The most awesome part about this mouse is its configuration. There are 5 physical parts that you can adjust to make the mouse fit your needs. Included in the build of it is a tool that screws into the back of it. This is like a size 2 allen wrench. Now behind the screw you will find another nob to release and behind it you will find a set of 5 gram weights. It comes with a total of 5 and you can adjust the weight of it. I love this so much… I enjoying feeling something in my hand and before even driving it knowing that its build with quality and some durability. The weights give you that as well as the additional pressure to make the movement of the mouse the smoothest I’ve ever seen.

Next is the palm rest. It comes with 3 different palm rests in different heights and and grips. Also the place that the grip slides onto has different notches to adjust its positioning to best fit the length of your own palm. This was the only thing I had to get used to. My current mouse is the Razer Mamba. That mouse is curved to fit the shape of your hand as it rests on top so there’s no  gaps and the erganomics are sculpted gracefully. It might actually be the only thing that would make me rate this mouse a 4 out of 5 star mouse. Now if you keep your fingers totally straight on the R.A.T. 7 its a really clean fit.

I never really think about this but now that I have options I pay attention to other mice that don’t have this and that’s pinkie support. Yup. It comes with 3 different plates that you can interchange. One is more smooth and plastic like. The second has a rubber grip and it feels a lot better in terms or resting as well as finger placement. Its the one I use. The last one is like a bucket seat for your pinkie and or ring finger. I had to try it out but I don’t think I have long enough fingers to make it feel like a seat I could hang out in all day long.

The last two things you can change are the the button placement and rest area for your thumb. Using the tool you have a screw that you can loosen and it gives you a pivot point to push the buttons further out or in. Really great for people who have a wide hand or even long fingers. The last part is a screw that your loosen or tighten and it slides the whole side into your desired position. This was my second favorite option to be able to customize as I like my buttons a little closer to home and I could rest my thumb and not have to move it anywhere to push my browser navigation buttons forward or back.

You might be wondering what the knob in the middle is… Well thats a side scroll wheel. Someone finally made one! I’m so annoyed by the fact that you have to press you scroll wheel side to side and most of the time you end  up pushing your middle button or what ever the case and its been a faulty design IMHOP. Being a DJ this knob felt right at home!!

The scroll wheel has a click to it but its more of a soft rounded click between positions vs. the harsh big stops that a typical mouse has. I’m very used to using my middle finger to right click and scroll but this mouse has so much realestate for the buttons that you can lay three fingers down with room for company and have it feel like a landing pad for your fingers. The click of the buttons is fast… precise and short. If you are slamming down on a FPS this mouse is super tight and has great control.

Now I didn’t get a chance to play as many games because of mothers day weekend so I am going to have to test drive it on Call of Duty or our new FPS at work to really get a feel for it. There’s this button that they call the ‘Precise Aim Mode’ for the mouse and its supposed to help you steady shot and get best accuracy for any FPS you play.

There’s also a sensitivity button right behind the scroll wheel with 5 levels of adjustment that let you speed up and slow down your cursor on the fly. This is great for multiple reasons. Right off the bat you don’t need to get into your system options for your mouse you can adjust your speed as it suits you on a day to day. Level up for a FPS this is fantastic because you can instantly go form quick pan and scan to a slowed down precise head shot if you can train yourself to use this tool.

So my overall review is that if you are a gamer… get his mouse. If you are a designer… get this mouse. I have an amazing mouse to compare it to and even though the ergonomics are not as amazing as I would like them to be all the other features outweigh that slight flaw in the design. I’m actually selling my Mamba and I’m going to get this mouse. It’s way cheaper too. I’ve found it for $75 – $100 vs. the $130 I paid for my Mamba. You might be asking yourself “well is it wireless?”. No it isnt but it comes with like a 5 ft cord that’s not your typical rubber its made from a high quality braided cable that’s light and flexible. I thought that I wanted the wireless option but at home my Mamba is wireless but I have it plugged in for best communication and accuracy when I game. Do they have a wireless option? Yes. The R.A.T. 9!!

