Damien Hirst takes on skateboarding

World renowned artist Damien Hirst has teamed up with exclusive new york based skate label 'supreme' to create a extremely limited collection of skateboard decks.

Supreme are well known for producing limited numbers of t shirts and other clothing items that people pay huge amounts of money for to add to a collection they will never wear and this latest project is no different, they are releasing 3 skateboard decks designed by Damien Hirst who is best known for his part in the sensations exhibition and putting animals in boxes as art, the boards he has designed are extremely colourful and psychedelic and look great but what i find strange about his approach to the skateboards is that while the underneath of your average skateboard is a carefully designed image and logo that will be part of a series for that particular company with nothing on top other than maybe a small logo as it will be covered by grip tape to skate it, but hirst has flipped this on its head while his designs are quite striking, they do just look as though he's thrown some paint around and see what came out of it but the tops of the skateboards on the other hand seem to have more thought put into them, each board has a individual piece of design on top and this part that would be covered up seems to be the most unique and therefore part of the board you would want to show of.

Either way i don't think it really matters where he writes his name because i very much doubt the lucky people to get there hands on one of these boards are going to skate them because now just because his name is on it it would be like taking a painting out of a gallery and smashing it to pieces, and this just goes to show how much difference a name can make when added to a piece of work no matter what it looks like.

nike sb Chalk

I found this on youtube while just searching for skateboarding videos, it is to promote themselves as a company that is new to the skateboarding world, but with this being nike and the huge brand the already are outside skateboarding they have had no trouble in paying for a very well designed and creative advert and also being able to afford paul rodriguez who is one of the best skateboarders in the world to be in there advert helps too.

Nike SB chalk
Uploaded by omerone -

The advertisement was created by wieden and kennedy who are an independant creative advertising agancy responsible for nikes biggest campaigns, the advert is quite simple we have a birdseye view of a road and skateboarder comes into shot and draws the outline of stairs on the road and then goes of screen only to reapear riding the chalk line and kickflips the stairs and rides out of shot and then reappears skating on the road as normal again.

What i like abou this is not really the concept because while it is clever you see it coming straight away so theres no real surprise to it but what is good about it is that there are endless possibilities for a series of similar adverts, what i think is the most effective feature of the advert is the feeling it gives of, first i really like the look of the street it is filmed on, the colour is very subdued with a monochromatic colour scheme that is nicely lit to give a calm , quiet look and this works really well with the fact there is no music and only the sound of a skateboard rolling and the chalk line being drawn and i feel that the sounds are quite soothing against this look the advert has, at the end of the advert when the skateboarder comes back into shot i think that the way he travels ties up the advert well because of the fact he doesnt go end to and in a straight line he takes a smooth mellow turn to go around the chalk staris and i just feel liek this oiece of movement emphasises a calm feeling once again.

Overall i think the advert is very well done and has a really classy feel to it by not doing the obvious of playing some rock music having huge amounts of action adn throwing big logos everywhere.

Hope Act Change

www.hopeactchange.com

While reading creative review i found out about this website created by the company syrup,the website is a political one around the election of barrack Obama and the theme of change peoples belief that he will change the world and the idea of Hope.Act.Change. is a community of people empowering one another to create positive change in the world.
Now it is not the actual message of the site or what it is about that drew me too it as i cant really say i am one to follow everything about world politics it is the piece of video that the site is creating and the idea behind how it works and its representation of the sites ideals.

What the site is building is a incredible music video, and it gets stronger as more people become a part of it and it actually incorporates the people into it backing up the idea of people coming together and supporting them are recognised as an integral part of the bigger picture. when you join the site to show your support you add a photo of yourself with your name and where you are from, and this picture is added to a huge mosaic of the people at the forefront of this change for example Barack Obama from the magazine all i saw was stills and this still looked amazing and the idea of it building as more people join really intrigued me, but when i got to the site i was really blown away by the fact that the Mosaic pictures are actually moving image to accompany a specially created music track by 'will i am' and what is a very effective touch to the video is that when you hover over the video and hit a thumbnail it gets enlarged so you can see the person making up that part of the picture and i think this really does give a feeling of community and that you are apart of something your not just a name on a list it makes you feel like you are apart of change and this is why i think the website has been such a success.

smith & foulkes

I found smith & foulkes when i discovered the production company "nexus" and i found that i was a huge fan of the work they had been doing but i just didn't know they were the ones behind it until now, so i decide to do some research iinto them and where they came from to get where thay are in the industry.

Smith & Foulkes graduated from the Royal College of Art animation course in 1997 and then teamed up with producers Chris O’Reilly and Charlotte Bavasso at nexus studios, they have won coutless awards for there commercial work including a grand prix award at cannes lions, an ITV Award for Best Commercial and two Golds at the D&AD awards. in 2006 they were the most awarded comercial directors in the us and europe.

