Well here is the final result, the video and image of the Loch Ness Monster assignment for school.

Unfortunately I published the video in a format that requires you to watch it fullscreen to get the dimension straight… Its a bit squashed flat this way. Here it is anyway.

If you prefer to see it the way it should be seen: Download it here.

Oh and an older assignment I also wanted to post here: The Meaning of My Name.

Click the image to go to my Flickr.com photostream where you can see comments about the photo.

Ok, so this is a piece of something cool I’m working on. I dont know whats going on with me but Im having a really creative wave lately. I got home from work and actually wanted to figure out more about the widgets here, and to continue creating something new for www.christiaanleever.com which is now completely removed I wanted to do something different than the photo background, allthough I also like that, but I was thinking along the lines of vector art. First I looked up some free vector art, but then I thought, why not just make it myself. So googled “how to make vector art” and found a nice tutorial that explained some of the basics since I never used the pen tool in PS

Anyway, eventually when I noticed how easy that was and how many new options that gave me for doing cool stuff in PS, I saw another tutorial on that persons site, and they explained how to turn a pencil/paper sketch into a more computer rendered look. Much use of the smudge tool basically. So thats what Ive been doing. I was thinking, OH! Lets make a drawing of the Loch Ness monster since I have that as a theme for Jan van Delfts assignment. I just drew a random head, with lots of teeth, and quickly took a bad photo of it with too much flash. Opened it in PS, and started trying it out. In the beginning I was rushing since I just wanted to test and see how it would work, and as I kept going I kept getting better and things started looking really 3D! Very cool how you can use it to create shadows, folds and veins and bumps etc… So ive been experimenting a bit and on a part of my monster I drew this alienlike thing. I like it.

Next up: Continue Loch Ness, and do some vector art for website background? Or see how I want to do something with a photo background. Might also be cool.

Woohooo! After creating this blog and searching for a nice theme that I would like and wouldnt be too hard to customize, I was a little dissapointed because none of them were really what I was looking for. Then I searched for “create wordpress themes” and somehow found Artisteer. Its a program that doesnt require any knowledge of html/css/codes etc, and still creates very cool designs. It really has thousands of options and I believe an unlimited number of unique and different resulting themes. Also cool is that if you want some inspiration or want to have a look at all the different possibilities, you can just ask the program to “suggest” something, the colours scheme, or the header, or the text and links etc, or just the whole blog. Create randomized themes in 1 click… I did that for a bit in the beginning, then decided to create my own theme completely. Its a great and easy program and with about 200 settings or so to change, it took me around 3 hours to make this blog. Everything you see, I decided for it to be that way, and thats what I like.

After the design was done, I copied/pasted all the html from the blogspot posts over at my original ACD blog “Phutureproof” to this blog. So now I have those posts here. I prefer the design and location of this blog, but unfortunately wordpress does have some options that are too advanced for me, a lot of stuff you can do if you know php, but a lot of things that blogger does for you automatically, arent possible here on wordpress. Also the whole dashboard and editing widgets/plugins is a bit slow. So I dont know if I will really completely remove the Phutureproof blog yet.

I just had a cool rushing internet session with Julian… learnt a lot of new stuff about blogpublishing, he recommended to install wordpress to my server, and showed me the options. Looks like its a bit more advanced than blogger/blogspot. I’m looking forward to trying out the new features.

Whilst installing wordpress on my webspace, I also found out that my hosting provider (Godaddy) has a lot more options nowadays than when I signed up 4 years ago. Like installing wordpress instantly from there, without having to do a lot of manual stuff. I also found the option for making subdomains Something which I tried to do a few years ago but couldnt figure out. Now the new blog will be visible on blog.christiaanleever.com, nothing there yet now though. Thanks to my intentions 4 years ago I made an account with SQL database possibilities, and I can host 10 blogs basically if I want. I also finally figured out how much webspace Im actually using on christiaanleever.com, only about 1GB, out of 10GB total. So thats cool. Im also only using 0.25% of my allowed bandwidth which is 300GB per month.

Later, Julian showed me Smashing Magazine which posts about photography, design, and lots of other random cool stuff to keep you inspired and busy. Only yesterday I had somehow stumbled upon Yanko Design which posts a lot of concept designs. Very cool and futuristic product design. Two sites that I’ve also added to my interesting links list to keep updated with their feeds.