If you want to spend some money on a great mouse don’t go looking at your consumer level Logitech device. They are ok, I’ve used them for a long time. If you want to raise your own bar and feel what its like to use something built with real quality get yourself a gaming mouse. You will instantly feel the difference.

Thanks for reading!

They are calling it “2011 – The year of the iPad 2”.  They really pushed the envelope of technology and served up a tasty piece of tech that the world will get to get their hands on starting March 11^th.

They started off with some stats…

100 Million Books downloaded last year.

200 Million Apple ID’s

$2 Billion paid out to apple developers

Lastly… the 100 millionth iPhone was shipped.

“Our most advanced technology in a magical & revolutionary device at an unbelievable price.”  The original iPad sold 15 million copies in 2010, more than any tablet ever. They made $9.5 billion in 2010 and took 90% of the market share! Currently there are over 65,000 apps for the iPad… Honeycomb – 100. Ouch!!

The iPad 2 has an all new design. Starting with the processor, the all new ‘A5’ is what they are calling it. Dual-core processors, up to 2x faster CPU and up to 9x faster graphics! It has the same low power as the A4 and it’s the first dual core tablet to ship in volume.

They  iPad two now has a front and rear facing camera. Attached with home made software to really make it shine. From photo booth to, of course, Face Time.

The iPad is now 33% THINNER than the iPad, its even thinner than the iPhone 4! What’s to come with the new iPhone is my real question… Its now at an astounding 8.8mm thick and weighs in at 1.3 pounds! I can’t wait to get my hands on one of these. Did I mention that they have a white version?!!  Its also going to have the same 10 hour battery life and over a month of standby.

Here are your prices… Wifi Only: 16gb $499, 32gb $599 and 64gb $699. WiFi + 3G: 16gb $629, 32gb $729, 64gb $829.

The HDMI out is mirrored video output. Scales up to 1080P and it works with ALL apps. It supports rotation and no setup or configuration is required! Plus… you charge the iPad at the same time at the cost of $39.

The case they designed is pretty amazing. It has 4 flaps that cover the front of the device. It can be folded in various ways to support the iPad in various positions. There are no screws, glue or clips to hold this on. They are using magnets! The magnets grasp and auto-align it. It has a micro-fiber lining that cleans the screen and when you put in on it sleeps the iPad and when you take it off it wakes it!

With the new iPad comes the new iOS. iOS 4.3.  They upgraded Safari performance with Nitro JavaScript Engine, iTunes home sharing lets you share all your content over wifi. They have also included AirPlay improvements and a preference for iPad switch to either Mute or lock rotation.

I’m pretty excited about this… the iPad two now has video editing!! iMovie will be available for $4.99 and you can edit all your movies and show them off in full HD right on the iPad 2.

GarageBand is the next greatest app to hit the iPad with Touch instruments, guitar amps and effects, 8 track recording and mixing, 250+ loops and you can email the AAC file of your song . Its 100% compatable with the Mac version.

I’ve only really touched on all the features but regardless… its going to be an amazing product and getting your hands on one of these is going to be a delicious treat!

One of the biggest things is the Bio’s of the people that you are following! So if you click on the person now you can see who they are and not just their last tweet. I’ve yet to see it launched but it is supposed to come out today!! Check out their awesome video:

Find out more at http://twitter.com/newtwitter

Mike “the monkey” Senfton. This guy comes from a DJ world (I do as well) and he is someone of real brilliance when it comes to creative expression through art. Not only does he understand that timing is key but he understands what beauty is in the presentation of a product or identity. His solutions to simple animations are really unique and something that not only myself but hundreds if not thousands of people look up to. Not until recently has he really come out to display what he does on camera and before that you can find his presence on Mograph.net. Which is just an amazing community to join if you do motion graphics. People really help out and try to do what they can to help you push forward. The Monkey was asked by the makers of Cinema 4D to do a presentation at N.A.B. about integrating sound into Cinema and after watching it I was blown away by all that he knows and shared with us. Not to long after he was approached by Nick Campbell (The Gorilla) and asked to do some tutorials for greyscalegorilla.com and he agreed. What an absolute pleasure to watch this man work and just play around with Cinema 4D. Here are two videos for you, the first is the NAB presentation and the second is the tutorial by The Monkey. The third is a piece of brilliance he created for ECHO.

