Julian Opie

Back when I first started exploring LEDs as a medium, I came across the work of Julian Opie on YouTube. Unfortunately, my propensity for forgetting names lead me to forget his.

Recently, through the wonder of the facebook news feed, I found his website, and now: I have the name! And since I have the name, I can share these videos of his work that I originally saw with you!

Crazy Process

So Mac just pointed out Bob Staake's New Yorker cover. There's a lot of buzz about the fact that Bob Staake still uses Mac OS 7 and Photoshop 3, but really, it's his process that amazes me. I mean, just watch this:




His additive/reductive method using simple geometric is just hypnotic.

I once read a "how to draw" book that started with something like "An artist sees objects not as whole objects, but a set of component shapes" but never have I seen someone who's method holds so true to that concept.

Amazing stuff.

As for the fact that he's using PS3: what advantage would CS3 really give him looking at his method?

[via Gizmodo]

Useful Design tool

The 960 Grid System is an effort to streamline web development workflow by providing commonly used dimensions, based on a width of 960 pixels. There are two variants: 12 and 16 columns, which can be used separately or in tandem.

Really great stuff. Applies one of the basic principles of print design to web design in a really simple way. Excellent.

Scott Pilgrim Gets it Together

I finally picked up Scott Pilgrim #4 - Scott Pilgrim Gets it Together

I've been trying to for a while now, but every time I went to Borders they didn't have it. But since I live in Portland now, I figured I'd give Powell's a try. It is a Portland icon after all. I'd heard about how big that place is before, but even so...dear lord, I was not prepared for that sheer mass of books. I mean seriously. Seriously. WOW.

But anyway, back to Scott Pilgrim: I picked that up at Powell's today, and just sat down and churned through it. I love this titled, and #4 is no exception. In fact, I think it may be my favorite thus far. Bryan Lee O'Malley's style of story telling, which combines 90s video game references with a coming of age story, is just great.

Oh, and the color pages? AWESTACULAR!

We really are related...

Contextual Advertising

Contextual advertising is really cool...conceptually. In reality though it can be be really annoying or fail horribly. I was reading an article about when Palin was Mayor and I've got to say, this is a great example of contextual advertising failing:

The Eye - Now a web app.

Before now The Eye, which is featured in my portfolio, has been limited to a "live, gallery only" experience, due to its hardware requirements (depending on the size of the space, 3 or more cameras were required.) Recently (today) however, I've rewritten a segment of the code so that anyone with a single camera can experience it.

Ideally, you should step about (making this number up on the fly) say, ten feet away from your computer, so that it's field of view is accurate.

System Requirements: a computer with a built in, or attached, webcam.
If it doesn't seem to be working, right click over the video, go into settings, and make sure you have your camera selected.