Done, Dusted and back to reality….Bump

Posted on June 8, 2011 by itsaboutpeople292867057

Time……

Been a while due to doing stupid hours to get it all done, got to the point were sleeping seemed like a guilty pleasure!

Everyone really pulled something special out of the bag in the last two weeks well done to all my class mates.

As usual looking around at everybody else’s work see big gaps in mine, but came to the conclusion that we will always be better off following our own cue.

Regrets, still think my sequential’s are a bit heavy, whereas my 1;50 seemed to hit the spot, with movement and a light touch.

Would’ve liked to have done a seasonal page as i played around with colours earlier on, no time. Would’ve liked the model to be better, seeing the rest of the class picked up some good idea’s, and well done some really nice models.

I think i managed to get the point across with this one, room for improvement on the trees though.

Obama visits Park life for inspiration and too meet an old Mexican friend

Distance and our friendly monks take a stroll.

A particular fave, really thought about the issues as i designed this in particular hidden fixings, but with accessibility for maintenance.

This one seemed popular in the sense ‘ooh i would like to go there’ so managed to sell the festival idea with the ravine.

Just need £20million to build it….. offers welcome

ZZZZZZZzzzzzzz

Don’t push me, cos i’m close to the edge

Posted on May 2, 2011 by itsaboutpeople292867057

I’m trying not too lose my head.

As ‘Flash’ put it (the grand master of the furious five). The message still holds its own and was the first ‘real’ bit of hip hop to hit my young ears back in 81 and was an instant convert to all things New York.

Unfortunately i went over the edge today when i realised the document that needs proof reading and up dating is on the external hard drive that has crashed.
Then as luck would have it, found the file on my Main Mac only for it to be corrupted and refuse to open even though it was showing 50+gb. Threw a hissy, broke my glasses (all £10 from Tesco). Fortunately a friend happened to call and calmed me down.

So looked around blah blah, threw a prayer up to the Great Garden Designer in the sky and presto it opened, only 10 unlinked photo’s that are easy to retrieve…. Calm restored.

Progress

Is slow, no matter how many targets i set it takes an age. So this is were i am at. Finished and annotated all the Sequences, Lighting spec done, Updated lighting plan and festival plan, spent an age on the model image plan, but that paled into insignificance compared to the ‘Mood board’ how difficult is it to find 5 images…bloody difficult thats how much! And then arranging them in an eye catching way, playing the ‘less is more’ trick, so difficult and time consuming.

Stumbled on a couple of things ‘playing’ with the sequence images, how to get some life into them, out of the box, simple as that, done one, not going to do the others. No time. I will probably do it on the 1;50 sequences. Using cut out people,but manipulating them so that they ‘sink’ into the image.

Turned this into a panorama and pulled Hari forward to give the image more width.Plus moved some of the trees higher to the right. Made the path wider as it was going to narrow to quick. Overall looks more balanced.

As Mr Chilli is a fellow republican i was going to send an image with some Royal joke, anyway these guests heavily p/s to sink into the image plus heavy shadow walking out of the frame, suddenly looked a lot better, lesson learnt , knew it from previous work but got so close to the trees that i could not see the wood.

Took some more model images, had a go at a quick render, inspired by Sue’s pain bucket. Did this with a ‘wet brush’ and some quick filters to sink (Multiply) etc.

Does not look to bad, gets the point across. I am sure with practice one could do some thing half decent. Did not use on the model sheet, time…….

Did a bit of a ‘Paula’ on this one, as in lining everything up, and really thinking hard about composition. Yep it should be 5 images, but it just would not work. So head on the block, 1 and 3 images are uneven numbers and thus clusters.

I am probably 3mm out somewhere Paula!

Spent an awful long time trying to find the ‘right’ kind of lights. Some don’t exist yet. It seems to me that most of the lights are made in China and ‘Badged’ (when several retailers put a name to a product that has been made centrally by one anonymous manufacturer).

