SQL City

Microsoft recently asked us (Metia... the place where I work) to make an online business calculator that shows you how purchasing Microsoft's SQL Server product will affect your business. They were thinking maybe we could make some fancy dials and graphs and such, but during my concepting phase, I was struck with the idea to make an actual little business that the user could affect. There would be little people moving around, interacting with eachother, server stacks appearing and disappearing, clouds moving by in the background... We had no idea if we could actually build it, but we were all excited about the idea.

I ended up pitching three concepts to the client. Fortunately, the client picked the concept that I was hoping they would and so I spent the next 88 hours meticulously animating little arms and bodies and fancy buttons and sliders. One of the developers at work hooked up all the back end, staying up till the wee hours of the morning. The final product turned out pretty nice.

I have to say, it is one my favorite projects since I started working here. Can you find me in there? :)
(play w/ the pie chart and add some more employees to the IT Dept)

Banksy

We recently rented a video called Bomb It and found it very inspiring. It showcased a number of street artists - one of them was Banksy. Then last week, we stopped at Johnny O's house and flipped thru this really cool book he had just got that day called "Wall and Peace" that featured the works of Banksy. Then two days later, I was looking something completely unrelated to street art up on Google and for some reason Banksy showed up as one of the first results.

For some reason, Banksy has been calling me...

Check out his site. I love this stuff!

Slowwww Mo

Footage shot with the i-Movix SprintCam v3, which can shoot from 500 to 2000 frames per second. Very cool. Thanks to The Doctor for the link.




I-Movix SprintCam v3 NAB 2009 showreel.

Wolf Loves Pork (who doesn't)

A little long for my 2 minute attention span (video is about 4 min) but brilliant. Just brilliant.

Ride the Wave

I've been designing a lot of stuff at work for this new Microsoft technology called Silverlight. It's pretty frustrating because it is not as user-friendly as working in Flash, but it has it's "aha" moments where things kinda make sense and I can sometimes make some nice interaction.

Anyways, here is something we finished up last week (me and a Developer). I really had fun animating this 3D grid and shooting light waves down the slopes. It's all about the little intro...

http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/2010/en/us/default.aspx

(probably not Mac friendly)

TRON

We watched TRON last night. Wow.

I cannot believe how cool that movie is. And to think that it was made in 1981. It was so ahead of it's time. Watching it, we realized how much cultural influence that movie has had. There were some Matrix undertones followed by some Taiwanese credits at the end that looked like Matrix code. And there was a line about the "way back machine", which is now the name of the feature at www.archive.org. I'm sure there are many more examples, but that's not the point of this post. The point is, if you haven't seen that move, you should. And if it's been a while, maybe you should watch it again.

End of line.

Red Riding Hood 2.0

Ever been curious about the nutritional value of your Grandmother?