iancul

Great article about the glittering, Vegas-rivaling, Tokyo pachinko halls on Ping Mag, made by Tokyo Odyssey (check their website for more projects).

Seeing these amazing lighting solutions proved me yet again that light is one of the most impressive means of building architectural volumes, but also one of the most underestimated. Strange how we, humans, as civilization depend so much on our visual perception and still are toying around like dumb kids with one of physics strongest energies. It also pains me every time I’m involved in interior design projects, on one degree or another, to see how of little importance the lighting is to the architects or the client (can’t blame the latter, though, especially in Romania).

One of the rare things that impressed me during college was the lighting lecture kept by a great designer (even if he was a former doctor and also a plastic arts graduate), Mr. Savel Cheptea, one of the founders of the Design College in Cluj. He taught us the importance of good lighting, the effects it has on our eyes and especially on our working/reading stamina—by extending, the huge importance lighting has on our mood (ever wonder why you’re grumpier on rainy days?—it’s the lack of strong, warm sun light and the omnipresence of cold, shadowless light, not the rain itself). I bought that week a 200 watt light bulb for our student room, it boosted our drawing efficiency by at least two times, being able to draw till 4 or 5 in the morning without our eyes feeling the fatigue. After two weeks we got used to it so well that we could sleep with the light on, as others were working.

Most of my 3D renderings were light studies, I could fine tune radiosity and light scattering for days, but got bored in modelling in just three hours tops. The biggest pain while working as an interior designer was that the company made just 3DSMax scanline rendering for the clients, with no real light simulation whatsoever. Sure real light took hours of rendering compared to the 20-30 minute basic renders, and of course clients were visually uneducated (and sadly, still are in Romania). But lighting is one of the most important parts in interior design. Build anything you like, using the most amazing materials, put a 50 watt bulb inside and you’ve got nothing. Use just plasterboards and LED lighting and you can suggest any mood you’d like, from burning hot to freezing cold. And even if the client is uneducated, presenting a light study rather than a washed out top view image will help you sell the project a lot easier. Engineers can easily make top views, an architect should sell concepts, moods, impressions (Monet anyone?).

Sadly, romanian architecture is in the dark. The majority of public-interest buildings are either washed out with cheap lighting (not cheap actually, cost-inefficient to be more precise) or totally “stealth”, like haunted houses on a creepy road.

Concluding, here are some examples of superb lighting. You can easily guess the succes they have as a retail marketing and branding tool.

—or yet another possible title: how would Hari Seldon review The Good, The Bad And The Ugly finale.

Intriguing? Well, if you’ve never thought of applying game theory—wiki—to movies, here’s a treat:

I think that the final scene in this Clint Eastwood movie is the most outstanding example of game theory. Three men in a triangle — each with a gun, a rock at the center of the three. It is up to each man to evaluate his situation. All are excellent shots. Who do they shoot?

Clint has supposedly put a message on a rock that holds the key to everything, but do the other two trust Clint to have actually written the correct answer? As the other two evaluate the situation, they realize they can’t trust Clint to have written the answer on the rock — therefore they can’t shoot Clint who likely still has the answer. That means the other two can only shoot each other, but only one will likely hit before the other.

What they don’t know is that Clint has given one an unloaded gun… Clint can ignore this one. The one Clint has to worry about with the loaded gun will try to kill the one with the unloaded gun. Neither will fire at Clint. Clint will fire at the one with the loaded gun. As the camera passes from one face to the other the audience is meant to figure out what each would do.

The guy with the loaded gun shoots at the guy with the unloaded gun — Clint shoots the guy with the loaded gun. Game over. As with the hangings in the movie, he has dangled Duco out as bait while Clint takes the money.

The game is decided before it starts.

Clint sets up a situation where each evaluates their possible moves, but in reality, Clint has already won the game. Its a brilliant example of people making the best decisions based on the information available to them…and somebody manipulating the information available to them.

Phil Mellinger, 2002

Sounds like Asimov’s Hari Seldon has just used his psychohistory to find out if somebody’s gonna be a lucky punk :) Too bad scripts this good are so rare.

(via typographer)

Priceless. Gotta have one.

(via we ♥ it)

I remember that when I was a small kid, Kinder Surprise eggs had inside wonderful toys. In pieces, for me to mix’n'fix. Cars, planes, boats, dinosaurs, clowns, wacky flying machines, you name it. Putting them together was such a joy, especially if you didn’t look on the tiny guide.

These days we have Ikea. Every time I buy something from them I can’t wait to get home and spread all the parts on the floor, trying to figure out what goes where, first without looking at the guide :)

(the lamp in this photo didn’t take much effort to install, but the toy.. let’s just say that making models during design school certainly has its beauty, in spite of all the shortcomings - view larger on flickr)

Brad Bird, talking about Pixar’s modus operandi through nine valuable lessons, touches a very-often-forgotten aspect in most companies: morale.

Brad Bird: In my experience, the thing that has the most significant impact on a movie’s budget—but never shows up in a budget—is morale. [what’s true for a movie is true for a startup!] If you have low morale, for every $1 you spend, you get about 25 cents of value. If you have high morale, for every $1 you spend, you get about $3 of value. Companies should pay much more attention to morale.

Read the whole interview here.
(via Daring Fireball via Kotke)

I remember seeing The Bear That Wasn’t on Cartoon Network when I was a kid and being enchanted by its beautiful yet thought-provoking story. Chuck Jones made the animated short adapting Frank Tashlin’s book (hope amazon will be selling it again soon, i can’t buy from resellers in Romania).

(photo from Kip W’s The bear that wasn’t photo set - thank you Kim for scanning the whole book. Mind the beautiful typography in the title.)

The story beautifully touches the problems of urbanization, mass production, human alienation, workaholism and of course, the environment’s. It sounds over-ambitious for a cartoon, I know, but it’s amazing to see how easily these ideas are presented while keeping the cartoon entertaining even for small children (that will grow up and write rants like these :D). Graphic lines that entangle and move the characters, camera cuts made in an almost-comics-like manner (Samurai Jack’s got nothing on this :P), suited and colored to match every masterfully-drawn character’s personality, music that gives you that 50’s industrial feeling but still manages to describe different social statuses and sometimes even have a hint of techno sound, and last but not least, the wonderful storytelling make this cartoon a true gem.

Enjoy:

Too bad sometimes we let others convince us we’re just “a silly man who needs a shave and wears a fur coat”. Luckily some of us don’t buy that for too long.