For a change this festive boxing day I went with family and newly extended family to Romford dog races. Took the 5D mk II and the Canon 70-200mm lens for some shots of the dogs in action, pretty pleased with the results, check out the slideshow below -
See the full set on Flickr here -
http://www.flickr.com//photos/willgoldstone/sets/72157628578411979/show/
If you, like me have recently gotten into video production thanks to the awesome new generation of Digital SLRs – the Canon 5D mkII, the 550D and the Nikon D700 to name a few – then you’ll likely have faced some of the challenges in getting them to play nice with existing filming conventions. One source of inspiration for such things has been Philip Bloom’s awesome blog – check that out for sure. Now I’ve pimped Bloom, let’s get to the point!
I was doing a video shoot for my job (I work for Unity Technologies, developer of Unity Game Engine) and I needed to get some nice slider shots in addition to standard piece to camera static tripod shots. So I looked into my options and discovered rather few… Many folks online are ‘rolling their own solution and it struck me that there is the high end of the market – Kessler Crane’s Pocket Dolly series, and the more affordable Scottish developed ‘Glidetrack’ – RRP around £200 btw. In a rush I nearly bought a Glidetrack – but after calling, tweeting and emailing asking to buy one direct, with no response, I resolved to simply rent one from a local hire company in London. This cost around £50 for the day plus insurance, and the results were, in short, very disappointing. Having little experience in operating a slider or dolly was likely a hindrance, but the main this that struck me about the Glidetrack was the inability to control or dampen movement.. maybe its my arthritis ridden hands from a youth spent gaming, but I found it tough to operate.
So, with Kessler’s products starting at around £600 with shipping, despite their perfection – I resolved to find my own solution. I’ve seen many folks using various means of building their own slider, but I don’t have much of an engineering background, or access to a friend or place that has the right kind of parts.
Then, whilst visiting my dad I noticed an old rowing machine (A York Fitness R510) I knew for a fact he’d neglected to set sail on for many a year, and he said I could happily butcher it to save him ‘a trip to the tip’. Cheers Dad! So armed with a hacksaw, some bolts and a set of allen keys, I set about turning a rowing machine, and an old tripod I never used anymore, into a slider! Here’s what I did!
First off the end of the rowing machine that has the pulley and handles needed removing, along with the piston underneath. This reassuringly got rid of a good amount of the weight too, and the seat itself was simply to remove as its just two bolts that sit it onto the sliding plate.
You can see in the image above that the plate is neatly made of some skate-like wheels that run inside the metal housing of the runner of the machine, so it makes it very fit for purpose.
The last steps to creating this slider will be to add mounts for a tripod to fit at each end of the slider, so we have no use for the stands at each end that previously raised the rowing machine a foot off the floor, so time to unbolt and use force where necessary!
This leaves you with something like this -
Then came the problem of mounting a camera onto this otherwise flat panel. Having a few cheap old tripods around, I remembered one was in the garage and decided to use the two bolt holes that formerly held the seat in place to hold the tripod on top.
I removed one tripod leg and flattened the other two, as well as sawing off the main shaft of the tripod that raises it up and down. The remaining two legs were cut down to size, and a pedestal drill was used to cut through, and I then bolted this onto the plate -
As for taking apart the rower.. that’s done and i’ve now got this -
So I’ve still yet to weld some metal plates on the bottom and mill a hole for a tripod bolt – I think this is a 1/4 inch whitworth hole – tested with another bolt and should be fine. Aside from that I can still use it at present and have made this quick test with my Canon 550D -
So current issues are:
More updates soon!
Now you all know I love a *good* tutorial site. There’s a world of tutorials on the internet, but many of them fall into the all too simple traps of teaching in an online medium – not to get into these in too much detail but its usually things like planning, timing, length of lessons, approach, and demands of the user.
So I’m always thrilled when I come across a tutorial site that I feel really NAILS a topic and delivers it in a way that will bring new people to that field – that’s what tutorials are for after all right? enabling!! however buzzword / lame that sounds. The last time I encountered something like this it was the very excellent Video Copilot – if you want to learn visual fx in Adobe After Effects, this is the place to go – Andrew Kramer is the name to remember – he’s the guy making all the tutorials there, and mostly for free. I was once very happy to see a comment on one of my videos that called me the “Andrew Kramer of Unity tutorials” – I may not agree but I hope to aspire to that for sure.
So waffle aside let me introduce you to Matt Kohr, who has created this wonderful site ‘CTRLPaint.com‘ – if you want to get into painting with your tablet and photoshop then this is the place to start – its gotten me back into artwork and I’m really pleased with that – granted you’ll need a wacom tablet for this, but with the Bamboo tablet coming in at around £70 nowadays these things are more affordable – and if you’re planning on a career in any kind of IT – you should definitely ditch the mouse ASAP – trust me, its cured my previously rather bad RSI. So take a look at ctrl paint, and drop Matt some nice comments telling him what an awesome job he is doing please!
Lately I’ve been shown a few amazing bits of artwork coming from game developers and concept artists, and I keep losing track of it, so I thought I’d share it with you, and keep it here! That’s what a blog is for right? no one is still bookmarking are they… er..
