Blogbook
Fox and the Whale is a beautiful animated short by Robin Joseph and Kim Leow, about a magical meeting of different species. Via Variety:
The credits for Robin Joseph’s animated short “Fox and the Whale” are incredibly brief. The 12-minute blend of computer and hand-drawn animation was mostly done by Joseph himself and his partner, CG animator Kim Leow, with no outside funding and very little, yet notable, outside help.
The film is the lyrical tale of a curious fox trying find to an elusive whale that he hears from ashore. “The inspiration for ‘Fox and the Whale’ was the pursuit of curiosity. Not so much a primal curiosity behind food, shelter, or even play. It was more about the grey areas and often abstract pursuits. The drive of wanting to know what lies beyond the abyss,” says Joseph. “The ambitions at the fringes of it often seem one step beyond reach. The fact that we still try instills a sense of awe and wonder. At the other end is an idea of failure, or at least what is perceived as failure. The fortitude to move forward and keep searching in spite of it. It’s a fragile state of mind at times, but to me it holds such optimism.”
“Fox and the Whale” is Joseph’s first professional film, and that drove his decision to do most of the production himself, with Leow doing the CG animation. “Kim was the sole CG character animator. Kim also did the character models and rigs,” Joseph explains. “My role was everything else: from design, boards, background paintings, the odd bits of 2D animation, visual effects, compositing, editing, recording the foley and final sound.”
Joseph did get some valuable help from award-winning sound designer Tim Nielsen. “The Little Prince” director Mark Osborne connected Joseph with Nielsen after Joseph’s original sound designer fell through. The film was already finished, so Joseph tried to do the sound work himself, but didn’t have much money left in the budget. Nielsen didn’t have time to do any work on the project, “but Tim is such a gem of a human being, he surprised me by sending a massive sound library of his field recordings for use in the short. I sourced most of the final sound design from the raw files Tim loaned me,” says Joseph. Nielsen also offered advice throughout the final mix. “He had a busy schedule, yet always left room for me to give him a quick ring,” Joseph recalls. “I really couldn’t have finished the film without Tim. I really, really got lucky here.”
Blue is an Australian documentary that’s a love letter to the world’s oceans–as well as a warning about what we’re doing to them. Via the Sydney Morning Herald:
Directed by the Australian scientist Karina Holden, Blue concentrates on the ocean, with a series of segments – filmed mainly in Australia and South East Asia – that dwell on the disastrous impact of pollution, global warming and over-fishing.
Voiceover narration is supplied by various conservationists and other concerned citizens; though the script, which has its share of purple passages, is credited solely to Holden.
Most of the segments follow the same pattern: starting out with the beauty of nature, then showing it despoiled. Shark fins lopped off; seabirds caught in plastic; bleached coral reefs, like abandoned bones. These are images seemingly meant to induce the opposite of pleasure; though Ash Gibson Greig’s soothing score lets us experience them as grimly beautiful in their own way.
One of the best sequences reminds us that aquatic filmmaking has a history of its own: an encounter with 81-year-old shark expert Valerie Taylor whose documentaries – made with her husband Ron from the 1960s onward – have found several generations of fans. Today’s oceans are still beautiful, she says, but with marine life depleted and diversity vastly reduced, they’re nothing like those she explored in her younger days.
The Strange Science of the Impossible Burger, marketed as the vegan burger that “bleeds”… and apparently tastes close to meat. Via Wired:
There are other veggie burgers on the market, of course, but Impossible Foods wants to sell consumers a real meat analog—one that requires a very different kind of engineering than your Boca or black bean burgers. So WIRED wants to take you on the deepest dive yet into the science behind the Impossible Burger.
Biting into an Impossible Burger is to bite into a future in which humanity has to somehow feed an exploding population and not further imperil the planet with ever more livestock. Because livestock, and cows in particular, go through unfathomable amounts of food and water (up to 11,000 gallons a year per cow) and take up vast stretches of land. And their gastrointestinal methane emissions aren’t doing the fight against global warming any favors either (cattle gas makes up 10 percent of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide).
This is the inside story of the engineering of the Impossible Burger, the fake meat on a mission to change the world with one part soy plant, one part genetically engineered yeast—and one part activism. As it happens, though, you can’t raise hell in the food supply without first raising a few eyebrows.
The ins and outs of crowdfunding and what the phenomenon is about is explained here by the viral card game, Exploding Kittens. Via Vox:
What’s the real appeal of crowdfunding? If you ask the creator of Exploding Kittens, the record-breaking Kickstarter-born card game, the answer is something more surprising than dollar signs.
I spoke with Elan Lee about his game’s stunning success, and why he and his fellow co-founders decided to draw from the crowdfunding well once again for their second game, Bears vs. Babies. As the above video shows, their emphasis on community isn’t just PR — it’s a plank of their business.
