was better. Music is something I don't really want to be better at enough. Graphics on the other hand I love, I look at the work of professionals and wish I could work to that standard. I wish I could live up to Trent Reznor's idea of having something to say. So I took a long hard look at my stuff on DA and realised that most of it was either dull, or derivative, or badly conceived so I took it down. It's still on my hard drive and many of them represent a lot of work and learning new techniques, but none of it really showed any skill, or vision, or had anything to say.
Maybe it's time for us all to remember that being able to produce stuff isn't the goal: having something to say is
Because, frankly, they just weren't that good.
It's not that I dislike them all, or that I wasn't happy with them after I'd done them; I just don't think the rest of the planet needs, or wants, to see them.
This was sparked by watching the film Sound City, which is very good (available on iTunes) and well worth watching. During the film Trent Reznor says;
"Now that everyone is empowered with these tools to create stuff, has there been a lot more great shit coming out? Not really. You still have to have something to do with those tools. You should really try to have something to say."
(I found the quote typed out here)
It's hard to argue with this. For years we've been provided with more and better tools to use the computer to produce art, much of it either very reasonably priced if not actually free. Video, graphics or music: anyone can now put their hands on tools which offer opportunities not even imaginable not so long ago. Digital cameras are really cheap with no costs in film and processing, and loads of people are now carrying 'phones' which offer great photography and video capabilities. There has never been a better time to use digital technology to be creative. But access to tools doesn't equate with ability, just because anybody can make and share their art and music doesn't mean that it's worth sharing. Note that I said 'worth sharing', art and music are always worth making because the process of being creative is just good for a human being. Years ago I said to somebody I knew that I was a fairly dire 3 chord guitarist to which he replied "there's nothing wrong with that...so long as you know that". On and off I've strummed for fun, but I've never thought my playing was something anybody else might want to hear.
Desktop publishing has allowed everybody to produce their own flyers and posters without the cost and time involved in getting a designer to put them together and a printer to produce them: but look at any notice board and while you'll see loads of adverts for clubs, societies, small businesses and events most of them are actually not that nice to look at. They do the job, but they don't do it elegantly. Think I'm being judgemental and snotty? Okay, take a magazine and find a print advert in it you like. Then go and look at the notice board in your university, or village hall or whatever and see how many of the flyers and posters look as good as that advert from the magazine. OK, so if you wanted to know when the flower arranging club meet or you're looking for a band to see this evening all those amateur flyers are going to tell you that, but they're not of the same standard as the professional ones. Because the professional ones have been put together by people who spent a lot of time learning what looks good and mastering the tools to achieve that. Youtube has hundreds of hours of video uploaded to it every minute: thousands of amateur filmmakers (though the term is now accepted to be 'Youtubers') producing content on a whole range of subjects which may be of interest. But once you get past the content how many of them have weird lighting, or poor framing, or piles of undone ironing in the background? When did you last see a professional video, or one done by a film school graduate with pairs of knickers drying on the radiator in the background without them needing to be there? You don't because serious filmmakers know how they want their film to look, have the skills to understand how to achieve that, and put in the time and effort to make it happen.
Which brings me, via my inabilities as a guitarist to why I deleted most of my DA content. See, the reason I'm still after all this time a dire 3 chord guitarist is simply because I don't apply myself to the guitar, I don't study the theory and above all I don't practice seriously. If I did those things then I'd improve. I listen to good players and don't want to be that good, though a bit of me wishes I was better. Music is something I don't really want to be better at enough. Graphics on the other hand I love, I look at the work of professionals and wish I could work to that standard. I wish I could live up to Trent Reznor's idea of having something to say. So I took a long hard look at my stuff on DA and realised that most of it was either dull, or derivative, or badly conceived so I took it down. It's still on my hard drive and many of them represent a lot of work and learning new techniques, but none of it really showed any skill, or vision, or had anything to say.
Maybe it's time for us all to remember that being able to produce stuff isn't the goal: having something to say is
Wednesday 15 April 2015
Free Nuke for fun
Greetings to all my new friends at GCHQ and at Fort Meade who had their filters tripped by the post title - sorry for taking your time folks, it's just a way to create a title for this post. But hey, stay and enjoy anyway!
A few weeks ago I posted on the need for free quality visual creative software if we want to produce the next generation of people who'll enrich our visual world. Well this week comes the announcement from The Foundry of a free version of NUKE for people who just want to mess around at home and have fun, and who want to learn the software. This is exactly what we need to see from more companies, and all credit to The Foundry for doing it. It's going to give anybody who wants to the chance to muck around with it with no expense. Everybody wins with deals like this. Of course there are limitations to try and reduce the chance of it being misused by people who really ought to be paying for it, which again is good for everybody because companies need their commercial revenue stream.
