Flash 9

I was just over on Danny Patterson's blog and he has a post about MySpace and Flash 9. Apparently it's now required for their site, which means that the penetration rates will be high right from an early stage.
www.dannypatterson.com/...

here are the current penetration rates

and if you're interested in messing around with AS3 you can download a preview version of Flash 9 here:
http://labs.adobe.com/...

apologies...

for the immaturity of this post

shop pee & poo!

Verizon FiOS

Our very own Mehmet Irdel recently finished working on a very cool site for Verizon.

Verizon FiOS

puddle jumpers

steven and I came home last night to an urban geyser! mass ave flooded beyond washington street thanks to some bright fellow drilling a hole in a 30" water main... the scene was quite odd: water pouring out over the sidewalk, firemen tromping about in wellies, and the amateur/freelance cameras first on the scene.



steven caught a good snapshot of the more tranquil water, once it had lapped its way into the bus stop at the boston medical center.

better roll up your trousers!

Art Pad

ArtPad
is a fun online drawing tool. The fun part is the ability to re-play the drawing as a movie, as well as the ability to pass the drawings back and forth multiple people to work on.

A few of my drawings are linked from here- sad, sad story drawing blog

HDR Trick Photography: Half-life 2 in Real Life.

Australian Nick Bertke came up with a cool idea: What if you could place those life-like character models from Half-Life 2 into real-life photos? Through a series of posts at the Garry's Mod forums of Facepunch Studios, he detailed a process that resulted in some amazing images. (The posts also earned 17-year-old Bertke not a little fame in Half-Life 2 circles; read this interview with him at Deathfall.com.) (via: G4)

HDR lighting is the next "big thing" in gaming graphics technology. High Dynamic Range lighting adds a sense of realism beyond anything we've seen in games before. This technology is also finding it's way into the digital photography market, as HDR Imaging allows for, seemingly, greater detail and saturation in compositions.

With these photographic renders from Nick Bertke, we're seeing the creative symbiosis of these two technologies. Using a external light probe to record and measure levels of incident illumination in a given "real world" scene, Nick then creates a 2-d illumination environment that he can then map onto a 3-dimensional composition, so that the lighting in the virtual composition then makes the lighting in the original "real world" scene when it's rendered.

It's a clever little trick and the effect is quite amazing. I suppose we'll be seeing this more and more in digital filmmaking and still-photography.

summertime

okay, I took these pictures for my mom, but I want to post our rooftop garden success for serious horticultural bragging rights... well... hmm... I hope I have friends that will help me with my tomato crop once these are ready for picking — there are going to be hundreds!

Chili's Seven Nation Big Mouth Burger

I saw a Chili's commercial tonight for the "Big Mouth Burger" and I couldn't get over the resemblance to The White Stripe's, not so great, video for "Seven Nation Army". Ripping off the video wasn’t enough… they also had to steal the song.

Oh... and I just fucking love it when companies make up words like "Spicealicious".

Vader Sessions

Great viral marketing/mashup piece from the sound design team at the AkJak Film Production company.

"Torn by good & evil and an incestuous love affair, a lonely and depraved Darth Vader has a nervous breakdown.

It was created entirely by using the true voice of Vader, Mr. James Earl Jones HIMSELF!"

Conversation

Joshua Davis and Stefan Sagmeister, from the FITC site, discussing:




- Fame and Fortune
- How to keep work fresh
- Things in common
- Controversy and Public perception
- Inspiration and the art scene
- How it is funny that Josh Davis isn't wearing shoes
- How ugly hotel furniture is and don't they wish they had stayed in Barb's B&B

And, I saw a few familiar faces in the "FITC: where all the cool designers go" video clips on the FITC.ca homepage (I didn't watch many of them, just skipped through hitting that next next next button!). Now, let me just say that Nicole went right before me as "Ann Karash" and I panicked a little with what that meant my name should be so... okay, that's it.

kindness and humility

I really like this interface: clean and simple, mimimal without losing me, intuitive but innovative. kindness! but what I really love is those poured concrete countertops (click on play to see a list of projects)... can you really do that at home? and I hear that you can die concrete? really? let's try it — I might need a new sewing/project table top for the co-op studio!

