Call the police! CGP goes all Home Invasion on your a**

I've just spent way to much time playing with my toy. If I'd have said that when I was 15 I'd have meant something completely different. Today though I mean the latest app on my phone. the as yet un-named Augmented Reality (AR) app. We'll call it the AR thingymabob because things with names are generally friendlier (except BoBo the clown who still freaks me out. Seriously, who's calls themselves BoBo?)

We produce computer generated room sets and product shots for a large number of interior furniture manufactures and it's that relationship that has driven the necessity to develop the provisionally named AR thingymabob. These guys make, manufacture and move product. They know that if they can get you thinking and imagining what it would be like to have their product in your home then they are halfway there.

What's more, we wouldn't mind! we'd even welcome it. The chance to stick that bathroom furniture in the bathroom and see if it fits into that tight spot, to see which colour or grain of wood works better with the existing motiffs, to see exactly how you feel about those wardrobe doors now they're out of the store, off of the page and in your wall. Altogether bloody useful.

I've basically spent a few days playing with the AR Thingymabob (tm) and showing people who have so far unfailingly thought it was bloody marvellous.

The way it works is by using "markers" which are visually recognisable and unique patterns (like a QR code). These could be a particular picture printed on an A4 piece of paper for instance. The marker dictates the relationship between the AR model and the world. It determines its scale and position. So place on the floor  to see some furniture in place. Stick to the wall and you can see wardrobe doors, paintings or even windows in place

This really if the future of commercial CGI. If you want to play test the beta, post a comment or get in touch with me.

How to Woo an Architect in 10 Steps

So we produced an article entitled "How to Woo an Architect in 10 Steps" that basically mocked our shortcomings in picking up business in the Architectural Visualisation market. Truth is we get a lot of this business although we would love more. The article proved a big success and we produced it as an infographic! 

You can see it on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/pages/Image-Foundry/323451257748693

It turns out people like brutal honesty with a sprinkle of funny. 

Are we Manchester United or Accrington Stanley

This random guy from many miles away, across seas, and mountains, emailed some work to us looking for a job. Turns out it was good stuff because we've moved him to the UK and brought him aboard. I now have an Italian colleague. This chaps has different skill sets to most of our guys and finds alternative solutions to issues that arrive. His work is really top rate and I can't wait to show it off.

Careful thought goes into deciding who to bring into the studio. Each new person has to improve the team. No replacing people or expanding for the sake of it. The studio is only as strong as its people. So each new "acquisition" needs to be a first team player. No buying for the bench.

That attitude has seen the quality of work we produce increase and the scope of work we can confidently tackle, escalate year on year. Much like a Paul Scholes makes everyone who plays around him look like better footballers, so our established artists improve and learn with each new addition to the team.

I'll have 20 box's of plasters please

The worlds financial markets are collapsing and it's "death by a thousand cuts" for western civilisation. Or so I'm told. Business however, is picking up. More projects are coming through and the world keeps turning. Either we just happen to be in a growth industry at the right time or Reuters have got it all wrong. Well, you can't trust the news can you, what with their dependence on facts and professional analysis. I'll take the phone as a barometer every time, and mine is ringing. Of course we are in a growth industry which is going to make the next few years very interesting as we and CGP become established. Once operation "survival by a thousand plasters" has been in full swing for a while and Jonny investor feels safe splashing the cash, we should be ripe to capitalise. Now is the time to forge ahead and aggressively market virtual photo shoots. The cost advantages alone make this a great climate to grow our customer base.

What to do while the boss is away...

I have been left unsupervised by my boss who is on a road trip working out of our other locations around the globe in a mission to streamline our CGP process. Less amendments, quicker production times and new design references should improve our quality and reduce our production cost. Meanwhile my unsupervised self was overcome yesterday with the urge to watch Wimbledon while at work. I had the tennis on one screen and a plethora of windows open on the other. For one afternoon I remembered what it's like to try and work with one computer screen. It was horrible. It really is a "you can never go back" scenario. Trying to clear a mounting list of tasks on a single screen made me feel like I was back in the stone age. I came perilously close to donning a loin cloth and starting a fire with two sticks. Then I remembered how bloody difficult it is to start a fire with naught but two sticks and decided to forge on with my ever expanding task list and a renewed respect for stone age man. By the time I'd beaten back the urgent items the tennis was over anyway. So what have I learned this week.

