jonnybaker

a light through the noise

at grace on saturday night we had an amazing evening. 10 people created something in response to advent, picking a passage from a prophet or a theme. i am collating all the pieces and we will add them to the grace archive at some point. joel baker made an amazing video - his intro is below. the track he played with it was ben frost - theory of machines which has been switched out for putting it online as we don't have permission for it. but do switch it for yourself if you can. i honestly thought this was amazing (not just in a biased parent way!). it's been added to the proost advent series here. anyway here's the spiel from joel to go with it...

"The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned." Isaiah 9:2

When reading a few verses / passages for inspiration this one really struck out at me.
As we come to the end of the year we reflect; pulling together end of year playlists, highlights and lowlights, miles run, walked and cycled, goals and achievements. But one thing I haven't particularly wanted to reflect on is what's going on in the wider world. It’s pretty depressing.

Sometimes it feels as if we are walking in darkness and could really do with seeing a light. This then was my visual response & exercise. By scraping various headlines from the past year or so, I tried to see if I could shine a light through the noise and give us something to hold onto as we move into 2025.

click to light the olympic torch! wonderful...

joel was contacted by bibliotheque design and asked if he could turn this poster design into something animated for the olympic opening day. click on the torch to light the flame and then drag your mouse across the screen to move the flame - let the olympics begin!

writers block - introducing flora martyr

got a wonderful surprise this morning when sue who is on the cms pioneer training told me her daughter had animated a track of harry's called writer's block. this is from his album rhythm and poetry when he was more on a rap tip than a poetry one. anyway it's an absolutely delightful movie and must have taken an age to make. i haven't actually met flora martyr but she is clearly someone to look out for...

the story of everything

this animation the story of everything was made by rich and submitted as a piece of work on the cms pioneer course i am teaching as a timeline telling the bible story - wonderful! worship trick 8, series 4.

animated parables

we have 3 amazing new animated parables on proost this month. they are the lost son by joel baker, benny the boss by jon birch and the gaga samaritan by andi mac. watch the promo below to get the flavour. this project is a partnership with stapleford house who will be producing lesson plans for secondary schools to use with the movies at the beginning of 2011. you can download the movies through proost and if you are a proost subscriber they are in the download section on the site.

animated parables promo from jonny baker on Vimeo.

 

lucky

stash is a monthly dvd zine of animations, motion graphics, visual effects with a mix of short films, music videos, virals and ads. i was given issue 65 so it's clearly been around a while. each year they also produce a dvd of the best of that year and have a number of collections. if you are familiar with onedotzero it's in a similar vein - creatively brilliant and a wide range of styles.

there are a number of beautiful short films on the issue i've got. one of the simplest and my favourite is lucky, a sad lament for the way we humans treat fellow creatures on the planet, especially whaling. the good news is that the film is online at hybworks.co.uk. click on lucky on the left hand column under short films. there are a number of other short films there which i haven't yet looked at - let me know if you find any gems.

advent - new 9 lessons animations and a bundle of other ideas and resources from proost

9 lessons is a wonderful new flash animation from jon birch of asbojesus fame. it is incredibly simple an idea. run the flash file (in a browser or flash player) and there are 9 animating loops corresponding to each of the nine lessons and carols from the traditional christmas service. but here's the brilliant part - each one loops for as long as you like while you do the reading and whatever else. then you simply click on the play button in the corner to move on to the next image. it's only £2.99 and is this year's offering from proost into the ever expanding creative melee of ideas as the worldwide body of christ goes crazy to celebrate the coming of jesus the god/human into the world.

proost actually now have an amazing selection of advent ideas and resources. if you've not come across them have a look at the following:

nine - nine artists interpret the traditional nine readings with 6 movies and 3 songs 

25 - si smith's amazing cutout and make nativity characters and advent calendar and comic

wait - vaux's simple but powerful movie and liturgy on waiting in advent 

silent night - a movie that's ideal for pretty much any christmas service 

then of course lots of liturgies and songs on the advent theme elsewhere in the books and audio sections...

it's probably obvious but these resources are as useable round a meal table or in your lounge with a family and friends as they are in a worship service. use with creativity and imagination!

did i ever mention that if you sibscribe to proost you get access to all the back content and the coming year whenever you like for the equivalent of five pounds a month?! ;-)

anyway hope your own creative juices are flowing and that of your communities. i'll be blogging other ideas and stuff that's out there as the weeks go by.

i am making 9 lessons a worship trick - no 75 in the third series - as i love it so much.

[update: jon has added it to youtube if you want to take a look]

i love elvis - worship trick 70

andi mac was a discovery on proost two years ago as one of our unusual suspects. it's been exciting to see his movie making/animation going from strength to strength. at the proost events at greenbelt he showed a new movie he has made i love elvis, another contemporary parable. you may remember sea parable in a similar vein and he has done clouds, vampire love and a movie for last year's nine on proost (see the movie section of the site). well the good news is that it is available free from the guys at kore to download. i'm hoping that we will be able to add it to proost as well at some point, at least for subscribers but the main thing is you can find it and it's free!

...talking of free just a reminder if you haven't to check out the freebies for a taster of proost

reel and congrats!

congrats joel on getting a distinction in your art foundation! yay!!!! and here's his reel if you want to get a flavour of the movie stuff. the end piece should be worked up on proost for july we hope!

