Dam Dam DAM (in Kinzua, that is)

Local residents know the Kinzua Dam, located about six miles south of Warren, Pennsylvania. One weekend in early March of 2015 I realized that I had never been there in the winter, so I took my camera out to rectify that. The snow was quite high despite being sunny (still not very warm), and here's some footage.


It was windy, and I didn't have an audio recorder with a windscreen with me, so I apologize about the sound.

Video for CJ's Home Decor & Fireplaces, Episode II: How To Install An Inside-Fit Zero-Clearance Fireplace Door

The saga continues...

This is part two of the previous video. I shot the footage the same day, but the editing was done later (and has improved a little). The manager actually couldn't wait for me to film him installing it, so I had to uninstall the door and re-install it, using camera angles and special effects to mask the fact that I'm not actually drilling the holes (but really, you can tell by the lack of a lot of debris, which I just couldn't get to look right in Adobe After Effects).

CJ's Home Decor & Fireplaces How-To Videos, Episode 1: Measuring for a Zero Clearance Fireplace Door

What a week that was...

This is the first in a series of instructional videos that I'm working on for my employer. It's been an interesting experience. Here's a basic rundown on everything that I did to produce it:

1. Wrote a script for the procedures (with input from my boss)
2. Gathered up the tools and incidentals
3. Shot the footage with a single camera
4. Recorded audio
5. Edited footage in Adobe Premiere
6. Color-matched footage in Adobe Speedgrade
7. Cleaned up audio in Adobe Audition
8. Created 2D art assets in Adobe Illustrator & Adobe Photoshop
9. Made 2D animations in Adobe After Effects
10. Modeled and rendered 3D animation and particle systems in Blender
11. Selected and arranged the music tracks
12. Rendered the video
13. Uploaded it to YouTube
14. Closed caption editing

I did all of this within a five-day period. Did I do a good job? I'll let you be the judge. Are there things that I would change/improve? Well certainly - good art is never finished, only abandoned. But the important thing is that I've learned a lot while doing it!

Not a Fan of the Brand - Confessions Aging Enthusiast

A Recent Article Showed Me The Light

I happened upon a slideshow on Rant Gizmo (which your can find HERE) this morning when I was looking for the best graphic practices for mobile themes for some up-and-coming projects at work. In this brief piece, the author, Michael Peckerar, posts thirteen reasons why the iPhone is better than any Android phone, which fit the range of, "You have to pay over $299 for a good one," to, "You can screw it up if you try to customize it." After laughing at the author's decidedly one-sided approach to the argument (for those uninitiated, most new iPhones cost upwards of $500 and you can't really customize them beyond desktop backgrounds), it got me thinking:

What's up with fan-boys these days?

My confession:

Now in my youth (and for some of my adult life) I was an unabashed video game fan-boy. First it was Nintendo over Sega, then Sega over Sony, then Microsoft over everyone, and on, and on... I've realized that by choosing one brand's hype over another that I've missed out on some truly amazing products over the years because I was too stubborn to accept the one truth that fan-boys can't seem to fathom:

All brands, regardless of marketing hype, are just companies trying to push a product to market.

Brand loyalty needs to be earned, sure, and once it is it can give that brand an advantage in future purchasing decisions. My love of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System shaded many of my video game purchases, getting me to buy inferior products like Virtual Boy and the N64 out of the hope that my favorite brand wouldn't let me down, despite the fact that Nintendo has been hopelessly out of its depth since the 16-bit era. Maybe it's because I'm older and wiser, or maybe it's the marketing-saturated world that we live in, but I find that I am less enthusiastic about "brands" and more enthusiastic about "products" and actual value.

The undesired result

Far from Michael Peckerar's point, I find that his misguided attack against one brand in favor of another is as much as a turn-off to me as anything. His misleading obfuscated opinions are actually making me LESS enthusiastic about Apple's iPhone and its products in general -- if this is how the brand's adherents feel and act, resorting to lies and half-truths simply to push a product's user base, I don't think that it's an ecosystem that I want to be a part of. I have taken up this view on many brands in recent times, and I avoid purchasing until they produce something with the features and cost that I find desirable.

For example, I no longer buy brand name clothing unless there is a definite cost-to-feature benefit. I like "toe shoes," and the Vibram Five fingers in particular. Are they the only "barefoot" shoes on the market? Absolutely not, but out of the ones I've tried I like the feel of them, and they are within my means, so they are the ones that I purchase for now. As soon as they become scarce, or change in some way that I don't feel is to my benefit, I will shop around again. I won't continue to wear shoes that I don't find comfortable just because it's the brand that I always buy. I own a couple of iPods, but now that I have a phone that can play MP3 music I rarely use them. Nothing's perfect, but there's no shame in recognizing a different brand's achievements.

Fan-boys do the opposite -- they continue to buy products based on a frothing loyalty to a brand regardless of cost or features, and are hurt - HURT, when someone doesn't share their narrow view. It often takes something like the Playstation 3's disastrous launch to shake off all but the most hardcore adherents. Apple is very steadily falling behind in desired features and innovation, but they still make a good product. When Apple finally does release its own "Playstation 3" (which is quickly becoming more likely in it's current rudderless post-Steve Jobs era) a good number of these people will be disillusioned, and when they are I will welcome them to the plateau of meaningful product discussion.

Michael Adams is a technical writer and graphic artist for CJ's Home Decor & Fireplaces, LLC
His current phone of choice is an HTC One Max (Android)

More soon. In the meantime...

You can check out my work over at CJ's Home Decor & Fireplaces.  If it looks graphicy, then it's probably something I drew.

www.cjshomedecor.com

Showcase 5: More renderings.

These are some of my earliest 3D Studio Max renders (using Max 5.5, I believe).  This was actually a real fireplace in my apartment at the time, but it didn't look this dramatic in my living room (also, it was bricked up, so no fire).

Old mechanical animation.

This won't turn any heads (except maybe screw-heads), but here is an old animation on how to install a plastic sign-holder to a metal beam.  Please excuse the spartan presentation, it is meant to look like a mechanical drawing for the purpose of extracting stills.