Eoin Griffin

3D character animation

Eoin — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 05:04:27 +0000

This lip-sync animation was made to match an audio track taken from an interview with ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax.
Created as part of a character animation course during my studies in Darmstadt, Germany.

As part of the same course, we were also asked to express several emotions using the same character.
Those are: Balance, Weight, Aggression and Kindness (image shown below).
I realise that those aren’t exactly emotions… but nevertheless, here they are:

3D architectural flythrough

Eoin — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 04:34:45 +0000

3D architectural model and flythrough animation of the entrance room to the Cork Institute of Technology library building.
Modelled and animated in 3d studio max. Rendered using Vray.

The model is accurate, based on original building blueprints and photographs.

Useful hints: #1 – Odd/Even numbers (Modulo operator [%] and Bitwise And [&])

Eoin — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 19:21:50 +0000

I’m going to start posting some useful little bits of code up here as i think of them.
This is partly to help with my exceptionally poor memory, and partly to help out anyone who might be interested. I encourage anyone else who knows of some similar little helpful tips to send them to me and i’ll post them up here.

Ok, so here’s a nice simple one to start off. What’s an easy and simple method to determine if a number is odd or even?
The answer lies with the modulo operator (%) or the bitwise AND operator (&).

i%2

Whatever i is, i%2 will evaluate to either 0 or 1.
Or a faster method for determining odd or even numbers would be the Bitwise AND operator (represented by a single ampersand: &):

i&1

So what use is this?

Let’s say you’ve got a for loop:

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for(var i:int = 0; i < 50; i++){
if(i%2){ // Or i&1
//do something for odd numbers
}else{
//do something else for even numbers
}
}

So why would we use the modulo operator if a bitwise AND is faster?
To take this further, you could specify separate code for every nth number:

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for(var i:int = 0; i < 50; i++){
switch(i%4){
case 0:
trace ("run every 4 iterations starting from 0");
break;
case 1:
trace ("run every 4 iterations starting from 1");
break;
case 2:
trace ("run every 4 iterations starting from 2");
break;
case 3:
trace ("run every 4 iterations starting from 3");
break;
}
}

Flock

Eoin — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 02:10:26 +0000

Flock is an interactive media installation created in 2008 by myself (Eoin Griffin), Gerard Mangan and Catherine Philpott. The aim of Flock was to create an interactive environment in a public space that would encourage social interaction between members of the public, particularly strangers that wouldn’t ordinarily interact.

Flock visual prototype

Using camera tracking software, artificial intelligence to simulate the movement of a flock of birds, a webcam, a projector and an artfully created, sturdy frame to house the entire apparatus (thanks Ger!), we were able to successfully complete the tasks we set ourselves for this project.

Credits:

Project Manager: Gerard Mangan

Design & planning: Catherine Philpott, Eoin Griffin, Gerard Mangan

Coding & software implementation: Eoin Griffin (Created using Processing (Java) )

Hardware design & planning: Gerard Mangan

Phone GUI project

Eoin — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 02:10:18 +0000

Created as part of a GUI studies assigment. The task was to create a prototype interface for an imaginary competitor to the iphone.
All design, image creation and coding was implemented by me (with the exception of the Firefox and RSS logos).

Uses: Actionscript, Flash, Illustrator, Photoshop

Icon set:

Icon set created for the interface. Click for larger version.

The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince)

Eoin — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 02:09:53 +0000

For this series, I chose to take several scenes from the story ‘The Little Prince’ (‘Le Petit Prince’ – Original French title) by Antoine de Saint Exupéry. I chose this story because my interests with image creation lean towards image manipulation and this story is a fantasy story that lends itself well to what I wanted to do.

It would be impossibly difficult to tell the entire story of the little prince in a coherent manner using only 8 still images. For that reason, while creating these images, I’m assuming the viewer has knowledge of the story beforehand in order to get the full benefit from this series of images. The images may still be enjoyed without any fore-knowledge, but knowledge is intended to add greater appreciation.

To that end, if you’re unfamiliar with the story, you can read it online here. Although this is a children’s book, I myself only read it a few years ago and thoroughly enjoyed it, so i encourage you to do the same (don’t judge me ).

The images I have chosen are numbered from 1 to 8 to indicate the chronological order they appear within the story. Descriptions are as follows:

The little prince is weeding the baobabs from the earth on his planet.
The prince’s rose is kept in a glass jar at night to protect it from the elements.
The prince sits watching the sunset of his planet 42 times in 1 day.
After tethering several birds, the prince leaves his planet and travels to other planets.
On his travels, the prince meets a grumpy businessman alone on a similarly small planet.
On another planet, the prince finds a lamp-lighter whose job is to constantly light and extinguish his lamp all day long.
The prince arrives on the planet earth.
At the end of the story, the prince has left our world through the aid of a snake’s deadly poison and returns to the stars. The narrator has fixed his plane and is no longer stranded. He returns home after the little prince leaves him.

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Photography

Eoin — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 02:07:10 +0000

A small selection of photos from my collection.

Work Calendar

Eoin — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 22:28:37 +0000

The work calendar is a personal project of mine. I wanted to create an application that would allow myself and others to easily track work hours from week to week, provide a simple, secure, easy-to-use printable interface and perform some calculations the the average user might want to know (totals, pay rate, tax deductions etc). As well as that, my friends kept losing the pieces of paper they used to write down their hours, so I thought this might help them out.

MySQL provides a powerful and efficient database which makes it easy to store and retrieve the data for each user.

Uses: XHTML(strict), CSS, PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, jQuery, AJAX

Work Calendar screenshot

This app was also created to help me brush up on some of my skills, so it’s also a bit of a demo to help prove I can do what I say I can do. If you’re a techy, you’ll understand what goes into making something like this

Work Calendar is free to use by anyone. If you like it, hate it or have any comments please let me know.

Internet Storytime

Eoin — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 20:45:05 +0000

Internet Storytime is a project I’m currently involved in as a Flash and Actionscript developer.
The goal of the application is to create a book player that will allow people with little or no Flash scripting skills to easily create children’s storybooks for an online audience.
What makes this player stand apart from a regular book or other online books is its versatility. The IST book player allows a person to easily script text, images with animations and audio in their books to create a unique interactive experience that will help them engage a young audience.

The instructions for the player are received from an accompanying XML file which I have designed to be as simple as possible, human-readable yet still remain robust and versatile. Flash is not needed to create or edit a book’s XML file.

This project is currently under development. Please not that the content inside does not reflect how the final version will look, however the code (because that’s what i do) is top notch

Uses: Actionscript, Flash, XML

IST Book Player screenshot