What? I have a blog? OH YEAH!

Wow, so who thought I was dead? No one? Wait, does anyone even follow this thing?

ANYWAY, Its been a long time since I've had a chance to sit down and write a blog, a year at least. However, I've decided to recommit to blogging regularly. I've been quite busy the last year, I've graduated from college and have started doing some freelance work which has been keeping me busy. In other news, I got a website up and running (and then the domain expired and I decided it was too expensive to maintain, so I moved it to a free hosting site) So the new link is now here!

So that's really it for now, below I'll embed some of my video's that I've done over the last year (freelancing work, and personal projects) I plan to use this blog to display works in progress, behind the scenes of finished projects and a bunch of other useless and random garbage that I feel is slightly relivent :)

This was my latest project, its the intro animation for Lyme Lyte to be used at the beginning of music video's and other work by the client.

Similar to the Lyme Lyte Logo, this logo for the S.A.R.S. Network will be used in branding of music video's and other projects by the network.

The following are small tests, school assignments, and personal projects I've done to get some practice with the software (3Ds Max, and AE CS4/5)

There's a lot more on my website and Vimeo page, so feel free to take a look, I'll begin to post more and eventually I'll catch up to where I am now :)

Till I remember to post again,

-Greg

Light Numbers

Using Photoshop to change the colour the assets were then imported into flash and animated, and are put into a continuous loop.



-Greg

Photoshop

Here are some exercises I've completed over the past semester.

-Greg

Walk Cycle

Here is the final walk cycle I made for flash class. The character was painted in photoshop, and the armature was added using the bone tool in Flash CS4

-Greg

Flash Hair Removal...

Wow, so Flash CS4 really does make you want to rip out your hair! Over the past 2 days I've worked non stop on trying to figure out the Actionscript code I need to make my site work, and lets just say the process has been rather slow.

For the most part I know a bit about the workings of flash, movie/button/graphic symbols, motion/classic tweens, inverse kinetics, timeline animation... The general stuff you need to get started along with some basic VERY basic actionscript (my favorite, and often used "gotoAndPlay ();" and the ever popular "stop ();" commands). But this weekend I think I bit off more then I could chew (At least at the level I am at now) and I jumped deep into the depths of actionscript and began my adventures into adding child symbols and instances to the stage with button commands and embedding Vimeo video's into the pages (which I am beginning to regret) and learning how to use the tween commands flash has built into it that you can access within the actionscript coding.

So what has all this hair pulling, too many cigarette breaks, loss of sleep, and general anxiety about a language that is only used to communicate with a computer give you?.... this:

So THIS is what has caused all of my anxiety and sleep loss... And I doubt if I'll even use it in my final site. Basically what I was trying to accomplish was to create a portfolio page that mimicked a CSS light box effect (because I don't know anything about CSS yet... maybe its easier for this effect.....) but would play an embedded Vimeo file... I got it to work, sort of, I'm still not completely satisfied with it an may end up embedding an .swf file into the site instead of embedding an external URL... plus I still need to design the rest of the site because right now I've just got a white box with a light drop shadow and no navigation at all... Hopefully eventually I'll be able to create the highly interactive site that I have in my mind, but for now just to get something out there I think I'll be designing something that functions well and looks nice.

So feel free to click on the images and take a look, they've been hyperlinked to bring you to the website that is slowly eating my soul. (and yes, I know sometimes you will receive an error with the page that has the vimeo link embedded into it... I just can't figure out how to get rid of it... similar errors occur with the flash files I've uploaded on here as well... and they are driving me mad!)

Flashing mad,

Greg

Vain.

Self portrait for photography class... don't want to be vain so I'll shut up about myself now... haha?

Full of himself

-Greg

Who would have guessed?

So I suppose it all depends on the teacher! Todays typography class was actually FUN... I know, I was pleasantly surprised with today's class and assignments, also I'm actually pleased with the outcome.

So the first is a font I created called "3-BIT" below are the letters "A,B,C,P,Q,R" and "TYPE" rendered in the font. The octagon in the corner shows the base shape and the lines used to remove areas.

This second group were some in class assignments where we had to look at the font's shape and form rather then a typical letter and create the compositions.

Typo Happy,

-Greg

Spinning Sprint

So I'm beginning to learn that procrastination actually takes up more time then the actual work would if I had just done it originally. Anyway, here's the spinning phone I made:

I replaced the blank screens with functioning ones, and did a general clean-up of the phones which included removing any dust, smudges, cardboard used to hold up the phones, etc....

