“Freelancers” walk out at MTV

Some pretty amazing VFX work from Thailand based Digital Magic Group

Marcus Graf’s “I, Ball” is watching (built with Processing)

Vancouver Film School students Marcos “Boca” Ceravolo and Ryan Ulrich came up with an interesting—and entertaining—premise for their final project in the Digital Design program. “Duelity” tells the creationist’s version of the beginning of the universe using the language of science while simultaneously presenting a scientific cosmology using biblical lingo.

It’s a fun experiment that shows just how much the language we use can influence the way we present and receive ideas. Personally, I found the creationist’s view much more palatable when presented in this way. I’m not sure what that says about me, but it does point to the power of diction, the power of carefully chosen words.

You may recall that Boca and Ryan worked on another interesting project, “Typographics.” I hope they continue collaborating; they seem to have great creative chemistry.

Last Friday I took part in the first Layer Tennis match done in After Effects. My opponent was Jason Koxvold, who I had previously collaborated with in the first edition of PSST! Jason provided the hilarious but destructive ending to Easy Action, so I knew he would be a tough competitor.

Layer Tennis itself is a collaborative / combatative design event created by Coudal Partners. It used to be called Photoshop Tennis and was started back in 2001. But then it lay dormant for a while and was just resurrected earlier this year. So far they’ve had some great matches: Harrington v. Anderson Hansen v. Cordiner Bantjes v. Vit The previous week’s match had been done in Flash and it was really interesting to see the concept evolve when you could apply motion and story-telling to what had previously only been static imagery.

The invitation came late on Tuesday and the match was for Friday afternoon. Not a lot of time to think about it or worry about what I was getting myself into, so I just said “Yes.” I won the coin flip on Thursday, so I had overnight to prepare my “serve.” This was a file that had my first animation and several other elements in it that I was planning on using somehow in the match. I had decided to make a happy little tennis ball, because I enjoy the blindingly obvious. I also wanted to keep my side of the match pretty damn simple and try to just re-use my exisiting elements for each volley. Of course I made a few other elements that I planned to introduce over the course of the match and set them aside… I set the tennis ball up so he was jointed and very easy to animate. Sounds like a plan, right?

I posted the first serve for Jason a few hours before the match went live and he got to work on his “return.” The match then started in the late afternoon and the clock was ticking! We were supposed to be returning each other’s serves every 15 minutes. Behind the scenes the Coudal folks and Jason and I were all online using Basecamp to talk to each other and exchange files. 15 minutes is really not a lot of time. It was nerve-racking trying to get your serve done and then also render and post it. As Jason was working on his serves, I would start to work on my next move and hope I could figure out a way to incoporate or respond to his last volley when I got it. Then once his was actually posted, I had to scramble to finish mine up and get it up on the Coudal servers. I’m pretty sure we went over our time limits each serve, but we did get the match done in the usual 3-4 hour slot. Not a mean feat considering we made about a minute and fifteen seconds worth of animation pretty much on-the-fly.

Hopefully it provided a few of you with an entertaining way to spend your render time on Friday afternoon. Jason did a great job returning his volleys and reacting to my shots and the whole thing was really fun to be a part of. Big thanks to Matt Haughey for his commentary Jim Coudal and Adobe for making it happen. I lost the match, but my dignity is intact.

Tiempo BBDO asks what would you do with 600 Euros?

Alternative Energy by Geoff McFetridge for the NY Times

SIM Global Education: Freud

The gents over at Royale have created this imaginatively experimental piece for Flaunt magazine which brands them alongside sponsor Diesel and will be included in their 9th anniversary issue.

While the visuals are intricate and beautifully complex, the concept is quite simple: build imagery from Diesel’s current campaign with pages ripped from Flaunt. The piece borrows from a lot of trends I’ve seen popping up lately, like that almost too 90’s home video feel or the always favorite “cut-out” look. But in the spirit of the above mentioned concept, it takes on it’s own enjoyable feel.

I’m an Alan Watts fanatic. I have listened to countless hours of his lectures, and I’ve read several of his books. There’s just something about the way the British-born philosopher in 1960s America saw the world that resonates with me at a deep level.

Apparently, I’m not the only one. South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker tapped animators Chris Brion and Todd Benson to create a series of animations set to snippets of Watts’ lectures. It’s something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time, but alas, they beat me to the punch.

They’re simple, fun and serve as a great introduction to Watts’ take on the world. Enjoy.

Via FEED