Then as Julian was looking at Google Reader, a simple online RSS reader, I thought, yeah, Ive added all those blogs that Im following here to my google followers list, they should be in Google Reader too. I never used it before, but had a nice look at it and seems like a handy program if I ever have nothing to do… Like that ever happens

I think this morning just started out right. I had a dream that I was waking up and that it was a great morning, but then I really woke up, and felt good Started with photoshopping a drawing I made a while ago. I guess I felt creative.

Dont know which one I prefer. Which one do you like better?

Ive made a movie of the slideshow aswell, it might be more easy for everyone to view.

I only saved a low quality version because it will be easier to upload. If you want to see the full quality of the photos, I recommend the powerpoint, but that doesnt have the nice music of course.

O God

I also changed the blog a bit last night Enjoyed doing some webdesign again. Picked a template, because you have to admit its a nice and easy start, and changed the font to something I preferred, removed the header and put the image in there. I was thinking of making something with text “Phutureproof” because that is the url I chose for this blog, referring to a song by Massive Attack, Futureproof. That url was already taken so I took the one with ph. Its a spacy ambient kind of mellow soundtrack which I like a lot.

Anyway, I was just testing a brush, and when I saw the result I thought it would be funny to add this image as my header sortof to say to all those people that take a lot of effort to come up with some original meaningful name or a phrase, that they shouldnt take it so seriously

I was interviewed a while ago by a few students from the Grafisch Lyceum Rotterdam about HDR photography, here is the video! They asked me a few questions, filmed some things outside aswell, and added some of my photos, I like it a lot!

Ok, so. This post is a message to God. Since I found a headline in the NRC saying: “O God [...] en ze worden atheïsten.” I decided to start my storyboard with that.

Now the next assignment was to take 15 photos that have a horizontal or vertical line going through them. We had to take photos that we could associate with words from the text. I had no idea what else we would be going to do with the photos, so I just snapped some from my bike on the way home after school.

Today at school we heard we had to darken a part of the photo along the line, and use that part to add words from the text to the photo that we associate it with. I had about 60 photos, selected 30 of them, straightened the lines in Photoshop and later in Lightroom since it was a bit easier. Then I added almost black areas to the photos usually covering the more cluttered halves, leaving the simple or more empty halves. I think simplicity in photos often makes photos stronger, unless youre specifically going for the busy, cluttered effect.

Download the powerpoint presentation here.

During the lesson I was becoming increasingly frustrated at seeing signs of Apple/mac/I-this and I-that everywhere. Luckily I had brought my Packard Bell “windows” laptop with me, because I was a bit late and all (mac) computers were already taken. This also had the advantage for me that I could work nicely in windows. Still, classes are being held projecting apple software onto a screen so we can all follow what they are doing, in Keynote, or I-movie, or I-Photo, etc… And of course I dont have those programs on my windows computer. Also, I cannot install them since Apple decided to make all their file formats non compatible with windows…

I will try to keep in mind that I am receiving a free Apple/mac software training here the next 3 years, and that I should use it to my advantage. I will do what I want to do on my computer, and what I need to do on macs I will do on macs.

Today, 13th of may, I created these sketchup models.

In the afternoon of the 6th, I wasnt present, but we were introduced to Sketchup, a Google program that is very simple yet often very frustrating because it wont do what you want it to do. its fun to use nevertheless, and you can quickly learn how to make 3D shapes, 3D buildings, 3D text, 3D sketches, whatever, as long as its 3D as you can see. I did the tutorial at home that evening to get to know it a bit, but it still had a lot of options I didnt know about as I found out today whilst making these.

The assignment was to make a kind of gallery and to show your photos in it. This is just a simple gallery, the other one is a bit more experimental, ignoring gravity etc. I have uploaded the skP file here but I dont know if thats enough to open it or if you also need the skB file. Was a bit confusing at first, saving something and having 2 the same file names with different icons… Then I noticed the extensions were slightly different

For those that want to see it in 3D I saved the animation here as an avi. CLICK IT!!

The slightly more experimental gallery: here is the skp file. Or you can just view the screenshot.

I thought it was fun to make, I also stayed at school a lot longer than planned, till 19.00 or so, but I also finished next weeks assignment for Johan, the slideshow/presentation of the text we cut out of the paper.

I chose to join the 4 introduction days of ACD (Art & Crossmedia Design) and 6th of may was the first one. We had to make a storyboard of headlines cut out of a NRC newspaper. It had to be at least 30 words, and could be about anything you wanted. We are going to use the text in the storyboard for future assignments for ACD.

Overall Im pretty satisfied with the results.