Mike “the Monkey” Senften NAB 2010 from Lukasz Pason on Vimeo.

Joint Chains, Spiral Growth, Iterative Hierarchies, & the Golden Section from 4Dthieves on Vimeo.

Ecko Artifaks from 4Dthieves on Vimeo.

Nick “The Gorilla” Campbell. This guy… oh this guy is what this world needs more of. A man dedicated to not only creating beautiful motion graphics but on an endless question to share with us anything he can through his amazing tutorials. Most people who do tutorials they say do this and that, put in this number here and you get this. Not Nick. He takes the time to tell you why and what if this and if you did this you could get to the same place but we are going to go this way. He dives into a project with you and if he gets stuck while doing it he doesnt pause or cut the video so that he can make it perfect he troubleshoots right there. Live on camera. This is more valuable than the actual tutorial you are watching. Its something you only get to witness when you work on a project. Not only does he teach us he does a weekly live uStream for an hour where we either focus on a top or dive into questions right from the chat window. I’ve had my own questions answered during this and its so cool to have that kind of connection with a person you really look up to. He’s also done a lot with Photography and After Effects. He shows you not only 3D animation but compositing and lighting and so many different aspects of the video motion world… truly a guy that inspirational and inspired with positive energy for all of us to indulge in. One big thing that he’s done for the community is his 5 Second Projects. These are projects that anyone can do. It has to be animation, no longer than 5 seconds and inside a topic that he picks for us. The latest one was Nude No More and it was sponsored by Thredless. The winner was just announce and they got some cool prizes from Thredless.com. Check out the latest video tutorial from Nick on how to do a cool 7up animation as well as a video that tells you why you should do a 5 second project.

How To Make The Cherry 7up Look With Cinema 4D from Nick Campbell on Vimeo.

Five Reasons To Enter the FiveSecondProject from Nick Campbell on Vimeo.

There are more people that choose to inspire and share with us and I just want to mention them briefly. Robert Redman from Pariah Studios also shares a lot of knowledge with us and he too has some great tutorials for us. He goes beyond Cinema 4D and teaches Realflow and a few others. you can find him at http://www.pariahstudios.co.uk/ Secondly John Dickinson from Motionworks also share a lot of great technical info with all of us and you can find him at http://www.motionworks.com.au/ . Just recently I discovered James White from Signal Noise. Well I a have been a fan of his work for a long time but he is now making tutorials in graphic design as well as a live broadcast to share and answer anything we throw at him. He’s such a friendly guy and so respectful thats its no wonder why his art is so beautiful and I have much respect for him.

With all of these mentors that indirectly teach us we can really grow as a community and I hope that more and more people find the time to share something new with all of us. I hope that one day I too can share more than just a project file with the community and embrace you with knowledge about a certain technique inside C4D. The road is never ending with design and if you think you have nothing else to learn you are kindly mistaken because there is Always someone better than you. Find that person and learn from them. Drive yourself to try something new everyday you can. Go back and look through the basics just incase you missed a key point that could quicken an process. Immerse yourself in the community that shares and encourages through constructive criticism so that you too prevail in the endless stride to perfection. Be open, be kind and explore beyond the limits of your knowledge everyday.

The first game we are going to show is Battle of the Immortals. The game is already in open beta and is really picking up a lot of traction. We’ve expanded to new servers and just really spent a lot of time listening to the user. The development teams are in-game, on the live servers listening.

The game is a lot of fun to play and visually stunning too. You start off and before you really know it you are at level 20 doing your first instance. This is definitely my favorite game we have! Its a fast pace Action MMO RPG that really hooks you off the top! A big focus is also the ‘Soul Gear’. The creative team really sat down and thought through each piece and how it looks, Animates and skills your character. Here’s a the Open beta trailer and a ‘BOI Blueprint’ of the Magus character Soul Gear.

