I wondered how easy it would be to build a quick pinball simulation – so I threw together some pretty crude shapes in Illustrator, pasted them on to an After Effects layer and let Newton do the rest. It automatically splits each mask on to individual layers (if you choose to) and allows you to set all kinds of properties for each object (friction, bounce, angular and linear damping etc).

I did cheat the flippers a bit, which in the original project were just flapping about like crazy using wiggle expressions. Tweaking them for the few collisions is the only post-Newton fiddling that’s gone on. Oh, apart from tilting the whole thing in 3D and putting auto-orient towards camera on the ball. The important thing here is that the motion of the ball is entirely automatic and probably next to impossible (or at least mind-numbingly tedious) using traditional keyframing.

Anyway, here’s the result.

Weather Symbol T-Shirts

Why not pop along for a huge selection of Weather Symbol T-Shirts, Mugs, Clocks and literally hundreds of Weather Symbol branded products.

The downloadable web-sized versions proved so popular I figured it might be time to branch out – so I’ve plastered some symbols on pretty much every available product over at Cafepress. There’s some pretty nifty items including iPad and iPhone cases. Plenty of perfect gift ideas for anyone who knows anyone interested in The Weather. I used to know a few meself as it happens.

Or you could simply wear your very own weather forecast for the day! Here in Ireland, I reckon anything with rain on would be a pretty safe bet.

I might add some more products at some point. Or maybe see if these ones fly off the shelves first…

see Times Online – Green Lantern movie: confirmed release date

I made the trailer a while ago just for a bit of fun, and as some practice using various bits of software and plugins. Even so, it’s had over half a million views on YouTube and loads of really positive comments. And Total Film listed it among their 10 Most Awseome Fan Trailers Ever Made. I’m secretly hoping that Warner Bros will get in touch and commission me to do the titles for the real thing…

Failing that, I’ll settle for the Green Lantern movie being a massive box-office success so I can stick my entire collection of GL comics up on eBay and cash in at last…

Added: here’s a couple of bogus Green Lantern posters I rustled up to see how Ryan Reynolds might look as Hal Jordan…

Green Lantern Movie Posters with Ryan Reynolds

Sinestro

Update: The YouTube ‘Green Lantern’ video has passed the one million mark.

Update: Here’s a better Green Lantern poster than mine. Kind of reminds me of that great Alex Ross pic. Nice. On reflection, I probably should have attempted something a tad more dynamic for my own GL poster. Look at him standing there like a great big lemon. He should be FLYING…! Mind you, at least I’ve gone for the old-school white gloves.

White gloves. I ask you.

Sinestro – Mark Strong in talks to appear in ‘Green Lantern’ Movie (image)

Update: Latest reports suggest Mark Strong is in talks for the role of Sinestro. So here’s a picture of my own quick effort at Mark Strong as Sinestro.

Sinestro - Mark Strong

That’s probably enough Green Lantern movie nonsense for now….

mikeafford.com/blog :: wordle #1

Wordle.net is a fun way of wasting a few minutes – just a big tag cloud really – but using all the words it finds in your feed. Plenty of font, colour and layout choices.

I’m pleased to see ‘graphics’ in nice big letters naturally enough, but just a bit disappointed that ’smoothing’ came out so big – so I guess my post on Font Smoothing may have been a bit repetitive…

I discovered wordle.net after seeing a comparison of  words in Bush and Obama’s inaugural speeches (and other Presidents).

There’s something very pleasing about seeing words laid out like that. It reminds me of a project I did on my Foundation Course (many) years ago. The only difference back then was we had to cut all the words out of magazines, trace them on to an A2 sheet of tracing paper, rub the tracing down on to a pre-stretched sheet of cartridge paper mounted on board, and finally paint the whole f**king thing using guache over the course of several mind-numbing days.

God bless wordle.net

Mike