(www.mdcn.ca)
Had fun at the first part of my internship for the Mobile Digital Commons Network project. We were in Montreal at Concordia’s Hexagram lab for the past 4.5 days doing some pretty intense writing, brainstorming, and then some actual visualization prototyping. Beyond simply spewing out ideas I found myself doing a lot of After Effects work and a tad bit of 3d studio max. There wasn’t enough time for me to get into producing any actual physical objects, but I didn’t mind doing video work, as I haven’t done it too much for the last little while.

The MDCN project we’re developing is basically a game played out with the assistance (or use) of cell phones. 8 players meet on Mount Royal in Montreal and interact with the game and solve tasks using their phones. We’re working off newer models so that we can take advantage of GPS tracking and monitoring of players, as well as bluetooth communication between phones, and between Bluetooth enabled gear (accessories we build). Such as an animatronic teddy bear that becomes activated only at a certain part of the map, and then triggers a video to play on the phone.
The short is that Arthur English who is buried on the mountain (famous Canadian who hung over 400 people) is trying to escape, so players have to complete a set of tasks or ‘locks’ to stop him. English is one of three storylines being developed for the project.

Intern: MDCN (Mobile Digital Commons Network) Montreal + Toronto. A project working on developing interactive immersive live action games for cellphones. MDCN is a joint project between OCAD and Concordia University amongst others.

The music video shoot with the animatronic hearts went great. I was there just to make sure nothing went wrong, and surprisingly, nothing did. They survived being thrown, dropped, everything.

Summary.
Jeff got me to do 3 oversized (elephant size?) hearts for him and he needed them to:
1) Pump blood out of them
2) Be fully self contained. No tubes, no wires coming out.

How I made them.
The core component of the units is a 12volt DC pump. A magically strong pump that uses very little energy for what it is. Thus I was able to power it through 8 x AA batteries. Nice for filming as that way if the batteries happened to run out (it was a winter shoot) we could just go buy more at a corner store.

Then I just rigged up some tubing, and a powerade bottle in each heart. The pump was insanely high powered and could go through a bottle of water or blood in under 20 seconds, so I limited it a bit with thinner tubes, and stoppers near the tips to control the spray and drip action.

How it looked.

They looked pretty good but not perfect at first. I'm a perfectionist and the oversize made them seem not totally believable, but those were my constraints.
THEN we got BLOOD on them. It was night and day, they came alive. I’m not one to toot my own horn, but damn, they looked like fresh cow hearts, bloody and dripping, you could have almost fooled me.

And we fooled a lot of people, there were ladies that screamed as we were filming, (we were in public places) and EVERYONE slowed, got wide eyed, and stared. Which surprised me. In Toronto people never look, ESPECIALLY if you have cameras, but they sure did today.
Can’t complain and Jeff (director) was overly pleased, thus I am too.

** Thank you Crystal Pallister for painting them. We all know how Mr. partly colour-blind shys away from colour.

I’ll try to get some early video stills, but it’ll prob be a month or so.

Originally it was going to have full control by a microchip, and I had designed and built the 2 circuits, but the night before I ripped them out and switched to a simple push button trigger. It made more sense to give the actors complete control over the mechanism so that the hearts could bleed on cue at the directors discretion.

Overall, we only had to refill the blood sacks twice, and the batteries lasted for a full week of testing + 1 day shoot in the cold. I designed it around AA’s so that we could replace them if they ran out at any corner store, but it wasn’t needed at all.

Early still footage (Notice the spray)

That's right! Adam's back! Saturday was my last day. I've saved up a bit of cash and I'm going back to finish school full time and begin creating art again. I had a lot of fun at my job as the people were wonderful, but the job itself (moving bolts of fabric) wasn't exactly my life goal and it left me with only 2 hours a night to do my own thing, which I managed to get a hell of a lot done, but it's not enough with all the other things I want to do and I had to pass up on a few commercial sculpture offers, which sucked.

So here I am, ready to begin creating things again. Art + fabrication portfolio here I come.

My last day was actually pretty nice. At the end Arman, Pedro, and Shawn tied me up with packing tape and told me I couldn't leave, Angie (manager) was just like, “just don't tape his mouth”. Then I went out drinking and I thought up a new sculpture with while talking with Ryan and I'm gonna use him in it.
After drinks Jessie, Kirsi and me went over to her place and I taught her some Intro mould-making skills so that she could make moulds for dolls heads. I really like teaching.

