Hasta La Ideas

We got a little preview of what this year’s version of the Cut & Paste Digital Design Tournament was going to look like when the New York-based crew ran their Design Slam at Autodesk University back in December; and what we saw got us excited. After a couple of years running live action illustration and graphic design competitions in cities across North America and Europe, Cut & Paste has seen fit to add 3D design to the roster, with some impressive results — if you didn’t see the video footage from AU in Las Vegas, it’s worth a check.

Now taking this extended competition on the road, Cut & Paste hosted the first of its 2009 events in Los Angeles last Saturday, and from the looks of it, they’ve got a great design-crowd pleaser of a function figured out. Winning image from the 2D portion of the competition came from rock poster illustrator Janee Meadows, with some strong competition from the seven other Angelenos on stage.

The new 3D portion is perhaps less eye-popping, but more impressive to watch live, especially if you run any CAD yourself. Competitors use a combination of Maya, 3DSMax, ZBrush, Cinema4D, SolidWorks, and Rhino, and like their 2D counterparts design live to a given theme. This is Justin Harrison‘s take on the first round “Two in One,” which becomes infinitely cooler when you realize it was produced, like all the other entries, live on stage in 20 minutes.

The other new feature in the 2009 tour is a motion graphics competition. Competitors in this category get a luxurious 8 hours to complete their 15 second entry, which doesn’t seem like much of product until you examine an entry like this one from TJ Sochor, and realize how just how much a clever artist can cram into such a tiny space.

TJ Sochor from Cut&Paste on Vimeo.

Cut & Paste is presently busy setting up for their second date, tonight at The Galleria in San Francisco, so Bay Area designers best get your tickets quick if you want to check it out. Complete list of venues and dates is here, including several new cities in Asia and Australia.

Event photos: Jason Lewis Photography

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