Designer Roundup

Some of these you might have seen before, others hopefully new. Plenty of inspiring work across the board(s)*.

Bryce Wymer
http://www.brycewymer.com/

Fantastic illustration, motion design, even large scale installation work. A veritable powerhouse.

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Chichi Bello
http://www.niog.net/

Boards boards boards. Beautiful boards.

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Keetra Dean Dixon
http://www.fromkeetra.com/

An eclectic mix of design. Type design A+.

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Anthony Hurd
http://www.anthonyhurd.com/

Ex-Exopolis, ex-EGG, now solo.

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Emie
http://www.byemie.com/

Still more storyboards, Emie designs for several of the heavy hitters in the business.

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This is just a small, small sampling of the humbling amount of top-notch talent out there.

*(the author is deeply apologetic for any unintentional harm this horrible, horrible pun could have caused.)

EVAQ

Asif Mian aka “EVAQ” has some beautiful work to show. Illustration, design, and some interesting video direction to boot. Not to mention a ADC Young Guns award from ’06.

Despite the eye-catching visuals, the tidbit that stuck out the most to me was on Asif’s about page: “Mian’s background started with painting, drawing and sculpture as well as biology, genetics and chemistry…” Not every day you run into a Young Gun with a bio degree.

Latest Impactist Work

We’ve posted its original incarnation, but Impactist’s “Field Trip” series has a few new additions. Doubling the content, Kelly and Daniel have released not only three new shorts, but several new music tracks as well. Each of their animated “trips” are beautifully crafted gems, but “Collection” in particular caught my eyes and ears. The animation, video, and sound are masterfully intertwined, and its story simple. All in all, Field Trip is a nice refresher from the never-ending bombardment of swirly eye candy we call “advertising”.

Visit the Field Trip mini-site.

Kris Moyes, Expatriate and more

Kris Moyes’ latest video for Expatriate is a monochromatic playground of slow-mo fun. The piece is comprised of long, flowing black-and-white shots, each beautifully composed. Some of the shots seem a bit melodramatic, but for me this was counterbalanced by the band members’ often silly expressions. I guess it’s hard not to look funny at extremely high FPS.

We posted Kris’ previous video “Heart Made of Sound” on the Quickies bar (twice, actually), but it deserves a revisiting on the frontpage here. I e-mailed Kris about the process that went into creating the quick-cut montage madness, and he graciously responded with a little insight:

“The clip took 14 days to shoot and was all mapped out from the beginning. I notated the whole song and used that as my bible. The words and musical sections were divided equally allowing 7 days each. We were shooting about 25-30 words a day and working 9 hour days, (about 1 word every 15-20 minutes) which ended up being too much for my art director who pulled out halfway through. For the word section the more solid ideas were executed in the first few days allowing the others to ferment. Naturally there were a few that didn’t go exactly to plan so I had to treat them on a case to case basis. I think the results from the ones that needed lateral thinking are my favourites, especially “andâ€? which was spelled out of the laptop, external drive, wacom tablet and ipod speakers.”

Check out the rest of Kris Moyes’ excellent directorial work at his site.

KIM DULANEY

Greg C. pointed me towards the work of designer Kim Dulaney earlier today; her storyboards and illustrations are to kill for. Beautifully hand-created, each project listed is unique and varied. As evidenced by much of her work, Kim is a fulltime designer at Stardust. Lucky guys.

Gone Fishin’

“Onnazuri: or men, women, & capitalism” is a great animated short by Yusuke Murakami. Beautifully hand-drawn, Yusuke’s character animation is subtle and understated. One has to wonder how the docks are cleaned at the end of the day, however…

From Lithuania, with love

I just stumbled across the work of PetPunk, a Lithuanian freelance studio. It looks like two people, Andrius Kirvela and Gediminas Siaulys, are responsible for the studio, and they hire additional hands on a per-project basis. A nimble setup. The work is beautifully illustrative, but I think the best way to describe PetPunk is as playful. “Welcome“, an informational/musical about Lithuania, especially caught my eye. I can only hope they show it on large mega-screens at the border to inform the incoming tourist folk.

