To promote the popular Irish TV show “Home of the Year” Allied Irish Banks hired the team at Madrid 3D/CG studio JVG: “Rothco, to produce a series of CG animations that create 4 separate rooms. Each object in the space has been animated carefully coreographed to encourage the viewer to rewatch the video and discover more with each viewing. The result is literally thousands of single animations designed to draw the viewer in to take in the details. If you can watch it full screen on your computer or in the Vimeo app on your smart TV.
Video and Motion Graphics
Paul Rand Retrospective for the One Club Hall of Fame
One of my favorite graphic designers, Paul Rand, is being posthumously inducted into the One Club Hall of Fame. To honor his induction, one of my favorite motion graphics/titling/animation houses Imaginary Forces, has created a nice little animated short film for the ceremony. It combines original animation with sections of a videotaped interview of Rand, that encapsulated his unique and timeless contribution to the design community. Full of wonderful quotes about graphic design and art, this 4 minute short is worth the watch. I love the fact that they kept a 4 b3 aspect ratio, which is true to the formating of most of the title sequences Rand would have created in his day.
Credits
director – Mark Gardener
producer – Cara McKenney
designers/animators – Jeremy Cox, Joey Salim, & Liz Centolella
animators – Andrew Chung, Sean Eno and Chase Massingill
editor – Corey Weisz
sound design – Derek Lee
Everyday Experiments – In Full Bloom
The first cellphone camera I ever used was in an imported unlocked Nokia so-called “smartphone”. It was an expensive flip phone with a screen that rotated 180 degrees. It had some form of limited office functionality, texting, and a 0.3-megapixel camera that shot postage stamp-sized images and no video. I thought it was the greatest phone ever, and the ability to take somewhat decent photos with my phone was a game-changer. Then in 2007 and the world changed.
When the iPhone went on sale in June of 2007, it was light years ahead of the competition. It had a whopping 2 megapixel camera and 320×480 pixel resolution screen. The day it went on sale I was 4th in line at the ATT store to make sure I got one before they sold out. At the time, I had no idea how much this single piece of technology would change the way people create with images, video and audio.
Fast forward 15 years and the impact has been very obvious. So much so that Apple has built an entire marketing platform around “Shot on iPhone” that focuses exclusively on the creative aspect of the handset. One of the best examples being a series of videos by Donghoon J. and James T, called “Everyday Experiments that show people how to create some pretty amazing videos with their iPhones and things they have at home. Something that would have been impossible to do with my Nokia in 2005, or even using a “Flip Video” camera that was hugely popular at the same time.
Everyday Experiments as well as the rest of “Shot on iPhone” show just how far we have come in a very short period of time. If you are into using your phone for creative endeavors I encourage you to take a look at the “Everyday Experiments” content. It’s well-produced and they have a section of behind-the-scenes videos that show how these two actually make the videos Apple commissions from them.
This is Gullwing
When I first started producing digital content at the end of the 1990s 3D most high-end CG work was done by large studios that could build out render farms to distribute the render load. I remember working on a Mac Quadra 950 with megabytes of RAM, yes megabytes not gigabytes, in Strata Studio Pro, and the computer taking all weekend to render one or two frames. The point of me mentioning this is just how powerful computers and software have gotten in the last couple of decades and the amazing quality of work that is being produced.
This afternoon a friend emailed me a link to the video “Gullwing”, below that was produced by the Lisbon-based studio Briktop. It’s a stunning piece of work that is 100 percent CG. There is a nice little storyline that demonstrates the director João Elias passion for the Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing. The editing is executed so well helping to draw you into the piece. The sound design combined with the music adds a sense of completeness and drama. It just works. I have no idea what his hardware and software set up is, but I guarantee it’s an affordable desktop rig. If you want to see more of the work from Briktop you can find it here. He’s got a really nice BMW 2002 short as well as more commercial stuff.
By the way, Briktop has some mad skills. He’s been in business for about ten years and started out doing architectural visualizations. The work on the Briktop site shows just how much they have grown, and what they have been able to accomplish in just one decade. Hat tip to them.
Directed and animated by João Elias | Music: Evan Macdonald | Sound design: João Elias
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