Amazing cellist, Giovanni Sollima. Also, nice video, insane on some parts, painstakingly made. I love how well the development of the music is represented by the multitude of hands. The second part reminds me of “Flight Of The Bumblebee”. Enjoy:
here is the second part:
and definitely check out this mindblowing project with ice instruments:
Loads of ninjas doing all sorts of stuff, from fighting, killing, training to cooking, floating and dancing, all in Scott Campbell’s wall “scroll”. I’d definitely hang this on my wall (too bad it’s 150$ :(, but I guess art is worth paying for) – click for larger version:
It’s part of an exihibition called “Ninja Show: Revenge Of The Ninja 2″
Here are some delightfull close-ups:
It’s not every day that I find a new band to like, yet alone two (see my previous post about The Silk Demise).
Meet Blue Foundation, a danish electronic music group (wiki). Imagine a Bjork-like voice, superb trip-hop beats, great turntable scratching, haunting piano and violins and you get a close image of what they sound like. Sometimes they remind me of Massive Attack, sometimes of Portishead, but they surely have their own sound.
This video is called End of the day, from their 2004 album, Sweep Of Days (great album, almost perfect). Enjoy:
It’s very frustrating when you make something that you know is good, something you believe in, and the client just throws it away. But it’s one of the downsides of our job and you learn in time to live with it (but never accept it completely).
But worse than that is seeing some of your rejected work having being done by somebody else. That really pisses you off.
Last year I was still working for Lowe&Partners, as an art director, and together with my copywriter, Alexandra, we were the ones assigned to Unilever’s Axe account (our creative directors were Avi and Diana, they are now self employed at Mercenar – check their site for some nice award-winning works). We did a lot of things for them, some great, some not-so-great, many adaptations, as the client usually preffered to adapt foreign Axe campaigns from other countries than approve something new and original, made specifically with the local target in mind. Plus the eternal “small budget” problems. Among many unconventional ideas that we presented, one looked exactly like this (larger image on Ads of the world):
We presented the same concept, with similar execution.
Life isn’t fair, I know.
From what I hear, another nice concept we made, still for Axe, which got postponed many times, will be made by another ad agency (wouldn’t really matter anyway, since I no longer work for Lowe). At least I hope they’ll make it right, I’d be glad to see it well executed.
Superb music from this canadian duo, The Silk Demise. And not only do they make great music, they also give it for free on their site (hoping that honest people will donate through PayPal or buy their cd from amazon).
The first album is amazing, a true delight, reminding me of Unkle, Massive Attack, sometimes Faithless :). The second one has less vocals, more psychedelic samples, instrumental, almost a goa-like trip-hop.
You can hear some of the tracks on their myspace page. I highly recommend The Garden and Corridor Fog. They also have a blog.
Highly recommended for electronic music fans.
Enjoy.
Read this article (via Ideasonideas) today and I was pleasantly surprised by the simple yet beautiful and meaningful quote from the title.
As a coincidence, while waiting in line at a bank today I couldn’t help overhearing a man talking. Smart dressed, handsome and well built, expensive suit, in his thirties, the guy screamed “pro lawyer” from miles away. And indeed he was. While observing his way of talking, gesturing, sitting on a chair, all giving away his profession, I realised that this is what most of the people do, they work. And as I was looking at him and the bank’s employee (beautiful antithesis, the bank employee was thin, hunched, very young, pale, blue eyes over a long jewish nose, almost a real image of Bugs Bunny’s enemy, the bald eagle :)), leaning over his keyboard as if being afraid of doing something wrong) a question struck me:
How much fun do people have when they work? Are doing it just for the money, just because they need a job to live, to pay the rent and all the bills? Or do they really enjoy and live their work, with all its good parts and bad parts?
Then I thought I’m lucky. We designers do not work, we get paid for something we like doing any way. Sure there are many times when it seems that certain projects are just mind-exausting headaches, complete fuckups, nothing to be proud of. But we still do something creative, even for the worst client ever (I’m not talking about designers that have lost their soul, obviusly). We get to play every day, just like kids do in kindergarden. We get to dream, to imagine, to invent, to rediscover.
I’d say that getting paid to play with forms and colours all day long is quite the ideal job, isn’t it?
(except being a computer games tester, maybe :P)
Or any kind of art, for that matter? (and by art I do not reffer only to the 6 or so arts, but to all human arts, from wine making, cooking, child teaching, hair cutting, client selling, football playing, anything that implies a degree of lifetime effort to be better and better at what we do).
