PIXAR CREATIVE PROCESS

Image by matlock via Flickr

In this interview from , Michael B. Johnson of Pixar discusses tips on the Creative Process. He also talks about moving from an analog to a digital creative process and some of the pitfalls of working virtually as well as some of the pros. Michael develops software for the animators and creatives at Pixar animation Studios, which is known for it's creativity and 3D animation films. To watch more of these interviews, check the link here.

INTERVIEW WITH URBAN GAME GURU

Image by fiahless via Flickr

This is an interview I filmed for Picnic in New York together with my good buddy Kevin Slavin. Kevin is the founder of Area Code and is an extremely smart and creative dude. He develops everything from Urban Games to ARGs, to Cross Media games, and more. Have a look at the interview and definitely check him out at Picnic in Amsterdam this year. In the interview he talks about the Augmented City and how information technologies need to simplify rather than complicate the information we generate around a city.

Like on Facebook!

-ASKFRASCO and @MARLOOZ talk about "Like me on Facebook" and other geek girl chatter. by www.gabemac.com

Dark Night Viral Campaign

Many people wonder how Viral Campaigning works. Many beleive that all you have to do is make a funny video woth a cat and that will spread the message. Sorry, that was about 2-3 years ago. The truth is nowadays you have to create a Multi Media Alternate Reality Game. Otherwise known as an ARG. There are puzzles spread over the internet, areas to communicate with other players, real world phone calls and emails. This is how you create a Viral. Not just a 30 sec. clip but an allround Media experience, puzzle and immersion. These are the types of projects that my students have been developing over the last few years. One of the first of my DVTG students created on his own, with no budget, an alternate reality game that spread from temples in Thailand, lockers in London, phone calls from New York and the Vatican. Using the tools available all over the internet with free sites, this is how Alternate Reality Games are spread. Below we see a video of the Dark Night Campaign, and there are 2 of the Transformers virals that were spread. Those videos spread from the transformers is called, "The Rabbit Hole". Or the first video trigger that leads one into the Alternate Reality Game.

HELLOO GERMANY!

So last weekend or so I was in Berlin to Speak at a workshop, and I did an interview with gruenderszene as well as some other journalists. In any case gruenderszene posted the video interviews as well as a nice writeup. In the interviews I talk about twitter, the difference between entrepreneurs in Europe, United States, and Israel. I also talked briefly about my thoughts about how there should be a fund by technology VCs and investors that be given to artists to try and understand the meaning of what we are building. Of course this is already happening, becuase artists will always do this, but it helps stimulus when they can actually live off of these crazy pieces they do. It's an idea that Paulo Cohello says will come but in years time at Le Web. Well here are the videos. They are posted on gruenderszene.de. The translated post is here.

Brand Talk with Friends

Joking around with friends about the Adidas campaign "Impossible is nothing". Rose Bertins tells the story.

Milo Xbox of AI friends

Xbox and Steven Spielberg have gotten into a project called "Milo". It is scarely like A.I. that was made by Spielberg, and really shows how far the "Tamagochi" Phenomenon can happen. When we feel lonely our laptops and our games are our new friends. Scary and sick but this is how it is going. But does Milo have a soul? Do these inatimate items that we had as kids, such as the blanket, doll, or star wars figure we loved have a soul? A new generation of imaginary Virtual Friends is about to occur. Get ready, because everything ios about to change! Thanks for the tip GabeB!

EVOM My new Fav Video App on Mac

So, I come across a video that I would like to save on the internet. I may wanna use it for a class, to create a mash-up, keep a copy of friends videos, use it to VJ, etc. I need to download a lot because of either copyright, or loss of account or some other issue, it is hard to find those AMZING vids again on the net. Yes the internet has an expiration date on video. more than it has on text. I guess because video files are larger than text, they don't seem to be archived and saved and distributed as much. Text is easier to find when the source is gone. Video, a lot harder.

My method was use some Video Download plug-in in FireFox which would download the flash file from sites like Youtube, Dailymotion, etc. However these don't always play so well on the Mac. I usually watch all my flash videos in Miro, which seems to be the best for me, and also FREE. However flash files don't work at ALL in editing programs such as iMovie or Final Cut Pro. Good bye mash-ups then. I am constantly fu*#ing with converters to get flash turned into quicktime to be able to edit them. That has all changed for me today with Evom.

Evom is a FREE app for the mac that allows you to drag and drop, and easily encode videos for the web. Wheter it be to convert for iPods, AppleTV, or even post directly to Youtube. However for me there are a number of other programs that do this better. But that's not why I like it.

A small (only seen in the small print) feature is that by adding a bookmarklet to your bookmarks bar, Evom will download, automatically convert, and even place a video from a website into your iTunes. YES!!! Thank you! I beleive my Msic Video collection as a VJ is about to grow a lot more. Damn I need to run and get another 1TB hardrive for all these great vids. Free for a Mac, go get a copy if you are into Video on the web and a Mac person.

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Toy Story 3 Teaser Pixar History

Image via CrunchBase

I admit I was excited to see the Toy Story Teaser from Pixar. I'm just a huge animation fan, and Pixar is one of the most amazing stories in animation. It started out as a research group with George Lucasinside ILM. Because Lucas was getting divorced he had to sell some stuff from his empire, and the research group (which was looking into computer generated animation techniques) was one to go. Steve Jobs stepped up then and bought the company. Actually Ross Perot almost bought it first. When Pixar was finishing on Toy Story, Jobs, who had a lot of free time on his hands and was going through a bit of a crisis after Apple and Next, became slightly obsessed with the project. To his name, he struck a 3 picture deal with Disney, but more importantly made sure that the Pixar Leader came in the opening credits . This created Pixar as the name in 3D animation when Toy Story was released in the early 90's. So much so that other movies following that used 3D animation, such as Dream Works, were in the public's eye attributed to Pixar. Good branding. If you would like to read more about that part of Pixar's history, you should check out the book The Second Coming of Steve Jobs. But he was a real tyrant as well. He almost moved the Pixar animation Studio acros the state so that his commute for the meetings would be shorter. This in the final months of production with a huge deadline, and the first time a 3D Full Length Feature was ever created by Pixar. Luckily this didn't happen.

Seeing as today John Lasseter is now running Disney Animation (Principal Creative Advisor), it will be very interesting to see how this movie comes out.

Toy Story 3 - Teaser by victorvharo

No MORE Twitter!

File this in the category: WTF? I log into my twitter today to see this:

MY FREAKN ACCOUNT IS SUSPENDED! FOR WHAT? And what pisses me off the most is the fact that there is no email to sent to me to give a "Head's Up!" or WHY? Nothing what so ever. I have to surf through the site for 30 min. to put in a request that will probably take a week or so for me to get through. Screw it. If this service treats it's users with such fascist authority, I'm out. Fuck Twitter, Fuck Biz Stone fuck the lot of you.... So I'll probably burn in hell for this. Might as well post my shitter video with Chris Sacca (one of the investors in twitter). Yes I can feel the burn now...

update: It seems that there was a glitch in the matrix with twitter. I again have access, but all the sudden I started following strange people in my account. Looks like I have to purge my followers. I beleive my twitter account was hacked actually. Marc believes it was Russians. Great, now I've got Russians hacking me to worry about. In the end I'm still upset and turned off by twitter as I still have no idea, no correspondence, nothing to what happened or what it going on. Come on guys! Can't you even explain what happened in 140 characters to me? I find this lack of communication disturbing.