Roundup #023 - 25 years of Jamfactory 🎉
Hiya! How goes it? I've been celebrating as of late, as at the start of the month on the 6th February, it was exactly 25 years since first registering my domain name jam-factory.com, which means it's been a quarter of a century making stuff under the name of 'Jamfactory'! I put together a wee video edit, cataloguing 25 years of passion projects:
It was great fun digging through the digital archives, seeing what I could find. Generally I have most stuff backed up, but the really early bits took a bit of detective work! Things like this; designing characters in Adobe Illustrator and spraypainting them on skateboards in my mate Martin's garage in Leicester!
Or our very first 'skate/art' (!?) film we made in 2005 called 'DON'T' (which was named because I had a habit of getting very frustrated with my rubbish skateboarding skills and immediately trying to snap my boards - my friends would yell "DON'T!")
It's been funny looking back at old work and seeing how much my work's changed... but also how little has! I still like mucking about with characters and vectors and bright colours!
The launch of 'Droplets', which was my first ever range of vinyl toys, was particularly special. I was so fond of those little fella's, I still can't quite believe that all happened! We had a launch at Go Go Plastic in The Custard Factory in Birmingham.
Here's my friend Emma opening her first Droplets blindbox on the launch night in brum back in 2008... she only goes and pulls the rare chase figure straight away! Legend!
Anyways, that edit at the top of the blog is packed full of bits from the last 25 years, indulge me and give it a watch! Filming it was good fun, if not a little messy. I didn't really think too much about letting off a confetti cannon in my tiny studio...
As a present to myself, for 25 years, I grabbed something I've always wanted... my own arcade cabinet! I've had my eye on the Arcade1Up cabs for a while now, and this 'Yoga Flame' edition got great reviews, so that was the one for me! It comes with a few flavours of Street Fighter II (Hyper Fighting / Championship Edition / Super Turbo) which I underestimated just how hard the arcade versions are! I've rage-quit the cab quite a few times I can tell you!
It comes as a flat-pack kit and it's really fun to put together, it's like the best IKEA delivery ever. It comes with a light-up marquee too, which I can see myself re-designing at some point in the future!
The kids really like it too, there's a few great shoot-em-ups on there that they like, and Sully in particular is really into Super Puzzle Fighter!
On a totally different tangent, I've enjoyed falling down the rabbithole of making 180-degree stereoscopic-3D stuff! I've been using Blender to make my own prototypes which I then airdrop over to my Apple Vision Pro! I've got early plans to make my own experimental short (at some point!) but I've been really enjoying the freedom to create my own immersive worlds. Because the specifications for the format is so intense - 4320x4320 pixels, per eye, 90 frames per second - I've opted to just lean into a graphic style with no lights or shading, which lets me get render times down to about 5 seconds per frame, whereas It was taking about 1.5 hours per frame for an all bellts-and-whistles test scene!
I'm having a blast playing with all this stuff, but I keep hopping around with projects and jumping onto more virtual pinball fun, but more on that next time!
Cheers all,
- Gav.
WHAT AM I PLAYING?
Because I got myself the Street Fighter arcade cab, I've been playing a lot of Street Fighter II Hyper Fighting and boy, it's a punisher! I thought my muscle memory would kick in... but turns out playing on a SNES pad in 1993 does not equal instant eSports-level-greatness right away. In fact, I first thought the joystick was faulty... turns out I'm just crap. So been spending a lot of time practicing hadoukens!
That cabinet also has a few great shoot-em-ups too, and there's a brilliant bullet-hell game called Gigawing on there that me and my son love to play 2-player together. It's absolutely bonkers and would have cost us about £200 per go if we had to actually put money inside it!
I've not had as much pinball time at the minute, and when i have, I've been working on the next stages of my 'gnarlybot' virtual table. Still, managed to find time to play a few games and Monster Bash is a firm favourite at the minute. I love the playfield design and the callouts are super fun!
WHAT AM I LISTENING TO?
Everything in the world might be awful, but it's a great time for heavy music, there's been some belters released recently! First up, Knocked Loose (who've pretty much become my favourite band ever in the last few years) released a collab with Denzel Curry and it's beautifully brutal, as expected!
Talking of brutal, nothing compares to Disembodied Tyrant's latest track release '8.6 Blackout'. I couldn't (and didn't want to) embed the official music video here as it's pretty gnarly, but here's a live drum cam version. If you like your symphonic deathcore with a dash of synth, samples and industrial poundings then this is the track for you!
Talking of brutal songs with music videos that I don't wanna publish here, then Lorna Shore's Prison of Flesh is the track for you! This one take video of vocalist Will Ramos performing every demon noise possible is incredible.
WHAT AM I WATCHING?
We've not been the best at sitting down and watching stuff recently, aside from starting Marvel's Wonder Man, which is pretty fun, I've been watching a bunch of stuff on YouTube.
This doc on the evolution of grime was great, it really went in-depth and profiled loads of historic heads from the birth of the genre:
Again, because my head's back in the world of arcade cabinets and fighting games, this short doc on 'the diago parry' aka 'evo moment 37' is also great. Imagine having the reflexes to parry a move 14 times in a row with a quarter-of-a-second room for error.
WHAT'S CAUGHT MY EYE?
'Project Windless' looks bonkers... who know a rooster could be so bad-ass!? Chicken Run 3 anyone?
I knew BTTF is perfect... but I hadn't quite appreciated just how amazing the blocking of the movie is, because it's so motivated and seamless, it never stood out. This deep dive breaking down why it's so perfect is a great watch!
Who doesn't love a Tiny Desk Concert!? This 'set tour' of the space is really fun!
Lastly, I am a year late to finally watching this... but Alberto Mielgo's short film for 'Marathon' is absolutely mind-blowing. I love the use of motion-capture performances and camera work as a foundation, then building all of this stunning 2000s-esque graphic identity on top of it is right up my street!
That's all from me folks, see you next time!
- Gav