Battle of the Immortals – Open Beta Gameplay Trailer from Lukasz Pason on Vimeo.

Battle of the Immortals Blueprint – Magus from Lukasz Pason on Vimeo.

The next game is Heroes of Three Kingdoms. This game is really based more on PVP with its campaigns. You do a campaign that has a player limit of 60 people!! Madness… Inside HoTK you get to choose to be part of the Wei, Shu or Wu and lead your character through defending you kingdom. Its unique in the way that the economy is really based on which kingdom is ruling the lands. So its very interactive with the community! Here is the teaser for HoTK:

Heroes of Three Kingdoms Teaser from Lukasz Pason on Vimeo.

Lastly we are going to reveal our game play trailer for Forsaken World. Its already in closed beta in China but we finally got our hands on the client and the game is really polished! I ill update and post it once we get back from E3!

As for the gear thats going with me to E3, its a pretty small but awesome kit! We just purchased the Canon 7D with a kit lens, the 24-135. We have the beachtek DXA-5Da for sound recording and the Sennhesier Evolution Wireless Mic Packs. All of this fits nice and snug into a little Pelican 1400 case. I really wish that this kit was my own. Its such a great run and gun setup. Once thing we might be missing is a shotgun microphone but I think I might have a solution for that… Here are a few shots of the toys I get to play with!!!

[nggallery id=4]

So the first thing that I was asked to do was to create the companies Intro and Outro graphics. Simple task huh? The intro was to just a simple logo reveal and let people know who’s game this is. The other video producer here, Jason, had a simple vision and so I executed it in C4D. The outro was to be a little bit more elaborate and I had freedom to do what I wanted. So what I wanted to do was reveal a world with a sun, have the logo fly in over it and have our horizon line reveal by having the world somehow transform into it. So here are both of those videos for you to enjoy.

Perfect World Entertainment Intro Slate from Lukasz Pason on Vimeo.

Perfect World Entertainment Logo Animation from Lukasz Pason on Vimeo.

We just released open beta for our latest release, Battle of the Immortals and its speeding up to be quite the amazing game. We’ve had a lot of great response and the user feedback has really been essential to the development of the game. Its pretty awesome to see our developers be so in-tune with what the community wants and they make changes to the game based on those requests. Simple things like the in-game font, WASD movement and also new dungeons that give players a bigger challenge vs the typical instance run. I got a chance to create some developer diaries as well as our official Open Beta gameplay trailer. This game is a lot of fun to play and I think I had more fun playing than actually editing the game… lol.

Battle of the Immortals – Post Mortem from Lukasz Pason on Vimeo.

Battle of the Immortals – Adventures from Lukasz Pason on Vimeo.

Battle of the Immortals – Open Beta Gameplay Trailer from Lukasz Pason on Vimeo.

The next task I got to do was the Forsaken World logo animation. Since china only has the chinese version and we are making the E3 gameplay trailer for it I got my hands all over do the animation. It was a fun challenge to learn how to make fire wrap around 2D text and I learned a few new tricks on this one!

Forsaken World Logo Animation from Lukasz Pason on Vimeo.

Lastly, or at least the latest video that I can show publicly until after E3 is our Heroes of Three Kingdoms teaser. This is the first gameplay video about the game and I was excited to make it! The animations were a lot of fun to do too. Using concept art and doing a kind of Sherlock Holmes approach to it (the movie titles for the new movie) with ink style dissolves between rulers of the three kingdoms. Check out the video below!

Heroes of Three Kingdoms Teaser from Lukasz Pason on Vimeo.

I’ve got a couple more to upload and release as soon as I am able to so stay tuned and thanks for reading! Now if you want to learn more about the company, go to www.perfectworld.com or check out our youtube channel for all of our trailers!

