I’ve posted this on Facebook as well, but in case you miss it, you absolutely must check out this music video. Comprised of 2,096 still frames shot in only two days.

YouTube: Her Morning Elegance

Taken from PDN’s article Her Morning Video: A Surprise Sensation (April 2010), where I read about it:

Made up of 2,096 still images shot in just two days in photographer Eyal Landesman’s Tel Aviv studio, the stop-motion music video for Oren Lavie’s song “Her Morning Elegance” has been viewed over 10.5 million times on YouTube. It’s also been shown at film festivals in Europe and America, and been featured in media from Yahoo Headline News to Jimmy Kimmel Live. The whimsical video, directed by Lavie and animators Yuval and Meirav Natan, shows a woman waking up and then walking to work, riding a train, flying and swimming—all without leaving her bed.

Landesman, a photographer known for his dance and theater photos, began working on the project in January 2009 when he was contacted by the directors, who thought his experience documenting choreographed movement and his work on commercials made him well suited to shooting stop motion. Landesman proposed shooting the stills in his studio for maximum control on a minimal budget. The team created a simple bedroom set and got friends to move in a mattress. They created a rig to hang Landesman’s Canon 5D over the bed to shoot the stills from above, and then tethered it to a laptop on the floor. Landesman chose to use flicker-free tungsten lighting to keep the lighting consistent in all the frames.

“We did a lot of tests.” Landesman says. In shooting stop motion, “You must know in advance how many frames each movement, step or jump will take.”

The directors had spent weeks storyboarding the video on the computer using 3-D modeling and an animation program. When it came to the shoot, however, they had their model for only two days. “We knew the video would take more than 2,000 frames. We realized that with 48 hours for shooting we [had] only two minutes for each frame,” says the photographer. That meant they had to rush to move the bed sheets that made up the backdrops and rearrange the props between each shot.

The schedule allowed the model, actress Shir Shomron, time get up and stretch “and a small break for sleeping,” says Landesman. “After 15 minutes with her leg in one position, she [got] a lot of pain.” Luckily Shomron practices yoga, so she could hold a position for five minutes. But given the importance of maintaining continuity, the photographer says, “Every time she got up from the bed, we had to figure out where she was on the bed and then she had to return to the same place.”

For the rest of the article, visit PDN’s site here.

A poster I designed for the upcoming Black & White exhibition at the Center for Fine Art Photography. The recent series of posters have been very successful and well received. I am pleased with how well the designs are creating brand recognition. The Black & White exhibition runs August 28 – September 26. Be sure to stop in and see the work.

A poster I designed for f/stop cafe and their Tritone Fridays happening every friday through the summer.

Check it out: ’skine.art.

You are asked to do or create something which you know to be wrong or otherwise an embarrassment to your craft. On the one hand, you are being paid for your services and talent, and are obligated to do what the client wishes. On the other hand, after this client is gone, all you are left with is money (hopefully) and this piece which is, at best, useless for your portfolio, at worst, has your name and pride attached to it. There must be a point where you have to self-preserve and say enough is enough.

I suppose if you were a full-blown employee, it doesn’t much matter. Nothing you do has any direct bearing on you, and you can’t use anything for a personal portfolio anyway. However, for a self-employed designer/photographer/artist/etc, all you have is your portfolio. A creative’s portfolio is the holy grail for prospective new clients and employers; resumes come second, if at all. So if you’ve filled your portfolio with crappy work you knew sucked when you created it, but still made money, where does that leave you for the future? Ultimately not in a good position I’m afraid. Telling your future employer at an interview that the reason that project looks horrid was the client’s fault, probably won’t go over so hot.

What about you guys? Thoughts?

As if the Fort Collins logo fiasco hasn’t gone on long enough, I present to you a page containing submissions from local citizens for our new city logo. Warning, shield your eyes, it may be the worst design work you’ve ever seen.

Fort Collins Logo Project

Via the Denver Egotist.

Renowned French designer Philippe Starck says he is fed up with his job and plans to retire in two years, in an interview published in a German weekly on Thursday. “I was a producer of materiality and I am ashamed of this fact,” Starck told Die Zeit weekly news blockquote paper.

“Everything I designed was unnecessary.

“I will definitely give up in two years’ time. I want to do something else, but I don’t know what yet. I want to find a new way of expressing myself… design is a dreadful form of expression.”

Starck, who is known for his interior design of hotels and Eurostar trains and mass consumption objects ranging from chairs to tooth brushes and lemon juice squeezers, went on to say that he believed that design on the whole was dead.

“In future there will be no more designers. The designers of the future will be the personal coach, the gym trainer, the diet consultant,” he said.

Starck said the only objects that he still felt attached to were “a pillow perhaps and a good mattress.” But the thing one needs most, he added, was the “ability to love”.

While I don’t agree that design is dead, I do share his sentiment that it’s not a super great form of expression for me. I’m looking to see what other paths my talent and desire can take me. Focusing more on video and photo seem the most promising and interesting.

Via The Ad Mad.

Go to the beach and realize you got a scanline across your tanline.
And find microchips in your hands, fluid in your Grands; as a result of somebody else’s plans, that nobody really understands. Even though it spans across lands, African soils to Arabian sands. It’s airborne, yet it seeps through them.

A new disease that you caught a Micky D’s, in your quarter pounder with cheese. Order with ease, super-size please. Can you believe? People don’t even survive through the drive-thru, and they thought they were live too. Pullin’ off, pumping raw bass, stuffin’ fries in they face.

Over a billion served what they never deserved. Soles, they drove away, they swerved into the curb. With they head on the steerin’ wheel, Kids blacked out in the back with the fuckin’ happy meal. What a crappy deal. But it was only 4.99, so there’s more people in line. Yeah the plan’s workin’ fine. The parkin’ lot is now a burial plot, where you can park and rot, if you can find a spot.

~Mr. Lif – The Fries