The Good Life...

The Good Life... from the talented folks at Free Range Studios - creators of the equally cool video/animations, The Meatrix and The Story of Stuff. Enjoy!

WICKED! Nokia N96 + Bruce Lee...

A very cool bit of video editing here... in this commercial for the Nokia N96 - Bruce Lee Limited Edition (I wouldn't mind having this phone). Watch the embedded video above or via YouTube, here - enjoy!

Via swissmiss - cheers!

WICKED! Post-It-Note Animation...

You have to see this crazy animation to believe it... do you think they really stuck all those 'sticky-notes' up by hand or is this fancy CGI? Any thoughts? Watch the embedded video above or via Today's Big Thing - enjoy!

WICKED! Type War...

Too cool. This typographic animation/ad was created by Optix Digital (Hamburg), for Inlingua Business English schools. Watch the video embedded above, on YouTube or via Motionographer, here - enjoy!

Thanks again to Mr. Simpson for the link - cheers!

COOL! Micrography: Text Art and Typography...

Image: Obama word portrait by Jeff Clark.

Wikipedia says "Micrography, also called microcalligraphy, is a Jewish art form developed in the 9th century, with parallels in Christianity and Islam, utilizing minute Hebrew letters to form representational, geometric and abstract designs. Colored micrography is especially distinctive because these rare artworks are customarily rendered in black and white.”

View some beautiful examples of this art form, here - enjoy!

Thanks to Mr. Mark Simpson for the link - cheers!

COOL! Graphic Design - The Forgotten Web Standard (Video)...

Graphic Design: The Forgotten Web Standard on Vimeo.

The following video was played as part of Mike Kus' talk at FOWD London 2009. It's sped up footage of Mike designing his slides for his talk. Mike thought that it would be interesting to show it because he thought it would interesting to see the design process he went through whilst making them. It also features a footage of slides being designed that never made it to the final slide deck... it's quite neat IMO.

You can view Mike's presentation at FOWD London 2009 , here - enjoy! Thanks to Davin Greenwell for posting the link to the GDC Listserve - cheers!

Recommended Viewing | How to Destroy Civilization with Nanotechnology...

How to Destroy Civilization with Nanotechnology.

Slowly-but-surely, I'm starting to make a dent in my '2B_Blogged' folder residing on my desktop. ;)

This little gem of an animation was sent to me a while back by my friend, Paul Kletke... I thought it was quite well done. Watch the embedded video above or check it out on http://www.5min.com/ - enjoy!

Thanks Paul for sending me the link! Cheers!

Life is...

Crazy.

Apologies for the radio silence... but, things have been crazy as of late. I hope to be retuning to more regular postings soon... stay tuned! ;)

In the meantime, here's a little music video treat (a favourite of mine), Crazy by Gnarls Barkley, watch the embedded video above or check it out, here - via Google Video.

Cheers!

Recommended Viewing | Enter the Serif...

Too hilarious not to share (at least for designers and typographers)... as described from the original post on FontFeed:

Enter the Serif... (a student film [1:54] by Johann Pascual | California College of the Arts, USA) combines typography with fragments from the classic Drunken Master – a mix of martial arts and slapstick comedy from 1978 which propelled Jackie Chan to mainstream success. The short film pits Univers Chang of the Sans Serif Clan against Sabon Huang of the Serif Clan. Excerpts of Drunken Master are alternated with dialogue screens that are inspired by the work of Jan Tschichold: his classic, centered serif period and his assymetrical neue Typographie period. Some bits are laugh-out-loud funny (via FontFeed).

I couldn't tend to agree more... ;) you should go and check out some of the other video highlights from the ATypI’08 | Typophile Film Fest 4 (there are some really nice ones...) via FontFeed - enjoy!

Thanks to Nancy Wu for sharing the link on the GDC Listserve - cheers!

Did You Know...

Watch this video on YouTube... :O

The Girl Effect...

A nice website link and typographic intro video (embedded above) to share with you all today. When you have a moment, go take a look at http://www.girleffect.org/ - a link posted to the GDC Listserve by designer, Danielle Autran. I think it's quite nicely done... a good use of typography, music and Flash(?) IMO, what do you think?

Thanks for posting the link Danielle - cheers!

Neat! 'Beached' Video on Vimeo...

Beached from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

Came across this cool little video (created by Keith Loutit) the other day... it employs an effect which makes the people seem like little ants. It reminds me of the 'diorama model' photo effect tutorial that I blogged about a while back, here. Anyhow, you can watch the video embedded above or via Vimeo, here.

If you liked Keith's 'Beached' video, be sure to check out his other videos on Vimeo, which are done in a similar style: 'The North Wind Blew South', 'Bathtub II', and 'Bathtub III' - enjoy!

Hope all my fellow Canucks had a nice Thanksgiving Long-weekend! Cheers!

Recommended Viewing | Airport Animation...

I just came across this neat animation on YouTube, via a post on the popular SpeakUp blog where they describe the video as using most of the famed AIGA Symbol Signs. I think it's rather well done and thought that you might enjoy it too... the description on YouTube describes it as the animated story of one man's epic journey, created entirely from public domain symbols. In other words, an airport story told in the language of airport infographics.

The video is a couple of years old so, I apologize if you've seen it before... you can watch the video (embedded above) or on YouTube, here - enjoy!

Recommended | PS3 - Metal Gear Solid 4...

One of the coolest gifts I've ever received was a PS3 (this past birthday, from my younger brother and eldest sister). I was initially in shock when I opened the package and was actually somewhat dismayed, my initial thoughts were, Great! How am I ever going to be able to save any money now? I'm going to need to buy a new HD TV, start purchasing Blu-ray discs to add to my (rather large) collection of movies, and PS3 games... ;) j/k. I can't thank them enough for the gift!

