Watch this video on YouTube.

This is a quick 30 second spot for the College of Dupage Library's Digital Commons service. I've worked out a new logo and identity that involves a network of interconnected dots as a graphic element. The dots can also be animated, as seen in the video.

Labels: design, video

Just a preview of the SECRET ZOMBIE PROJECT.

Labels: illustration, video

School is back in session, and I now have two excellent part-time jobs. There is hardly a minute to spare between projects, and soon the floodgates will open.

Above you can see a simple test of a zombie walk cycle. What project is it for? SECRET ZOMBIE PROJECT.

Labels: illustration, video

Watch this video on Vimeo or YouTube.

While reading about how to make your own tape loops from cassette tapes*, I was reminded of the Buddha Machine (a sort of electronic ambient music generator), and how some people buy multiple Buddha Machines to create more complex layers of sound. I just threw together this little experiment, but the idea could definitely be explored further.

*I found that the added washers and stuff this guy adds are unnecessary. You really just need to open it up, pull out the tape, splice it to the right length, and put it back in.

Labels: music, video

Watch this video on Vimeo or YouTube.

Thursday night was Portfolio Night at the College of DuPage. All the graphic design students submitted their best work to be shown, and the portfolio students competed to be the best of the best. It was incredible to walk around and see everyone's work. Multiple times during the night, I had to hunt down people and berate them for not telling me they were doing such brilliant work. The night was full of surprises, and it was a wonderful way to end the year.

This has been the best year of school I've ever had, and I'd like to thank my teachers and classmates for making everything so fun and exciting. The amount of talent that surrounds me every day is staggering. You have changed school from something I used to dread into something I now love. You've changed my life.

Thanks.

Labels: bloggy, design, illustration, video

Watch this video on Vimeo.

My friend Jake and I finished our final projects in 3D class today. Mine was inspired by sine waves, and looks like some kind of futuristic chapel. Jake's is a series of interlocking octagons that fits perfectly within a cube.

This marks the end of my first year of design school. I'm not going to get all reflective on you yet, there are still some projects I haven't posted, and I plan on doing some video coverage of Portfolio Night tonight. All the hard work is done now, though, and it feels good to have survived the year.

Related.

Labels: design, video

Watch this video on Vimeo or YouTube.

Treasure Hunt is an Egyptian themed board game I created with four other super talented design students at the College of DuPage. Eve, Kevin, Matt, and Blair put so much of their talent to work on this thing, and it not only looks great, it's also really fun to play. Thanks for making this my favorite project of the year, guys.

(Also, thanks to Mr. Blevins for assigning this thing in the first place. It's the weird challenges like this that make design school interesting.)

Labels: design, illustration, video

Watch this video on Vimeo or YouTube

Thanks to everyone who came to the opening of FACE VALUE last night! If you didn't get a chance to swing by, I made this little video to give you an idea. The show will be up for a month in the Wings Gallery, which is located on the first floor of the Student Resource Center at the College of DuPage. The open gallery times are a little goofy, and I'm not really sure what they are, but I will update this post when I find out.

All the glory should go to Kristin Schlottman, Chris Walker, Grace Blevins, Jake Albaugh, Erika Swanson, Heather Shaw, and Dan McDarrah for all their hard work on this show. You guys have incredible talent, and I feel so lucky to have worked with you on this project.

Labels: bloggy, design, video

FACE VALUE is a typography show featuring a lot of great work from some incredibly talented graphic design students at the College of DuPage. Some of my crap got in there too, I'm not sure how that happened.

The show will be in the Wings Gallery (which is located in the Student Resource Center, or SRC of the College of DuPage) this Monday, April 13th at 7:00 pm. I hope to see you there!

Labels: video

Also available on Blip.tv

The time has finally come to unveil my secret project. HELLO is a new series of videos about interesting people. This first episode features Eric Michaud, President of Pumping Station: One, a hackerspace opening up in Chicago. I asked him all about what a hackerspace is, and why you should join one.

UPDATE: Special thanks to Eli Skipp for letting us shoot in her totally bodacious room.

