The crooked handle makes a come back?

Remember those strange looking VHS and BETA camcorders from the mid eighties with the crooked handles? They seemed like they would be more comfortable than the horizontal handled camcorders that we all actually bought, always thinking to ourselves, isn't the crooked handle more ergonomic? Samsung has a new camcorder coming that will attempt to bring back this unpopular, but maybe better config.

Engadget - Samsung SMX Camcorder

Mockup for a dock connector dual camera accessory for iPad

Dual cameras, preferably at least Flip HD 720p quality capture (depends on processing capability of iPad of course). Perhaps if the iPad can't process the video, an H264 encoder could be built into the camera? Lower resolution is not a deal killer but being able to use the iPad to take good video would be handy.

Stereo 3D image capability using anaglyph. This is completely optional. If you want to use anaglyph glasses then you can record and watch 3D video or do 3D video conferencing. YouTube supports anaglyph video, this would allow for easy capture and sharing of consumer level 3D video.

Use one camera for video conferencing as well as being able to send a second stream of video for the other camera flipped to the reverse direction.

The mockup shows the cameras as they would be 2.5" apart.

Stylus for the Apple Tablet? Yes please.

Appleinsider linky

This Apple patent app for an iPhone stylus looks exactly like my home made stylus. My stylus works really well except for the fact that it isn't pressure sensitive and you have to have a screen protector because it lays down some pretty nice fine scratches.

If Apple could pull off a bluetooth stylus that can send pressure data to the tablet and works well on the capacitive screen then their mythical tablet would instantly become hugely useful for a lot of people.

Demo Reel 2010

HD Version can be seen here:
http://www.vasher.com/reel

Improved the UV map for my car

Found that my first unwrap distorted the car so much that my
polypainting in ZBrush just didn't look that great mapped back to the
low poly model. So I cut the bottom off (since it doesn't have any
paint detail anyway) and mapped that seperatly. This allows the top of
the car to be unwrapped better.

Why Apple's mobile ad network could be huge

If thousands of content creators can easily get their wares on the App store using an Apple authoring suite, imagine that an object you can easily dump into your template is an Apple Mobile Ad. You could give away (or sell at a low price) your content and whatever ad revenue is generated just shows up on your monthly App Store check. It's just that simple.

Low Poly Car Model

Building a low poly (we're talking iPhone game low here!) car model for my reel. Sculpted it up and re meshed it in ZBrush. Now I'm working on the texture maps.

Apple Tablet/iPhone App Authoring Suite

Apple makes several apps that allow just about anyone to author professional looking content with the click of a mouse (iDVD, iMovie, DVD Studio Pro, Pages, etc.). Imagine a Macromedia Director (remember that program?) style Apple Tablet App Authoring Suite "ATAAS" that just about anyone could pick up and build a compelling app in minutes with. To me this would be so huge for so many industries.

This application could have powerful scripting capabilities which would allow for complex functions while still having an easy to use interface for building more basic interactive apps. This suite would come preloaded with professional templates. Templates would be freely sharable and downloadable from the web also.

I live in a rural part of Michigan and we have a local paper. ATAAS could allow a small paper like this to quickly publish their new additions to their custom Apple Tablet App. The purchases could be available for free if you have paid a subscription, or they could be available as in app purchases a la Carte. These apps could connect to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other web services to extend the functionality of the app greatly.

Apple could provide a web based builder app also. So a user wouldn't even need a client application installed, they could make changes to their app through the web and publish the changes directly to the Tablet App Store.

To me the democratization of the creation of rich media apps is what could change everything here and it would take the creation of ATAAS. It's not going to happen with xCode.

This entire system would of course need some sort of "trusted dev/publisher" system where devs/publishers could push new App updates/additions directly to the tablet app store without first needing Apple's approval.

Look at how GameSalad works. It's pretty slick. It works kind of like Automator and allows you to build games and applications using scripting or pre built actors and actions from a central library. If The ATAAS had this functionality that would be very slick.

Apple could leverage their Apple script experience to create a system where Apps could be automatically populated with new content and published, without hardly any development effort.

Apps could be built for iPhone or Tablet without much extra work also.

Green screen test

Shot this with my fancy new PVC framed portable green screen.


Green screen test 2 from Wes Vasher on Vimeo.