AQUAFINA GLOBAL REBRAND

New work for photographer Robert Schlatter. Like a splash of fresh clean water... Pepsico's Aquafina global rebrand just launched.

UNREAL FLOW

About to give RealFlow the boot. Welcome Xparticles. Liquid Simulation for mere mortals right within Cinema 4D. Here's a screenshot from Ben, our CGI animation and simulation artist doing the sim thing in the Raygun R&D warehouse and ammo depo...

MAGIC PEYOTE DESERT

I love the desert as much as the next German expatriate, although I still don't know what it is about the desert that draws us in. Could it all be Carlos Castaneda's fault? Anyways, this piece done entirely in CG really strikes a chord with me, but I am sure even those who would never stop and step out of their cars between Barstow and Las Vegas or ever eat anything Don Juan has to offer, will find this amazing and beautiful:

A FRENCHMAN NAMED BENOIT, KAI'S POWERTOOLS AND THE SECRET TO LIFE (INCLUDING BETTER iPHONE ANTENNAS)

If you've been around graphics as long as I have, you'll remember the desktop publishing revolution of the Eighties and Kai's PowerTools of the Nineties with the cool fractal stuff and Kai's lifelike interfaces that eventually made their way into OS X. What I didn't realize until now is that Mandelbrot was the name of a French mathematician named Benoit who came from France to IBM in America in the 70s and no one really knew about Fractals or understood them at the time. For some reason I always assumed fractals were DaVinci type math and it's amazing that the Mandelbrot Set was a creation of the 80s, a child of the computer revolution really. And even though fractal images have trended out just like Kai's PowerTools... the fractal designs and Kai's ideas are used everywhere now... including both the OS and the antenna of your latest iPhone. Talk about the intersection of Art and Math... and Life itself! But watch for yourself:

COMPUTER MEETS CAMERA MEETS ROBOT

and it's quite a trip. Unbelievable, actually. It's called "Box" by Bot & Dolly in San Francisco with some direction from Gmunk. Thanks, Mauro, for turning me on to this. As they say at the end... indistinguishable from magic...

And here's the sufficiently advanced technology behind the magic:

Enjoy!

MOVE LIKE A RAT, TALK LIKE A CAT

Messing around with Cinema 4D's IK chains and Hair Module.

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.