Signed up for the 10k in London next summer and thought it would be a good idea to trace the route on Christmas day with the family. Thankfully the rain just stopped as we arrived so that I could safely and finally make use of the Blackmagic Video Assist 12G that I bought to record BRAW on. It probably isn’t noticeably better compared to the internal recording codec when viewed on YouTube but I wanted to see for myself. I used SmallRig parts to make sure it was a setup that I could transport in a large bag and hold comfortably with one hand and it sure did look serious enough.
I thought the city shots came out well and I then had the idea to place them side by side with shots of the trail route I run on closer to home. Not sure about the music but I wanted quick cuts in sync with the beat. I really like this camera but it will probably be my last video with it for the foreseeable future as I want to focus on my 3D work next year. Small steps lead to leaps 😄
I absolutely love planning trips and I actually think I get a kick out of a well scheduled itinerary. That’s not to say I don’t like spontaneity (I actually decided on Iceland based on a good deal for a car rental) but there’s something comforting about being able to follow a schedule and controlling what I can. Once I knew I would be going around the ring road, I mapped out the locations of all the Tesla superchargers and figured out the distances I would be able to cover each day. I was then able to book places to stay for the seven nights and picked out spots to see along the way, including three geothermal baths and a few epic waterfalls. The only thing left was to pack: warm winter clothes, all my photography gear and my drive filled with my favourite playlists.
If there’s two things I’ve learnt driving in a new place it’s this:
1 - Keep your eyes on the road 99.9% of the time
2 - Slow down if you can’t see far ahead enough
Came across this design competition by Gediminas Kirdeikis, who does some of the best architectural tutorials around. Felt like it would be a fun project to visualise my ideal set up if given an empty Nakagin Capsule (although I was sad to read that the physical building has now been demolished).
Considering the capsules realtively compact size of about 3.7m x 2.2m of usable floor space, I wanted to maximise the efficiency of the room and divided it into three main zones: the bookshelf around the window, the two work desks and finally the sofa and TV unit. The next step was figuring out what items needed to be placed and took inspiration from workstations I had seen online and my own room. I downloaded the majority of 3D assets from various sources and changed the textures depending on what I thought worked well. All the modelling was done in Houdini and textured in Substance Painter before importing the whole scene as a USD file into Unreal Engine where I saved the images from.
I was happy to see my entry come 4th (as a honourable mention 😊) but just missed out on the prizes. The winning projects were great to see and the creativity of turning a box with a window into something unique was inspiring.