Hasta La Ideas

A series of images by CGI specialist Recom Farmhouse and photographer Markus Wendler places vintage cars in some of Los Angeles’ less desirable neighbourhoods, conjuring some striking images. The project is a self-initiated, collaborative venture between Recom Farmhouse and Wendler, who have worked on a number of commercial projects together in the past.

Wendler had already shot some nighttime images of LA as a starting point, and after a bit of creative to-and-fro, Wendler and Recom decided to use vintage cars in “sketchy areas in and around LA, that are not just placed in an advertising style angle, but would rather tell a story – or pose questions as it’s never going to be clear what is actually happening”, according to Recom Farmhouse creative director Christoph Bolten.

Creating aged, damaged and dirty cars completely through CG was an attractive challenge for the company, as automotive CGI is one of its niches of expertise. “The next thing that was really exciting, was that these were not going to be classic advertising images, but had a much more realistic and narrative approach,” adds Bolten. “Something that from the beginning was offering the possibility to create something ambiguous and magical.”

Top and above: Two final images from an ongoing project created by photographer Markus Wendler and CGI specialist Recom Farmhouse

Having come up with the idea last summer, Wendler shot more material in situ in LA, before the CG modelling began, with Recom Farmhouse fitting the research and work between commercial projects. Bolten is always keen to have such research and development projects on the go – they are all about “pushing the boundaries”, he says. “Also, for the CGI artists it’s a lot more fun to work on projects like that; they love the freedom of playing a little and not having a client breathing down their neck.”

The process for creating the series included many stages, from initially modelling a scene and planning different crash scenarios, to extensive research of imagery of similar crash scenarios, sketching the form of cars, and sculpting creases and dents (see process images below).

Creating realistic effects for various automotive states of ageing – dented metal, shattered windscreens, dusty metal with fingerprints, rusted medal, skid marks, or smoking tires – was particularly challenging, all-in-all “quite time intensive”, says Bolten.

Wendler and Recom Farmhouse are still finalising the series, but are hoping to exhibit the images in the near future. As Bolten says: “These images are really about being printed very large as they have so many mysterious little details going on in them.”

The Recom Farmhouse project above also features in the current issue of CR. Unfortunately, an image on page 29 of the magazine was wrongly credited as being part of the project. It was, in fact, an unconnected image used merely for reference in the making of the project and was not taken by Markus Wendler as stated. Our apologies for the error.

Out now, the May 2013 issue of Creative Review is our biggest ever. Features over 100 pages of the year’s best work in the Creative Review Annual 2013 (in association with iStockphoto), plus profiles on Morag Myerscough, Part of a Bigger Plan and Human After All as well as analysis, comment, reviews and opinion.

You can buy Creative Review direct from us here. Better yet, subscribe, save money and have CR delivered direct to your door every month. If you subscribe before May 3, you will get the Annual issue thrown in for free. The offer also applies to anyone renewing their subscription. Details here

CR for the iPad

Read in-depth features and analysis plus exclusive iPad-only content in the Creative Review iPad App. Longer, more in-depth features than we run on the blog, portfolios of great, full-screen images and hi-res video. If the blog is about news, comment and debate, the iPad is about inspiration, viewing and reading. As well as providing exclusive, iPad-only content, the app will also update with new content throughout each month.

Swedish communications agency RBK has created an alarm system for human rights workers that is powered by social media.

The “Natalia Project” – named after Natalia Estemirova, a Russian human rights activist who was murdered in the North Caucasus in 2009 – is a GPS-equipped bracelet that when triggered, emits an alarm that informs staff at human rights group Civil Rights Defenders of the wearer’s location. It also notifies people who like or follow the project online so they can send out alerts and calls for help on social media.

Each bracelet is set up with individual security protocols based on the wearer’s protection needs – the alarm response will depend on their location, the type of work they are involved in and the infrastructure in their local area. “The idea is to be able to react in the best possible way, if an alarm is triggered, depending on these factors,” says Mathias Wikström, chief executive of RBK.

The bracelets cost just a few hundred euros to make, but as each wearer has to be trained to use it and will be monitored by a security team around the clock, the estimated average annual cost of each system is around € 5,000, making the project heavily reliant on fundraising.

Designed in collaboration with students at Hyper Island, the Natalia Project has been praised by the United Nations and will feature at this year’s Strasbourg World Forum for Democracy in November.

As well as saving lives, Civil Rights Defenders hope it will put pressure on corrupt governments and help expose oppressive regimes where attacks on human rights workers are rife. The organisation is hoping to equip and train 55 workers by 2014, and six are already undergoing training.