McDonald's Sundial [UPDATE]

Disgusting company.
Brilliant idea.



I'm going to try to find out a little bit more about it. Who did it, where it ran, etc.

Update
I found this on AdRants:


"Just when we thought there were no new ideas, Leo Burnett, with the help of an engineer, designed a billboard in Chicago for McDonald's which acts as a sun dial to create a shadow of the McDonald's arches over a different breakfast food for each hour of the morning. Of course, someone will now leave a comment saying this has been done somewhere else before unfairly labeling Leo Burnett a copy cat."


As a side note, Leo Burnett has a great website.

And now to balance out the positive energy towards McDonalds I also found this image while searching for information on the sundial.

Virgin Digital “Music Muscle”

A fascinatingly creative marketing video by ad agency Ground Zero, with a fresh, multi-dimensional take on an old "Pythonesque" 2-dimensional collage style.

Each "scene" references a song title, with 45 song references in all.

(View embedded .MOV)

*This might be old hat 'round here ('twas released last fall), but thought I'd share it anyways. I find the aesthetic absolutely compelling and would love to see exactly how it's done. Also, this is my first post, so be gentle! ;)

New Member

I’ve invited Dave Fedorko to join our little blog.
I think most of you know him. For those of you who don’t he’s a great storyteller and designer not to mention a good friend.

I’m sure we can all look forward to some interesting posts from him.

Everyone say hi!

80's Music Videos

Ever have an urge to watch a bunch of music videos from the 80's? No?
Me neither.

But if you ever did then this would be the place to go:
www.dvdsmusicvideos.com

Everyday Fabulous

Ikea gives a few examples of how "Good design can make the everyday a little better".

Everyday Fabulous

the raconteurs

speaking of Old is new (is in) : the raconteurs site

tour filter, times two!

although I started playing with green/grey after john's first comp, what I really wanted to do was make the "Tonight's Show" window a little more integrated as a calendar type of object, and still use the "tracked by" aspect that is on the current site.

all in all, I think I like the list-like feature that john has created below as a more interesting way of allowing you to look at stuff in a calendar view vs. this day by day idea — maybe there could be a "view" option in list that allows for looking at your upcoming shows by week or by month by block vs. list?

Emigre

Emigre has upadated their website:
www.emigre.com

Tour Filter

For those of you who don't know already Tour Filter is web application written by a Chris Marstall that allows you to keep tabs on your favorite band's appearances in your area. It has a ton of potential and I've already put it to great use but the current interface leaves a lot to be desired. Ann and I are teaming up to give it a facelift. If anyone one else wants to get involved please let me know. The next phase of the project will be a marketing campaign.

Below you can see my first attempt at a redesign (click on the image for a larger view).
I won't go into detail but my main goals were to:

• Allow for better branding
• Add imagery and visual interest
• Add more depth of content by providing artist and venue information and potentially user generated content
• Create a more personalized feel
• Offer better information management tools

This still has a ways to go but please let me know what you think. I'’ll be posting an update soon, and I'’m sure Ann will too!

Kyle Cooper

Apperently I’m way behind the times. I just found out that back in early 2004, maybe even late 2003 Kyle Cooper left Imaginary Forces to start a new company.

He’s now running things at a place called Prologue Films.

They have a 4+ minute long reel full of the things we’ve come to expect from Mr. Cooper.


Click for video

Mates of State: "Fraud in the 80's"

A video for Mates of State that shows once again that stop motion is a dead technique that is very much alive. The director, Arno Salters, and his wife manually cut out about 2,500 images for the video. It's a cute, quirky video (much like the band).


Click for video