Johannes Mathisson

Internship has started

2008-08-22T00:17:00.000-07:00

It's almost two weeks since the internship started and I figured it's about time I picked up my blogg again. For the next seven month this blog will mainly contain updates about my life as an intern. I'm doing my internship at:

I'm doing my internship as a tech developer at Suddenly in Stockholm. My primary responsibilities are database implementation in the Flash-applications/campaigns developed at Suddenly. My first task was to do just that for an upcoming online competition.

Considering the lack of experience I have with Flash, it was quite a challenge. Also I had to familiarize myself with ActionScript 2 for the first time (always used AS3). However, it's quite similar to javascript, which I know very well.

Suddenly mainly works with shorter projects, rarily spanning more than a few weeks, if not just a couple of days. That way you get a lot a variations and never have get sick of a project. Although I wouldn't mind developing a complete site with loads of functions I'm afraid that won't happen alot, if at all.

Suddenly is located at Södermalm in Stockholm, next to Skrapan. As you can see from the picture above the interior is small but fresh. Only 10 people works here which makes it a small but cosy environment to work in. That's a little about where I am. See ya soon.

Pixartisticism = How to make a digital ratatouille look tasty

2007-11-29T10:00:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we were blessed by the digital media gods. Ziah Fogel, crowd supervisor of Ratatouille, came to Hyper Island and taked for hours about the making progress of PIXAR-movies in general and Ratatouille in particular. Anyone that has spent an hour in the lecture room at Ången knows what effect the insufficient ventilation can have on your focus. You get needlessly tired, period. Yesterday the whole room was filled with not just Hyper Island syudent, but also students from other educations from the region. Dispite this I didn't get tired during Ziah's two and a half hour long story.

Ziah Fogel is quite young, 28 I think, and have worked at PIXAR for seven years. Before that she also worked a short while at Industrial Light & Magic, you know the company that does all special effects for the Star Wars movies. Damn, she have really spent her life at the most interesting companies! PIXAR is now close to having a 1.000 employees which make it a huge studio. Too huge for my taste. But there seem to be an atmosphere at that studio that makes it interesting none the less. According to Ziah, it's a very competitive place but at the same time you really have the opportunity to be yourself, decorating your office in any way you like.She showed pictures of an office literally built like a castle. However, if you're a very creative person within many fields you might find PIXAR to be a limiting place. Most employees specialises in a narrow area and keep doing that particular thing.

Ziah did a thorough walkthrough of all steps of the development of a PIXAR-movie, a process that takes five to six years. That's a long time to work on a single movie, but according to Ziah most animation and effects are done during the last year of the production. The earlier year consists of storyboarding, pre-animation, sculpturing and research. I won't go through all phases she talked about because of two reasons. First, it would take to long to write and second: I don't remember half of all she said. She gave us the best behind-the-scenes lecture you could ever wish, at least if you're interested in Ratatouille or any other PIXAR-movie.

We're in the middle of a pretty serious module and lectures like the one Ziah Fogel gave acts like a motivation and inspiration boost rather than bring more work. In the cold and November dark Karlskrona, Ziah brought light and warmth to a lot of us.

In the rear mirror: Stevens Henri

2007-11-28T02:39:00.000-08:00

To continue to recap some of the lectures we've had so far during the Visual Communication module. Stevens Henri is of french origin and quite a character. You got to love him. During his three lectures he enlightened us with the basics of design; colours, shapes, golden ratio and combining them in successful ways. He admitted that he completely ignored these rules in the early stages of his career. And he produced crap, crap and crap, using his own words. We did some workshops that included painting but I'm going to focus on the task given to us at the last lecture. Producing a 14 pages magasine called Parasoll. If you check out the thumbs below it's needless to ay I didn't win any awards this time. The guiding word here is cheesy. It's more of a travel paper than a respectable magasine. Consider this a slap in the face for all clean design:

So, what do you think? Stevens Henri liked it! Not for the design (he thought i was terrible) but because it made him happy. He used the word "cheesy" quite a lot during his feedback, and always with a smile. I knew it was a horrible design, and it was for the most part deliberate. I had a fun time doing this. So, dare to go with unclean design!

