WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

It's been a rough week, you might agree, and no one put it better than The Onion right here, which captures pretty well how I was feeling the last few years following the general news. And I always thought they were in the business of satire... Steve's passing definitely beckons the question "Where Do We Go From Here?" and I think we all need a little pick-me up, which I'll share with you if you can spare a dollar for this great little diddy of the same name from my favorite 70s movie Vanishing Point. And if you don't have a dollar, I'll gift it to you, just drop me an email. It's a great tune about another fearless explorer with big ideas and an even bigger drive to make them happen. Christopher was his name. And that's my segue to wishing everyone who reads this little blog a great weekend and Happy Columbus Day.

CINEMA 4D AND THE ART OF SURGERY

It's been a while since the last post, but there really hasn't been much time to look over the edge of the monitor or leave alone in my "To Be Blogged" folder for that matter. Sharing with you that we're officially on Cinema 4D version 13 now, which really should have been version 12 it's that good. I love how the UI is cleaned up and it makes a lot more sense now. Most of all the physical renderer. It's getting to be one hell of a 3D program and the renderer is getting close to being real time and allowing us to work things up visually and in real time, artistically rather than methodically. So check it out if you're into 3D. Cinema is of course what we used to model this little sculpture for an image we did in collaboration with Hunter Freeman. For final render I much prefer KeyShot still, but Cinema 4D is getting there and I am glad KeyShot is getting into 4D at the same time. It will be great to have both legs to stand on.

INTERVIEW IN RESOURCE MAGAZINE

RESOURCE, a photo production magazine wanted to take a look under the hood of Raygun Studio and granted me an interview. The issue just arrived in our mailbox. I have no idea why of all images we offered, the rats breaking into someone's home was chosen, other than the people at Resource must share my dark streak. I think Alex Baker did a great job in turning my rants into a good read and it's a pretty accurate reflection of how we do things and what our philosophy is.

Although I was really hoping the part, where Alex asked me what kind of music we play at the studio and I told him about Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream, that it would make the cut. I know it's probably about as esoteric as the Raydiosity Esoterica setting but it goes well with bending splines, subdividing polygons and extending long gradients. What's interesting to me, back in Germany where electronic music was pretty much invented in the 70s, there were discussions—fears—about whether electronic music and synthesizers would someday soon displace traditional music and wooden instruments. The discussions in our industry today about CGI and photography remind me of that. And I get this question quite often, whether CGI threatens to replace photography. I don't know the answer to that, but what I do know, is that electronic music has come a long way since the 70s... it's all over the place now... but it really never made a dent into Polka. Or for that matter... Jazz.



Thanks again, Aurelie, Alex and Thomas for the interview. You can find out more about Aurelie's Resource Magazine or subscribe to the print edition on their website.

FLASHBACKS OF OTL AICHER

A couple of weeks ago I heard again from one of my favorite art directors—Michael Wilde—asking me whether I wanted to participate in creating these poster images for the BMW USA offices, who are officially sponsoring the 2012 Olympics. Now with Michael, he doesn't really need to show me any comps for me to say Yes, but when I saw his comps, how could I say anything but... Yes! For me these have everything that I love... spectrum colors on black, a really great graphic design concept and they are iconic... a simple power that immediately gives me flashbacks of one of my other design heroes: Otl Aicher. He too had quite a hand in the world of graphic design for the Olympics in Germany back in the 1970s.

So we started out playing around with a few different ideas, different images representing various athletic disciplines and then I got into techniques... from simple Photoshop layering approaches to making the "multiple exposures" feel more like frames of motion captured over time even though they came from the same image to start with. This collaboration was definitely one of those projects that will make me say "Keine Frage!" if you were to ask me: "Do you love what you do for a living?"

2011 WEBSITE REFRESH

It's a new year and so we're kicking it off with a website refresh both for your desk and on the go. Check out the updated portfolio from the new thumbnail overview.

NEW iPHONE SITE

We love icons and have come to love the iPhone too, so although having to create a separate website for the flashless iPhone, while a pain in the ass, it was kind of fun too. If you visit the Raygun site from your iPhone or iPod touch, you will be whisked there magically.

RAYPLAYER LOOP

Been working on an iPhone app we named RayPlayer. It's capable of lining up small planets, which occasionally can take some time, so we figured we give people something to look at during the wait, as frivolous as some people might think it is. It's QuickTime, infinity, synchronized swimming and a little bit of illusion all rolled into one.