Kickstarter puts an emphasis on community as well. I spoke to Kickstarter CEO and cofounder Yancey Strickler at this year’s TED conference to learn about his philosophy behind running the crowdfunding company. He’s backed thousands of projects because, like Elan Lee, he believes understanding community is key to understanding his business.
Watch the video above to learn what crowdfunded hits really say about crowdfunding, beyond the money-focused headlines. Just make sure to watch out for those exploding kittens.
We’ve played Exploding Kittens after its release, a fun group game that does admittedly get a little repetitive once there are fewer defuse cards available. Check out the video – and the game!
Trans-Siberian • Trans-Mongolian is a beautiful short film about the longest railway in the world, showcasing 2 weeks of experiences. Via the film’s description:
This is a short film on the centenary Trans-Siberian Railway. We embarked August 2017 expecting to live a romantic long train journey, but it wasn’t only that: we enjoyed 2 weeks of absorbing and great experiences, both on the train and in the cities we visited. We departed from Moscow and stopped in Ekaterinburg, Irkutsk, Baikal Lake and Ulan-Ude, the formerly closed city in which we took the Trans-Mongolian route to UlaanBaatar to after visit the spectacular Mongolian countryside.
101 years after it was completed, the Trans-Siberian still keeps the tranquility and nostalgia of an historical ride.
—
A film by J.J. Guillermo
Production by Raquel Delgado
—
Technical:
Cameras: Sony a7s, GoPro Hero 4 Black Edition
Lenses: Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS II USM, Yongnuo 35mm f./2
GoPro Stabilizer: Feiyu G4s
Edited in: Final Cut Pro X
Music: “In the Distance” by Tony Anderson. Licensed: musicbed.com
—
Special Thanks:
Antonio Pinto
Little Tuvshinzaya
In case you’re not yet convinced, here’s a Guardian article about what it’s like to be on board the train:
It sounds simple, and it is, but to understand the Trans-Siberian journey, you need to look out of the window. First, there are the station stops. Some have fantastically long tongue-twister names, such as Uyarspasopreobrazhenskoye. Hard-to-spot kilometre posts edge the railway line, marking the distance covered. The countryside changes but retains a comforting familiarity, a snowy bucolic theme. Outside Moscow I scrutinised the picket-fenced dachas (summer houses) painted in pastel colours. Later on in the journey, I watched out for differences in the izbi (Siberian huts) with their painted shutters and log piles.
Brandon Dayton, who worked as a concept artist at Disney Interactive for several years, shares why he quit his dream job. Via DesignTaxi:
Clinching a job at Disney can be considered a dream come true for many artists around the world. This was no different for former Disney Interactive employee Brandon Dayton, who worked as a concept artist inside the company for several years. Dayton, who has worked as a professional artist for more than 10 years, explains inside the video’s description:
“In the fall of 2015 I quit the best job I could have ever dreamed of…I made art for a living, got good benefits and got to go to Disneyland for free.”
Despite being able to work “with a group of amazing artists” and earn “a decent salary,” Dayton shares in his clip that he’d constantly felt something was missing on a personal level, a sentiment that he sums up with this quote by Walt Disney:
“We don’t make movies to make money, we make money to make more movies.”
While that might have been Disney’s strategy in yesteryear, the world has changed and today, Dayton feels that the focus has severely shifted. He contrasts this with a quote by Robert Iger—current Chief Executive Officer at Disney—on the company’s present strategy that was cited inside the LA Times:
“We know how to leverage or mine value from [intellectual property] probably better than any media company out there.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kupi0IfUbJI
The embattled Seaworld brand’s latest campaign is From Park to Planet, with a successful ad that became the most liked ad of the 3rd quarter. Via Adweek:
While there’s nothing revolutionary about the ad or its creative approach, those cuddly rescued animals and feel-good vibes did really resonate with viewers. Still, it’s surprising, perhaps, especially considering the source, that “From Park to Planet” nosed out content ranging from GE’s inspirational “Meet Molly,” about an amazingly inventive young girl, and Walmart’s heart-tugging hurricane relief spot.
In fact, according to Ace Metrix, the SeaWorld spot “ranks as the single highest-rated travel ad” in the research group’s database, which dates back to 2010. “Viewers were moved by the powerful message, which was reinforced by beautiful visuals,” Ace says in a post published with the rankings. “After dealing with a tarnished reputation in recent years, SeaWorld successfully demonstrated to most viewers that they are committed to making a positive impact on this planet.”
Michael Rentiers, president of brands and advocacy at Push Digital, says that his shop—well-versed in crisis communications and political campaigns—chose to create inclusive content that emphasizes SeaWorld’s broader mission beyond its tarnished reputation as an entertainment venue.
“Our goal was to cut through the clutter and to present SeaWorld in a new light, with a larger mission that every SeaWorld guest contributes to,” he tells Adweek. “We wanted people to see that SeaWorld is a premier destination that is a force for good in the world. We absolutely feel like we are accomplishing our goal. A good political approach is about moving people to take action. We took a creative and emotional approach to a direct message: ‘Together, we can save the oceans and ocean animals, and have fun doing it.’”