First things first… The first time I was asked to a motion graphic at work I was solo. I mean they laid off the production department and I was left to learn how to edit and do motion. Needless to say I was thrown into the fire pit and had to find a way to survive.

My first piece was for Podshow, or formally Podshow and now being released as Mevio. They asked me to redo the sting for the company that would be anchored on to every video uploaded as well as distributed to all of our 3rd party producers to place on their videos. Pressure much?

This verson was not released. This was my favorite of the bunch that I made. Funny thing is, I dont have the current version uploaded, ill have to get it and upload it to vimeo soon.
UPDATE: I uploaded it and the final approved version is after the unreleased.

Unreleased MeVIO Sting from Lukasz Pason on Vimeo.

Mevio Quad from Lukasz Pason on Vimeo.

Ill try to go in order of creation but that wasnt how I uploaded everything. The next few movies were for the branding of our individual channels. Mevio has 4 main channels or networks, Men Women Tech and Music. I was asked to make an animated graphic for each. Here are those:

MeVIO Tech Intro from Lukasz Pason on Vimeo.

MeVIO Men Intro from Lukasz Pason on Vimeo.

MeVIO Music Intro from Lukasz Pason on Vimeo.

I really dont like the womens one. It was poorly done, the director for it never really knew what they wanted.

When our president was finally picked we wanted to do world wide coverage of the inauguration so I was asked to make a bumper for the all of the clips. I really enjoyed making this in a day and I think the outcome was pretty awesome!

Inauguration of Change from Lukasz Pason on Vimeo.

This next piece was for promotion purposes. It was basically an ad of what we could do for you. The concept was a box that we passed around to different producers and each one said a piece of the marketing who ha ha. Looking back at it now, I’d do a few things a little differently but I still like it.

the Box from Lukasz Pason on Vimeo.

CES2010 was pretty big this year and we wanted to cover the coverage and we called it: CESPool. This was a lot of fun to make. I wanted to go for a techy animation to hit on the technology covered in the event. This was just a bumper graphic to brand the segments since it wasnt really a show.

CESpool 2010 from Lukasz Pason on Vimeo.

I started to dive into the Cinema 4D community and I found some fun tutorials as well as plugins to use. So here are a few animations that show those test renders.

Destruction Test PT.2 from Lukasz Pason on Vimeo.

Xplode + Thinking Particles + GSG Light kit = Awesome. from Lukasz Pason on Vimeo.

Family – Discovery Style from Lukasz Pason on Vimeo.

This next video was done using only after effects. I wanted to get more comfortable with Particular 2 so I decided to just jump in and try something different. I used CC Sphere as well as some Tracode Shine and Trapcodes Soundkeys to map the particle movement to different frequencies.

Particle Playground from Lukasz Pason on Vimeo.

After being laid off, I found a contract gig with a company called Sky Creative. They wanted an animation the was synced to another animation. I had to work with another motion designer doing the video that showed off the products for Safilo and I did the LED panel animation that accompanied that. The video was played for 3 or 4 days in New York as well as Las Vegas and a big fashion show convention where Safilo has a 10k sq ft. Booth with a runway. Pretty exciting to tell you the truth. Here’s the animation that I had to do for it.

Safilo Attract Loop LED Panel Animation from Lukasz Pason on Vimeo.

2 more left!! Thx for staying with me if you have read through this far. This next one gained so much traction and was played by thousands. Really the first animation of mine that got so much play time and it was just a fun little test using a voxel preset and some mograph dynaimics inside my 3D app, Cinema 4D.

Carousel from Lukasz Pason on Vimeo.

This last piece was a quick 2 day, actually 2 late night into early morning creation done for a pitch. They wanted to spoof off of the ESPN Sports Center look for the US Food Service. The first part of the animation I made the scene but another animator did the animation and I did the second part of this which was the logo reveal.

US Food Service from Lukasz Pason on Vimeo.

I have to thank you for taking the time to take a look at my progression over the years. There were many more little pieces that I made but they were all for live action videos and I just dont have the time to dig them all up. Keep up with the videos that I create on my vimeo page.