Model Citizen

Faraway Pictur...

Set 2

By Chris Morse

Book Preview

I've been playing with Blurb to have my latest 3D images put into book form and it allows other people to purchase too.

So if you want to take a look through the book and maybe get a copy yourself click the link (image) at the top of this post.

Like a lot of people's reviews I've read on this film, I'll echo one sentiment. I did'nt know they made movies like this! It's not often you can watch a movie and feel better for having done so, but this is one of those. Facing The Giants is a "Christian Film", it has at it's central core the belief that God can change lives and events. From different reviews I've read this point seems to be hotly debated, maybe because when He does it does'nt make the news...but more of than in a minute.

The story follows A High School football coach, Grant Taylor, who's life is just full of those little upsets that piled together can bring someone to their knees. His car is a piece of junk, he only earns enough to tick over, not enough to go out and buy another car or commit to that kind of a loan. His house smells terrible, something has died in the floorboards somewhere! The cooker is on the blink. His job is'nt going anywhere, the team are losing games and he might be replaced and lose his job. And to top it off he has some condition that is preventing him and his wife from having children. Some mountains he has in his life, probably easier to deal with in small doses but brought together are a tsunami for him and he is literally brought to his knees where he asks God for help. Grant is then used by God as a fulcrum for a revival in the high school as he makes a stand and brings Christian standards into the football code. The team has a complete turnaround and starts winning, enabling them to finally meet the biggest team in the State, the Giants. Before going further I must point out, that though this is a Hollywood quality film with high production values, the cast are not actors. Most of them are apparently members of the church where writer/director/star Alex Kendrick goes. Does this make a big difference? from my viewing I'd say no. It took me a bit of time to get used to the accents but after that you soon found that these 'real' people are acting very 'real'. You really feel for Grant and his wife. It's not common to see men cry on film, but in the situation he is in I think most would.

OK, the 'religious bit', is this film based in fantasy land? Is the sort of 'revival' shown remotley possible? Well as of writing this today I can tell you I personally know of 3 revivals happening in the world right now! I'm talking of an event where God has for some reason decided to show his power. There are such miraculous things happening that when you hear of them you can't help but wonder why they're not shown on the news every night...instead of getting no coverage at all. Anyway, the 3 I know of are Todd Bentley in Florida. There's Chandra Kant in India. There are so many miracles happening in india right now that only the 'big' ones are reported to the church. When i say big I'm referring to people who have had limbs grow back or have been raised from the dead! I kid you not. Then there's also Bishop Ricardo Pereira in Cuba. Things that have been happening there include such bizzare events as peoples teeth growing back again! These events dont even include what is happening in places like the Phillipines and China where it is now reported that approximatley 30'000 people come to Christ every month!

So, a good film? Real enough? Insiring? Yes, yes and yes. If you want to watch something that could genuinely lift your spirits as well as maybe just show you an answer to life then watch this movie. Me, I'm looking forward to getting the first film from this group "Flywheel" and also seeing there most recent one "Fireproof" too.

Well, I said I'd post some pics from the new camera. I've not taken that many, still getting to grips with it, but here's 3 that came out OK.

I've set up a Flickr account to display them HERE

Anyway, still learning. i bought the Blue Crane DVD on how to use the camera, not had a chance to watch it yet, but I'm enjoying the journey so far.

I've not received an inheritance before, but my late mums inheritance came recently. It was a last act of kindness from a very kind lady. It was not a huge amount of money to some but I really wanted to get something with it that mum would have approved of. To me that said get something that will help your creative side because mum was always encouraging me in that. Even as a kid when I did some really silly things she never seemed to mind because I was experimenting. Things like accidentally spilling red gloss paint on my bed as I was building a model of  Eagle 5 from Space 1999, or the day I started to colour in the wallpaper in the living room to make it look more interesting. The felt pen took years to cover up!

I also remember mum helping me buy my very first camera for college. A Petri SLR with 50mm lens. I looked after that extremely well all through college and then passed it on when I bought a Nikon F501.

Yesterday i became the owner of what is the best camera I have ever laid my hands on. The Nikon D300.

Whenever i buy something significant I really do my homework, usually for months as I search out reviews, best places to buy etc. With a purchase as important as this I did the same. This time though I had a huge helping hand from my friend Richard at AV Talk  Richard has had a few Nikons and steered me to start thinking of the 300 rather than the 200 that I was looking at. He also helped me in the choice of lenses I bought and from where I got them. I took all his advice and bought them from MIFSUDS  a shop based in Devon that sell new and used equipment all with warranties. They give next day delivery and that's when all the equipment came. It's the sort of camera that will last forever, as with anything, you look after it. I hope to put some sample pictures up soon that I've taken with it, but in the meantime if you want to look at the review of this camera from DP Review look here.

Thank you very much Richard. Thank you very much Mum.

LEOCAD Is a FREE! 3D programme that lets you make Lego models on the computer in 3D. I downloaded it last year but just could'nt get on with it. Anyway, I  gave it another go this last week and found it a lot easier. It has a huge parts library with it though finding the part you want can be a bit tricky. What is good is that the parts will snap together and if they facing the wrong way you just rotate the piece again to a constrained angle. It has options for various viewports too. You can change the colour of the pieces before dragging them into the window and all in all it's a programme worth spending a bit of time on.

This is a view of the programme. I have a 24" monitor so it's a lot more spacey than this view.

I currently have only finished one test piece which I exported from LeoCad as a Wavefront object. This is great as I can then import it into whatever 3D programme I want. i chose Cinema 4D using the plug-in Riptide that also imports the materials too. I gave it a tweak here and there setting the Phong value to 60 and adding a few custom colours and here's the result:

  I want to try something more adventurous nex. i'm still learning but here's what I found so far:

Brickfactory  This site has hundreds of scanned Lego instruction manuals to help build your model.

MLCAD  This is also a Cad package for designing Lego plans. Not quite figured out how it can be used with LeoCad but I've seen some stuff on Deviant Art that is a 3D model from MlCad, soit must be possible.