If you don't have 15 minutes to spare, here is a 90 second preview:


Also available on YouTube | Flickr

Labels: hello, video

Just a little snippet of my day. I am off-camera for most of the video scanning in fabric samples.

Labels: video

Watch this video on YouTube or Vimeo.

This was my first shot at playing along with myself on video. I was so impressed by this young lad's performance that I had to try it for myself. The logistics are a little tricky to figure out, so I kept it pretty simple with this one, but I'll probably try some more daring videos like this in the future.

Thanks very much to John Hodgman and Jonathan Coulton for introducing me to this song. It's also worth watching the more complicated version from the Jerk, which nobody can seem to agree on how to play, as well as this one with a young lady who has a much better voice than myself.

Labels: music, video

Flickr | YouTube | Vimeo

Merry Crimmas from me and Godzilla! Reeeeeaaaaaaarrrrrgh!

Labels: bloggy, video

YouTube | Vimeo

Tina's little nephew lives far away, so we've devised a series of short movies to entertain and educate him. So here you have it: Warrencast episode 1, featuring original songs made up on the spot.

Labels: music, video, warrencast

YouTube | Vimeo

My sister and I (AKA Mookie and Melon) kicked off winter break with this little video. Can you control yourself while watching it?

The background music is by my good friend Dan Huff.

Labels: video

YouTube | Vimeo | MP3

My good friend Dan Huff came to visit last week, and he brought copies of his new album. Dan is the most prolific songwriter and music maker I know, and absolutely one of my greatest influences. Writing and recording can be daunting tasks for normal musicians, but Dan has a love for music so intense that no barrier ever stands in his way. If Dan Huff can record an entire album in the back of his truck, then there are no excuses for the rest of us. Nothing should get between the artist and the audio tape. That's why Dan's newest album is so important. You can listen to some samples on his myspace page, but he's given me permission to post the album in its entirety on the internet, so I suggest you download it here:

MUSIC FOR MUSICIANS OR: How to make a 60-minute album in less than 8 hours for about $200 as performed by the Dan Huff Solo Experiments (68.5MB ZIP file)

Now, I have to warn you, it takes a special ear to really appreciate a Dan Huff album. You might think that it sounds terrible. What you really need to do is listen to the potential of the music. Shine it up a little bit, and you could find a pretty great song. Dan's music isn't about saving up for that expensive guitar at the store, or buying fancy microphones, or renting a studio, or taking years of guitar lessons. It's about capturing music and ideas in their most raw state, and moving forward instead of tweaking, procrastinating, and digging yourself into a creative rut. Why is this important? I've had so many ideas go unrecorded because I didn't think I could make them sound good enough. I didn't have the right microphone. I didn't have the right instruments. I couldn't play the part well enough. I didn't have the right software on my computer. All of that goes away when Dan Huff drives his truck out to the Walmart parking lot and records whatever's in his head through a $5 microphone into a battery operated 4-track recorder. If you have music inside you, there are no excuses anymore. Get it out.

Labels: music, video

The first time I saw the band I Need Sleep was in a Halloween-themed basement show. I can't remember the year exactly, but October of 2002 sounds close. I was an immediate fan, and as the ever-changing cast of members rotated, eventually they invited me to play with them. We played some terrible shows, we played some incredible shows, we made a studio album, and we went on tour, we won a battle of the bands. I left the band sometime in 2005 or 2006 (I can't remember exactly anymore), and although I've got a whole heap of memories and stories from playing in the band, I was a disappointed that there seemed to be so little video of the band performing. People frequently had video cameras at the shows, and there were rumors that some totally awesome tape was going around, but they never seemed to surface.

