i hate being torn between finding something, learning something, applying something, and then learning it’s passé. in the age of the internet, things are dead before they even hit a million views. that being said, there are many benefits of learning things, teaching yourself something new - none more beneficial than parallel creativity. and by that i mean, getting creatively excited about something completely unintentionally by trying to delve into something else. i guess it’s the nature of creativity; or, at the least, it’s the nature of my brain. i’ve seen david o’reilly around in many places, i just never realized he was always the same dude. i guess, if you keep running into something/someone without trying, it’s meant to be? delving into david’s work, i came across his recent piece “please say something”. there’s something about personification that really works for me, really makes me smile, especially when executed so well. maybe i’ve just stared at too many LOLcats, or maybe david just has a way with his character animation that i’m really into.
i guess the underlying points of my ramblings here are:
creativity is good (i need to do it more often)
“parallel creativity” is a good term and should be used
cats who wear scarves can make you smile
david o’reilly’s other über-inspirational piece is the following animation featuring diamonds, cats, space, and walt disney. (he also has a schweet iphone app that i wish i could download)
i’m working on a project we shot a few weeks ago on RED and are building loopable assets for a site. i know that’s very general, but until the site goes live, that’s about all i can say. but, in working with 3 days worth of footage, over 80 separate video pieces of people (most [...]
i originally found this through my twitter pal, eric alba, but definitely had to share. my favorite spots are the 360-flip wall plant at 2:36 and incline to backflip at 3:26.
3d is getting big. with cameron’s avatar right around the corner and lenticular and anachrome executions all over print and web, you’d expect to have seen it all. yes, there are stereoscopic animated .gifs all over the web, but i don’t recall ever seeing a stereoscopic video, until now. created by [...]
i don’t think i’d heard of inlingua before, but this typographic execution is pretty nice. or maybe i’ve just been playing too much call of duty lately.
i’m not sure how i have never seen sigg jones before today. douglas lassance (aka asterokid - who also created galactic mail), matthieu bessudo (aka mcbess), and jonathan vuillemin, three students of supinfocom, the french school of 2d/3d animation famous of which the film oktapodi’s directors are also alumni of, created sigg’s short film as [...]
my twitter activity is inversely proportional to my blog activity.. my apologies.
if you follow my ffffound feed, you’re familiar with my love of information, mapping, visualization, data, (and yeah, there’s some other good stuff in there) but i’ve recently come across the newest web trend map 4.0 from tokyo-based interaction designer oliver reichenstein showcasing web [...]
after a discussion yesterday about nike’s foray into the snowboarding realm and my energetic attempt to convince a coworker who had this to say: “what!? no, no, no. that’s just wrong. they have no experience in snowboarding. no. just… no.” i was beginning to feel a little shaky about my faith in nike athletes. and [...]
nike football’s ignite campaign has begun, offering footballers a way to train like the pros at home. this project is interesting as it brings together players like cesc fabregas, robbie keane, robinho, ronaldinho, pato, lucas leiva, gennaro gattuso, and at least ten others to follow along with trainer jens bangsbo. shot mostly in RED 4k, [...]
toronto-based studio purchase brothers (aptly named from founder brothers ian and david purchase) have officially taken it upon themselves to answer the call of nerds everywhere by creating “escape from city 17 - part one”. as much as i hate to admit it, i now understand the passion of trekkies and star wars fans everywhere [...]
sometimes i prefer to wait out the popularity of certain things and see if they continue to hold true value and not simply be a hype, but there’s nothing temporary about the quality of animal collective’s latest album “merriweather post pavilion” and especially nothing fleeting about how good “my girls” is. it’s on repeat at [...]
the san francisco supercross was last saturday. i took the opportunity to pull out my lensbaby 2.0 and grab some shots. i have a feeling that, much like HDRI, tilt-shift will no longer be an art-form of only those with high budgets and intricate equipment and will soon be everywhere. so i’ll enjoy it while [...]
the bike vignette is definitely my favorite of the series. currently, we’re localizing the pieces for the asian market and i wanted to show the boards from bike’s chinese version. it looks so much cooler than english.
