I Like Electric Motors

I spent some time this weekend tearing apart an old floppy and CD-ROM drive on the hunt for some components. The floppy drive is fast becoming a retro relic these days; the one I've just destroyed is probably dates from the early 2000s. I'm amazed at the precision engineering and precious materials that have gone into every one of these 'obsolete' devices ; and we so readily toss them away.

I've found in these drives some tiny stepper motors that might be useful for one of my ongoing projects; also some ready-made linear slider mechanisms that look pretty useful too. Unfortunately I've not been able to drive these motors yet with my Stepper Bee (USB motor controller card). It seems like these little 5 volt motors are bipolar rather than unipolar motors, so I'll probably have to buy another card to control these from the PC. I'll maybe blog a bit more about this stuff if it looks like it's going anywhere. Quite apart from their functionality though, some of these pieces actually look quite pretty...

Over the past few years I've been using a single stepper motor (from an old scanner) as a very basic motion control system for rotating objects under the camera. With a stepper motor controlled by the computer, it's possible to get really precise turnarounds of small objects and models, and I've used this technique quite a lot in my film-making work. For example, the rotation of the Simon's Cat Earrings was shot this way, as were many elements for the Canongate Book trailer films I made in 2011.

Making Simon's Cat: earrings

I've just completed work on another video for Simon's Cat Ltd. Making Simon's Cat: Earrings went on line today on the Simon's Cat Extra channel. This is a short 'behind the scenes' style film showing the production of some rather special silver Simon's cat earrings.

The film follows the story of the manufacturing process from initial design, through sculpting and casting and on to the final checking and presentation of the final product. It's notable that these earrings are hand-made and cast from silver, all in the UK. The earrings along with other Simon's Cat products can be purchased online at the official webshop.

For this film the manufacturing footage was all shot by the jewellery designer Christopher Milton Stevens. The film features Simon Tofield and Laura Nailor and music is from Sam Clunie at stockmusicsite.com

THE FUTURA GOLD : episode 03

Here's the latest episode of The Futura Gold. This is my new typographic animation series in which all the characters and backgrounds are made from the letters, numbers and symbols of the Futura typeface. If you like this stuff, you might like to head over to the TheFuturaGold facebook and twitter pages too.

Student animation from Alghero

A couple of posts ago I mentioned my December trip to Alghero Sardinia to host some animation workshops for the Masters Students there. I've just seen that the short films made by the students have been posted on to YouTube, so you can see them here. With only three days, the 20 students split up into 4 groups, spending about a day on each project; they turned in some really interesting and experimental work.


To the students from this workshop and the staff of the University too for making my stay both enjoyable and inspirational... Grazie mille!

2013

HAPPY NEW YEAR! to all readers of this blog both new and old...

I've had a site of some kind on this here internet since around 1997. Back then I was learning all I could about HTML and doing it all by hand (Does anyone remember The Tall Story Hotel?).
I first registered the chrisgavin.com domain back  in 1999, and have been using this URL for the various iterations of this site since then. www.chrisgavin.com is therefore a surviving relic of the first dotcom boom.

This site is mainly a place for me to promote my various commercial and personal film and animation projects and occasionally opine about related topics; mostly in the realms of animation, film-making,  photography, and image-making in general. If you're looking for information about TXT ISLAND or THE FUTURA GOLD, then you've definitely come to the right place. If you've never heard of these things, I hope you'll still find something here of some interest or value to you.

I plan to keep on blogging here, I enjoy having my own space to do this, and I do welcome comments on these posts. Although it may not be obvious, you can click on the little 0 comments button under any post here should you wish to do contribute your thoughts too.

I look forward to continuing to post here throughout the upcoming year and wish all readers a happy and healthy 2013.

RIP Kodak 100D Reversal Cine Film

Very strange behaviour from Kodak. They announce a NEW type of Super 8 film (50D negative) then the same day they announce the scrapping of 100D reversal (the most-used and affordable cine film; their only remaining colour reversal film) Nooooooooooooooooo!  :(

Return To Alghero III

This weekend, I've just got back from Alghero Sardinia where I've been teaching a three day animation workshop to students on the Masters course.

Thanks to Prof. Ceccarelli for inviting me back (for the 3rd time!) and to all of the students and other staff too for making me feel very welcome.

I'd devised three new projects for this workshop, using stop-motion techniques to bring typography and some 'found objects' to life. Thanks to the dedication of the twenty students we saw some strong short films/exercises; the groups spending a (long) day on each project.

Once again I was really inspired by the inventiveness of the work and how effectively the students worked together to make these films.

THE FUTURA GOLD : episode 02

Here's the second webisode of my new web series THE FUTURA GOLD. If you like this, then head over to The Futura Gold's very own FaceBook page join up for behind the scenes info. and news of future releases etc.

FUTURA GOLD in Creative Bits & TypeSpec

Another nice write-up, this time (completely with lots of lovely links) from creativebits.org

Oh and another one from typespec.co.uk

FUTURA GOLD is 'awesomeness'

One of the first web reviews of THE FUTURA GOLD has come in, and it's a good one...
 from Mike Rankin of www.creativepro.com