April 30, 2005
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Just saw it at the local Megaplex. I thought it was spectacular, even in spite of differences from the book. I figured I would take this opportunity to post a copy of the original radio show for those interested, but only for a limited time.
Hitchhiker’s Episode 1
Hitchhiker’s Episode 2
Hitchhiker’s Episode 3
Hitchhiker’s Episode 4
Hitchhiker’s Episode 5
Hitchhiker’s Episode 6
Hitchhiker’s Episode 7
Hitchhiker’s Episode 8
Hitchhiker’s Episode 9
Hitchhiker’s Episode 10
Hitchhiker’s Episode 11
Hitchhiker’s Episode 12
Enjoy!
Nathan
Posted by Nathan Dickson at 04:57 PM | Comments (1)
April 26, 2005
Helmet
This is a helmet design that to me looks Star Wars Stormtrooper inspired. This was drawn back in 1981 for the Triumph short film (see the entry called 1981 Flipbook).
This was drawn with a happy fun No. 2 pencil on standard copier paper (which was amply supplied by my father, the copier repairman).
(Thanks, Shelley, for saving all this old artwork.)
Posted by Nathan Dickson at 06:16 PM | Comments (0)
1981 Flipbook
When I was growing up, I first wanted to be a rock star, then an animator, then a special effects wizard and then a film director. During that whole phase of my life, I wrote short film scripts, illustrated otherworldly characters and even created a couple of flipbooks. Here is the first one, based on the ending of a short film I was never to create. The short film was to be titled Triumph, after the name of the smaller spaceship in the flipbook animation.
To create this web-ready version, I scanned in each 3x5 card on which the flipbook was created, brought each image into Adobe After Effects, used AE’s motion stabilization feature to re-register each frame so the movie didn’t jump all over the place, and then render the final out to a Quicktime movie.
Here is a picture of the flipbook in mid-flip:
Here is the final movie version that plays at ten frames per second:
1981 Flipbook (1.3MB)
Quicktime is required
The image and flipbook movie are Copyright 2005 Nathan Dickson. All rights reserved worldwide.
Posted by Nathan Dickson at 05:57 PM | Comments (1)
Michael Jackson
WARNING: This is not for childrenHaving warned you in advanced not to let children watch this, the Daily Show did an incredibly funny piece on the Michael Jackson trial. Here is a fairly large Quicktime movie containing the entire segment. |
Posted by Nathan Dickson at 02:43 PM | Comments (0)
Fred Armisen
Posted by Nathan Dickson at 02:37 PM | Comments (0)
Would You?
Not to get everyone down, but my brother Dan passed away about a year ago. To help me work through the emotions surrounding the whole event, I wrote and recorded a song. Please listen and comment. Quicktime is requiredPosted by Nathan Dickson at 02:29 PM | Comments (0)
Multiple Choice
In the picture above, the man is . . .
A. Happy
B. Sad
C. Frightened
D. Blitzed
Brought to you by an Olympus C2500 digital camera held in my very own sweaty palms.
Posted by Nathan Dickson at 02:26 PM | Comments (1)
Before and After
 |  |
Have you ever been to a party and had a little too much to drink? Or maybe not too much to drink, but just enough? This happened to me a few years back. Fortunately, digital technology was there to preserve for posterity the amazing difference that four white russians and three beers can make.
Please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not a lush. I just enjoy not realizing how many drinks I’ve had that evening because I’m so preoccupied with having a good time with friends.
Can you guess which picture was taken at the beginning of the evening and which one near the end? I’ll give you two hints: the picture at the beginning shows my smug, aloof self-control; the picture near the end shows me when I don’t care what I look like.
Yes, in one of the pictures I am indeed wearing a plastic fireman’s helmet.
Posted by Nathan Dickson at 02:12 PM | Comments (2)
April 24, 2005
LisaDickson.name
Lisa has just posted a preliminary web page for her new personal domain. It’s obviously a work-in-progress, but at least something is there now.
Posted by Nathan Dickson at 04:01 PM | Comments (0)
April 23, 2005
Comments
I have enabled the ability for viewers to post comments to my postings. So, if you have an opinion that you’d like to share, please do so. However, for unregistered commenters, I will need to “approve” your comment before it goes live. I will only censor spamming posts and not those expressing an opinion contrary to my own.
Posted by Nathan Dickson at 01:39 PM | Comments (1)
Lisa and a Baby
Lisa, of course, is my wife. This is a picture of her when she was about seven or eight, I think. The other night she spent several hours scanning in about 150 images from when she was a child. This is one of the better pictures, with the adoring look on her face. This is the look she flashes me whenever she thinks adoring thoughts about me (what a lucky guy I am).
I have no idea who the baby is. Lisa let me know very clearly that it was not her little brother because this baby is dressed in pink.
Are you happy that I posted something about you, hun?
Posted by Nathan Dickson at 12:20 PM | Comments (0)
Brain Scanner
It’s difficult to miss the Brain Scanner animated GIF (pronounced JIFF for those of you who until now have pronounced the acronym incorrectly). This was created in After Effects 6.5 Pro (hereafter referred to as “AE”) using several tricks.
