FOTB2011 MAIN TITLES from GMUNK on Vimeo.
The man in the video represents you as the creative and he starts with blacked out closed vision. Through the sequence he is confronted with a series of characters. The first one is doubt represented by the reaper who he does battles with. Once he defeats doubt his vision starts clearing slightly. Next is the two gazelles who pull him and push him and he doesn't know which direction to take and once he has decided his vision again becomes wider. The final one is the fireball who he 'wrestles' with until eventually his vision is completely clear and all is well in the world again... phew. It was beautifully shot and I loved the simplicity of just a room with lots of lights and dance. Makes it look easy but you know it wasn't.
GMUNK also treated us on the day to the work he has done on Tron. Stunning effects. Exploding video sequences and sparkling 3D effects. Beautiful and inspiring. He shared some of his influences with us which included lots of data visualisation (Feltron - Genius) and architectural drawings which looked like abstract works of art.
HelloFlower creators HelloEnjoy supplied an inspiring session on the day showcasing the HelloFlower app. It's a lovely app, very light and entertaining. They put a lot of effort into the app to ensure it only creates beautiful flowers. It's free! Go get it now. Here is one of mine:
Jon Burgerman
More lovely work, the large scale pieces are awe inspiring. One of my favourites can be seen here: http://www.jonburgerman.com/Work/comments/sixty_showroom/
Also liked the audience participation stuff that he did. He created a lab out of cardboard in an exhibition space and invited people to participate in lab experiments and then created illustrations from this. He is obsessed with salads and gave us a great tip about baked potatoes - bake them, leave them overnight then toast them the next day, cover in humous (humous is optional). He also walked around the conference in the most amazing jacket covered in chips.
Seb Lee-Delisle
It was full on geek fest at 9.30 so I took a timeout in the kick-back lounge checking emails, datadoodling etc. Caught a glimpse of Seb LD in the corner of my eye. He was up next and I was expecting the best - he did not disappoint. Pixels for the people delivered all that was promised. He brought the audience together in a device sync up extravaganza. Audience participation and geek volunteers required. The audience was lit up in animating colour sequences. He did some cool geeky magic to find our device location then run his app and we all glowed pixel perfect.
Pixels for The People (quick snips) from Momo the Monster on Vimeo.
Joel Gethin Lewis
His showreel is immense. He shared some interactive pieces with us like Coke 24 hr music. I was truly inspired not just by his work but his whole ethos. Loved the stuff he was doing with the autistic kids. It was very touching and seeing them respond like that must be the most rewarding feeling. Would love to help him out.
Hillman Curtis
Mr Cool... he showed us a trailer for a film he has done a film called 'Ride, Rise, Roar' featuring David Byrne from the 08/09 tour. I got to see the tour which was spectacular so I'm looking forward to seeing some of the behind-the-scenes footage. We also had a glimpse of the film he is doing with Stefan Sagmeister called 'The Happy Film'. One clip showed a young Stefan plucking up the courage to tell a woman on the subway that she looked beautiful - a story he shared with us at last years FOTB. He confessed that it doesn't get any easier a task. Another clip showed him handing out a flower and trying to get a date. It was a little awkward to watch and I'm looking forward to seeing the rest. There were a few more tears watching another of his interviews with a guy who had been diagnosed with HIV. He got this man to open up who rarely talked about himself and what was happening to him. All the films are beautifully shot with an elegance which makes them flow and so enthralling to watch.
James Victore (aka muthafletcher)
Inspiring, funny, all hands on, no digital. Got to have a few drinks and laughs with him later on after my colleague grabbed him and his friends of the street. He started taking pictures of us so I thought it only fair to return the favour. That's the very talented Jessica Hirsch in the background. The guy in the blue shirt was called Matt McGuinness (thanks Paul for finding that out) and he had worked with James on a project for the School of Visual Arts. We talked about all the usual stuff, Jersey Shores, TOWIE, Geordie Shores and the upcoming Scouse Shores (oh the shame!). Oh yeah and James complimented me on my shoes :) Great night. Thanks Neil.
Jessica Hirsch
Beautiful illustration and lettering designer. Loved the board game about divorce. Very funny.
Han Hoogerbrugge
Hilarious!
Elevator Pitch
The ones that stood out the most were:
Simon Santavirta - Very pretty music visualisations.
Pete Mäsesde - Flash game in 3 minutes
Anders Figenschow - He had created an impressive subtitler which was very funny - the guy doesn't have a website or a demo online that I can share - Fail
Jeremy Thorp
Lots of lovely data visualisation using Processing. He shared the NYTimes Project Cascade which illustrates avitivies on the web from a news article and follows how the conversation expands and is shared socially online. It explores behaviors and analyses the data. It's uber cool and beautiful.
He also shared his ideas about we record events and build up our personal history in photographs taken or tweets we post and locations we tag ourselves in. Our record will look a lot different that just looking back at photo albums.
My colleague an I also made it onto the big screen in this presentation :)
Jared Ficklin
After a brief introduction to the various types of facial hair Jared showed us a lot of lovely work. There is an element of the mad scientist to his work which he does in his 'man cave'.
Lots of dangerous elements - he uses a lot of fire.
Check out some more on his youtube channel here.
Lots of audio and motion responsive visualisation too. He also showed us some ghostbuster style goo of corn starch and water which was had alternative reactions to the type of touch or impact you applied to it. It was very cool shit. Touch it softly and it was gooey, but touch with high impact and it didn't budge. So he used audio vibration to see what kind of response he got. the results are below.
There was so much more that he showed and I was eager to get a front row seat in front of the main stage for Joshua Davis.
Josh-oo-arrrr Davis
Star! The closing to another great FOTB and who better to do it.
I love his whole persona. He is incredibly funny and entertaining character who puts on a real performance. He is a very talented bloke but there is no ego about him and he is very approachable.
He showed his project with IBM and the creation of Mr Watson. Also some of the outcomes from his workshop at Anderson ranch. Besides his lovely work he shared some of his fails and his personal battle with the booze. He shared his studio space and his beloved half pipe and we got to see the creative dark mind of his daughter and her love killing robot - genius!!
We legged it to the train and started the trek back up north. Another goodun!
You can see some of the pics I took over here on flickr.
This following pic was taken after the Victore session. I think he inspired us :)
