It had been nearly a decade since I had picked up an instrument and nearly two decades since I had played in a band, when I decided to purchase my Electronic Wind Instrument (EWI). Akai had just released an affordable USB powered EWI and this was as good an excuse as any to begin playing again. It differed from their more professional offering (the Akai EWI4000s) in that the sound processing is done via software on your computer rather than on the device itself.

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Recently THQ announced an upcoming peripheral for the Nintendo Wii called uDraw which employs a tablet and pen in order to paint on the screen. This brought back fond memories of my time making movies using Mario Paint back in 1993 on the SNES. I had used various art programs and even some basic animation programs previously but since I didn’t own a computer at the time, this was an easy entry into the world of graphic editing and animation.

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In 2004 I went about redesigning my testbed website Switched Services. I sort of keep this website up-to-date with the latest Company website on which it is based and also to try out some new programming and design techniques. I had just seen the movie “Ghost in the Shell: Innocence” and had also been following the latest TV series “Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex”. Add to that I had purchased the original Japanese “Ghost in the Shell” movie sketchbook and I wanted this redesign to have a distinct anime feel to it.

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Occassionally I am asked to do multimedia projects such as DVDs or other assorted video projects. Way back in 2003 I figured I should design a nice movie production type intro to put at the beginning of these videos. I mapped out a storyboard which would tie in with the theme of my logo. The clip would start with a basic flyover of a seascape with an impending storm heralded by the occassional flash of lightning and low rumbling of thunder.

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