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When I grow up

April 28, 2006

Spinning yarns about childhood goals

According to the reports from my parents, when I was young I would say that "when I grow up, I want to be either a Doctor or a Garbage Man." Now mind you, I was really young and do not remember actually saying any of this but the response I would give when asked "Why a Doctor or a Garbage Man?" was "Because Doctors make alot of money and have big houses with cool toys but Garbage Men get to ride on the backs of the trucks!" You can see the dilemma here.

Fast forward twenty-some years and I was sitting on the porch earlier today with [M] and the garbage man went by to get our refuse just like every other week since we have lived here but this time it reminded me of these stories my folks would tell about me wanting to be one. As I am telling this to [M] I realized that the 2 things I was torn between in my younger years where "making money" and "doing what I enjoyed." I obviously had no idea what a Graphic Designer was when I was 4 or that you could even get paid for playing around and making stuff.

In case the four your old me is ever reading this I want you to know... I'm doing what I can to pay the bills while still riding on the back of the truck. Even if riding on the back of the truck isn't what is directly keeping shoes on my feet and the lights on in my house.

Its worth noting here that for one summer I worked at the Michigan International Speedway and after each NASCAR and INDY car race during the clean up weeks I did in fact get to ride on the back of a garbage truck several times. It was everything I had ever hoped it would be. I just hope the 4 year old me is proud.

02:19 PM | Permanent Link | Comments (0)

W06.semester.length-2

April 24, 2006

It is the second-to-last day of the semester. So I come home with more notes like this than usual.



11:34 PM | Permanent Link | Comments (0)

Found: Tile

April 21, 2006

I found this awesome piece of tile a while back.

And I finally scanned it in to use in some play.

09:33 PM | Permanent Link | Comments (0)

20seconds Drawn: AM Porch

April 20, 2006

Same system. Different 20second sound. This one was recorded this AM sitting on my porch before I left the house to get to a meeting.

Early AM Porch with Cigarette Light

Drawn with Action Script. Analyzed by Flash Amp.

11:45 PM | Permanent Link | Comments (1)

20seconds Drawn: AM Rain

April 18, 2006

The previous drawing with sound analyzation play still had a few points of small random selection. This series is now completely driven by the data from the analyzation of the sound. Each time it is run on the same sound analyzation it returns the same visual results. This is allowing me to better investigate the visual differences between the sounds I am processing with it.

Drawn with Action Script. Analyzed by Flash Amp.

07:02 PM | Permanent Link | Comments (0)

JSFL: Convert Gs to MCs

April 17, 2006

Sometimes its just easier to make a giant button to do it for you...

I made this a while back for my own play but then it came up in a discussion I was having in class with a student earlier tonight so I figured I'd post it in the event it helps speed up someone else's play. It converts any graphic at the current timeline position to a movie clip.

Its especially handy when I am using the Illustrator to Flash 99% trick learned from Joshua Davis, figured out originally by Erik Natzke. Usually its pretty simple but I was finding as the stuff got more complex, Illustrator was only exporting most of the things as graphics and there where still these extra bits, especially if what I was bringing into Illustrator was something originally drawn with Action Script in Flash.


Download installer

11:55 PM | Permanent Link | Comments (0)

Drawing from The Key of Gma

April 13, 2006

The visualization of some sound play I made this morning using my G-ma's organ.

I was helping a student figure some things out using analyzed audio along with some visual things you can do in Flash with that data and I got excited to play with it some more so today I did. Here is a video of it being drawn
Drawn with Action Script. Analyzed by Flash Amp.

04:23 PM | Permanent Link | Comments (0)

SEA Flight 95 Time Killing

April 08, 2006

I was rummaging around in a DV Tape this morning looking for something and I stumbled across this footage I forgot I had taken last summer at the SEA Airport.

The audio is more play from my Grandmother's beautifully crackling organ.

10:08 AM | Permanent Link | Comments (1)

JM3 on the idea of Formalplay

April 05, 2006

A voicemail I recieved from JM3 talking about the idea of "Formalplay" and how it ended up in his process. Also, this is the first use of my Awesome Friends Cable.

Thanks JM... I was in class when you called.

This has been reproduced with permission.

02:25 PM | Permanent Link | Comments (4)

The Awesome Friends Cable

I have the awesomest friends. (If you think you do you are wrong. Because I do.) And sometimes they leave me the awesomest voicemails and I have been wanting a way to save them. The old method of micing the phone itself never really worked well and I realized that the phone does have an audio out so I made this cable last night so that I could get phone activity directly into a recording device.

It started with an 1/8 inch jack and an old hands free unit with a broken mic we had laying around {thanks [M]}.
Once I took the hands free unit apart I realized that there where 2 cables (one for voice, one for ears) so I had to crack the mic open to see which one went where. The copper+red one was the one I needed.
Each set of 2 wires was in one plastic tubing with a very loose divider so I had to protect them from each other. I just smashed some electrical tape around the one.
After I soldered the points to the 1/8 jack and put the jack housing back up and around I taped off the end I was not using and I had my cable.

10:35 AM | Permanent Link | Comments (11)

RE:cursive On Shelves Now

April 04, 2006

A few months ago I used my RE:cursive type drawing engine to render out some headlines and other forms for a magazine to use in a feature story about motion graphics in Detroit. I think it is a pretty interesting fit. The idea of type rendered over time and different every time has always intrigued me and I was excited to find out that someone found it to be of interest.

The issue came out recently and I just picked up a copy today [thnx to a tip from an internet friend]. My good friends at Defrost Design are responsible for the design and the connection to my project and I am geeked at how it turned out. Here are a couple quick scans from the 6 page spread.


"Craig Steen and Matthew Raupp have been partners at Defrost Design for six years and also serve as adjunct faculty members of the Graphic Design department at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit. Their collaborative creative process combines client input, a growing network of designers, and their own vision of conveying information through captivating design. In the case of this project, Defrost asked Alex Braidwood to generate the motion type using RE:cursive, a coded typography drawing engine he developed in Macromedia Flash. The typography actively captures the spirit of perpetual motion and works as a multi-functioning graphic that can exist in digital and print media."

12:33 AM | Permanent Link | Comments (1)