Anyhow, lately I've been trying to play through Metal Gear Solid 4 - Guns of the Patriots, and I have to say it's an amazing game... not only are the graphics, and movie-like, cut-scenes super cool, there's so much depth to the game it's ridiculous. It's not your typical action game, where running around like a maniac and shooting up everything in sight will work. This game is all about stealth and strategy.

I'm sure that opinions will vary, as some of the cut-scenes are rather lengthy, but the cut-scenes really add to the overall development of the story. I might be biased as I've been a fan of Hideo Kojima and the MGS series since first playing it on PSone. I'd highly recommend MGS4 for anyone looking for a challenge on their PS3, if you're playing through and need some hints, go and visit the MGS4 page on WikiCheats (a great online resource for video game tutorials and walkthroughs)- cheers!

Image via WikiCheats

Recommended Viewing | I Met the Walrus...

A beautifully animated video found on YouTube, via Swissmiss' blog (I've reposted Tina's description in it's entirety because it's so eloquently written):

In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, snuck into John Lennon's hotel room in Toronto and convinced John to do an interview about peace. 38 years later, Jerry has produced a film about it. Using the original interview recording as the soundtrack, director Josh Raskin has woven a visual narrative which tenderly romances Lennon's every word in a cascading flood of multipronged animation. Raskin marries the terrifyingly genius pen work of James Braithwaite with masterful digital illustration by Alex Kurina, resulting in a spell-binding vessel for Lennon's boundless wit, and timeless message.


Thank you Tina (and Prescott) for sharing! Cheers!

If you're unable to view the embedded video above, you can view it on YouTube, here - enjoy!

Wicked Artist | Dan Dos Santos...

My good friend, local designer/illustrator James Gillespie (KALAMAFRAZ), sent me this YouTube link to Dan Dos Santos' Warbreaker Cover Illustration - Oil Painting Demonstration. All I can say is WOW. Check it out on YouTube, here. You can see more of Dan's work on his website at http://www.dandossantos.com/ - enjoy!

Thanks for sending me the link James, cheers!

Recommended Viewing | Joshua Heineman's Cursive Buildings Website

You really have to go and check out Joshua Heineman's Cursive Buildings website... more specifically it's his Reaching for the Out of Reach project that has caught my attention. Joshua's description on his website: I’m breathing new life into the past using old digitized photographs from the New York public library. I’ve spent hours rekindling these moments. And they will not be the last. P.S. I’m so so deep on these funny little things… it’s like the past has rediscovered a dimension!

Sadly the image above doesn't represent his work accurately (I'm not sure why animated .gifs don't work when I upload them), so go and check out the image above (as well as more examples) on his website at http://lala.cursivebuildings.com/tagged/reaching - enjoy!

Thanks for sending me the link Paul - Cheers!

COOL! White Glove Tracking Project...

My apologies if you've already seen this... I've been meaning to post about it for some time now. Excerpt from the White Glove Tracking website:

On May 4th, 2007, we asked internet users to help isolate Michael Jackson's white glove in all 10,060 frames of his nationally televised landmark performance of Billy Jean. 72 hours later 125,000 gloves had been located. wgt_data_v1.txt (listed below) is the culmination of data collected. It is released here for all to download and use as an input into any digital system. Just as the data was gathered collectively it is our hope that it will be visualized collectively. Please email links to your apps, video, source code, and/or screen shots to evan[at]eyebeam[dot]org. Work will be exhibited in an online gallery and depending on popularity and interest potentially in a forthcoming physical gallery exhibition as well. Huge thanks to everyone that contributed to the data collection.

While I can't say that I fully understand the tech behind the project, I did find it to be rather interesting and the re-edited video(s) fun to watch... although, you can really only listen to Billy Jean so many times in a row before you start going a little nutty! ;) It definitely was one of the better periods for the Moonwalker himself... you can watch the original live performance of Michael Jackson's Billy Jean above or on YouTube here.


The video above is an example of what someone has done with the data... they're calling it Giant White Glove. I found it to be rather amusing... the giant glove makes me think of Mickey or some other cartoon character. Anyhow, check out the White Glove Tracking website at http://whiteglovetracking.com/ to learn more, White Glove Tracking is an open source project initiated by Evan Roth and Ben Engebreth with support from the Rhizome Commissions Program and the Eyebeam OpenLab. Be sure to check out the online gallery - enjoy!

Via Daniel Koh at Kaliber1000 - The Designer's Lunchbox. Cheers!

On this day in 1953...

On this day, May 29th in 1953 the first (documented) successful ascent of Mt. Everest was completed by Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay (along with their expedition crew). An amazing feat to say the least, given the climbing technology and gear available to them at that time. Since then, numerous attempts have been made to reach the summit of this formidable mountain... not all have been successful and not everyone comes back alive... just thinking about it, makes me yearn to throw on the ol' climbing harness and hit the rocks/local climbing gym.

You can read more about Mt. Everest, the attempted ascents and more on Wikipedia, here. Check out a 3D panoramic view from the top here (you'll need the latest Flash Player version installed in order to view it) - enjoy!

The above image is from Wikipedia and is licensed for use under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 License. Photo by Pavel Novak - cheers!

Wicked! Blu's Muto...

Kevin Guenther, MGDC is one of the designers which I'm very fortunate to be working with at Circle. The other day he sent me this link to Muto - an ambiguous animation painted on public walls. I cannot even begin to describe how crazy/ambitious this project must have been to complete... you truly have to watch it yourself.


You should check out the rest of the website too, some very cool stuff if you're into 'graffiti art'. Visit http://www.blublu.org/ - enjoy!