In the rear mirror: William Hall

2007-11-27T10:55:00.000-08:00

One of the most interesting lectures we've had so far during this module has been the one about typography with William Hall. During my studies at Sörängens Folkhögskola I did quite a lot of page layouts. The name of the course was "Linje för skrivande och grafisk formgivning" (Course in writing and graphical design) so it contained a fair amount of typography theory and exercises. I found those lessons very interesting back then. Sorry to say I haven't been doing any "copywriting" since and that's why I found William Halls lecture so giving and inspiring. This reintroduction to typography acted like a small kick start for me to regain the motivation I lost during the Concept and Development module.

Just like many other lecturers, William Hall had a task for us. We were to layout to bilingual spreads using only typography as means of design. No images or other graphical elements were allowed. He also announced a competition were the winner got some rare art books he brought from England. I was quite surprised when he nominated my layout as one of the top 5. After a vote I won the second price, maybe because two of my fellow nominated classmates had left earlier leaving only two to compete with. First price went to Claes Källarsson while Aina Cecilie Ørebech got the third price. Here are two thumbs of the spreads I did:

The task was to choose an architect and try to convey his or her style with the layout. I choose Zaha Hadid because I was really inspired by her diagonal shapes. I tried to capture that feeling be using diagonal spacings between the columns on the pages. The angle of the diagonal isn't very big so the text remains easy to read. Although it's difficult to make out in these thumbs I choose english and russian as my two languages. My choice of fonts was Garamond for all text and headers while I used Book Antiqua for the running header.

Neglecting to blog... ooops

2007-11-22T13:10:00.000-08:00

What can I say. The first line in my last entry surely apply now as well. OMG it's been one and a half module since my last entry. Somebody spank me for being so neglectful. So, am I now to summarize the time not spend at blogspot? I sure am, but I'll try to keep it short.

The module Concept & Development was... unexciting and for the most time even boring. We started off by brainstorming in order to come up with 50 business concepts that in some way were related to digital media. This was the fun part. I really enjoy to brainstorm, especially if the result doesn't necessarily have to be serious. I had a few darlings among the 50... and they were brutaly slaugthered in front of me eyes when we were to select the Top 5 ideas...

The second week was the research week. I've got alot of criticism because I dug to deep into some of the topics. I've always considered myself to be a researcher (though my primarily source have been books in large libraries instead of the Internet). In combination with my wish to do a thorough work I tend to spend too much time researching some topics. I need to find a way to balance between my own "research hunger" and the time available. Dispite my love for researching my motivation dropped this week.

The Business Plan week were the third. Why didn't I find this week the least interesting? There was a huge amount of text that needed to be written. I love to write! I've previously studied writing with the purpose of becoming a writer or an author. I spent a whole year doing that and loved every second of it! The business plan was just tedious. Budgets and marketing strategies was a major part of the business plan. I am kind of anti towards both of them so I focused on the technical stuff (which interests me) and to puzzle the texts together.

The presentation week have been a nightmare from the moment I first heard that we were to pitch our business plan in front of real bankmen and investors. When I heard about the module at the recruiting days I honestly got second thoughts about Hyper Island. As the DAY drew near I kind of lost that anxiety. I was just a little nervous at the pitch so it didn't affect me negatively at all. I'm surprised at that. Is it thanks to the UGL and all the group follow-ups? I like to believe so. We didn't get the money we wanted but we didn't get a complete no either. If we got ourselves a client and made some changes to our business plan we could get some money. This is a victory as far as I'm concerned. I mean, if I got a business idea of my own that I wanted to make real I would certainly spend more than three and a half week perfecting the idea before going to the bank.

Afterwards I feel that the module has been a great experience all-in-all. I didn't learn that much concrete stuff but I got a lot of insights and a better understanding for things included in a business plan. Perhaps this wisdom will come in handy in the future, perhaps not. Either way I'm most satisfied with having gone through this module.