Visit PetPunk.

Thanks, Patrick.

Helios Design Labs / Nokia

What could be better than blowing the crap out of a bunch of consumer electronics? Blowing the crap out of them at six-thousand frames-per-second. And getting paid for it. It looks like Helios Design Laboratories had a blast (ha. ha.) with their latest project, an elegant run-through of a demolitionist’s fantasy. In ultra slow-mo, various gadgets explode into beautifully glittering fragments, the detritus of which eventually coalesce to form the latest Nokia.

While aesthetically beautiful, the technical hurdles were what made me curious about the spot. I talked with Alex from Helios, and he gave me a few specs:

“In order to minimize motion blur the shutter speed had to be at 1/10000 of a second. That meant a lot of light; at one point we were using 90000 watts. The heat generated when you focus that amount of light on a small area is insane: the plastic parts of the props would start melting after about a minute. Makes you kind of nervous when you know that they’re packed with explosives.”

Just another day at the office.

Check out the spot.

Helios also has some production stills from the project on their site, worth checking out.

JJ&Maithy Sweet’N Low Pt. Deux

Hornet’s JJ&Maithy just released a second, beautifully done Pink Panther spot for Sweet’N Low. I enjoyed the seamless blend of 3D and 2D animation in their first pass, and this spot one-up’s it. While still as silky smooth as its predecessor, “Switch Up” is a bit more ambitious with its larger focus on the stylized characters and detailed nighttime environments. And it’s more pink. Very pink. Inspirationally pink.

Check out “Switch Up”.

Buck Update

Buck just updated their site with a few notable spots: a branding for this year’s World Cup, and some action-packed Spike TV shorts. The World Cup intro especially is a fantastic spot, full of beautiful color palettes and Buck’s now-trademark 3D style.

Vist Buck.

America Fun-Pak

I got an enigmatic little e-mail this morning about “America Fun-Pak“. No mention of the creators’ identities, just a link. Parked on a domain with no content but an email address and a movie, I was a little curious. The movie turned out to be a beautifully detailed bit of satiric nostalgia, but after watching it a few times the message (if there is one) was still a bit unclear. Maybe you guys have a better idea.

Message aside, the visuals are definitely worth the visit alone. The “cut-and-paste-2.5d-jittercam-50s-world” has been done before, but the anonymous creators of America Fun-Pak executed it handsomely.

Visit America Fun-Pak.

Gaelle Denis / City Paradise

Gaelle Denis’ “City Paradise” is a wonderfully visual adventure of urban confusion. Initially set in a dismally urban London, the story follows the integration of a fictional Japanese immigrant “Tomoko”. Awkwardly long-limbed city denizens, bizarrely whimsical environments, and the infamous London climate all collaborate to kick the shit out of Tomoko’s comfort zone. Between the locals’ unintelligible speech, and their intimidating glances, the first half of the story beautifully externalizes Tomoko’s culture shock.

Just when she might be getting around to handling this acid-baked environment, Tomoko’s dealer ups the purity. Through the bowels of an English YMCA clone, our Japanese heroine tumbles into the hidden core of the city. Tomoko gets the opportunity to dance to the banjo-accordion tunes of the local Norns, before getting whisked back to the upper-London stratosphere. As part of her package vacation she gets some sort of Dandelion of Neverending Light, I guess as a testimony that it wasn’t “just a dream after all!”. After all of this, Tomoko seems to be a bit more at home in her new residence. Being vomited into the fantasy core of London by a giant jellyfish would definitely re-establish my concept of culture shock into the category of “not so fucking important”.

This piece is from 2004, so a few of you might have already happened upon it. It’s visuals are not dated however, and it’s a fun little bit of fancy that deserves any re-emergence it can get.

View “City Paradise”.