Archive for May, 2009
Multi Mania 2009
Yesterday I went to Multi Mania, a free multimedia event in Kortrijk, Belgium. This year the event was stretched out over 2 days, one with workshops aimed at professionals, and one day with speaker sessions.
The first day was already fully booked when I tried to register, so I decided to go listen to some of the speakers on the second day.
Here are the sessions I attended:
Hot tips to improve your textlife – by Sakri Rosenstrom
This session covered the new text rendering engine in Flash player 10. Very interesting stuff. I really need to play with these new text rendering capabilities!
Flash platform “next’ – by Serge Jespers and Enrique Duvos
This session gave insight into what our workflow could look like in the future. They showed us Flash Catalyst, which used to be Thermo. Adobe changed the name, but the concept stays the same. Designers can use this tool to create designs in Photoshop or Illustrator, and create a Flex mockup from this. They can then pass this on to a developer who can add the functionality and the server communication code.
For my work at Epyc I’m already using the skinning capabilities in Flex extensively, but in general graphics designers don’t like to work with a tool like Flex builder. So in the past I always converted the design into a Flex skin myself (which could later on be edited again by a graphics designer). Flash Catalyst could make our life a lot easier. We’ll see once it has been released. I’m looking forward to playing with this!
Away 3D and the future of 3D in Flash – by Rob Bateman
When I need 3D in Flash, I normally use PaperVision3D. It was the first Flash 3D engine I used, and I stuck with it. It looks like both engines have their pros and cons. But, now I’ve seen Away 3D’s features, I really want to play with it. So, if I find some free time… I’ll give it a go.
Flex 4 – by Christoph Rooms
Also a very interesting session. I am an avid user of Flex builder 3. I heard of Flex 4 before, but I didn’t really know what the new features would be. I must say: I’m impressed. Adobe is working hard trying to close the gap between designers and developers, and with Flex 4 (and tools like Flash Catalyst) I think we’ll be another step closer. A lot of developers just use the standard Flex skin these days. I hope once Flex 4 is out, we’ll start to see more and more fully skinned applications.
Silverlight 3 in all it’s glory – by Gill Cleeren
Most sessions I’ve seen about Silverlight all contained a good portion of Flash bashing. Most Flash developers didn’t even bother reacting, we knew better. This session, however, was a lot more honest. I must say, it looks like Silverlight improved a lot! But to me, it still cannot compete with Flash (although…being able to work with a tool like Visual Studio is a huge plus). I will keep following the evolution though… maybe one day it’ll be the other way around. Meantime, I’ll just stick to Flash.
For a free event I can really recommend Multi Mania. You get to see some of the same speakers of the big Multimedia events, and there’s always a nice atmosphere.
See you next year!
Generative art news
There seems to be some interest in the generative art pieces I recently made. More specifically in the “Obama series”. www.animalnewyork.com wrote a small article about it, and it was also mentioned on a blog on www.politico.com. Because of that last site the visitor count on my blog exploded. But unfortunately my last blog posts were all a bit technical, so that’s why I’m quickly posting a small update on my generative art projects.
After the “Obama series”, I was asked by Cullen Miller, an American composer and electronic musician, to create some artwork for his upcoming album. He asked me if I could use the same algorithm I used for the Obama portraits. Unfortunately the output of that algorithm is heavily dependent on the input image. The first results were rather dissapointing. So I had to change the code a bit, also added a lot more particles, but eventually this was the result:
I like how this turned out. Can’t wait to see it on print!
Besides this, there is nothing new but I’m working on a wii-flash project (using the wii mote to create art). However, it is too early to reveal anything. I will probably post some info here in the coming month.