(sorry, photos deleted from server, will re-upload soon)
nike women recently launched their spring 09 “be transformed” campaign in asia pacific - nike women’s largest integrated campaign to date. below, i’m linking to some of the videos i worked on and above is one of the print executions i created. below, i’ve also listed some of the people responsible for bringing it all [...]
andreas nilsson comes through with another eerily beautiful video, this time for “if i had a heart”, off of fever ray’s new S/T album, karin dreijer andersson’s new solo project. (psst! she’s 1/2 of the knife) i first took note of nilsson when i saw the knife’s video for “heartbeats“. the way the individual pixels [...]
flipping typical is a web-based utility which allows you (yes, you) to preview and explore your computer’s available typefaces. that means if you own adobe caslon, you can preview text in that typeface; if you do not, then it will not display. it is an interesting, and probably useful tool, if you’re wanting to see [...]
thanks to a conversation with a friend of mine today, i went back to gary hustwit’s blog objectifiedfilm.com. i’ve been looking forward to this newest documentary since he first said something about it a year or so ago. as if i needed to further fuel my desire for more “things”. this one promises to do [...]
i try to focus on a few subjects here, hoping to mainly focus on work-related topics (and usually failing that), but had to throw out a link to one of my new favorite sites: radiobutt. i am very dedicated to a few genres of music: post-rock, (mostly french) electronic, hip-hop, and metal. and, in that [...]
yeah yeah, i know.. i post this right as CS4 hits the streets. i remember posting the CS2 version and wasn’t aware i had not linked to aescript’s AE BG render script yet (again, created by the ingenious lloyd alvarez) until just today. so, what i’m saying is, i’ll wait until CS5 is about to [...]
fontshop berlin created, and released today, fontShop AG. brilliant idea, if you ask me - especially for designers or typophiles. but, according to the guys over at aisleone, there are some pretty evident discrepancies with the design and interaction, two elements that should be in order for a designer’s resource such as this.i’ve just downloaded [...]
the new(ish) ford f-150 ads narrated by dennis leary have caught my attention a few times. created by team detroit, they answer current-economy concerns for a potential truck buyer in a bold, typographic execution. set to leary’s machine-gun style ranting, the pacing is quite nice. i’m posting these here as i’ve been looking to inspiration [...]
Magic Flashlights from Mike Benson on Vimeo.
it appears as if someone was inspired by the work i, and a few other AKQAers did for a job on XBOX about a year ago. well, really, when i consider that that project never actually went LIVE, i probably have to concede that it might not have been [...]
not only did i find this for inspiration on a current project at the office, but it’s also motivation to actually prepare for this crazy possibility the earth may very well open up to swallow me whole. not sure if this’ll be as huge up here (it focuses on the southern california emergency response), but [...]
my good buddy, jon aka principle, shot me this mix today. wanted to share as it is a-maz-ing. put this on your iphones and ipods and itunes. get with it.
not sure why i sat on this for so long, but the fine people over at interactive studio teehan + lax put together this awesome .psd of iphone elements. use it to design iphone mockups, presentations of client apps/sites/images on the device, or to simply put your own picture in an iphone layout. click the [...]
the new nike women site will be live soon, one which, due to the (fortuitous, for me) moving-on of coworkers in the office, i had the opportunity to art direct. the image above was finalized by liz doan, one of our nike team’s strongest designers. my original version is posted below. colors, type, and [...]
the experience site for gears of war 2 went live today. this is a completely custom view of the gears 2 world realized through proprietary use of the unreal engine as expertly driven by 2d/3d motion designer matthew law. although my involvement in the project was in the pre-pro stage, i still feel a [...]
always wanted to be a dj. now, thanks to javascript and some genius developers in germany, i can. i scored a beta invitation from hobnox themselves and have been playing with it for a while. there is also a video editing suite on the site which allows you to do simple effects and edits to [...]
inspired by some of the type play i’ve seen online recently as well as the desire to recreate anaglyph images on my own. i was also intrigued by the various blending modes of light versus color in photoshop and illustrator and how the different modes present the same image.