We are currently in the middle of the Visual Communication-module. I will address this in another entry, this one is already getting too long. And by the way! I will not talk about what our business idea was about...

Awe-Inspiring Awakening... Awhat!

2007-10-12T12:22:00.000-07:00

It's been quite a while since I wrote my last blog entry here. Almost an entire module has past here at Hyper Island during my absence. The main reason is because I've been writing on another blog during this time, namely our group blog that is currently available at www.etg3.blogspot.com. If you're interested you can follow the work progress of the last weeks on that blog. Below I will summarize that time out of my own perspective:

My group consisted of Max Olander, Cecilia Celander, Susanna Averpil and Filip Redelius (check out their blogs in the blogroll). In the Experience Technology module we were given some kind of existing technology and were to use it for something new. Our group got a wireless keyboard and mouse.

Initially we brainstormed like maniacs and came up with ideas so weird that if they were actually followed up we would get a free-ticked to the closest mental hospital (That would've been Gullberna if it wasn't discontinued). Luckily our group has some members that are a little more down to earth and likes to go for the easier sollution. Perhaps they should have some kudos for the fact that we actually pulled through this module with flying colours. Anyway. Once e had chosen to go for the Sound Memory Game (later shortened to Sound Memo) the work went fairly smooth. I was entitled the Senior Technical Director and was given the main responsibility for the hardware department. It was my task to rebuild the keyboard and build the Wall Frame around it. The task wasn't so hard on me since I have an old electrician education behind me so the idea was that I was going to help with the coding of the program as soon as I wasn't building on the Wall Frame.Though I do have to admit that I was confused when I opened the keyboard and saw that the circuitboard was printed on a plastic sheet. My education goes ten years back and we used classic circuitboards with lots of soldering points. This one was pure science fiction to me. Luckily I quickly got some help.

It soon turned out that our coder gave up on learning Action Script 3.0 so I wrote a back-up program using JavaScript that could run the game in case our coder wouldn't succeed in making a Flash application of the game. After that the Flash research and learning stalled totally. Everyone assumed that we were to use the JavaScript program on the exhibition, which initially wasn't the case at all. As time passed and the Wall Frame came close to its completion I enhanced the program bit by bit to match some new ideas and features. The first version was full of bugs while the last one had alot of special features and ran almost continously for twelve hour during the exhibition without screwing up once. If there're any bugs in the program the sure kept hiding for that time, and that's appreciated.

We had a last minute lecture today with John Lester from Linden Lab, the company behind Second Life. OMG, OMG, OMG, OMG. I never realized the potential of Second Life before and I found the lecture incredibly interesting. I find the virtual life both compelling and frightening. The possibilities of what you could do with Second life is limitless. I think that if I allowed myself to begin exploring Second Life I could get trapped. I don't want that. I want to be me in the real world. That's why I intentially stay away from any online games, especially WOW. I don't want to "waste" my time in a virtual reality when I have so much to do in the real life. I have a problem committing myself to virtual activities, and unfortunately that includes networking. I hardly spend any time at Facebook and I know I should do something constructing about my linkedIn account. I really need to get better at networking. I think that perhaps Second life could be an interesting way of networking. It has a gamelike experience (I think) and games have always interested me. Games by bag. I really need to check out Second Life.

Experiencing Warm Ups'n Gameport

2007-09-25T10:25:00.000-07:00

The "Warm-Up"-phase of the Experiencing Technology is over. Now it's the serious stuff that lays before us. But that's the story of another post in this blog. The last week we have worked on improving our concept with the base-vibrating chair. After first having presented our concept in front of the class we had a meeting on how to take the concept to the next level. It didn't take more than a few minutes before we came to the conclusion that a chair was awefully bulky to carry around between concert halls. We also had the problem with how to improve the disco experience for the deaf. Obviously a chair wouldn't solve that problem. In the group discussion I mentioned a vest and the response to that was immediate and positive. Our concept remained the same but the product changed from a chair to a vest. After a brainstorming we decided on "Vibe Vest" (all the group didn't agree with the name but we had to decide, or we would waste to much time). Once the new concept was detailed and ready we divided our selves into two main groups. One group (Filip R. and I) took care of the design of the vest and the control device for it, while the other group (Max, Cecilia and Susanna) handled the graphical guidelines and documentation. The presentation was prepared in collaboration with the whole group. The final presentation of the concept was today and it went well.