Reel from cntrst on Vimeo.

12 stations meditation freebie - worship trick 61 [series 3]

it's good friday so we thought we'd throw up one of proost's pieces for free. this is party because there was a glitch in the file we uploaded originally so some people have had problems downloading it so we feel bad for messing a few people around. and because we felt like putting something out there on good friday anyway. to view this i have embedded it full size so stretch your browser window so that the whole animation is in there and then you click through the slides on the bottom right. if your window is too small, download it - see below. the movie 12 stations is a great accompaniment if you haven't seen it. thanks jon for agreeing to give the meditation away. if you've paid for it already and feel hard done by e-mail me and i'll create a coupon for you to download something else. if you are a proost subscriber you could access this anyway. you can downlaod it here and use it either with flash player or open it in a browser if you want to use it offline.

i had a scroll back through the worship trick series and these are other things i noticed related to the season. if you have things you have come across leave a comment and i'll take a look

bitter journey
seven sayings - which has now moved to here
three days
ecce homo
a couple of animations
tenebrae
dead man waiting
good friday stencil
graffiti stations of the cross
easter liturgies
shooting jesus images
holy week reflections
passion pictures

parable of the sea - mission and the church

andi mac rocks! he is one of proost's unusual suspects - new talent that we publish. he contacted us out of the blue last year and we published clouds - a quirky movie. last year at the greenbelt unusual suspects session he played vampire love - which we adored - even more quirky! that now has an electro french pop sounding soundtrack and we decided to hold it back for valentine's day so it's just come out this month. he was also one of the artists we featured as part of nine with another brilliant piece. andi is now carving out a niche as a designer, animator, illustrator... and he sent me a link to a piece he has done for SAMS ireland called the parable of the sea. it is stunning - simple, sad, powerful.

go and watch it on his site and there is a link to paypal to buy it for three pounds. also if you haven't watched any of the three movies andi has released on proost they are all on his site in the animations section...

chelsea vs barcelona and onedotzero free night - looks like a good week ahead

am delighted to say i have got tickets for chelsea vs barcelona on weds night. can't wait... sadly i only got two tickets so harry has to stay behind (sorry harry!). the game last year was fantastic - i love the big european games...

if you are in london this week and want a good free event, the V and A museum have a late night event transvision on friday with onedotzero and VJs in galleries - it really looks like it should be good. it's my birthday the next day so a few of us are going along and then on to abbaye which is about 10 minutes walk away for belgian ales afterwards. if you are around see you there. the blurb on the web site says

for this one-time event, onedotzero has invited over 20 key creatives from diverse fields, representing the full breadth of moving image programming that onedotzero explores.

across motion graphics, music videos, short films, interaction design, live audio–visual performances, music, and architecture, featured artists will include airside, hi-res!, trevor jackson, allofus, the light surgeons, d-fuse, intro, jason bruges, neutral, peepshow, phillip o' dwyer, pre-loaded, sennep, tank.tv, universal everything, usman haques, and united visual artists.

Technorati Tags: onedotzero, V&A

cafe church animation CD ROM - worship trick 19 [second series]

a while back i posted a worship trick - contemporary stained glass windows in motion that linked to cafe church and their animation project. they have now published the animations as a CD ROM which is great news (thanks darren for the tip off). you can order it from cafe church

the blurb about it says...

Cafe Church Glebe is meshing art with technology as a way of enriching their gatherings for worship.

From 2002 - 2003, Cafe Church employed a digital artist, Rick Bull, who produced animations - prayers, scripture passages, visualised themes. We have been using these as a regular part of our worship.Think of them as contemporary stained glass windows in motion.

This program continued in 2004. Cafe Church secured the services of Rob Thwaites (theatrical practitioner, digital artist) as Arts Facilitator, and Cameron Semmens (performance poet and wordsmith) and Pete Harding (musician and digital artist) as Artists in Residence.

Technorati Tags: animation, worship tricks, alternative worship

a couple more flashes

ben has posted a couple of flashes from sanctus 1's easter services - uncertainty and it is finished. i like the ishuffle juxtaposed with thomas!...

worship trick 17 [second series] - a couple of animations...

a couple of animations for good friday from pilgrims progress

crown of thorns | shattered cross

(thanks to mark for the link)

worship trick 12 [second series] - 40

today is my turn to post on the grace lent blog. i thought i'd post here as well and make it a worship trick...

si smith has done a comic strip 40 of jesus journey into the wilderness. this was used by revive at greenbelt last year. i missed it there but first saw it at the IASYM conference in january when simon hall led some worship. he used the comic strip in a powerpoint presentation played over a track off revive's first album beautiful day (can't remember which one). si used to be part of the group that has become maybe (an understated name if ever there was one) in oxford, though he has now moved to leeds and joined revive.

maybe are posting one of si's illustrations every day during lent which is a wonderful idea. by the end of lent you will be able to download them all...

a slight warning - the images haven't been that compressed for the web so if you are on a phone dial up, as lent goes by the page will take a while to load - worth the wait though. add your suggestions for an accompanying music track in the comments...

worship trick 96- truth

truth9.swf is a stunning piece of flash from www.ni9e.com. good on its own but brilliant if layered in arkaos. i first used it at the mayc communion. anyway this piece of flash gets made worship trick 96