Okay so first up is a friend of Unity awesome dude Fini Alring, his name is Thomas Pringle (one of his pics ‘loading bay’ above) – take a look at this link and be wowed – http://pringleart.com/.
Second, we have Michael Vicente, an amazing 3D artist who has worked on recent Unity title Crasher, by Puncher’s Impact (this one will take a while to load, but that just means more awesome) -
The guys at the Envato network are an awesome bunch. If you haven’t seen some of their gorgeous sites, check out the entire network at http://envato.com/ and if you’re looking specifically at tutorial and article content look at http://tutsplus.com/.
I was lucky enough to be interviewed by activetuts+ recently about Unity, and made some comment on the migration some flash devs may be taking part in when Unity unleashes support for publishing via Molehill later this year. They also called me a Guru which amused me greatly, cheers guys!
A slight departure from my usual work on tutorials for software, I made this tutorial on getting flat colour out of the Canon 550D / T2i. I started a site called ExposureHD.com but as yet haven’t had time to really expand upon it as I’ve been focused on working with Unity (game development software, and now my job!). This may well be useful also for the T3i as it is based upon the T2i but having not had a hands on with that model I cannot confirm nor deny whether the settings are in the same places still. Either way, have fun!
if you have not seen my tutorials before, have a look at my other sites, shown in the sidebar of my blog here >>
Having spent a lot of time lately working on game development learning materials I’ve taken some time out to produce a series of video tutorials to teach beginners HTML5 and CSS web design, they are available on my YouTube channel in a playlist here …
As the web and its technologies are a constantly evolving mish-mash of standards, languages and trends, it can often be difficult when you are just getting started to know what to invest your time in. Often it will seem like an up and coming technology should be your main focus as many pundits may be calling it the ‘next big thing’ that you’re a ‘fool not to invest in’ but a lot of the time, this thinking falls flat. So where should you start? Well if you’re starting out as a web developer, its crucial that first off you get an overview of the important stuff.
Fact 1. HTML is the language of the web and the current working draft of it, version 5.0 is what most developers are getting excited about at present (more on this later)
Fact 2. Flash as a technology is unlikely to go anywhere any time soon, so is definitely worth knowing but not an essential part of web development.
Fact 3. Mobile devices are the biggest thing to change the way web designers think in years – finally forcing lazier developers to consider accesibility issues, so it is important that once you are up to speed with web design that you look into how your content works on a mobile phone, PDA or tablet device.
Fact 4. Whilst HTML5 and CSS3 (the latest standards) provide useful tools in terms of animation, transition and other dynamic elements to otherwise static pages, most developers working today either in agencies or a freelancers will use a form of javascript to enhance page functionality – either Javascript itself or a ‘Library’ product that allows for more simple commands and pre-written behaviours. Examples of this are jQuery or MooTools.
The first thing any new developer needs to get to grips with, is HTML – Hypertext Markup Language. You’re looking at HTML right now, and all web pages are rendering in (by?) it – whether they are simple static pages, to vast dynamic social networks, the end result is always HTML. Understanding how a page is structured, and how HTML tags effect content is really important and acts as a foundation for future development. The visual side of HTML is CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) – a complete language not only for styling, but now in the current edition of CSS (3.0) also behaviour creation also, and by behaviour we mean the way in which content reacts to interaction and also to other content.
The latest editions / combination of CSS3 and HTML5 are really important as some of the things they provide a developer with in simple terms have needed to be done with javascript in the past, or have had to be written in what developers call a ‘workaround’, creating code that does the job but does not make sense semantically.
In the next few weeks I’ll be creating some new video tutorials to replace my old somewhat outdated video tutes I’ve had online in the past (you can still see these at willgoldstone.com/learn but they will be replaced). In these I will cover the basics of what I have discussed here but until that time I suggest that you take a look at some of the following links to help you get started in your career as a developer of online joy!
W3 Schools
The W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) is the body that sets out standards for HTML and also provides a basic school of tutorial information that you can use to get started.
http://www.w3schools.com/
Dive Into HTML5
This site is a fantastic and almost too detailed historical overview plus presentation of new features of HTML5
http://diveintohtml5.org/
Smashing Magazine
An excellent digest of what is happening in web development, plus tutorials, free usable content for your sites and more
http://www.smashingmagazine.com
960 Grid System
When designing pages for the desktop browser, you’ll need to consider grids in order to give you consistent designs, the 960 grid system is one of the most popular practices out there
http://960.gs/
Envato Network – PSDTuts and NetTuts
The Envato network is a network of tutorial websites that offer all kinds of cool stuff, mostly for free and always very well presented. I highly recommend taking a look through PSDTuts and NetTuts when starting out, and trying a few of their tutorials on for size.
http://psd.tutsplus.com/
http://net.tutsplus.com/
Web Designer Wall
This fantastic site by Nick La is a source of immense inspiration, not only is it nicely designed but also offers lots of well written tutorials and has a good community of readers attached also
http://www.webdesignerwall.com/
A List Apart Survey
A List Apart is a fantastic blog about everything going on in the technical side of web development, and each year they do a massive survey of web designers to get a sense of everything that is going on in the development community.
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/findings-from-the-web-design-survey-2009/
Moluv
A nice blog of inspirational web design
http://www.moluv.com/
More will be added as I have time! 
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