AnyForty ‘Stick Em Up’ Session from Rob Antill on Vimeo.

Myself & Alex Fowkes hooked up with London based streetwear brand AnyForty  to bring you this short edit.

Shredding the new AnyForty deck ‘Stick Em Up’ at Flo skatepark, Nottingham.

First time experimenting with CineStyle for the 7D and ProTune for the GoPro. Colour correction using film convert pro. Thanks to the guys at Dimention2 for introducing me to this.

Deck available here | Rider Alex Fowkes | Location Flo Skatepark | Music Ten Tigers – Bonobo

This season I tracked everyday (with the exception of a couple of errors) snowboarding at the ski resort Whitewater, BC, Canada. Overlaying all the data in Google Earth creates this super interesting effect.

Click below to read more about this project…

Update: I’ve created this interactive map using GPS Visualizer and Google maps. Download the KMZ file here to play with it in Google Earth.

Tracking outdoor activities is something I enjoy doing. It’s nice to be able to see where you went and look at things like max speed etc.

After a couple of days at Whitewater I had the idea of trying to track every day I was at the hill for the entire season. I wanted to see where I had been and where I had left to explore. As time when on, the mountain slowly turned blue and patterns started to emerge. I was able to see where I hadn’t been and areas that I travelled a lot. Remembering to set it off tracking every day was a mission. I was surprised that I was able to get a full day of data on one battery.

Some Info:

• Tracked with the iPhone 5
• MotionX-GPS used to record the data
• Total distance approximately 2200km / 1370mi
• Average distance per day 35km / 21mi
• Total descent/ ascent 260,000m / 853 000ft
• Average time 5 hours per day
• 66 tracked runs
• Max speed 118km/h / 73mph
• Date range 10 Dec 12 – 14 Apr 13

Aerial view from Google Earth of Whitewater Ski Resort with all the tracking data overlaid.

As mentioned in the stats above I clocked a new personal best top speed. The conditions that day were perfect. The resort was empty, the snow was hard but not icy and my board had been recently waxed. I decided to straight line it from the top of one of the runs and get as low as I could. I knew I was going fast because the air resistance was intense. It felt like I was ready to take off.

When I got to the bottom and looked at the phone I was stoked to see I finally beat my previous top speed of 101kmph by 17kmph! The road speed limit here in the UK is 70mph, at this point I was going 73mph. It’s kind of scary to think I was traveling this fast on a board…

There were a couple of days where I forgot to turn off the tracking data as we got in the car and left the resort. I ended up tracking some of the way back into the closest town, Nelson. This would have skewed the results a little, but not enough to have a major impact. You can see the road leaving the resort at the bottom right of the image below.

View of the ‘Short Side’ of the resort. There are no groomed runs in this area, but there is some great lines to be had through the trees. The only issue with dropping in here, was the traverse at the bottom back to the lift. This is why this section of the mountain is less covered than the others.

The thicker straight blue lines are the lifts.

Below you can see where we went for hikes.

View of the resort looking west from Ymir peak.

Close up view of the runs.

So there it is, 5 months of snowboarding tracked. I’m very much looking forward to my next visit to this amazing resort. I can use this data to work out what spots still need to be filled in on the next map :)

Minute Fourteen – Chipped from Rob Antill on Vimeo.

Here’s a quick process video showing how I put together this image. A friend work’s at a electronics factory here in Nelson, BC, Canada. They had collected a bag of parts that the machines miss-place. Usually these will just get chucked out or recycled. I tipped them out on the table and was fascinated by all the tiny bits (some the size of a grane of sand). It was new to see these separate components before they are soldered to a board.

Music: Flotsam – Tasty Morsels - (free track download)

Click more to see more stuff on this..

Camera set-up for the time-lapse shots over looking the laptop.

The final shot. I thought the little chips could represent the ants building the logo from the pile (anthill). I wasn’t entirely satisfied with how this looked though. I think its a bit too literal. Also the little ‘ants’ have what appears to be 8 legs (real ants have 6 legs). I thought the two front legs could get away with being the ants feelers.

Some close-up shots..

Here’s another shot of the final image. I prefer this simplified version.

So yeah, this was a fun little project to spend a couple of days on. I think theres some potential to take this idea further. If you really had the patience you could create an entire image with the parts, using different coloured bits as shading and high lights. It would also be better to have a flat dedicated screen for the job. Having the laptop perched up like this was highly unsettling for hours on end. I had to be so careful not to knock it over and ruin the piece. It would also be cool to create an animation in Aftereffects that corresponded to what was laid on the screen. Maybe something I can experiment with.. if I get the spare time.

I recently re-created my logo out of very small electronic components. Really pleased with how it turned out. Video of the process here.

Download the full resolution image to use as a desktop image if you so wish:

Desktop [1920x1280] | Tablet [1536x2048]| Mobile [640x1136]

Here’s a trippy one for you. Took two photo’s from slightly different points of view. Shot while in search of natural hot springs, British Columbia, Canada.

Minute Ten now online. Following Tyy, Alex and Jamie for a few laps of the whitewater terrain park. Mad technical skills.

Here it is. My first video using the new DJI Phantom. It was a serious challenge trying to snowboard whilst controlling this. As a first attempt goes, its okay, Lots of room for improvement though. Since this was filmed I’ve made some adjustments to the props and built a shock absorber mount. Future footage should be smoother with a bit of luck. Enjoy

Here’s a quick post running through how I’ve tried to smooth out the footage coming from the GoPro and DJI Phantom.

There are basically two important things to do so that the footage doesn’t have a jello effect.

You need to balance your props and create a shock absorber between the camera and aircraft.

Continue after the break…

It took me three days to come up with a solution to separate the camera from drone. I ended up finding a Meccano set and using parts from that.

I tried ear buds as dampeners, but they were too soft and the camera wobbled around.

I tried reducing the wobble by adding springs in, but this didn’t work either. The rubber needed to be harder.

Here I have replace the headphones with rubber seals. The GoPro mount is still separate from the drone but tight enough not to wobble. I added the extra springs just to help with the sturdiness of things… also it makes it look pretty interesting.. like it should work, even if it’s pointless.

Next challenge was to balance the props. This literally means making sure that both sides of the propellers are of equal weight. This is important because unbalanced props create vibration that is noticeable in the footage.

Trying to get a spindle to fit this shape was hard. I ended up relying on the trusty Meccano box again.

Using a dremel I span a small plastic washer at high speed and used a knife to create a taper.

I could then use these tapered washers to wedge into either side of the prop, and keeping everything perfectly centered.

When I placed this spindle between two points so the blade could move freely, the heaviest blade would rotate towards the ground. This told me that I needed to sand some material off this side until it would not spin any more.

This method was very effective. I would highly recommend you invest in a prop balancer. Due to my current location, buying one online would mean a two week wait, so I set out to make one my self, but remember what ever you do it has to be pretty accurate so you dont end up causing more damage.

It will be interesting to see what others come up with to reduce the vibration. I can vouch that this method works pretty well. Footage to prove it on its way..