Legend has it that Pablo Picasso was sketching in the park when a bold woman approached him.
“It’s you — Picasso, the great artist! Oh, you must sketch my portrait! I insist.â€
So Picasso agreed to sketch her. After studying her for a moment, he used a single pencil stroke to create her portrait. He handed the woman his work of art.
“It’s perfect!†she gushed. “You managed to capture my essence with one stroke, in one moment. Thank you! How much do I owe you?â€
“Five thousand dollars,†the artist replied.
“B-b-but, why?†the woman sputtered. “How could you want so much money for this picture? It only took you a second to draw it!â€
To which Picasso responded, “Madame, it took me my entire life.â€
Another similar thing, this time a real fact, was James McNeill Whistler’s (american-british painter) response to John Ruskin, a very respected art critic during the Whistler-Ruskin trial:
In 1878 Whistler sued the critic John Ruskin for libel after the critic condemned his painting Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket (..)
At the trial, the lawyer for John Ruskin, cross examined Whistler, “Mr Whistler, tell me, how long did it take you to paint Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket? “Half a day.” replied Whistler. “So,” continued the lawyer, “you are charging two hundred guineas for half a day’s work?” “No.” replied Whistler. “For the experience of a life time.”
Next time you think about how much to ask for a job, for a project, for a part of your life experience, think well.
How much does a part of your life cost ? Designers are not janitors, paid by the hour for sweeping x number of hallways. Designers do not sell groceries. Even farmers (especially romanian ones) are underpaid, nobody thinks about how much effort and risk goes into growing one feeble carrot. Pulling it out of from the dirt may be worth just one buck, but how about the countless hours of care before ? Tracing a photo in 20 minutes, designing a logo in 2 hours, drawing a simple (but not simplistic) symbol in 10 seconds may look like only a ten-dollar effort, but how about the kilometers of lines drawn before, the countless tweakings of just one bezier point that doesn’t “look right”, that made that 10-second symbol possible ?
Nowadays people are fighting for the smallest price. Capitalism, they say. So hello, indian programmers, chinese workers, ukrainean web designers and so on. Just because these people can’t afford to ask for a normal price, but can afford to work for so little money because they live in cheap, under development countries, everybody rushes to use them, happy that they’ve just saved one hundred bucks. Quality is less important. Price is the supreme ruler.
Is it for free? Yes? Can I get it any cheaper than that? Then I’ll have five, please.
It’s all about respect, I think. And recognition.
Respect for the professional, for the one that chose to dedicate his/her life to doing just that, the thing you need now. Recognition for the value you receive. The value that will help you in being more succesful in your business, in being prettier, richer, stronger, healthier, happier or whatever else you wanted. You had a problem, and the professional helped you with it. That deserves compensation. Equal compensation.
You get what you pay for.
Or should I say SISO – shit input, shit output?
These days, “everyone’s in the design business“, as Mr. Robert Wong puts it very well.
Thanks Trick for reminding me about Picasso. And good luck in Italy ;)
Watching “Jojo In The Stars“, Kit told me it left him breathless, thus reminding me of one animation that since the first time I’ve watched it (still in Poland) has managed to make me deeply shiver with emotion every time. It’s called “More” (you can download it from the site, if you use quicktime pro :P), directed by Marc Osborne. It was nominated for Oscar in 1999. It is wonderful how well the stop-motion animation combines with the touching music, managing to portray creation’s torments.
Much later update: embeding has been disabled for this, but you can still view the animation here.
What greater way of showing everybody’s talent than building an entire pixel-art-city, allowing you to see each artist’s “crib” :)
I was still in Poland, third year of study, when I discovered, among tons of other short animations, the work of Marc Craste. His “Pica Towers” short series left me craving for more of that bleak, spooky, twisted, but nevertheless beautiful and fascinating universe (check the site to see them). Then I read about a longer short, still in production at that time, called “Jojo In The Stars”. I’ve watched the trailer over and over again, haunted by the eerie music, searching frantically for the full version. And since then, I’ve still done it from time to time.
Today I was very glad to find it, mainly because I remembered I should try searching for it again, reading CRBlog’s entry about Marc Craste’s work for Guinness (which is great, btw). So here it is, enjoy it properly by turning off the light and bumping up the volume:
jojo in the stars
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By the way, AnimWatch is a great resource for finding and reading about new or old short animations.
