The Dermal display / Special video with author's narration

Some of you may recall that in late 2005 I completed my collaboration with Robert A. Freitas Jr. on the Dermal Display animation, a concept he published in his book Nanomedicine. Freitas gave a presentation at the 6th Alcor conference on the topic of Nanomedicine and Medical Nanorobotics which featured a section on the Dermal Display animation and a really terrific verbal description of what is happening when you are watching it. I was fortunate enough to have been supplied the footage by Alcor which I merged with the animation and edited so that you can enjoy this special feature video.
Click here to go download it!

Click here to go to the original blog post for the Dermal Display animation.

Get the Alcor conference DVD (not the same as this footage and is the full conference).

Watch Alcor 6 conference clips.

Two New Heinz Animations

Well technically these are not shiny out of the box new, one I made on the last day of June and the second a little over a week later. I really was feeling tired of contests but Heinz had one that not only would air the winner's commercial during the Emmy Awards, but would give out 57 thousand dollars as a grand prize! That's a very large cash prize, so I thought.......well......maybe one more contest. Late last night I saw that they had chosen the semi finalists, and I wasn't there. But that's okay, I tried my best and I like what I did. I hope you do as well, they were freshly uploaded to my website today, come watch them and read more about it at my Heinz page by clicking here. Have a nice week!

The top image: A still from my The Perfect Combination animation- a love story.

The second image: my Attack of the Edible Tomatoes animation- thank you Mom for this idea!

My first festival submissions ~ Sundance

I submitted my very first entries into the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. First I'll provide a little background on Sundance. The Sundance film festival is the largest independent and pre eminent film festival in the US, famous for discovering the new and independent work of international film artists. You may have watched the associated Sundance network television channel which has a reputation for programming cutting edge movies and shorts.

Neither of my submissions are brand new, I've probably already shared them with you. My first entry is the 7 minute "Odyssey" fractal animation set to Mozart. http://www.nanogirl.com/personal/odyssey.htm I entered it in the US Short Film (experimental) category.
My second entry is the ode to my sister Julie, "The Gift" which I entered into the US Short film (narrative) category.
http://www.nanogirl.com/personal/thegift.htm

I feel Odyssey may be my best chance. Granted, this festival is the super duper big leagues (the name alone comes from the role Robert Redford played in the movie "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid". I'm being realistic about this, so I know that my chances are most likely slim (or lower - at least at this moment in time), still you never know if you don't try.

They don't communicate with you to tell you they received your submission but they did say you could include a self addressed postcard that would come back to me in 4 weeks. I used an Escher postcard for each and wrote "we got your flick" on the message section. As for finding out if the entries will screen I think they contact by email and/or phone.

The process itself has been a learning experience for me, how to go about it, what forms to fill out, the deadlines, the categories etc. We were also required to make a (movie - not data) DVD in the tall retail sized cases, so I made my own cover art to fit. I used images from my animations to make the cover for each one. You can see pictures of my DVD's in the above photo. They suggested that we make back up copies onto vhs tapes in case our DVD's failed to play for some reason. I called the camera shops and while they can transfer DVD to vhs, they send it out for three weeks, well that would have been past my deadline (which was the 20th for my particular early entry fee). Some how I found out that I could play my DVD on my television set and record it with the vhs at the same time. The quality isn't that great, but that's why it's a back up. So there was a lot to learn in all of this preparation.

In the future I will have longer and more content controlled work that could be higher qualified candidates for submission and submitting these two shorts, has educated me so that the next time might not be as confusing as if I entered cold. Seems like I am always doing something for the first time, but I feel good about that. It feels like growing. I'd like to thank my friends, my Mom and Jim for always supporting me in growth! Best wishes,

The Sundance Institute
http://www2.sundance.org/

2008 Sundance Film Festival
http://festival.sundance.org/

Last years festival
http://festival.sundance.org/2007/index.aspx

Sundance television network
http://www.sundancechannel.com/home/

Book Covers - yes, another one!

I have been working on companion images to accompany short sci fi stories for a book over the past year or so and just recently finished the final cover selection that you see here.
You may remember my "Reverie" post, that was an earlier submission for the cover. I also have another 3rd version of the book cover that you can see at the webpage. Click here to see larger images, and the alternate version.