recently, i had the opportunity to reminisce about motion graphic heros MK12 with mick ebeling, the guy behind the ebeling group. TEG picked up MK12 back in 2000 (if i remember correctly), so it was inspirational to speak to the guy who’s worked so closely with some of the industry’s leading creative trendsetters. he seemed [...]
justice | SO ME | ed banger | machine molle
SO ME is back with yet another brilliantly directed piece of motion graphics set to ed banger’s golden children, justice. reminiscent of those ahead-of-their-time 80s network idents, branded movie theatre animations, and show opens, the guys over at machine molle have nailed this spot perfectly. my [...]
HOW magazine’s international design awards have gone to print. bubbly’s redesign has won yet another award. click the photo for a larger image of the page (thanks to leigh).
brand:nu
i am motivated by many things in life, inspired by many other artists, styles, forms, and types of design. in graphic design, specifically, i am primarily motivated by two aspects: visual motion and typography.i prefer to spend my mornings catching up on design blogs and other reference material. i recently came across brand:nu through the [...]
the ability to shift the perspective of reality is quite a feat. to do it in photography, a medium whose permanence allows for strict scrutiny on how distortion of reality is accomplished, is even more impressive. ben thomas, much like olivo barbieri, utilizes tilt-shift photography to break our sense of size, perspective, and [...]
mass effect went live yesterday, a bit late for game release, but an amazing site nonetheless. AKQA comes through yet again with another industry-leading game experience. this was another site added to my growing list of projects i was extremely excited to be part of. seeing the intense back-end work put into assets like the [...]
shoulda posted this much earlier.. tonight was RVCA’s grand opening celebration for their first physical store, which just so happens to be in SF. it’s good when the bay area sets precedence, even for a label based in socal. there were a lot of faces present: SF born and bred barry mcgee (aka twist, aka [...]
“Well the idea for the ghost sort of started out because my paintings tend to Have a lot of the old sketches on the panels before I finally get to the Image that I like and they have a ghost-like quality to them. Then as I Thought more about the title the ghost, I started [...]
ABC’s soap opera/family drama “dirty sexy money” about money being the root of all evil, starring peter krause (from “six feet under”), donald sutherland, william baldwin, and samarie armstrong (tell her to call me, thanks), has recently (and wisely) featured bubbly. take a gander.
trent reznor recently made the statement, in relation to oink’s demise, that he was a frequent user of the site, that itunes carries a horrible selection (yay, they now have the beatles! who cares?), and that there exists a whole space of grey area within P2P file sharing. it’s a complicated moral issue at hand: [...]
tonight, at the victoria theatre on 16th and mission, is nike’s leap into the skate vid foray. although not the official nothing but the truth tour, this will be a good opportunity for SF’s skate scene to come together. maybe outshine the fixed gear kids in the mission..
speaking of which.. MASH ships november 15th. get [...]
new york designer matthew waldman, concerned the means of telling time were not intuitive enough, created the nooka watch. as time passes, the bars fill. the design is better realized than this style’s pre-cursor, the tokyo watch. the nooka was originally licensed to seiko in ‘99, but only released in limited markets. now, the nooka [...]
this afternoon, i am attending the hip hop chess federation battle for the championship belt. imagine this: both the RZA and the GZA, straight from shaolin, pitting their wu-tang style against the mixed martial arts skills of ralek gracie, international chess genius josh waitzkin, and other hip hop artists and djs.. no, really, just TRY [...]
PGR4 has gone live as of yesterday. the entire site is centered around a highly stylized inspirational video piece that taunts the community to take the brand challenge- to live with speed and style.digital offerings abound - an innovative interactive widget that pulls down real-time xbox live events and leaderboards, a dynamic wallpaper that allows [...]
i have had the distinct pleasure of meeting/conversing/sharing ideas with/and hanging out with jared eberhardt, a director of some noteable snowboard videos (legend, that) and some music videos (himsa). to say he understands the importance of keeping as many special effects in-camera as possible is an understatement - the guy is a genius when it [...]
