I came across a pretty badass video on vimeo called Nature By Numbers. It’s gorgeous animation was done by Etérea Studios, a graphic and animation studio run by graphic designer and 3D artist Cristóbal Vila. Etérea focuses on CGI services for clients. Nature By Numbers is described as “a short movie inspired on numbers, geometry, and nature.”

Nature by Numbers from Cristóbal Vila on Vimeo.

After viewing Nature By Numbers, I went to Etérea’s official site and watched some of Cristóbal Vila’s other videos. Vila’s work is breathtaking. I’ve included two other videos of his called Isfahan, which is inspired by Persian architecture, as well as Snakes, described as “an animated 3D short based on a woodcut by M. C. Escher.” Both are stunning examples of CGI as an art form. Kudos to Cristóbal Vila for his imagination and technique in creating these videos.

Isfahan from Cristóbal Vila on Vimeo.

Snakes from Cristóbal Vila on Vimeo.

Every band or musician needs a web presence. Nothing says professional like an official site and it will do wonders for getting your music noticed. If you are a band or musician and are thinking of or already using WordPress, these plugins are essential for your site. From SEO purposes to posting upcoming gigs and displaying galleries of images from recent concerts, these plugins will help you get on the right track… pun intended.

Here is a list of the top 10 plugins I think every WordPress music site needs.

• All In One SEO Pack

This plugin is one of the most important for a musician or band website. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. What this does is increase your site’s ranking among the top search engines so your fans can easily find you. You can use this plugin right out of the box or customize it to make it work how you want it. This is a popular plugin among professional bloggers and trust me: you need this one!

• Last.fm For Artists

Every artist who knows their way around the internet knows that Last.fm is one of the best sites to upload their music to. This plugin allows you to add a widget to your sidebar displaying your top tracks and recent or upcoming gigs. If you have a Last.fm presence, this one will jazz up your site.

• GigPress

GigPress is an awesome plugin that allows you to display past and upcoming shows, with the ability to link an event to an article. You can embed the shortcode to display the a gig within a post or even as a sidebar widget. Great even for multi-artist sites. This plugin can almost do it all.

• Audio Player

Audio player is a simple and highly customizable plugin that let’s you embed a track with a post using shortcode. You can style it to any color to match your custom theme and lets your fans listen to a track on the fly within a post. Highly recommended.

• NextGen Gallery

NextGen Gallery is a super powerful plugin that lets you post images anywhere you want on your site. With a built-in lightbox feature, you can post galleries within posts, the sidebar, a page, anywhere! Show your fans your photos from your shows and get them excited to come out and see you.

• Chords And Lyrics

This plugin is for the artist who wants to share not only their music with their fans, but also the chords and lyrics. Simple to use and highly customizable. Recommended for artists who want to share it all with everyone.

• BluBrry PowerPress Podcast

Are you a podcaster or a DJ who wants to share their mixes with fans? This is the plugin for you! With PowerPress, you get the power of podcasting with full iTunes support. PowerPress can handle almost every type of media file you have. You can even get full stats right from your WordPress dashboard.

• ShareThis

The ShareThis plugin allows you to let your readers and fans share your content across the web. Whether submitting something to Digg, saving to del.icio.us, posting to Twitter or Facebook, and even emailing to friends, this plugin is a must have for any blog. Word of mouth can be a musician’s best friend.

• Contact Form 7

Contact Form 7 is a plugin that allows your fans, labels, and promoters to contact you using an easy form embedded right into your site. No need to give out your email address and it shows a little more professionalism when wanting to go that extra mile. This plugin will also let people send you music or photos, if you choose to allow it. You can create all different kinds of forms so if you want to have one on a contact page and another embedded within a post for a promotion or contest, this makes everything easy as cake.

• Wibiya Toolbar

The Wibiya Toolbar is a nifty plugin for easy navigation for your site. Highly customizable and it allows your visitors to translate your site, search, visit your YouTube station, connect with you on FaceBook, Tweet, search through random posts, see a special message or announcement from you, as well as subscribing to your site. Visit Wibiya to customize how you want it to look and what options you want added.

Now that you have a list of plugins to start with, spruce up that site that you’ve been putting off and get your tunes heard!

Image source: fycg

Description:

An evolving painting created by four artists working simultaneously on the same digital canvas. The painting process was unplanned and free form. The artists took cues from each others actions and interpretation of various shapes/colors. Communication was made possible by text chat. The total elapsed time was 4 hours.

The music in the video is Beethoven’s Piano Sonata, Opus 53 No. 21 (Waldstein) – Movement 1

Click here if you can’t see the video.

You will need to have flash enabled to view the photos below.

If you’d like to become a member of this group on Flickr, click here.

If you’d like to embed a set of photos from Flickr as seen above, download the free plugin TylrSlidr for WordPress, courtesy of Tyler Craft. You can display photos from groups like in this post, as well as your own, other users, and individual sets.

Click here to download from the plugin’s official page.

Click here to download the plugin from the WordPress directory.

Many thanks to Tyler for making this cool plugin!

If you would like to nab a copy of these icons for yourself, click here and get yours today!

You can also follow Paddy on Twitter.

I started with the original Arthemia theme, and I stripped everything down so there was lots of whitespace. I removed the top featured areas because, let’s face it, I don’t need them. I did want to keep the category bar on the top, but I hated the search area, so I decided to use The Morning After‘s search and navigation area from their theme and implement it in the header here.  I did like the Arthemia Premium‘s option on the bottom to have randomized posts so I added the scripts from the theme to this theme as well. I also upgraded Arthemia’s comment section to have threaded comments, and I did some other minor touch-ups throughout.

I’m really happy with how everything turned out and I love having all my white space with images and easy navigation. I hope you all love it as much as I do.

Cheers!