Then, about a week ago, a friend of the band named Paul from DeKalb uploaded some videos of an old show to YouTube. The clips are incomplete, and the audio is terrible, but it still embodies the spirit of what those shows were like. I realized that I had a few videos on my computer that I had never bothered to upload, and that maybe if I added to Paul's videos, perhaps others would make their private collections available as well. Since I feel it's so important to preserve this stuff for posterity, this post will hopefully serve as the ultimate I Need Sleep video repository. So, here they are:

• I Need Sleep on October 4th, 2003 - This was my first time ever playing on a stage (aside from being in the school orchestra). I was asked to stand in because Justin Powers and Dan Huff couldn't make the show. You can see how low-key the band was in those early days.


• I Need Sleep at the Fat Bean on February 6th, 2004 - The Fat Bean was a coffee house that served as the petri dish in which early I Need Sleep was allowed to grow. The band was still relatively calm at this point. I had planned a series of mini-documentary videos like this, but it became hard since I was more frequently playing with the band than watching them. Notice Dan Nagy playing drums and synth bass simultaneously, and don't miss Dan Huff's words of wisdom at the end.


• I Need Sleep at 602 North part 1, part 2, part 3, & part 4 - You can see the beginnings of the bat-shit-insane I Need Sleep in these videos. Dan Huff is gone at this point, but Brian and I have become official members. Justin wasn't at this show, and I don't generally regard this as a very good performance, but it was the beginning of a seriously fun stage in the band's history.


• I Need Sleep at Huskies Bar & Grill in Dekalb part 1, part 2, & part 3 - The audio on these videos does the actual show no justice, but the energy is there. Here we have the band's lineup as it was represented on the album: DL, Justin Powers, Dan Nagy, Brian Shebake, and myself. This was one of the first shows in which we passed out things for the audience to bang on, which made the whole room our rhythm section. Talk about audience participation.


• I Need Sleep at the Shape Shop in Chicago - There's a big chunk of time missing between this video and the last one. This video is after Brian Shebake, Dan Nagy, and I had left. This is even after Kevin Kozak, who was one of my favorite members, had come and gone. You can see that the choice of instrumentation had been pared down to the basics here, but the structure of the songs was starting to get more complex.

This is not a complete video list. I know for a fact that there is at least one more video I have on a tape hidden somewhere at my parent's house, and with any luck I will find that. Also, I'm sure there are people out there with videos who have not put them online yet. Please send an email to davemakes@gmail.com if this is the case, and if you need help putting it on the internet, I will lend you a hand.

Another thing is that I Need Sleep is still around making great music, albeit in Tennessee and with an almost completely fresh lineup, but hopefully as they play shows in the future, people will be more vigilant about recording and sharing them.

Thanks to the people who have uploaded their videos. I hope to see a many more in the future.

Labels: bloggy, link, music, video

YouTube | Vimeo | MP3 (demo version)

This was taped back in June of 2006 at some kind of art space in Chicago, back when I dyed my hair, my glasses weren't quite as goofy, and I felt compelled to open my mouth as wide as it would go when I sang.

"Someone Else Tonight" is a song by my good friend Dan Huff.

Labels: music, video

YouTube | Vimeo

I forgot my friend Jim's birthday the other day, and it reminded me of this little ukulele ditty I wrote a while back as a blanket apology for all the forgotten birthdays. It's meant to be played with a big goofy smile on your face to really make the apology work. So, Jim, this one's for you.

These youtube videos are a lot of fun to make, and I've worked out how to keep the audio from being all blown out like on the blah blah blah recording, so you can expect plenty more in the future.

Labels: music, video

YouTube | Vimeo | MP3 (original banjo version)

Here is my debut play-a-song-in-front-of-a-camera-and-put-it-on-youtube video. Everybody's doing it, apparently, and I had no choice but to jump on the bandwagon.

Labels: music, video

This commercial was done for school. It's just a rough animatic, since I didn't have the time to fully animate it, but you can use your vivid imagination while watching it to see what I had in mind. The audio was the funnest part. I sat down in front of the mic and just read off the lines in as many different voices as I could come up with. After that, I just cut together all the takes that made me laugh the hardest, and threw in some sound effects and music by Need New Body.

I was a little embarrassed to show this is class, since I went all-out on the goofiness, but they seemed to enjoy it.

Labels: illustration, video