If I have one tiny wee gripe about the conditions it's this one, though I can see why they've done it
"The commercial NUKE range cannot load files created with NUKE Non-commercial. The Non-commercial NUKE range can, however, load scripts and gizmos created with the commercial version"
Clearly this is to stop companies getting people to do work at home with the free version which they then import into the commercial one, and I can honesty see why they went with this, but it also means that if kids have access to NUKE at school under an educational licence they can't then download the free one to use at home and move files into and out of school...which rather goes against my view that we need to have kids doing as much stuff both at home and at school as possible: but again I can see why they did this. Perhaps a future upgrade might allow the product sold to schools under the educational licence to open files from free NUKE?
But, all round this is totally to be applauded, well done The Foundry and let's hope we see lots of other commercial creative software companies following their lead
A few weeks ago I posted on the need for free quality visual creative software if we want to produce the next generation of people who'll enrich our visual world. Well this week comes the announcement from The Foundry of a free version of NUKE for people who just want to mess around at home and have fun, and who want to learn the software. This is exactly what we need to see from more companies, and all credit to The Foundry for doing it. It's going to give anybody who wants to the chance to muck around with it with no expense. Everybody wins with deals like this. Of course there are limitations to try and reduce the chance of it being misused by people who really ought to be paying for it, which again is good for everybody because companies need their commercial revenue stream.
If I have one tiny wee gripe about the conditions it's this one, though I can see why they've done it
"The commercial NUKE range cannot load files created with NUKE Non-commercial. The Non-commercial NUKE range can, however, load scripts and gizmos created with the commercial version"
Clearly this is to stop companies getting people to do work at home with the free version which they then import into the commercial one, and I can honesty see why they went with this, but it also means that if kids have access to NUKE at school under an educational licence they can't then download the free one to use at home and move files into and out of school...which rather goes against my view that we need to have kids doing as much stuff both at home and at school as possible: but again I can see why they did this. Perhaps a future upgrade might allow the product sold to schools under the educational licence to open files from free NUKE?
But, all round this is totally to be applauded, well done The Foundry and let's hope we see lots of other commercial creative software companies following their lead
Sunday 12 April 2015
Michael Borremans - thank you artstack
I've just signed up for Artstack, as though I didn't already have enough blogs and sites to read every day. But I really like it as it shows me lots of art that I didn't necessarily know about and much of which I really like.
Like Belgian artist Michael Borremans, who I discovered this week.
(Image linked in from Salomea's Room)
He's a contemporary artist, alive and working today, though his paintings are clearly in the Old Master style and very 'painterly' (according to Wikipedia he cites Valazquesz as an important influcence) ... though they're also very surreal, sometimes to the extreme. You work your way down a figure to discover that they've got no legs and are floating just above a table top for example. Or people are shown from the back but with their clothes on back to front. I'm not sure I've got much to actually say about him, apart from the fact that a) I'd love to own one of his pictures and/or b) I'd love to be able to paint like that!
But I really do recommend that you go and spend some time looking at his work online - worth checking out this link on Salomea's Room for more samples of his painting, or just google for him
Like Belgian artist Michael Borremans, who I discovered this week.
He's a contemporary artist, alive and working today, though his paintings are clearly in the Old Master style and very 'painterly' (according to Wikipedia he cites Valazquesz as an important influcence) ... though they're also very surreal, sometimes to the extreme. You work your way down a figure to discover that they've got no legs and are floating just above a table top for example. Or people are shown from the back but with their clothes on back to front. I'm not sure I've got much to actually say about him, apart from the fact that a) I'd love to own one of his pictures and/or b) I'd love to be able to paint like that!
But I really do recommend that you go and spend some time looking at his work online - worth checking out this link on Salomea's Room for more samples of his painting, or just google for him
Sunday 29 March 2015
Modern house in traditional setting - why not here
Checking out Dezeen (one of my favourite sites) the other day I saw this item on a startling modern new house built in Norway - Villa Wot is a Brick Cuboid..
What impressed me, along with how much I was taken by the house itself, was the fact that it's not like the other ones in the street, in fact it says in the article "The plot in the Tåsen neighbourhood to the north of the city centre is surrounded by traditional timber-clad houses from the 1930s" which it clearly is in the photos. Villa Wot is just not like it's neigbours, and why the hell should it be? I know I've blogged about the aspic nature of the UK's attitude to building design before but I want to revisit it in the context of this because it's just not the sort of thing which happens here. Here it's all about homes fitting in, and even if the planners would let you build something very different somehow people opt for not doing so.