First of all, I grabbed a picture of an authentic human brain from somewhere out in the ether (Google), brought it into AE and applied the Colorama Effect to it. Colorama has the fantastic ability to remap gray values to many interesting color palettes and even allows you to animate the palettes. This is an old trick in computer graphics and it’s nice to be able to do it in AE.
Secondly, I created a Mask around the brain image and used the mask to create an Alpha Channel for the Brain.
Then I brought the color-animated and alpha-channeled brain composition into another composition where I added the Advanced Lightning effect.
The Advanced Lightning effect is quite beautiful, as you can see, and allows you to use the Alpha Channel of the layer to which you apply it to “teach” the lightning where to travel as it were. This is why the lightning seems to wrap itself around the edges of the Brain as it seeks its way from point A to point B. The lightning effect complements the evolving solarized blue color changes of the brain itself.
The last step was to render the animation in high quality and bring it through Adobe ImageReady CS, which has the fantastic ability of turning a Quicktime Movie into a well-compressed Animated GIF for posting.
For those of you who have a copy of After Effects 6.5 Pro (or if you’ve downloaded the 30-day Demo from Adobe’s Website), you can inspect the source documents to see exactly how this animation was constructed.
Posted by Nathan Dickson at 11:42 AM | Comments (0)
April 22, 2005
Spirit
I had never heard this Bauhaus song before the other day, when it played on VH1 Classics (the 80’s are now classics?). Here is a link to the song at Apple's iTunes Music Store. In fact, there are two versions of this song in the Music Store and this is the vastly superior one.
Posted by Nathan Dickson at 06:56 PM | Comments (0)
Voices Carry
Remember Voices Carry from the mid-1980’s by a little group called ’Til Tuesday? The lead singer, bassist and driving force behind the band was Aimee Mann. She has recently recorded a new version of the song with all acoustic instruments with a very lovely and low-fi sound. It’s available exclusively on Apple’s iTunes Music Store.
If you have iTunes and an account with the iTunes Music Store, I highly recommend that you at least give the freely-available 30 second clip a listen. Both Lisa and I believe that it’s much better than the original.
Posted by Nathan Dickson at 06:02 PM | Comments (0)
Citizen Cope
Late Saturday evening I was dozing off to Saturday Night Live when a Pontiac commercial caught my attention. A song was delighting my ears while yet one more stupid hunk of metal on four wheels glistened across my 27" tube.
Remembering that I have a computer and access to the largest library of half-correct information in the world, also known as the Internet, I leapt from the couch and logged into Google, where I punched in Pontiac G6 Coupe Song. Sure enough, within seconds, I had my link.
From Pontiac’s website, I quickly learned that a band called Citizen Cope, led by the guy who technically *is* Citizen Cope, Clarence Greenwood, released this tune back in aught-four.
The song is called Son’s Gonna Rise and is quite good on a number of levels. After purchasing it from Apple's iTunes Music Store, I was playing it over and over in my Sony Pro headphones and emailing everyone I knew to take a listen from Citizen Cope’s website.
Posted by Nathan Dickson at 05:50 PM | Comments (0)
One More Blog
Welcome to the first Blog that I have ever created and maintained. It’s sure to be one of millions of non-essential and ignored collections of ramblings in, around and under the web.
As a favor to my faithful fan base, I assure you that I will be posting updates as often as I feel like it.
Posted by Nathan Dickson at 05:47 PM | Comments (0)
Paul McCartney
I went to my local Kroger store this morning at 8 a.m. to wait in line to purchase tickets for the upcoming Paul McCartney concert here in Columbus, USA.
I got there and the ticket ladies handed me what looked like a standard carnival ticket with six-digit number and sent me on my way, telling me to return about 9:30. Well, I did so and, after pestering the ticket ladies and half the people in line, I waited my turn.
At about a quarter 'til ten, one of the ticket ladies, noticing my attempts at polite pacing, offered to me the chance to pick the winning ticket. Glancing at the other people waiting, making sure they saw that I turned my head in the opposite direction, I carefully sifted out one little paper.
Needless to say, I was not first in line, I was fourth. The girl who won first spot was grateful and happily took her prime spot in front of the TicketMaster machine.
After some minor confusion about how the sheep behind me were supposed ot line up (some guy actually had the audacity to snottily ask, “Oh, so you're in charge here?” when I was very politely trying to organize them), we all waited while the clock crept to 10 a.m.
The ticket ladies began processing everyone's request for tickets. Lucky Girl got four tickets on the floor, but way-far-away from the stage. Not too bad for $75, and that was for a cheap seat.
The next lady also purchased four, but her seats were way, way up and to the right. She needs to bring tissues to stop the blood.
The guy in front of me received seats with a partially obstructed view as did I, except mine ended up being to the side of the stage and slightly behind the amplifier stacks. Man, what stupid luck.
It won't really matter. Rachel (my eldest daughter) and I will still enjoy the heck out of Paul's performance. She's quite aware that this will probably be the only chance she has to ever see a Beatle live and in person. As such, she is noticeably stoked.
Posted by Nathan Dickson at 05:31 PM | Comments (0)
After Effects 6.5 Advanced
Well, I've begun work on my next VTC Tutorial. To prepare, I've been cramming my brain with as much esoteric AE material as it can tolerate. I think my gray matter fell out there for a day or two.
Posted by Nathan Dickson at 05:13 PM | Comments (0)