Posted on by Michel · 2 Comments

About Minuscule.tv and Flash

Watch the video (Minuscule/Futurikon)There’s a video and you should watch it.

Better with sound.

Better with sound on your THX-certified sound system, volume to the max:-)

(If you don’t happen to own such a system, err… Then use whatever sound system is available around;-)

The Ladybird from MinusculeThe Spider from MinusculeThe intro video (currently, the only video available to watch at the Minuscule.tv website) is great. I enjoyed it a lot – it was fun, fast-paced and beautifully drawn. The technique the guys and girls from Minuscule/Futurikon (Thomas Szabo, Hélène Giraud) use is quite unusual – they use a mix of real footage and 3D animation, plus real-life sound, very suitably selected.

Read more

Posted on by Michel · 3 Comments

The Mice Galaxies (NGC4676)

The Mice Galaxies NGC4676 (source of the photograph: NASA, Hubble Telescope)Sounds incredible, but Ani has discovered yesterday that there’s a galaxy a pair of galaxies called The Mice (NGC 4676)! Wow!

Quoting the Hubble Telescope website:

This pair of galaxies, NGC 4676, also known as “The Mice” for their tails of stars and gas, have collided and will eventually merge into a single galaxy. Streams of material have been tugged out of the galaxies by the force of gravity, triggering new starbirth.

When will be discovered a galaxy called Optimiced, then? ;-)

(I guess, I’ll have first to discover it…:-)

Posted on by Michel · 4 Comments

The Double Michel – inspired by Rebekka Guðleifsdóttir

Michel has a twin now... An evil twin ;-)I avow, that this post by the famous photographer Rebekka Guðleifsdóttir (no, don’t ask me to pronounce this Icelandic name!:-) inspired me… And also a question on the same subject, which my wife asked me a few days ago:

How this is done? And this?
Can a normal digital camera be used for this purpose?

Can the technique be reproduced using Macromedia Fireworks?

So, here’s the answer:

It could be done using a variety of methods.

Yes.

Yes.

The results are shown above [click on the thumbnail to see the image in full size]:-)

This is it – short and sweet. It’s me in the office today, shot by my small Pentax Optio S40 digital camera. And this is me, again… although, my second me is holding a knife and looks a bit evil;-)

If there’s interest, I may try to write a tutorial on it:-)

Posted on by Michel · 2 Comments

Yahoo! Messenger Logo Reloaded – the answer

This is the Yahoo! Messenger logo I have imitated using FireworksA while ago I posted two Yahoo! logos on my website, asking the audience to tell, which one is the original Yahoo! logo made by Yahoo! and which I have re-created using Macromedia Fireworks.

Now comes the long-awaited answer:

Yahoo! logo #1 is the one I made, and Yahoo! logo #2 is the original Yahoo! logo from the Yahoo! Messenger starting screen, captured as screenshot while the Yahoo! Messenger was loading.

I thank everyone for their participation, votes and comments:-)

I’d like to thank you here especially Alan Musselman from Adobe (formerly Macromedia), whose answer and comment was one of the most thougthtful and thouroughful ones:

Definitely the one on the left (#1). The only way I noticed is the Y is not proper like the Yahoo! branding. :) Good job though… I will also say the shadow on the teeth is a little stronger on #1 as well. If it wasn’t for these two things I wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference. :)

Both remarks are correct – the “Y” wasn’t perfectly made, and the shadow on the teeth is a bit different. Also, a lot of people reported that Y! logo #2 is somewhat saved with a bit worse compression than Y! logo #1 and because of that they presume #2 is the original logo, because probably it’s a screenshot and thus, was saved with worse compression and some artifacts, while #1 was exported from a high-quality vector-based file.

Read more

Posted on by Michel

Windows Vista or MacOS X?

Everybody is talking about the new Microsoft Windows Vista OS.

Meanwhile, I didn’t write about a lot of interesting things which happened lately – the light show in Sofia on New Year’s Eve, when Bulgaria became officially a member of the European Union; the climb to Vitosha mountain with friends, to Cherni Vryh (2290 m), a few weeks ago – January 13th, to be precise (and the unpublished photos from this climb, too); the concert of the Dublin City Workingman’s Band in Sofia (on January 26th, in NDK, Hall #2); and I didn’t even write a post, explaining what is the real Yahoo! logo, and what is the one that I have drawn myself.

Shame on me!:-)

Instead of writing, I was ill for some time, because a nasty flu coming from France (or so they said) caught me; and I was working, working a lot. This is what happened and I hope that I’ll have again some time to update my blog; meanwhile, let’s return to the subject of this post:

Windows Vista or MacOS X? I don’t know, frankly.

But here’s a nice picture on the subject (click to enlarge):

Windows Vista or MacOS X?

:-)

PS Some say The WOW starts now! and some say that it already started; for my part, I don’t believe something so revolutionary happened; time will show:)