Jeremys Fortress Part 2

The base warped terribly with grout so I got rid and cut away the fittings so the Fortress can be used by itself. Got a couple of layers of grout down and sprayed it with stone texture paint as an underlay. Rather heavy and solid.

Shadowed...

and lightened....

Time for varnish!

Iphone Skin

Hardly a "project" but something nice I wanted to share. Excellent quality skin from www.wrapz.com for my new phone.

Arctic Warfare Pc Case

Every six months comes an urge for something new. For some people that's a phone or a car. For me it's my pc case.

As I have an acoustic case almost brand new and an old rotting steel mess hanging around I thought I'd do some modding.

The idea being I'll put my old pc parts into the acoustic case ad run it 24/7 as a server and renderer and use this modded case as the main powerhouse. It gave me the chance to open up more useful intakes to use for my water cooling radiator.

A Dremel and lots of burning hot steel later I had holes cut for some spring loaded flight case handles, new intake cut on the roof and a set of changes to the front panel to hide the mess from previous modding. 

 

Everything was cut and fixed together and painted a digital camouflage. Some new fan grills and bolts to fit with the heavy duty theme where added and a new pair of buttons for the front panel.

The case does it job. Looks exciting, easy to carry around and is cool as an block of ice. I quietened down the initial loudness using rubber mounts and fittings for all the fans an hard drives. Seems pretty spot on!!

Holo Phone Concept

This began when attempting to create a high quality gadget render. It turned onto a small animation after getting carried away.

It featured "self stabilising" legs. I started off trying to use standard hierarchy settings and lock tools to make these legs work in the correct way for their joints whilst staying connected to the phone. This turned out to be a nightmare due to the tight angles and lack of knowledge on my part. I ended up using a basic bone structure and animating it mainly by hand. This also meant the phone looks like a jellyfish when moving it around in the viewport.

After a render, z depth and "screen" pass the entire video was compiled in after effects. Although the basic movement and action is finished I intend to do a lot more with this design. 

 

Urban Invasion

This project came about when I rediscovered an old max file if forgotten about. I decided to clean it up and make an animation.

The animation will feature a quiet slightly futuristic back ally. From a burning cigarette butt will float a spark which plants itself like a seed into the pavement. Growing into a Japanese style rural house perched above the road.

I was excited for this project for a number of reasons. It gave me the chance to test out a few techniques I've been wanting to try and was another chance to improve my poor animating skills. 

Progress shots

Jeremys Fortress

With me lives a wee Leopard Gecko by the name of Jeremy. He's grown far faster than I expected meaning he's running out off room in his vivarium. The time has come to create him a decoration/interaction to give him room to play and ease cleaning.

Although he poops in the same corner his dinner has a habit of walking away meaning a full sized lifelike natural design would be unsuitable when it comes to cleaning.

To do: build out of card, paper mâché for strength, tile grout for weight, texture paint and yacht varnish to make it waterproof. 

So far:

Brewing!

The staple of any Architects diet. Beer! Best when brewed to your perfect taste for light supping and evening refreshment.

The past six months have seen a number of brews, each one using different ingredients, lengths of fermentation time and temperature (insulation in this house is rubbish).

I started with a cheap "Youngs Lager" Kit and table sugar which, at 12%, was rather strong and harsh. Then a dodgy experiment using Raspberry syrup which ended in a 14% rocket fuel type drink. 

Since then I have moved onto a delicious Magnum Pear Cider, a Coopers European Pilsner and I'm currently brewing a funky smelling Coopers Canadian Blonde. 

If I've learnt anything it's that I can't get the timing right from keg to bottle and my brews are inevitably flat. Even with extra priming sugar they just seem to fail. Next brew I shall bottle them much earlier, using the initial fermenting sugar to prime.

Failing that, just drink from the keg (seemed 100x better in all brews).

First lager and rocket fuel brewing.

Label for the latest Pilsner

Fantastic stuff!

Pear Cider bottled up.

Blurble

So I finally did it. I have created a blog for the projects and hobbies that belong in limbo, somewhere between being complete crap and being good enough to put on my occupation website. Usually this pleasure is reserved for Facebook but I'm sure my friends will appreciate the lack of updates every 5 minutes.

First things first, I'm shall upload recent projects and then use this as a diary/project progress device for future and current ones.