Here's a short brief of the concept behind the "Vibe Vest": The vest is made of an extremely light material and designed to fit underneath your ordinary clothes. The threads of the textile in the vest has the ability yo contract and expand on command from the accompanying bracelet device. This feature makes it possible for the vest to fit anyone as well as reproduce sound wave pressure. The device that controls the vest can communicate with music sources via bluetooth (a USB bluetooth adaptor for computers is also included in the core package). Through this communication the bracelet device controls the contraction and expansion rate of the vest in rhythm to the music. This way another dimension of the music experience is added. Although anyone can benefit alot from using this vest our primary concept target group was deaf or hearing impaired. To anyone reading this that isn't a part of the dm07kna class at Hyper Island Karlskrona it should be stated that the Vibe Vest doesn't exist in reality. It was merely a concept.

We had a lot of lectures this last week. One lecture in particular caught my attention: Gameport. Two guys from Gameport visited us and told us about their company and how the work as an incubator for promising game development studios. The work of Tarsier Studios was especially impressive. I kind of fell in love with the design of "City of Metronome". They spoke of an eventual release to either Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3. I can say now. IF the game is ever released to any of those consoles I will haul up my wallet and buy myself a nextgen console. This game seems to be worth it... big time!

Mattias (that's the name of one of the gameport guys) got the question what he thought was the best game ever. He promoted Beyond Good & Evil. I love him for that! Beyond Good & Evil is definitely one of my favourite games for the GameCube, along with "Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy" and "The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess", in the action/adventure genre that is.
God! I got such an urge to play Beyond Good & Evil that I will stop writing here and now. By the way, there is a rumour that Michel Ancel is planning a sequel, dispite the fact that Ubisoft did a poor job promoting the first game. Go Michel! Skip those Rayman games and give us another game with Jade!

Go! Go! Experiencing Technology

2007-09-18T09:46:00.000-07:00

Until today I had no expectations on the module called Experiencing Technology. The main reason was that I had a very vague idea of what it was all about. But today Björn Renner was having an introduction and most of my questions about the module were answered. Now my expectations are really high and I believe that this module will be sooooo much fun! Björn also showed us some of his earlier works but to tell the truth I wasn't impressed at all. I'm sorry to say this but I thought that most of them were utter crap. Then he showed some movies about creativity and still I wasn't impressed. BUT THEN! Then I saw that these movies were produced in 1966 and 1971 respectively. I was blown away by that fact. How could they do that kind of thing without the help of computers. I'm still in chock and would REALLY like to see the rest of those movies.

We got our new groups today as well and I'm very positive about it. You have to be! If you go into a new group with negative thoughts it will effect the entire group. Each group was given three words and Group 3 (my group) was given the words "bluetooth", "furntiture" and "sweet". Of course the words were randomly selected so there was no idea behind them. Through brainstorming we were supposed to come up with an idea of a completely new technological invention. We weren't limited to existing technology but could brainstorm about things that would perhaps be reality in the future.

From these words we came up with numerous concepts like Feng Shui-devices that helps people to arrange their home according to the feng shui wisdom. Restaurant chairs which put you in the waitress queue just by sitting down on the chair. Actually we put so much time and effort into the brainstorminh that we were running out of time to elaborate on a specific one. So we voted for all suggested and finally ended up with an idea that Max presented. A device which primary use is to enhance experiences for people with some kind of sense inpaire. We call it S.W.E.E.T. or Special Wireless Entertainment Experience Technology. During the upcoming week we shall elaborate futher on this device and I'm really looking forward to it.

