DINOSAUR OF ROCK

Before there was Prince there was Marc Bolan and his band T.Rex. Here he is with 20th Century Boy circa 1973 on TV in Germany's Musikladen. I know... so "last century" but damn' it's groovy.

VMWORLD 2014 IN SAN FRANCISCO

It's always cool, and often surprising, to see the art we have been working on for weeks or even months finally revealed. But it's rare to see the whole town plastered with it for a few days. Such was the case let week when vmworld 2014 took place in San Francisco's Moscone Center. The theme for this year's event: No Limits. It's vmaware, so virtual machines aren't far from the idea of breaking through walls, breaking through earthly boundaries or limits of the imagination and into space. The brainchild of Audrey Merritt, Thomas Whalen and the creatives at WHM Creative in San Francisco, we were entrusted with creating and rendering the final giga OOH imagery after having been a part of the early pitching and concepting...

BREAK ON THROUGH TO THE OTHER SIDE

We chose to create this art in CGI, since I couldn't find the used set from Miley Cyrus's wrecking ball video on eBay or Craigslist and you know what happened to the guy that borrowed a tank in San Diego. Chris Conroy who also introduced me to WHM shot a whole ton of reference (no pun intended) from an office park that was being demolished right next to his studio, which gave us a good closeup look at cracks and texture. To do this in earnest then, I got deep into dynamics, somewhat new territory for me, to blow up some walls.

Dynamics are an easy way to overwhelm your machines very quickly when going high-res. For some time I wasn't sure whether we made a mistake going the CGI route, as what passes as photorealistic in a fast action motion scene, does not hold up for a 12 foot banner, especially when you can walk up right up to.

Even with the Mac doing a lot of heavy duty physics lifting, we didn't get around long hours of painstaking detailing work, whether pre- or post-demolition.

Breaking pieces just so,retouching hairline cracks, adding subtle light and shadow to texture or fine dust and motion to have it feel like it's happening right now.

I think those hours have paid off and the art work was enough of a work of art for vmware to go all out with it.

STILLS IN MOTION - THE 2014 REEL

So one of the things I heard was how Final Cut was supposedly wicked fast on the new Mac, a perfect opportunity to finally do a motion reel again. It's been five years, so it's about time. No lie, Final Cut cuts through HD footage like it's motor oil and everything is happening in real time, dialing in the audio and lining it up with just the right cut or trying out all kinds of different ways of cutting is no longer tedious, but actually... fun. Check out the final cut on vimeo or just download the high-res by clicking on the image below:

THE SECOND COMING OF THE CUBE

No, it's definitely not a trash can. Or even a cylinder. Open on both ends, it's a Tube. With a furnace inside and spinnning blades at the end. Just like a jet engine. To keep your coffee warm. Because you won't have as much time to go get coffee or sit and back wait for it to finish rendering. That new "PowerMac G9 Tube" rocks. And did I mention it's super fast?

My only peeve... It doesn't look anything like the renderings on Apple's site. It's neither matte with a shiny edge or black. It takes on whatever color your lighting is in the room and reminds me of a lipstick case or something from the men's hair dye color palette. Why not leave it at polished aluminum? Bet you it would develop a nice patina over time. Like an American Air Force bomber. Oh, well. I think I'll have to set up an appointment with these guys.

Anyways, kind of hard to believe that fourteen years have gone by since the first super computer in an 8 inch cube.

ICONS WITH COMPLEX SIMPLICITY

What does a living organism look like that's deadly, yet considered beautiful by those hunting for it? Hidden not within a jungle or a test tube, but within terabytes of big sequence and genome data. Finding the answer to this question was the essence of this recent assignment. A continuation of Big Data themes that seems to have been developing here at the Atelier. It had us venture deeper into the fairly new world of generative art, a trend that's been developing in parallel with the ever increasing power of the Intel chips and multiplying complexity and interconnectivity of all digital systems and our world itself. What I liked about it too, was that it called for the Image Design aspect of our offerings and exploring new CGI tools. Here's a look at some designs then...

R.I.P. H.R. GIGER

H.R. Giger has passed away. One of my favorite artists and artist heroes. Quite possibly the greatest artist of our time. Maybe not with the art elite, but for all who art makes a difference and give shape, a visual of what so many can feel, but not articulate until an artist puts it in front of them. "Hans Ruedi" Giger—right up there with Helnwein and Sorayama—all of whom I got introduced to via Rock'n'Roll record covers. In his case it was Emerson Lake & Palmer's Brain Salad Surgery and of course I had my mind blown by the amazing Alien in the late 70s. I was just looking on the web to find the best version of this album cover image to add to my iconic images folder I've started when I came across the news… I couldn't believe this just happened right now. It's really sad. But with his art being all about death, poison, pain and skeletal remains, I guess you could say what they said about Alice Cooper… getting quite old for a guy who gets executed every night…

Here are some of my all time favorites… Weird, I just downloaded the iTunes version of this LP last week.

1973 ELP "Brain Salad Surgery" Album Cover Art


1979 Erotomechanics VIII


1984 Debbie Harry (Blondie) "KooKoo" Album Cover Art

You can read more about it in today's LA Times. or see more of his art on the Giger Museum Website.