Cell phone loathing,
-Greg

Gotta Love it!

So as you may have noticed (or not...) There have been a few error's on my blog recently. HotLinkFiles.com has graciously deleted my account, I'm in the middle of getting it reactivated so these annoying little pictures (below) will go away. Soon enough I'll have my own domain, but for the time being... I've got to deal with the terrific people from this website :)

SUPER annoyed,
Greg

Sprint Screen Replacement.

Two shots of a phone with the screen replaced, added shadows and highlights to try and sell the illusion, hope it works!

Till text time,
-Greg

Mourning Coffee

So here is my final video project:

Mourning Coffee from Gregory VanDenBerg on Vimeo.

Here are the source sites if the above has trouble loading:
youtube
vimeo

Until next semester:
-Greg

Final bug book

So here is the finished little book we put together for the bugs:

-Greg

Soy Sauce FTW!

So before now the only weird and wacky medium I could claim to have used to make art was light bulbs and a drill press... But as Thursdays class proved once again, 'you can make anything out of anything'

And on that note, here are my paintings. With the paint really being soy sauce and the brushes really being Q-tips.... strange.

-Greg

SKATE DECK

So here is what I've got so far with my skate deck. The bug is raster and the hair follicles are vector.

I have a few more things I want to add to it,
so soon I should have this updated.

-Greg

I - DO - NOT - PAINT

... the title says it all. Anyway, here is the finished bug with his back story and a little bit about the little guy :)

Foliculus is a small prey type organism who travels alone, or in small groups of several million, they survive by disguising themselves against hair follicles. If it is caught by a predator (namely Pulgas) its exoskeleton secretes an oil which makes the attacking insect vomit, this action usually doesn’t deter Pulgas, but at least they try. Apart from hiding and oil secretion, they only have one main drive in life, food. The single source of food for these organisms is in fact the one thing they use to protect themselves from there enemies, hair.

A single Foliculus can eat approximately one inch strand of hair every 4-6 hours. During feeding time it burrows under the hair root and devours it, the insect then takes the place of the root and slowly begins eating the strand of hair above the scalp. If a dog, or cat is infested with these tiny bugs you can be sure that within 3-5 days the animal will be completely and irreversibly bald as the hair root is eaten during feeding. As for human infestation, although the Foliculus do not like the taste of human hair they have been known to eat it when another animal cannot be found, in this case balding will happen more slowly as it takes them longer to eat (due to length and taste) and baldness will occur within 7-10 days.

This is before the HORRIBLE paint job:

And this is after the HORRIBLE paint job

Note: If water color paint comes in a paste, it is meant to be added to WATER and not used in place of acrylic paint.... my poor little bug still isn't dry, and its been a week! And since it was so sticky all the fine details started ripping off the poor little guy.... Ooops :)

Paint chip eating-
Greg.

Bugs + Me = FREAKED OUT

Its well known that I hate bugs, all bugs, there is no such thing as a 'cute' bug. They are all useless horrors of this earth.... but heres my bug toy thus far into his construction.

PS: I changed my design since my last bug looked a lot like a robot (as I was told) so this is a new design, he too looked rather robotish so I gave him some texture with the super sculpey.

Thats all for now.
-Greg

Uhhhh

So visualization of music is clearly not my strong point, although I do like what I've produced for this assignment. The idea was to create something using any medium and try to visualize music.

The first, I made this while listening to:
Music is my Boyfriend by CSS


and the second while listening to:
Today Children by Liam Brocklehurst

I don't think either of them make a whole heap of sense, but this is what I came up with while I had the tunes blasting in my ears...

Over tired and crabby,
-Greg.

BUG

So, I hate bugs... all bugs, dead ones are for some reason more creepy then live ones but in the end they all suck.... and now I have to create one out of clay and it makes me want to shrivel up and die :)

anyway, this is him:

He is prey to many other bugs, and
lives a sad pitiful little existence

-Greg

Hookers get old...

So this is the illustration I made for DMA 101... she started out as a mean old woman head, but I couldn't figure out why she was so mean... so I figured I'd make her into a hooker, a really old hooker. Then it would make sense that she would have a really mean look on her face.

-Greg

You are what you eat.

So here are my 42 food pictures,

It all starts with OSAP, one day, completely randomly and NOT on time at all they will deposit a predetermined sum of money into your account. After not eating properly for weeks on end and stressing over a project which.... REQUIRES eating, you tend to splurge when you have the funds to fill your kitchen.

All the pictures can be found on my flickr account.

If I am what I eat, then I'm delicious!
-Greg