Description

Tweetopia is a new 3D Twitter visualization based on Three.js that will premier in Portland, Oregon at Webvisions on May 16-18, 2012. It will be available for public use shortly thereafter with source code and commentary on this site.

I will also be giving a short talk about its creation in the Punchy Ideas session on May 17th, 2012 at 3:30pm.

Description

The universe is full of barren, empty worlds and it’s up to you to seed them with the stuff of life. Send singing stars flying through the galaxy to create a beautiful display of music and light.

Highlights

• Gesture-based ambient sound and color game.
• Generative gameplay produces a different “song” every time.
• Five modes of play of increasing complexity.
• “Free Mode” to experiment with sound and color.
• Game center support with many achievements.

Download

Get Singing Star for all iOS devices at the iTunes App Store.

Behind the Scenes

Singing Star is an Objective-C application developed using Apple’s Xcode. It uses the amazing cocos2d for iPhone framework along with CocosDenshion for sound.

Artwork was created using Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop. Textures and sprite sheets were created using ImageMagick, Texture Packer and bmGlyph. Sound samples were created using Propellerhead Reason and Adobe Audition. Beta testing was handled with TestFlight.

Thanks

Many thanks to all of the beta testers, especially Loren Judah and Andrew Butterworth, who provided useful and detailed feedback. I also got a great deal of help and guidance from Ray Wenderlich’s iPhone Tutorials.

Description

Trails is an experiment I created to wrap my head around Cinder for desktop and mobile development. It is essentially a particle emitter that builds geometry between the emitted points.

Usage

Emit trails by dragging your pointer or finger around the stage. The desktop version also includes three key commands: The “f” key toggles fullscreen mode, the “s” key saves an image to the user’s home directory and the spacebar clears the screen.

Download

You can download a Mac version of Trails below. An iOS version is coming soon.

Trails v001

Source

Source code is available on GitHub: https://github.com/scottgarner/Trails

Description

Still Life is an interactive gallery piece that takes traditional still life painting into the fourth dimension with a motion-sensitive frame on a rotating mount.

Concept

Years ago I had the idea of a still life painting that wasn’t so still, but could never quite wrap my head around how to build it. After various experiments and explorations, I settled on Unity 3D as the ideal tool to make it happen.

Technology

On the hardware side is a custom-framed television connected to a rotating mount from Ergomart. Attached to the back of the television is a spatial sensor from Phidgets, makers of fine USB sensors. On the software side is a simple C application to communicate with the sensor and feed the data to a Unity 3D scene. The scene itself consists of a camera tied to the sensor data with all lights and objects parented to it so they rotate in unison.

Gallery

Thanks

Many thanks to Andrew Butterworth for additional 3D support and Kenny Breit for helping shoot and edit the demo video. This project was produced at Süperfad.

Description

Created with Loren Judah of Süperfad Seattle, this second entry in the Mission Control series takes things even further with streaming video in a physical 3D space.

View the live version here: Mission Control II: Video Display System

Concept

After completing the first Mission Control, we were highly motivated to push the boundaries of web technologies even further, this time creating a 3D environment for browsing the catalog of Süperfad’s work in a more immersive way than a traditional web portfolio. We especially wanted to experiment with removing the normal layer of flat UI elements in favor of a more pure and tactile set of interactions.

Technology

The backend of MC II is driven by a custom PHP script that pulls data from the Süperfad website in JSON and then processes each project. The script grabs additional video data from the Vimeo Developer API and generates the dynamic background textures with a combination of GD and ImageMagick calls. Theora versions of each video are created as needed with ffmpeg2theora. Key front-end technologies include HTML5 video, CSS3 effects and, most notably, WebGL, which allows for hardware-accelerated 3D graphics directly within a web browser.

Thanks

Many thanks to Ricardo Cabello (Mr.doob) for his wonderful 3D Javascript engine, Three.js, and to AlteredQualia for his helpful feedback on performance tuning.

Demonstration

Description

Thumblr is a quick Tumblr slideshow I built to experiment with both the Tumblr API and CSS3 animations. The initial version was completed in Seattle, Washington on 2012-01-07.

Try it here: thumblr.j38.net

Source

Source code is available on GitHub: https://github.com/scottgarner/Thumblr

Description

Created with Loren Judah of Süperfad Seattle, this visualizer displays global web traffic for superfad.com along with various information about the home city of each visitor.

View the live version here: Mission Control: Global Traffic Visualizer

Concept

Every day, people from all around the world visit superfad.com to learn about us. We thought it would be nice to learn about them for a change. With that in mind, we created a global traffic visualizer to teach us more about our web audience and the cities and countries in which they live.

Technology

The visuals are driven by data from Google Analytics, the Yahoo! Developer Network and GeoNames. Key technologies include HTML5, CSS3 and, most notably, WebGL, which allows for hardware-accelerated 3D graphics directly within a web browser.

Thanks

Many thanks to Ricardo Cabello (Mr.doob) for his wonderful 3D Javascript engine, Three.js, as well as his very helpful feedback on performance tuning.

Demonstration

This is the final cover design for Ryan Manchester‘s album, The Expanse.

Design explorations can be seen on Flickr. It was completed in Seattle, Washington on 2011-04-02.

This is a logo I began for Amber "Bones" Harner in the spring of 2009 and never quite knew how to finish. I decided to finally wrap it up almost two years later.

It was completed in Seattle, Washington on 2011-03-08.

Description

Written in the summer of 2010 as I traveled across Europe by train, this is a collection of letters to myself at various points throughout the 30 years I’ve lived so far. They include words of warning and wisdom I wish I’d had along the way. It features 17 full-color illustrations by cartoonist Maré Odomo.

This book was completed in Seattle, Washington on 2011-03-08.

Buy

Letters to Myself Paperback at Lulu.com
Letters to Myself eBook at Lulu.com