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Category: Art+Design

Woman in Black London stage play ends, then doesn’t

Woman in Black London stage play ends, then doesn’t

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I was crushed to hear the famous London play ‘Woman in Black‘ was closing on March 4, 2023. The award winning and record setting Stephen Mallatratt adaptation of Susan Hill’s novel had been running continuously at London’s Fortune Theater since 1989. I have always wanted to see it, despite having made 2 trips to London and not having time to catch a play.

I saw the adaptation at Chicago’s Royal George Theater right before the pandemic and it was fantastic (The theater closed in 2020).

What I’m excited about is that the play is now on tour throughout the UK for 2023/2024. Not only that, but it appears to also be making its way across the US in 2023/2024.

Unbeknownst to me, it was in New York’s McKittrick Hotel and San Francisco in late 2021-early 2022.

Upcoming, it looks like it will be in New Jersey – Princeton’s McCarter Theatre Center October 13 to October 29th, 2023. It will be in the Herberger Theater Center‘s in Phoenix from Feb 8 to 25th, 2024. Hopefully they have some additional showings as well!

Acting for film and stage are different beasts

Acting for film and stage are different beasts

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“The theatre is an operation with the scalpel, I think movie acting is an operation with the laser.” In this documentary, Michael Caine teaches the art of movie acting to five young actors, who perform scenes from “Alfie”, “Deathtrap” and “Educating Rita”. He shares all kinds of learnings, tricks, and ways to think about different kinds of close-ups, props, and a variety of other cool things viewers likely take for granted.

While this is likely dated now as framing decisions, camera technology, pacing and storytelling have changed a lot, I think it’s really cool to see what the actors are thinking when portraying a role and all the different kinds of methods and understanding they have.

drawing the effect of detail

drawing the effect of detail

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Stephen Travers Art has a wonderful collection of drawing tutorials.

When drawing highly detailed things (fields of flowers, trees, and complex cityscapes) there is a tremendous amount of detail. As it turns out, far, FAR too much detail to actually draw. So how do you draw highly complex detail – without drawing the detail? You draw the effect of detail.

  1. Draw some of the key, close items clearly. You need to have some clearly recognizable individual elements of the subject. Draw them of sufficient size and shape to be easily recognizable without any confusion around them – by not crowding them too close together and enhancing their edges with silhouettes.
  2. Enhance the silhouettes of the key flowers with shadow/darkness. Fill the elements around some of the key items with shadow to highlight the shape of the individual blooms/elements.
  3. As you move back to the background – you keep establishing the key elements (blooms, petals, buds, stalks)
  4. Use the direction of scribbles of the darkness to point the eye towards the key elements (blooms/petals/buds).
  5. Dark tones come forward, lighter elements are pushed towards the back. So use more shadow in closer elements and lighter elements in the background. To get lighter strokes, use less pressure or use a thinner pencil.
  6. Don’t fill all the gaps – move around randomly and leave gaps. You must leave gaps and randomness . Stop every moment or two and see how the wandering of the shadow is going. Is there too much of a grey tangle of lines (too many) – add more dark shadow. If you don’t pay attention, you’ll fill everything in evenly and the giveaway is that it will all be the same overall tone of grey. You want some areas very dark, some light, and some grey.

Architectural drawings

  1. Architecture often has repeated patterns. Capturing the repeating-ness is more important the actual pattern that is repeating.
  2. Closer repeated patterns should be drawn with more detail than the same repeated pattern far away. Follow the same basic design of the close repeated pattern but make it simpler in the far away repeated pattern – your eye will naturally bring the nearer detail to those elements in the background.
  3. If there is a repeated element, draw them all with the same stroke strength and style. This means it’s usually best to do all the repeated elements one after the other to make sure the technique is consistent (pressure, line width, size, etc). This helps you keep them all as symmetrical as possible.
  4. For repeated elements that move away from your camera, draw the closest one with much more detail first, then less and less as you repeat the elements further and further away from the camera. Again, drawing the more detailed ones first helps you ‘summarize’ or make a smaller repeated one match easier.
  5. Another key element to know that capturing the symmetry of the scene is more important than the details of the elements/decorations. Like before, capturing the flow and pattern of the architectural lines is more important than the actual path it takes.
  6. You can also use tone to emphasize form much faster than just using lines

Give his techniques a watch:

Viewfinder puzzle game

Viewfinder puzzle game

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Viewfinder is a new 3D puzzle game on PC and game consoles. It involves taking a picture with a film camera, then using the 2D picture to overlay the 3D world. The 2D picture then replaces/augments the 3D world with the 3D that was in the picture. It’s hard to describe, but very interested technique.

There’s also folks like Willlogs who are making their own versions in Unreal and describing how they think the mechanics work.

File Graveyard

File Graveyard

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Well, this is different. Instead of just deleting your file, why not bury it in a digital graveyard – marked with its own digital tombstone.

Ulf Schleth’s /death/null offers us – a digital graveyard where our files no longer exist as they were, but are marked with a digital gravestone.

Simply upload your file and it is marked by a 4 x 5 matrix of colored blocks that represents the file. It is registered forever in the graveyard where you can check up on it any time you like.

And now my file has it’s own (very plain) ‘tombstone’.

Ocean’s 11 shot analysis

Ocean’s 11 shot analysis

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Ocean’s 11 is an amazing movie – one of my favorites. It has a fantastic style and creates a unique feel and atmosphere. Besides the fun, unique, energetic soundtrack by David Holmes, it has a really slick visual style that really accentuates the characters. CinemaStix shows how Steven Soderbergh uses a series of seemingly simple shot and cut decisions to enhance the actors’ unique energy to create the rhythm of the movie.

It’s surprising how much of a movie’s feel comes from simple choices in how it is cut (or not cut) . I can appreciate it because I know that a ton of the feel of my landscape photos comes during the post and editing phase.

The Solar System in your living room

The Solar System in your living room

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Quantum Solar System (QSS) features miniature replica planets that float and orbit around the Sun using magnetic levitation technology.

Some of the neat features:

  • The positions of the planets are in real time, synchronized with NASA.
  • You can position the planets at any date: Past, Present or Future. For example, you could observe the position of the planets at any historical date in the past or in any astronomical event of the future.
  • You can observe the evolution of the orbits in a shortened time. Ex: you can convert 6 days into 1 second to speed up the movement of the planets.
  • If you want to relax watching the movement of the planets, you can move all the planets at the same time and at the same speed, in this way all the planets move maintaining their position relative to each other, it is as if the platform rotated on itself.
  • The Sun is a lamp. Sunlight will illuminate the planets.