Animating Sigz

[bobsobol]

Okay... I made my fist animating signature a little while ago, and I've just updated it, adding the intro to the new RZ video. Trying to stay around 3Meg... anything bigger can slow the forum down a lot.

OldSig

NewSig

"The font sux, the colours are ugly..." guys, I'm a low level coder and system engineer, not an artist. The technical composition of elements in an animation that isn't too bandwidth hungry was my goal.

I just wanted to share them with you, to show the power of a moving image in your sig... lots of people do it with Avatars, why not the Sig too? ^_^

[MentaL]

[FlyingHigh]

Nice job Bob. :D

[404]

Thinking out of the box for the hex. But 3mb sig that is D: big.
The font is alright, the scanning font color does look like crap. should of made it white (;

[banzaiutd]

Wow, nice sig ever plus its animated nicely. Good job. xD

[RadioX]

Happy to see effects from my recently released video being used in signatures ;)

For those wanting to see them in HD, enjoy:

YouTube - Join us at RaGEZONE.COM

[HoodyKid]

I love the 2nd part from the "newsig".
It reminds me of the logos of new game producers, which they show when you start a modern game. DICE, Frostbyte etc

le: awesome vid radiox!

[NTV]

What programs did you use to make that?

[WrathCon]

Wow, Nice signatur created from the video and props to RadioX for making such an epic advertisment. It would make me want to check this out :)

[bobsobol]

Happy to see effects from my recently released video being used in signatures ;)

I'm so glad you didn't disapprove.

Would you like just your effects in a sig? Without the hex scan, it actually loops quite nicely.

@Error 404: The green is how I remember doing it back in the day. (Green Screen only) The full sized, and frame-rate video (ECG rez [640x336] @ 60hz interlaced) and at the rate the scan moves, (every field) the hex blurs together, looking very much like "Matrix Code", which I'm sure is what the makers of that Movie where hinting at. I deliberately wanted to give that look, but be more authentic to what I actually do, rather than some Sci-Fi hit special effects.

What I did was simulate the Hex editor I remember using as a child. (FRED.COM, File Read and Edit... back on DOS 3.2, the one that fist introduced such marvels as "Sub directories" Oooo. XD) The video started out interlaced and updating every other scan line 60 times a second. I then de-interlaced it by doubling the frame rate, but only updating Odd lines one frame, then even the next, then odd and so on. Halving the intensity of the field which had not been updated. At this point it looked awesome, but you can't make a 60fps GIF show on a web page. The rate is capped somewhere below 13fps. (depending on browser)

I merged the frames from 60fps to 13fps for the animating GIF.

White is typically over powering against dark green text, and Cyan was often used to highlight. The spinning stroke symbols and growing .oO where common during compression and decompression with LhA, Zip or ARJ. XD

I would have come closer to the "Matrix" feel if I had overlaid the code frames that merged in the down frame rate using "hard-light", instead of "overlay" and gained a light-saber green tinge to it... but that isn't authentic to what we see (or saw) on a CRT screen.

The colours are also deliberately the fixed 16 colours of an EGA colour text mode display. (the first upgrade I made to that old 8086 PC) If Hex was ever displayed "white" it would have been on a dark blue background, as in Norton Commander, or QBasic.

A sig is about who you are. When you are ʝʮʂʈ ȿѻɱɞ ʘﺎɗ ҨᶖԎ then a sig that looks like an old interlaced CRT green-screen is appropriate, I think. XD

I didn't treat the RadioX footage the same, though this is still 25fps footage at 720p. Instead I used motion vector based temporal re-basing to get the footage down to 12fps without blur, distortion or judder. This part shows how ȿѻɱɞ ʘﺎɗ ҨᶖԎ keeps up with the current state of play.

I think it still plays a little "slow motion" on my browser, but that's just one of the many flaws in GIF animations. APNG ones are better, but not widely supported yet, and we can't embed Flash in RZ sigs.

@All: Thanks for viewing (and taking the bandwidth to download 6Meg of Sigs XD) and all your comments.

[RadioX]

Thanks for the offer bobsobol, but I'll pass :)

Your signature ended up looking very nice actually. I like the integration of the hex values with the RZ logo; It gives you the impression of a coder trying to crack an enigma, in this case, RaGEZONE.

Good job!

[bobsobol]

Thanks RadioX.

That's greatly appreciated. And high praise indeed from an artist to a coder who's just dabbling. XD

[Killer7298]

Looks laggy? Huh:/
Posted via Mobile Device

[w-miky-w]

great signature :OOO

[binu]

wow nice :D

[xbLazE]

Sick sigz you have there bro