Google’s geometrically flawed logo is not, in fact, a design mistake – as this video explains. It’s a balancing and visual decision. Via DesignTaxi:
Google’s logo has become the topic of much discussion lately. After a Reddit thread comparing the original versus its geometrically perfect version surfaced, the subject quickly gained traction among Reddit users and graphic designers across the internet.
The side-by-side sparked design critiques about how geometric precision did not equate to visual appeal, amongst other thoughts and opinions.
Will Paterson—freelance graphic designer specialized in logo design and brand identity, who’s previously shared valuable tutorials such as the Illustrator pen tool hack that shaves hours off digitizing logotypes, and how to use the golden ratio in logo design—succinctly sums up why the original symbol is not a design mistake.
Paterson presents the Nintendo Switch logo as a relevant example, where optical balance was prioritized over geometric perfection. He visually demonstrates how an ideally circular ‘G’ would throw the entire logo off and why—despite being “mathematically wrong”—Google’s logo is “optically correct.”
Google itself provided an explanation for its rebranding philosophy a few years ago:
The web giant’s principal justification for its redesign was legibility, reinforcing a century-old assumption that sans serif fonts are intrinsically easier to read. The popularity of this connection has its genesis with the London Underground font, designed by Edward Johnston and Eric Gill and which they claimed drastically improved reading times.
In this respect, Google’s shift to a flat sans serif in a slightly muted palette continues the vogue for neomodern design in web services. It is an aesthetic perfectly suited to the current era, in which our lives are dominated by ubiquitous telephony and the proliferation of “smart” devices – from wristwatches to refrigerators. The gradual decline of drop shadows, textures, embellishments and photographic logos are all intended to reduce screen clutter and achieve one end: higher data entry speeds.
First footage of Annihilation, the new film from Ex Machina’s director Alex Garland, adapting the popular book by Jeff VanderMeer. Via Screenrant:
Natalie Portman’s upcoming film, Annihilation, has a cryptic trailer that may create more questions than answers. Based on Jeff VanderMeer’s novel of the same name, Annihilation is Alex Garland’s newest directorial project. Garland began his career in film as a screenwriter, writing 28 Days Later and Sunshine among others, before taking on the role of director with Ex Machina. Ex Machina, which embraced and defied science fiction and horror tropes, went on to win an Oscar for its special effects. Annihilation will also explore the relationship between science fiction and horror – and the special effects in the trailer look excellent – but its similarities to Ex Machina may end there.
The novel Annihilation is the first of three books in the Southern Reach trilogy. It is told from the perspective of Natalie Portman’s character, known exclusively by her job title “the Biologist”. The other two books in the Southern Reach trilogy, Authority and Acceptance, are narrated by other characters. The trilogy gets its name from the Southern Reach, a mysterious organization that is facilitating scientific explorations into Area X, a region that is undergoing a drastic and otherworldly environmental change. The Southern Reach is a corporate entity, but they have partnered with the United States government and military to secure the border to Area X to prevent anyone from getting in – or anything from getting out.
A number of images from the trailer also appear in the book’s imagery: the lighthouse, the tower/tunnel, the cross-pollination of animals and plants, the human-like plants (or are they plant-like humans?). Just as the mysterious “it” that Portman’s character is questioned about in the trailer defies categorization, much of the flora and fauna of Area X continuously pushes the boundaries of how our society understands language, intelligence, and life. The book Annihilation is less concerned with how exactly Area X came to be, and more concerned with how humans have to confront their own limitations within this incomprehensible and seemingly hostile environment.
Ark Nova is the world’s first inflatable concept hall – a concept by Arata Isozaki and Anish Kapoor. It’s ballooned up in Tokyo Midtown for the Lucerne Festival. Via Japan Today:
Tokyo Midtown celebrated 10 years of operation this spring, while this July the total number of visitors exceeded 300 million. To commemorate this first decade, Midtown will host the Lucerne Festival Ark Nova 2017. It is a massive mobile concert hall measuring 18 meters high, 30 meters across and 36 meters deep and has a capacity of 494 people and appears in Tokyo for the first time.
The Lucerne Festival Ark Nova was planned by the long-standing Swiss music festival, the Lucerne Festival, in order to help support recovery from the East Japan Earthquake. Produced by world-renowned architect Arata Isozaki and English sculptor Anish Kapoor. It has been erected a total of three times in the past, between 2013 and 2015, in Matsushima, Sendai and Fukushima, holding concerts and workshops and attracting a total of 19,000 visitors. Tokyo Midtown fully supports this undertaking, and this fall, six and a half years since the disaster, will host the Lucerne Festival Ark Nova for a period of 16 days. During this time it will be open to the public have concerts and movie screenings.