It's all so exemplified by the Prince of Wales famous comment about one of the proposed extensions to the National Gallery being a "monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend", which for some reason seems to have contributed to the proposed design being scrapped Now I'm not denying that HRH had, and continues to have, the same right to comment as any other citizen; unlike some people I don't think his role in our society should mean he can't express an opinion on whatever he likes. I don't agree with him, heck I don't agree with the idea of a Prince of Wales, but I reckon he shouldn't have been slated for having said it. What he said seems to have struck a chord deep in the society of the UK which believes that somehow modern is something which has it's place...and that place isn't where anybody seems to be! Buildings have to fit in with other buildings in a supposed harmonious whole. Which brings me to, and I give myself the same rights as HRH here, to his own driven development of Poundbury outside Dorchester. Dear God what a place, it's one of the most soul devoid places I've ever seen. It's like being in 'The Prisoner' only somewhere less imaginative. There's nothing wrong with any of the individual buildings (though the huge building visible from the Dorchester bypass always seems to me like something Albert Speer might have designed if he'd lived in rural Britain) but it's all just so clearly a one-hit pastiche of the sort of towns which develop over years and which have far more variety of building types than HRH possibly thinks they do. Historically we didn't do this, houses were built in whatever style the builders were comfortable doing: now we worry about them fitting in rather than being visually interesting and a pleasure to live in. When they had the huge fire at Hampton Court Palace they spend lots of time and money lovingly recreating it the way it was before: Christopher Wren would have pulled it down and built something new.
We're busy building houses in the UK, though not as many as we need, and they're very much out of the HRH school of thought. They're very much like every other house built for years. Is the house-buying public really so locked into this view, and they are pretty much like the pictures of houses kids learn to draw at nursery, that they wouldn't buy something different? The modernist estates which grew up after the war weren't bad in themselves, the flats were big and the buildings were striking in their own way. What let them down was that they were built to a price which sometimes wasn't high, and then run by councils who both penny-pinched and didn't really care about them. If they'd had the money spent on them, and on-site staff who cared, and they had mixed communities, then they might well have worked. I suspect none of this helped modernism in the UK, but I'm sure loads of young aspiring professionals would be more than happy to consider modernist housing if only people built it.
Which brings me back to Villa Wot, which sits among 1930s homes and looks nothing like them: and you know what? It doesn't matter. Just because every other house in a street looks the same there isn't the slightest reason that one can't put something very different in an empty space should one appear. It doesn't matter that it's a similar house, it just has to be a good house: a house which would make a good home.
What impressed me, along with how much I was taken by the house itself, was the fact that it's not like the other ones in the street, in fact it says in the article "The plot in the Tåsen neighbourhood to the north of the city centre is surrounded by traditional timber-clad houses from the 1930s" which it clearly is in the photos. Villa Wot is just not like it's neigbours, and why the hell should it be? I know I've blogged about the aspic nature of the UK's attitude to building design before but I want to revisit it in the context of this because it's just not the sort of thing which happens here. Here it's all about homes fitting in, and even if the planners would let you build something very different somehow people opt for not doing so.
It's all so exemplified by the Prince of Wales famous comment about one of the proposed extensions to the National Gallery being a "monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend", which for some reason seems to have contributed to the proposed design being scrapped Now I'm not denying that HRH had, and continues to have, the same right to comment as any other citizen; unlike some people I don't think his role in our society should mean he can't express an opinion on whatever he likes. I don't agree with him, heck I don't agree with the idea of a Prince of Wales, but I reckon he shouldn't have been slated for having said it. What he said seems to have struck a chord deep in the society of the UK which believes that somehow modern is something which has it's place...and that place isn't where anybody seems to be! Buildings have to fit in with other buildings in a supposed harmonious whole. Which brings me to, and I give myself the same rights as HRH here, to his own driven development of Poundbury outside Dorchester. Dear God what a place, it's one of the most soul devoid places I've ever seen. It's like being in 'The Prisoner' only somewhere less imaginative. There's nothing wrong with any of the individual buildings (though the huge building visible from the Dorchester bypass always seems to me like something Albert Speer might have designed if he'd lived in rural Britain) but it's all just so clearly a one-hit pastiche of the sort of towns which develop over years and which have far more variety of building types than HRH possibly thinks they do. Historically we didn't do this, houses were built in whatever style the builders were comfortable doing: now we worry about them fitting in rather than being visually interesting and a pleasure to live in. When they had the huge fire at Hampton Court Palace they spend lots of time and money lovingly recreating it the way it was before: Christopher Wren would have pulled it down and built something new.
We're busy building houses in the UK, though not as many as we need, and they're very much out of the HRH school of thought. They're very much like every other house built for years. Is the house-buying public really so locked into this view, and they are pretty much like the pictures of houses kids learn to draw at nursery, that they wouldn't buy something different? The modernist estates which grew up after the war weren't bad in themselves, the flats were big and the buildings were striking in their own way. What let them down was that they were built to a price which sometimes wasn't high, and then run by councils who both penny-pinched and didn't really care about them. If they'd had the money spent on them, and on-site staff who cared, and they had mixed communities, then they might well have worked. I suspect none of this helped modernism in the UK, but I'm sure loads of young aspiring professionals would be more than happy to consider modernist housing if only people built it.
Which brings me back to Villa Wot, which sits among 1930s homes and looks nothing like them: and you know what? It doesn't matter. Just because every other house in a street looks the same there isn't the slightest reason that one can't put something very different in an empty space should one appear. It doesn't matter that it's a similar house, it just has to be a good house: a house which would make a good home.
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