The bracelet isn’t discreet but as Wikström explains, its design had to be capable of withstanding a brutal attack and had to incorporate GSM and GPS technology and a long lasting battery. “The field edition will be more discreet than the version pictured, and we are also looking into a concealed version,” he adds.

The success of the Nathalia Project depends ultimately on whether wearers under attack can be located and safely reached by those sent to help them, but by linking the alarm system to social media, it will help draw global attention to attacks on human rights workers and ensure they don’t go unnoticed.

Credits:
Creative Director: Johan Pihl
Digital Creatives: Tobias Snäll, Anders Sjönvall & Mathias Høst Normark
Film production: Bsmart
3D: Real Eyes / Imsa CAD
Sound: Flickorna Larsson
Alarm Technology: PFO Technologies

Out now, the May 2013 issue of Creative Review is our biggest ever. Features over 100 pages of the year’s best work in the Creative Review Annual 2013 (in association with iStockphoto), plus profiles on Morag Myerscough, Part of a Bigger Plan and Human After All as well as analysis, comment, reviews and opinion.

You can buy Creative Review direct from us here. Better yet, subscribe, save money and have CR delivered direct to your door every month. If you subscribe before May 3, you will get the Annual issue thrown in for free. The offer also applies to anyone renewing their subscription. Details here

CR for the iPad

Read in-depth features and analysis plus exclusive iPad-only content in the Creative Review iPad App. Longer, more in-depth features than we run on the blog, portfolios of great, full-screen images and hi-res video. If the blog is about news, comment and debate, the iPad is about inspiration, viewing and reading. As well as providing exclusive, iPad-only content, the app will also update with new content throughout each month.

Pink Floyd fans may recognise the cover of our June issue. It’s the original marked-up artwork for Dark Side of the Moon: one of a number of treasures from the archive of design studio Hipgnosis featured in the issue

The lead feature in our June issue is an interview with Aubrey Powell who looks back on his relationship with the late great Storm Thorgerson and the work the two of them created for bands such as Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and, of course, Pink Floyd at their Hipgnosis design studio.

For the piece, Powell allowed CR access to the Hipgnosis archive so that we are able to show, for the first time ever in some cases, treasures such as the original contact sheet for Pink Floyd’s Ummagumma album, revealing how the final repeating image was made, a rejected sketch for the Animals sleeve and contact sheets for Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy sleeve.

We have a special effects theme for the issue. While Storm and Aubrey created most of their work ‘for real’ we contrast their approach with the latest R&D from leading CGI houses

Plus we take a look at an intriguing collaboration between artists Rob and Nick Carter and visual effects house MPC which brings old master paintings to life as digital artworks.

In contrast, we interview the authors of a new book on hand-drawn illustration – The Purple Book explores symbolism and sensuality in contemporary work with five original pieces created in response to key literary texts.

Also dealing with illustration and storytelling will be an ambitious new show at the V&A. Novelist Hari Kunzru was commissioned to write a new piece for the Memory Palace show which illustrators and designers are helping to turn into a ‘walk-in book’. We talk to those behind the exhibition.

In Crit this month we have an excellent piece by designer Michael Rock which re-examines his On Unprofessionalism essay for the digital age, arguing that the idea of the ‘professional’ graphic designer was just a pipe dream.

We also have a tribute to Ray Harryhausen by our own Paul Pensom and, in his regular column This Designer’s Life, Daniel Benneworth-Gray considers the use and usefulness of Twitter

Gordon Comstock wonders why Charles Saatchi wrote his new book Babble and Paul Belford uses a Waterstone’s ad from 1998 to illustrate the dangers of over-restrictive brand guidelines

Plus, Jeremy Leslie looks at the indie football titles giving the game some more nuanced coverage and Michael Evamy asseses Venturethree’s identity for The Palestinian Museum amid brands’ new-found desire to be talkative

Our subscriber-only Monograph booklet this month is rather special. During theis year’s Pick Me Up festival, we organised a felt toy-making workshop with Felt Mistress. This month’s Monograph is a record of the day featuring some of the work made

You can buy the June issue of Creative Review direct from us here. Better yet, subscribe to make sure that you never miss out on a copy – you’ll save money too. Details here.

Thousands of online users’ photos helped produce this little ‘Thank You’ film from Land Rover to its Facebook fans. Created by Wunderman NY with Trunk Animation, the project invited fans to send in personal snaps for use in the video celebrating the brand reaching one million Facebook fans.

The animation charts a journey from New York to the Grand Canyon, taking in iconic American landscapes including the Florida Keys, the Great Lakes and Monument Valley.

Trunk directors Alasdair + Jock spliced together a number of techniques including stop motion, pixilation, CG and digital montage. Most of the background images were put together from diced up digital photos from the fans, rallied by Wunderman’s social team, and the final time lapse sky was provided by expert Andy Hague.

