Walt Disney explains the latest in animation technology
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Tag Archives: animation
Deadline
This video was directed by Bang-yao Liu at Savannah College of Art and Design
By the way – it’s always a good idea to document your design process in some way. It makes a great promotional tool and potential employers always seem more interested in your process than the end product…
The Making of Doctor Who
A recent event at BAFTA gave people the opportunity to see how special effects and other aspects of Doctor Who are designed. The video below gives a small taste but you can see the full 1-hour video at BAFTA’s website.
Lights, Action—Animation
From Design@tive and ShanghaiDaily.com
The Pudong New Area government expects to attract more than 200 animation and cartoon enterprises into Zhangjiang High-tech Park within five to 10 years, the district government said yesterday.
To forge the city’s animation industry base in Zhangjiang, the government plans to set up an “animation valley” as Phase 2 of the Zhangjiang Creative Industry Base.
The plan also involves building China’s first animation museum and animation cinema. The “animation valley” will be a market-oriented research and development platform jointly invested by the Pudong New Area government, Shanghai Zhangjiang (Group) Co Ltd and Shanghai Movie Art Academy, district officials said.
The final goal within a decade is to create more than 5 billion yuan (US$730 million) in output value of animation-related products, and have three to five leading companies in the comics and animation, film and TV post-production and design sectors. In other words, it will be cartoon central.
A complete industry chain including creation, planning, brokerage, post-production, marketing, communication, extensive development and tourism is expected to be forged.
In the past three years, Zhangjiang Creative Industry Base has attracted more than 20 companies in comics and animation making. Those companies have been cooperating with Net-games firms.
Typolution
Musiography, or typusic?
Representing classical music
This advertisement for Zurich Chamber Orchestra is a clever interpretation of what it feels like to listen to a live orchestra (if you’ve never done it, give it a go).
I’m not keen on the choice of music in the ad, and a more dramatic piece would have made the point a lot more clearly, but the concept is clever.
On Paul Rand
Paul Rand is pretty much a god in graphic design circles and to say anything against him is a cardinal sin.
Personally, I’m not keen on a lot of his designs (there, I said it) and think that if anyone else had come up with the NEXT logo (the computer company, not the clothes shop) it would have been heavily criticised.
I’m also not a big fan of a lot of what Rand wrote – reading his views on design education (it shouldn’t make students think, apparently), creativity (only a few are chosen and creativity is the work of divine intervention) and of the role of the client (to paraphrase: shut up and be told what’s good for you) make me wonder if he wasn’t just having a laugh.
Rand failed to distinguish between graphic design and art – Bourdieu would have had a field day on this – and as a consequence was ignorant of the true purpose of graphic design. He saw it as a personal expression of the artist and was a strong critic of its ‘commercial’ aspect. Ultimately, it strikes me that he wanted to be an artist, but couldn’t see a way of making money from it, so became a graphic designer instead.
This video, which is very well made and includes some quintessential Rand (as well as some of the crap: the IBM logo, the NEXT logo and the one for UPS – all three of which are held in high esteem by everyone except me, mind, so go figure) also includes some classic Rand rubbish on what graphic design is.
The world Rand inhabited was not the world most graphic designers inhabit. In that, he was fortunate. I’m happy for him to have been an artist, but I don’t think his work or views should be given the prominence they are because they risk designers becoming prima donnas. In today’s world of co-design and design as a service to others, this view is outdated and dangerous. Why he’s still seen as a voice of wisdom in a world where projects such as DOTT 07 are seen as being so important I don’t know. It’s like asking a T-Rex to describe the benefits of climate change.
I’m now going off to say ten Hail Marys for uttering such blasphemy…
Dropclock
If you love Helvetica this much, here’s a screensaver for you…
I have to admit I haven’t quite ‘got’ Twitter yet. I’m on there somewhere (search for me), and I know of quite a few design and tech communities that interact brilliantly using it, but for me it’s just a bit too much ‘noise’ in an already noisy world.
If you’ve not heard of Twitter, or don’t understand it, this YouTube video does a very good job of explaining it. It’s also quite a nice little informational movie.