OH! And among all the other crazy ideas, me and Ryan came up with a Broadway show. In short, it involves this guy that goes crazy and kills people, but all in musical fashion with arm waving and dancing and happy singing. And blood. Lots. We were singing it in the store but then Angie asked us to stop…….
Dunno why……

And 3 new Genpet comments for your viewing pleasure.
http://mrsloquacious.blogspot.com/2005/11/weird-grossbrilliant.html
http://fookthepeople.com/
http://raymitheminx.blogspot.com/

Angela shot her film (not video) this weekend. I got there Sunday morning 11:20, left Monday night. 40 hours no sleep. Inanity. But so fun! And the film will look SO great! Everyone was so inspiring. Such talent.

I did the prosthetic neck wound, which was my first time doing prosthetics and would have been happier with a budget and specially fitting it to the actor, but crap happens, and it worked out anyways. Learned a lot. The tube still wasn’t wide enough, but we got blood and a great shot of it bleeding anyways. Spent the entire weekend playing with fake blood. Simple stuff was most fun. Making Kyle’s head pool blood ruled (he got his head smashed into the door. Crystal and Kyle made it so freaking believable…).

March 26
-Because when a can of compressed air leaks, covering the insanely cold liquid spraying out with your hands might be the first reaction, however, it’s also the wrong one.
My hand hurts. I think the skin is dead.

-Cast and airbrushed prosthetic for Angela’s thesis.

March 25
Programming
-Got the heart monitor programmed. Some problems with the reset to the sequencer, but that’s all cleared up now. Evened out the power, and used a different pin from the microchip.

-Sculpted and moulded the slit neck prosthetic for Angela’s thesis. It also hides a tube, so that blood will pump out of the neck.

March 22 -24
-Finished sculpting / moulding /casting the second mould for the second piece of plastic.
-2 days of sanding it down ahead to get it smooth, then I’ll vacuum form clear plastic over it. Fell behind schedual…
-Registered genpets.com

March 20
Finished text and layout for thesis paper. It’s a product catalogue for the genpets. I’ll have it up on this site for download as a PDF later; it still needs photos and misc graphics.

Today I started my job as mould-making monitor. Thursday 6-9. I gotta be down there sculpting for business and thesis, so hell, I get paid !! how can I argue. And I get to make sure no one kills themselves. Hmm, hope I don’t look after the youngins the way I look after food I cook…

Water flooding. Twice. Yay. Water shut off in the apartment today. When it came back on, the toilet overflowed, I managed to save lauras room, but some of my art books aren’t happy with me now :( . Manafs room was unaffected because apparently we’re on a slight slant. Lucky me. It took me a few seconds of standing and watching the water rush over and past my feet. I was a little shocked (and alone in the apartment, knowing Laura was gonna freak).

And then Laura (later, after my 9 hour day) started talking about Noah. Which annoyed me (mom, dad, thank you for not forcing me to read the bible and lose half my IQ). Lets compare Adam, to Noah. When times got hard what did he do? He built a boat (ya, lets all cheer) so he could run away like a stupid sissy.

What’s that teaching our kids?! I’ll tell you. If I’d of been a bible thumper I’m sure I would have just ran to school to give my presentation (I was late for), instead I stayed an extra 40minutes and cleaned up. I was a big boy and fixed the problem and dealt with it. I didn’t build a boat and run away crying. Nice one Noah.
(ya, and then Mould-making flooded too)

oh, and my presentation went fine I think. I made it up on the spot. Not too hard when you’re spossed to talk about yourself and your work.

Then Ben & Casey dropped by and asked me to go out (but I’m leaving for London tomo, so I have to look anti-social and get good sleep and work, sorry again Ben. Me love you long time! V yelled at me for not being social and said I’m not going to have any friends if I keep this up. But little does she and Casey (Ben’s gal) know the spark of love that’s growing between me and Ben.. he’ll never get rid of me) (that’s what you get for telling me you read this sometimes. Ass.)

But Kasey was funny and noticed Stanley (fish) playing. Yes, playing. He was making bubbles, then spitting them and chasing them to eat them. It was funny and cute. He’s official insane. But apparently healthy and energetic. I told Laura (by jumping and impersonating the fish) but she didn’t seem to share my enthiuasm for the fact that our goldfish invented a game.