So managed to find some recent prize winners from the USA for innovation etc. So the latest Phillips High out put LED’s (17.5w for small and 30w for flood). Still think there is a lot of room for some bespoke designed lights. The rope LED’s are still in their infancy so expect in the near future a lot more LED rope, lamps (bulbs are what you plant in the ground) and lights to come out.

Mood board is a good name as i was in such a foul one while doing this! Cut out some of the images so they merged into the one below. Have not changed the colours or any other p/s stuff. Thank god for ‘Flicker’ and screen shot on the mac. 5 images with some hierarchy hopefully got something across. Tended to look for pictures until one would’ hit me’. This takes some time unfortunately.

Just got Precedents to do later today, (done just need updating to get some more zing and relevance) then 1;50.

Thats it folks.

Light Fantastic (ish)

Posted on April 20, 2011 by itsaboutpeople292867057

Re-visit

Like many in the group i have been revisiting my 1;200 stuff and working my way through,

so far materials, tree planting, shrub and climber planting, lighting, festival lighting (had to do it, very kitsch,but when you are a kid and its Christmas being high brow is not as important a visual overload for a memory, that includes 47 year old children).

Planting trees

Well worked hard on this, the trees are large on purchase to get an effect while everything else is taking hold, a risk, but it also shows the intention of getting an effect to get the park up and running quickly.

Shrubs and Climbers

Felt like this took forever (about a week). Trying to get reasonable flowering through the year with out to many holes. It may be better to go for a spectacular short flowering season or not (ie Augusta Masters Golf, hate the game but love the tournament, and the blowsy Rhododendrons remind me of Mrs Bucket for some reason)?

Lighting

Enjoyed playing with PS trying to get the lighting in the dark effect, as usual stumbled on a couple of things.

1) In the layers pallet click on the drop down and use luminosity once your blue fill layer has been placed over the colour image. It will turn the blue black ,don’t worry, just mask the main picture and create another colour fill when you have finished. It seems to lift out of the screen a bit more.

2)Brush and brush presets are were its at, once you have mastered layers and masks this is the next most important (in my humble opinion), brushes effect erasers, so the brush pre sets can act as a eraser brush. Worth playing with.

Lighting Festival

The chance of using extra lights for festivals with the ravine seemed a no brainer. The effect is a bit chinsey with these colours but everyone has a bit of chinse hidden away in the back of their head. After all this is a park for everyone not just your average judgmental ‘Garden Designer’ No Baa humbug here!

Drainage

Hopefully finish this one tomorrow and update the 1;200 MP. Thought a lot about catchment and water harvesting, so i will be putting in tanks and irrigation ect. Along with sediment tanks for the collection of silt. Used different arrows to show the speed of water, ie slower on soil that rock/hardstanding along with gradient.

One all the drawings then cross section update, sequential’s, precedents and finally model pics.

Then 1;50. Hopefully have a few drawings for the 4th May.

And Oh, my achilles has gone again, fan bloody tastic.

Mystic Meg visits car park

Posted on November 18, 2010 by itsaboutpeople292867057

When leaving late one evening from Avery Hill, noticed how a bit cold of mist can effect the haze of lighting. Very spooky, but enclosed by the darkness of the sky in contrast to the effective downlighting (to avoid light pollution) of the white lights (high pressure sodium i believe), compared to the orange (low pressure sodium, more efficient for luminosity to power consumed than the high pressure ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminous_efficacy).

The white is more up lifting and ‘safer’ in a car park situation, but putting that aside for the moment, the white just looks better due to ability to bring out the green (ie white spectrum compared to orange) in the planting. Thoughts for both parks. I know blue works well with humans in low light as it works well with our non colour sensors (what ever they are called) in the back of our eyes. Which i believe are there for low light (ie the less light the more grey and white landscape we see) or is my school boy memory playing tricks again? Normal back of post card please.

Getting ‘A back to the Future’ flash back, expecting a Delorian to come screaming out of know were doing 80mph+ with maybe a long haired version of Tom Turner at the wheel after an adventure in some Renaissance carriage park (or should that be stable yard), he would so love that.