Land Rover USA ‘1 Million Fans’ from Trunk Animation on Vimeo.

Working with the fans was particularly exciting, according to Trunk’s Richard Barnett, as the interaction with them drove major elements of the creative process. However, it was also one of the biggest challenges of the project – involving waiting for content from users to come in after a call-out or getting disclaimers signed, for example.

Quality was another issue, he adds, “because you’re asking a lot of someone to either go out and take some photos specifically for a project, or root around and scan in a load of old snaps, before getting them to upload them to a site, and then finally getting them to sign a release form in order to cover everyone’s posterior! So people will generally share stuff that they already have at hand, the easy stuff, sometimes whether that’s on brief or not. So we did learn that one call for submissions is not enough, you need to break it down and you also have to have a really co-operative and healthy fan base”

Credits:
Agency: Wunderman NY
Production Company: Trunk Animation
Directors: Alasdair Brotherston and Jock Mooney
Producer: Richard Barnett
3D Animators: Mark Lindner and Luca Paulli
Pixilation: Steven Edge
Design: Jock Mooney
Compositing: Alasdair Brotherston
DOP: Matt Day
Time lapse Photography: Andy Hague
US Photography: Gary Griffiths
Texture Artist: Francesco Puerto Esteban
ACD Copywriter: Carrie Ingoglia
Senior Art Director: Saunak Shah
Senior Art Director: John McGill

Out now, the May 2013 issue of Creative Review is our biggest ever. Features over 100 pages of the year’s best work in the Creative Review Annual 2013 (in association with iStockphoto), plus profiles on Morag Myerscough, Part of a Bigger Plan and Human After All as well as analysis, comment, reviews and opinion

You can buy Creative Review direct from us here. Better yet, subscribe, save money and have CR delivered direct to your door every month. If you subscribe before May 3, you will get the Annual issue thrown in for free. The offer also applies to anyone renewing their subscription. Details here

CR for the iPad

Read in-depth features and analysis plus exclusive iPad-only content in the Creative Review iPad App. Longer, more in-depth features than we run on the blog, portfolios of great, full-screen images and hi-res video. If the blog is about news, comment and debate, the iPad is about inspiration, viewing and reading. As well as providing exclusive, iPad-only content, the app will also update with new content throughout each month.

Flickr was once one of the most exciting sites on the web, essential for most creatives. But after it was bought by Yahoo in 2005 things started to drift. Will its new redesign refire users’ enthusiasm?

In the light of Yahoo’s purchase of Tumblr, and promise not to “screw it up” the relaunch of Flickr is interestingly timed to say the least. Here’s one acquisition which many feel Yahoo certainly did “screw up’ – or at least failed to give sufficient love and attention to.

The redesign is an attempt to address that, promising “a Flickr that’s more spectacular, much bigger, and one you can take anywhere”. Users now have a terabyte of storage space – an unimaginable amount even ten years ago.

The new homepage (see top) is a vast improvement, doing away with the old thumbnails to present images from your contacts in a grid, giving maximum space to photographs. Something also carried through to photostreams and sets

Looks like we need to update our icon…..

Apparently, Yahoo’s Adam Canah had admitted that “Flickr had become about words, little images, and blue links…Flickr really was not about the photo anymore.” This is a much more visually appealing site with the accent firmly on the image and the text elements relegated to the margins.

But there are signs that the redesign so far is only skin deep with some areas a mix of old and new  – here’s the graphic design group pool for example

and the groups list

Users are rightly suspicious when large companies acquire start-ups – things move slower in bigger companies and priorities differ. Tumblr users have been left wondering whether it will meet the same fate as Flickr.

Yahoo have finally got around to giving Flickr some much-needed TLC but is it too little too late? What do readers think? Impressed by the redesign or not?

Out now, the May 2013 issue of Creative Review is our biggest ever. Features over 100 pages of the year’s best work in the Creative Review Annual 2013 (in association with iStockphoto), plus profiles on Morag Myerscough, Part of a Bigger Plan and Human After All as well as analysis, comment, reviews and opinion

You can buy Creative Review direct from us here. Better yet, subscribe, save money and have CR delivered direct to your door every month. If you subscribe before May 3, you will get the Annual issue thrown in for free. The offer also applies to anyone renewing their subscription. Details here

CR for the iPad

Read in-depth features and analysis plus exclusive iPad-only content in the Creative Review iPad App. Longer, more in-depth features than we run on the blog, portfolios of great, full-screen images and hi-res video. If the blog is about news, comment and debate, the iPad is about inspiration, viewing and reading. As well as providing exclusive, iPad-only content, the app will also update with new content throughout each month.