My new album 'Diamonds Are Dead'

My Motion Graphics Demo Reel (August 2017)

Hello.

Over the past 18 months while you've been doing whatever it is that you do, I've been pushing hard to learn enough motion design skills to make it a career out of it. I'm certainly not up to the level I aspire to yet but I am making progress.

Please enjoy my showreel.

DEMO REEL AUGUST 2017 from Ian J. Gavin on Vimeo.

Ochiru is here

I've been busy making these computer generated marble races. The YouTube channel is called Ochiru, which is Japanese for falling (approx.).

My hope for the future of the channel is to be continually evolving and iterating the look and design of the arenas. The most challenging part so far is building arenas to create interesting races that are done in about 1 minute, and that can be rendered out on my MacBook in under 5 hours.

You want to see?

OK, then

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcD3iu2Q-xik-xd_lDY8jFAW6MMqV6Jha

My album on Bandcamp

I thought I'd embed one of the new bandcamp music players. You know, just for the hell of it.

Boards of Canada - the original ‘Instagram’ band?

While literally writhing with anticipation over the imminent release of BOC’s third and very long awaited album, ‘Tomorrow’s Harvest’, I’ve been thinking about my expectations.

Firstly, where have BOC been? Seven years is a very long time. Have they been making tracks all this time and just not been happy with them? Did family life take over? Were they feeling the pressure and just needed to step back a while? All I do know is that I shouldn’t expect any answers.

For me, BOC invented the Instagram, Super 8, nostalgia aesthetic. The way they filtered and warped their vocal samples and melodies always transported me to fuzzy, half-remembered Saturday mornings watching Sesame Street (was it even on Saturday mornings? I did say ‘half-remembered’) or going through draw of faded polaroids with my Mom and brother and laughing at the embarrassing hair-dos. BOCs music did this to me. Beneath the strong tunes there was a powerful connection to the past.

Their label, Warp, naturally understand how much BOC have been missed. A few teaser trailers, one video and word of mouth is doing the rest. Social media is a gift once you have a reputation.

Will the new album be more of their signature sound or has their style changed?

I don’t mind if it hasn’t.

Electronic Music Bromances

While enjoying the latest Daft Punk album on the way into work this morning a realisation struck me.

A surprisingly large amount of the successful electronic music bands are essentially male double acts. Off the top of my head there’s Daft Punk, Chemical Brothers, Orbital, Air, Coldcut, Autechre.

No doubt I’m missing many. Maybe I’m just seeing a pattern in a bigger chaotic picture but I can’t think of a single female electronic double act or even one male, female example.

Apart from sharing any money you might make, I can certainly think of many advantages to being in a double act; splitting the creative workload and having another pair of ears when you’re having that “is this actually shit?” moment, having a friend when you’re touring far from home or you just need someone there to motivate you to “finish that bloody track”. Friends can fill some of those roles but it’s hard to get an honest and constructive opinion unless they are as invested in the project as you are.

I’d consider collaborating but maybe I’ve been messing about too long now to find someone on the same wavelength.

There’s clearly some magic to it though.

Sympathy for Adobe?

I've just finished reading the comments about Adobe Creative Cloud (CC) in a report on Wired.com.

I found one, often repeated, criticism interesting. This was the complaint that many of the software updates that Adobe charge for, Photoshop in particular, aren't radical enough for the money.

Photoshop is a fantastic piece of software which I've used every day at work now for over 20 years. Photoshop pretty much started doing everything I want a photo editing program to be able to do, since the version when they added 'layers'. I really don't want radical changes made to it. I'm happy with the incremental improvements.

Similarly for Illustrator and InDesign, version CS4 had all I need day-to-day. The feature differences between CS4 and CS6 (yes that two upgrades) really are minimal and imagine most graphics professionals hardly need them.

This puts Adobe in a difficult position. They're not an arts project, they are a business. Nobody could realistically expect Adobe to declare Creative Suite complete, only cover OS updates and just sell it to anyone who hasn't already bought it? Adobe then have quite rightly expanded their range of software applications to tackle other tasks that graphics businesses may face such as editing video, animating a vector or building a website but most of us don't need them all.

The whole software bundle is the grandly titled Master Collection. It's great but it is quite expensive. I have it at work (CS6 version) but only really use the three titles mentioned above and AfterEffects. I can definitely do everything I need to with CS6 as it stands.

At work, our incentive to upgrade is already low. With Adobe CC it's lower. Adobe CC is too expensive for the new toys and the minor upgrades. We want Adobe to stay in business but not at our expense.

Adobe is a victim of its own success. Adobe has a problem.