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Archive for February, 2006:

My Life At 40: images

Posted by lauriehill at 5:21, February 26th, 2006

LaurieHill mylifeat40 01 1LaurieHill mylifeat40 02LaurieHill mylifeat40 03LaurieHill mylifeat40 04

motion

Posted by heicheng at 0:34, February 25th, 2006

http://www.lifesci.sussex.ac.uk/home/George_Mather/Motion/index.html

check it out
an interesting website to find out more about the basic of motion preception

Kinetic Depth movie

Laurie Hill: old news item archive

Posted by lauriehill at 16:14, February 24th, 2006

For some reason items of news keep on dropping off the bottom of these pages so I’m going to try to bring them back somehow!

April / May 2006

East End Film Festival, London, UK

13th Stuttgart International Festival of Animated Film, Germany

February 2006

Finalist & awarded Runner Up in Experimental Animation – Animex Student Animation Awards, Middlesbrough, UK

January 2006

Eat Our Shorts, National Film Theatre, London, UK

Halloween Short Film Festival, Institute of Contemporary Arts / Curzon Soho, London, UK

will’s production diary240206

Posted by Will at 12:46, February 24th, 2006

DSCN0959Oh dear. Model making is a very long proccess of trial and repeated error.

This little chap is going to have to have replacement mouth parts and eyeparts for stopframe, and I had wanted to have models done for the start of the new year.

Nevermind, I hear that stop-frame animation is really easy and never at all problematic, so I am sure everything is going to be fine and not at all ropey.

You want beef?

Posted by ianmackinnon at 18:28, February 12th, 2006

curryI’ve just been to Ronald McDonald’s house in Ahmedabad. He wasn’t in. His helpers did provide me with a McSashi Chicken, though.

And fries, obviously.

Hello, handsome

Posted by ianmackinnon at 15:48, February 11th, 2006

I’ve just been to Gandhi’s house. He wasn’t in. As I was walking down the path that leads past the house to a prayer garden, a young Gujurati man waved at me and said, “Hello, handsome.” Had ol’ Gandhiji been around he would probably have had to hunger-strike for a fortnight in protest of such a carnal outburst on his own grounds. I adopted a stern disapproving face and kept walking, but I did feel partly responsible. I suppose when you’ve got it, you’ve got it.

Anyway, this bald beloinclothed man said some wise things, such as:

Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man whom you have seen and ask yourself if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him. Will he gain anything by it? Will it restore him to a control over his own life and destiny? In other words, will it lead to swaraj for the hungry and spiritually starving millions? Then you will find your doubts and yourself melting away.”

Nice.

Come again

Posted by ianmackinnon at 15:54, February 10th, 2006

This evening I braved the streets and managed, with the help of two generous students, to accomplish one of my Indian shopping goals: tailored suit. We pulled up outside this plush looking glass building on a supremely dusty street. The sign read “Raymond’s Seconds”, which seems a bizarre for a bespoke tailor. Inside, I was lead upstairs to a vast room of wall-to-wall fabric shelves and mirrors. The guy behind the counter starts billowing cloth at me across a vast table, while another guy clips a fake shirt front around my neck, and from behind a little waiter guy appears with a selection of chilled drinks on a tray. Sweet.

After paying, I was gliding out the shop with fairly strong post-purchase euphoria, amid six or seven well-wishing assistants, when I swear, on solemn oath, that one of them said “come again”. It’s just about conceivable that it was a postmodern-Umberto-Eco-have-your-cake-and-eat-it “come again”, but I am choosing to believe not.

Tailoring was amazingly inexpensive, but I ended up spending a small fortune on cloth. I felt a little guilty until I started calculating what the cost would have been in London, and realised that I had made an obscene saving. I can’t work out whether I’m screwing this developing economy over, or doing it a favour, but whichever it is I shall look rather smart doing it.

Tall Tails

Posted by ianmackinnon at 15:06, February 7th, 2006

I began teaching today. My students turned up at 2pm and require regular tea breaks, so this is probably the most comfortable job I ever had.

So I’m planning to spend a little recreation time while I’m here. “What shall I do? Ah! The internet. The internet will know!”, I thought (utilising the popular philosophical acronym, WWTID?). Imagine my surprise as I discovered that most tourist attractions, shops and services in an Indian old town do not have websites. Where do people get this sort of information from around here? The mouths of friends? Walking around and looking at things? Where!?.

I was about to abandon my bourgeoise western ways and try out one of these crazy suggestions, when I discovered reassuring proof that I should not leave the safety of computer screen (where I risk, at worst, exposure to pictures of naked people or accidentally joining a terrrrist cell). A final brief Google search (“Ahmedabad tailor”) to find a starting point for my street wandering reveals the following sage shopping advice:

…Last night, Abdul Razak, 60, a tailor in Ahmedabad, limped in to the musafirkhana. His legs suffered acid burns during a mob attack on the slum where he …

…A 35-year-old man, reportedly a tailor, was found with his throat slit near the …

I mean, I don’t really need step out into this beautiful and exotic city I travelled eight-thousand miles to visit. What I need is not to be limping into a hotel with acid burns. I need to stay away from tailors. Those guys are bad news.

Perhaps I can build a protective army of tea-saturated students. But I have go into town to buy my Authority-Beard! What a bind!

Namaste!

Posted by ianmackinnon at 7:53, February 4th, 2006

Despite the efforts of the local auto-rickshaw drivers I have arrived in NID unhurt. There was some incredible scenery during the journey, including crazy buildings, enormous rivers, giant wildlife, and three old men riding a rickety vehicle of their own construction the wrong way along the adjacent railway tracks.

Most of my students are away at a film festival in Mumbai until Tuesday, so I have three days to cobble together some sort of syllabus. My plan is to as much cobbling as possible today, and then hang out in the gardens, among the peacocks and monkeys, with a real book and an imaginary gin & tonic.

I met the first of my students last night. He grinned at me welcomingly and said, “I was expecting some big professor”. Tomorrow I am going to the market to buy a false beard with which I shall assert some authority. Local beards are quite impressive, so it will have to be a very big one.