1:   Even when you can watch the tennis, you can't watch the tennis

2:   It won't be long before I need 3 computer screens

3:   Work flow process' are essential in large studios

4:   The time difference between the UK and Delhi is 4.5 hours

5:   CGP Artists don't like work flow process'

6:   CGP Artists just like being arty and getting on with it.

7:   Left to their own devices the CGP artists would take forever and create great work

8:   Which we'd then have to sell at a loss.

9.   I'm thankful the artists aren't left to there own devices.

CGP will change the way you live your life.

The nostalgic bit

Every now and then a technology comes along that changes everything. The last two were mobile phones and then the internet. My first memory of mobiles taking the world by storm was walking down the street trying to avoid the weirdo talking to himself, only to discover he was on a phone. I vowed I’d never become one of the “mobile crowd”, viewing them as a bunch of show off faddish slaves. Of course that vow went the same way as my new year resolutions. I now own a mobile and several years later still haven’t made it into the gym. Then the internet arrived and let’s face it, it was pretty useless initially. We hadn’t really worked out what it was for, but after a few years the “killer applications” arrived, email was prevalent, search engines evolved and information at our fingertips we could plug into the global market place at a consumer level.

The prophetic bit

Access to communications and information has changed the rules of the game for ever in a way that we as consumers through to tail chasing governments and defiant despots have yet to fully realise. CGP is going to play a major role in the next great leap forward. Tablet computers and perhaps more importantly smart phones have opened the door to “Augmented Reality (AR)”, a view of the real world augmented with computer generated photography. The concept has been around for a while but now in the form of the millions of handsets currently in use, it has the platform that will make it commercially viable to develop applications that actually affect that way that Joe blogs on the street interacts with the world. We are currently involved in a number of projects examining the way AR can be applied including seeing how products would look in your home and in store product information presented in a relevant and personal way. All of these ideas and products can be supplied as apps to your phone. The ones that don’t really fly will die and the ones that change the way you interact with the world, well, they’ll change everything.

Things that surprised me from our little excursion to the KBB London 2011 exhibition the other week

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1: The proliferation of CGP in existing marketing

3: How much fun it is putting faces to the voices

3: The brazenness of a specific local Londoner (you know who you are)

4: Certain individuals stoical refusal to open their eyes

5: How much my feet would hurt today

1:    I cannot stress how much CGP is in current use. More over, I cannot stress how much is in use that you just won't know about. Not long ago I could open a magazine and not really have a clue. I might notice one or two obviously computer rendered images but by and large the better ones would slip by me. Now every time I open a magazine I'm on the lookout. The range in quality in CGP in a single publication of "kitchens, bedrooms and bathrooms" is staggering. The quantity is even more amazing. A good half or more of the images seemed to be CGP. To the casual onlooker the good ones will just be assumed to be photography. The lesser images will be spotted and erroneously held up as an reason why CGP will never look real.


2:   We all do it. We imagine what someone looks like when we speak to a stranger on the phone. I was wrong on all counts. No one looked as I imagined them to look. No doubt they were equally surprised as my deep, confident and dulcet tones are unfortunately not reflected in my visage.


3:   My accompanying colleague whilst quite brilliant in many facets of our business proved to be completely inept at topping up Oyster cards, the transport currency of the capital. He did in fact top up a strangers card by £20 without realising. The stranger in question looked at him, clearly wondering whether to say something or wonder off. They wondered off and I now refer to my colleague as the Oyster Fairy.


4:   Quite comically, some marketing people judge photography by the best examples and CGP by the worst examples. If they saw a poor photo they would quite rightly blame the photographer, and yet when presented with a poor CGPhoto they deride the whole medium. CGP is an art form that requires highly skilled artists and if you want to know what is possible, what is available to you, then look at the output of the talented studios. By being un-open to the possibilities CGP presents, they may be denying themselves the appropriate tool for the appropriate job.


5:   Lot of walking, lot of talking, lot of fun.