Hasta la Vista for computers with RAMlösa inside

2007-09-17T02:29:00.000-07:00

Things kind of suck right now. My laptop is such a poor excuse for a computer that it gives me nothing but frustration due to its slowness. I now that the main reason for this is that my RAM is way insufficient. Here's a new definition of hell: Run Windows Vista on a computer with only 500MB RAM and while doing this also try to have Photoshop and After Effects launched simultaneously. If you then add some hagelslag to the cake in forms of Norton Internet Security and MSN that's continueously runs in the background you will have a soup! Not a cake! For some reason my computer just went slower and slower each time I rebooted it. Yesterday - after waiting almost three minutes for IE to launch, once I clicked the icon - I got so fed up with that soup that I almost threw up.

I talked to my fellow classmate Filip Redelius the other day. He had formatted the hard drive and reinstalled Windows and now his computer ran so smoothly that he was smiling from ear to ear. Initially I was only thinking of expanding my RAM from 500 MB to 2 GB (which is the most I can put on the current motherboard of my computer). But I was kind of stupid and didn't do my research well enough so the RAM I bought was incompatible. I have ordered more RAM now and this time I really made an effort of finding out exactly what RAMs was compatible with my computer. Until that memory arrives I have followed the example of Filip and have totally recovered my computer to it's retail state. Now it runs really nice again. I won't keep installing programs until the memory has been upgraded. That also includes installing MSN, so that's the reason why I won't be "online" in the next couple of days, dear Hyper Buddies.

24+ hours After Effectivity gave 15 seconds

2007-09-11T09:02:00.000-07:00

If I exaggerate a bit I would say that my last weekend was a near death experience. It all started last Thursday. We had a deadline for sending the synopsis for our individual 15 second motion task. It's said that you should aim a little higher than you expect to manage in order to evolve faster. I listened to that advice and pictured the whole motion in my head (with a lot of lighting effects, sounds and graphics à la Pixar). Wrote it all down and clicked the Send button. Two minutes later I was in agony. How should I pull this one of? I had never worked with After Effects before and I had only three days to finish it! But what the heck! If I fail to fulfill my vision I have always learned something in the process. To make a long and tiresome story a little shorter I worked for more than twelve hours a day during the weekend in order to come as close to my vision as possible. The final result was quite far from what I had envisioned. But it did fulfill most parts of the synopsis.

Apart from learning alot about After Effects, thanks to the excellent tutorial from Lynda.com and my fellow duckburg housemate Kasper, I have come to understand what it's like to aim too high. The higher you aim, the lesser sparetime you get. It's really just a matter of priority. If you value your sparetime alot, don't aim too high. I did and I didn't get more than a couple of minutes sparetime during the whole weekend. So was it worth it? When I sat there by the computer with a headache and like ten cups of coffee in the belly I didn't think so. Now, afterwards I don't regret it at all. No matter how I would have done that weekend is now a part of history and what gained during that weekend beats any hangover I might have gotten from going out and partying instead. But from now on I'll compromise a bit since I do want to get out and party from time to time.

Here's the result:

Me, a blogger?

2007-09-10T11:44:00.000-07:00

What a strange task to be given! To start a blogg just like that. What should I use this blogg for? I have no idea 'cause I normally only write stuff that I feel is of importance. Should I use it as a diary, and give away my inner thoughts. Like a sequal to the UGL? That is tempting, but do I really dare to do that when I know that millions of people will have access to them, if they want? Should I use it as an expertise panel and write about stuff I really know well. Immediately as I wrote that sentence the thought "am I really an expert in any area" went through my head. My current passions are videogames and history. My interest of digital design is also growing by the minute. But should I write about videogames? I could do that every day for a couple of years and still have something to say. Sometimes perhaps, but not as a main theme for my blogg. History is kind of outside of our education so why should I blogg about history? The History of Digital Media! That would be great! But unfortunately I don't know that much about the subject and I would feel like I was "cheating" if I researched the subject just to write a blogg about it. You know what? While I've been writing this I kind of decided what to do with the blogg! I will do all of the above mentioned stuff. I will use it as a diary where I share my thoughts. I will talk about the videogame industry from time to time. I will most definitely talk about history and I will share my unprofessional thoughts about the Digital Media business. I will try to add new topics in my blogg at least once a week, hopefully more often.