DanielStuart.ie

Adobe After Effects Earth Zoom from Dun Laoghaire Marina

admin — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 17:25:59 +0000

Decided to do another one of those tutorials from VideoCopilot. This time I attempted the earth zoom. I took some snapshots of Google Earth at various altitudes and in the tutorial you are shown how to put these all together and create the effect. The zoom starts at Dun Laoghaire Marina and pulls out to space. Enjoy!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwEwCJSL1pY

Here’s the Marina on Google Maps

View larger map

Adobe After Effects Particle Explosion Title HD

admin — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 00:28:42 +0000

Decided to spend a few hours this evening mucking about with Adobe After Effects. I headed over to VideoCopilot.net and came across this title tutorial. He’s got some really nice tutorials up there and he talks you through every step. Just make sure you have the pause button ready and alt+tab back and forth from your browser of choice to After Effects!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHNcZdeHyxU

Sock Guinness

admin — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 20:38:35 +0000

I’m just back from a cycle and I just realised that my right foot kind of resembles a pint of Guinness. Must have looked funny to drivers while waiting first in the queue at the lights with my foot propped up on the pedal I’m also sporting my new shoes that my girlfriend got me for my birthday!

Birthday Present from Tara, my 4 year old Niece

admin — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 10:52:47 +0000

My niece painted this picture for my birthday! Check it out. It’s a little robin.

NZ Ireland

admin — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 13:30:40 +0000

I was bored and thought it would be cool to replace the colours in the Kiwi flag with the Irish green, white and orange.

Giant Lantern Being set off on Ko Tao, Thailand

admin — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 22:47:45 +0000

I recently uploaded this video to YouTube. It was taken on new years eve 2009 on Ko Tao in Thailand. To Thai people, lanterns are a sign of good luck and hope. I bet they got a lot of luck out of this one, it’s huge!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=LF_XFDUbSLQ

My tiny room now has more space

admin — Mon, 31 May 2010 19:08:03 +0000

I recently made a trip to the new Ikea in Dublin last week. I was fed up being stuck in a tiny room with no space for all my stuff, and I have a lot of stuff! I had a look around their website and came across their selection of loft beds. They seemed pretty childlike but after spending some time thinking about them, a loft bed would give me a lot more floorspace.

I finally decided on this one and I’m really happy with it, although it took about 4 hours to put together with my girlfriend. Not to mention losing my temper a few times with the stress of trying to make heads or tails of the instructions.

I also got a few other things too; new shelf, clothes organiser, table for the telly and some hooks to mount my snowboard on the wall. It took a bit of time and a few headaches thinking about the layout of everything but I finally got there! It’s one hell of a pad

Take the tour

I took some photo’s with the fisheye to help make it look a bit bigger, take a look.

New Zealand Scrolling Panoramas

admin — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 16:22:47 +0000

I recently put put together 10 panoramas from around New Zealand with Photoshop’s photomerge automation. This is a great tool for putting these shots together if your camera doesn’t have an in built panorama mode. I have a basic digital camera too (FUJIFILM FinePIx Z20fd) so I’m happy to get some impressive amateur panoramic photos from it.

Its pretty easy to do this too with Photoshop, nice and automatic too. It also saves a lot of time trying to do this manually. I’ll bring you through the steps I took to achieve the image above.

Take your photos

I wanted to capture the dormant volcano crater of Mount Eden as well as Auckland so I decided to take 8 portrait photographs from left to right. My camera has a grid overlay display so i could line up the horizon. Here’s the files

Start Photomerge

Open up Photoshop (I’m using CS3 ) and go to File->Automate->Photomerge

Select your Photos

In the next window, click Browse and select your single panoramic photo’s. Once you have selected your photo’s now all you have to do is click ok, sit back for a few minutes and watch the automatic script do its work.

It’s that easy

Once its complete you’ll be shown something like the image below. Now all you have to do is crop it and hey presto, you’ve put together a panoramic photo!

Check out my 10 panoramas from around New Zealand. Added Hoverbox to make the photo selection look nice and the image scroller is done with Pamoorama.

White Water Rafting in Rotorua, New Zealand

admin — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 01:11:47 +0000

I put together a little video slideshow from the photos we got when we went rafting in Rotorua, New Zealand. I saved it in HD so you should check out the full quality version!

The whole thing lasted about 30 minutes and it was so much fun! The guys who ran it were great craic too…. utter lunatics!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMgCBtLXlwY

My New Percussion Instrument – Cajon

admin — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 14:01:13 +0000

I bought a Cajon box drum a few weeks ago from www.thomann.de, I’m really enjoying it!Its a pretty simple design; a hollow box with a hole on the reverse side, and behind inside the front panel, there’s a series of thin guitar like strings to give it a nice snare rattle.

As you play you notice the different tones you can get out of it. The top edge sounds like a snare and closer to the middle, a bass drum. You can fill in the rest with delicate ghost notes, these can be your hi-hats. You can also change the pitch of the drum by running your foot up the front panel as you play, do this with a nice fill pattern and these could be your toms.

So there you have it, kick, snare, hi-hats and toms in one box!