The Hong Kong based design publisher – IdN – is releasing their 15th Anniversary Edition What Do You Love? this month. Their monthly magazine is well known for its stellar collection of all that is great in the world of print, product, interactive, environmental, and motion design. The 452-page hardcover book features specially commissioned work from 250+ talented creators who have collaborated with IdN over the last decade and a half — sharing their thoughts on the past, present, and their visions of the future. leftchannel was invited to submit 3 selections, including our vision of the future in a custom animation specifically commissioned for IdN: Domination.
Domination is piece based around theories surrounding looming future planetary consumption and the outward stretch towards interplanetary domination. In the case of this piece, spider-like missionaries are able to tap a planet’s resources dry, conserving the planet’s livable shell for later use in constructing a inhabitable surface on a distant, larger planet. This piece portrays only a case example or snapshot if you will, of the expansive process of such domination. Perhaps domination is a process that could be compared to a innocent, wonder-filled child playing in a sandbox building castles and later destroying them to rebuild bigger and better ones. Does moss not grow on wet sand?
See Domination, get more information about IdN’s 15th anniversary or even purchase a copy of the book for yourself.
Greetings internet friends,
We just wrapped up a brand new spec piece for San Pellegrino! Take a look here:
To get the full orange action experience, click here for the HD Version.
Safe to say we used a variety of resources to create this guy, including pencil, oil paint, After Effects, and Cinema 4D.
Below you will find a couple of odds and ends from the making of the project.
Check em out!
leftchannel’s gone mobile! Grab your iPhone/Android/Blackberry and surf on over to leftchannel.com to check out our new mobile site (don’t worry, our redirect robots will make sure you end up on the right page).
After coming across our music video for 1976, mega-agency Wieden + Kennedy approached us to create a 3 part NASCAR print campaign for their client ESPN. The year-long campaign is based on 3 themes and will be launched in 3 phases over the course of 2009. The first theme is “SPEED” – the other two are “FAN” and “CHASE”. The art direction called for a collage-style, combining various types of media such as photography, digital illustration, hand-drawings, etc. Along with strong NASCAR photography – cars, crew, checkered pavement, we brainstormed with the creatives at W+K on a number of semi-literal and metaphorical objects to create the overall mood of speed. The only mandates were to avoid obvious clichés and to craft the visual metaphors into playful combinations. The collaboration was a stellar experience, resulting in some really fun quirks and hidden gems in the final piece. Along with the 2 to 3 reviews a week with the agency, W+K had bi-weekly reviews with ESPN.
The centerpiece of the SPEED project is a 16.5” x 24” poster that will appear as a quad-fold pullout in the February 12th issue of NASCAR SCENE, shown above.
Continue on to see the evolution of this piece in animated form as well as a poster build.
Crispin Porter + Bogusky recently launched a TV campaign and Web site for The Reality Coalition to help communicate its concerns on the recent political push for the development and use of “clean coal” technologies. The use of a canary in the logo art as the mascot for the campaign gets repurposed in a several animations that illustrate a series of quotes and talking points about the reality of “clean coal”. Leftchannel was commissioned to create some of these animations in which the canary collides with a wall of type. The agency wanted the collisions to be brutal and wince-worthy. Unfortunately we were slightly restrained from going all the way. Below are the two animations that CP+B incorporated into the online experience, which can be seen at thisisreality.org. But the real fun is in the two animations that they did NOT use!
Click here to see the animations, not for the feint of heart!
We recently completed this spec TV spot for Altoids. The breath mint has a very interesting history that goes back a couple hundred years in British history. We wanted our concept to take a light-hearted view on the origin of the mints by putting it in the realms of a quirky-looking candy land.
Pencil, paper, After Effects, Photoshop, magic, and Cinema 4d were used to create, model, and animate our curiously strong lumberjack and his Altoids forest.
Read the rest of the post to see our storyboard and animatic for Altoids Lumberjack
Always looking to keep those creative juices flowing, we here at leftchannel occasionally hold an internal event known as The Design Challenge. Basic parameters are set up and each of us work out a print design that’s presented and critiqued at the project’s due date. This process helps us refine styles, experiment with different media and programs and sometimes even serves as catalysts for internal motion pieces.
CHALLENGE
Design a piece based off a sound selected by another member of leftchannel.
Click here to view each of the designs (click them for full size) along with the sound that inspired them.
We were recently asked to pitch for a Deathcab for Cutie music video. Our concept centered around a main character who has transformed into a shadow — a walking silhouette — with a kind of Midas Touch. Everything he touches, from balloons to buildings, is overtaken by the same shadowy affliction. The video ends when he finds a cure by “touching” the sun. However as a side-effect everything else becomes a shadow through a rippling/domino effect leaving only our main character surrounded by darkness.
Click here to see a couple more style frames as well as a short motion test