The work they are well known for is there cgi for huge brands including coca-cola, motorola, robinsons and honda, what first drew me too there work was when i was shown there coca-cola advert entitled "video game" which is an adaptation of grand theft auto whic his a well know game for violence, car theft amongst other things, but what they did was flip the game on its head to work with the coka-cola message, the advert starts of much in the way of grand theft auto with a car tearign down the street almost hitting people and then a thug like looking character leaping out and heading into a shop where the shop worker throws his hands up only to be handed money for the bottle of coke the main character picks up and this is where we start to see what the advert is about, the main character carrys on his journey doing various good deads along the way but what is nice abou this is the little details that they have put in on what is typically quite a cliche idea of the bad guy doing good things, the details that make it stand out is the little details that show they no the game they are parodying well for example as the chartacter walks down the street we hear the sound of a gun beign drawn only for his to pull out a fire extinguisher and put out a fire and, the character looks as if he's going ot car jack someone only to get pull them out of there car to hand them a bottle of coke and its little details like this that make the animation come to life and show that its not just someone tryign to use the success of a videogame to sell there product.

Another thign a really like about ther work is the detail of what they create its all very clean and it looks as though there are no corners cut and that there is somethign to see anywhere but your not going to get a chance to take it all in in just a few viewings, for example in the coke video game advert the character models are liek that in the real video game, they have similar characteristics but only they are even more detaield and every character in the animation looks different to another, and the city is incredably detailed all the textures look perfect and are incredaly detailed down to the torn piece of a poster left on a wall adn it just makes you want to have the enviroment there infront of you to explore every inch of it.

nexus productions

Nexus productions are a motion graphics company from London, they work in 3d, 2d live action and even use live puppets in there animations they started work in 1997 when they produced a piece for U2's pop mart tour world tour where they created an animation for the worlds largest tv, since then they have built up a large list of clients including paramount, boddingtons, dream works, ben and jerry's and Honda.


The company works by having a large list of directors, animators and illustrators all under one roof, so they have a extremely wide range of work on offer and this shows that they can take on pretty much any brief that a client has to offer and they dont have the image of a regular company, they have specialists for every medium so its hard to see why any one would go anywhere else because there work is all extremely impressive from the the most minimal piece of flash animation to the biggest cgi piece. on the website there is a very useful feature which is in there work section of the website, instead of having a list of different pieces of work they have a list of the directors and the projects they have worked on so you can narrow down the style of work that is interesting to you by the people that made it.


What i noticed about the work by nexus as a browsed there portfolio was that i had seen nearly everything, all there work seemed to be those adverts that stand out on TV and you remember over any others, my favorite directors from nexus are 'smith & foulkes' they are the big cgi directos on the site there work is always on a huge scale with the most going on in an advert, they dont just create a cgi character and they create a whole world that is perfect down to every detail and has a incredable look to it that imediatly draws you into the world they create, some of there most notable work is the coke adaptation of the hit video game grand theft auto and the honda advert 'hate something' which shows the journey of diesel engines through a dreamlike world to the strangely catchy hate something song.

Fingerindustries

Fingerindustrys are a animation and illustration company from Sheffield, they work in a wide range of mediums including editorial work, character design, concept design for TV and art direction to name a few, there work is quite well know as they have clients such as the guardian, royal bank of Scotland and Lloyd's tsb, they pride themselves on being distinctive, original and useful which looking through there portfolio and recognising there work from television they certainly are.

The most recognisable characteristic of there work is there character design in 3d, most notably the beautiful Lloyd's tsb adverts that feature the strange characters and the fantastic world they live in, there other design work is very similar there designs all have a strange take on reality, the characters they create all are recognisable as humans but they have strange features notably the long noses and they look like something out of a story book or something from doctor Seuss and this is what i really like about the work, there take on reality and twisting it into something that looks like a wild dream of a child much like Tim Burton's nightmare before Christmas featuring wonderful characters that can be terrifying in there own right depending on how a story is told.



Another thing i really liked about the company was there website which is an interactive flash site that takes you on a little journey through a stylized cartoon world with little interactive characters that can be clicked to make them animate as you go from page to page, and this works really well to get more of an insight to what kind of company they are because they have not put together a generic website to hold there work they have made it personal to the company's style and it gives the message of fun, creativity and that they do things a Little differently and see the worked in a different way and there website puts this message across just as strong as there animations do.

contact phone call with flame digital

Due to not going on the trip to London i knew that i had to make sure that i got my second portfolio crit and i didn't want to go through the long process of e-mails as this would put me much further behind than the rest of the group, so i decided to call flamedigital in Manchester to see if this would have better results.

FlameDigital:0845 226 0766

I contacted Flame on Thursday march 12th.

When i got through I introduced myself and explained that I am a 3rd year multimedia design student at Stockport college and that i am looking for feedback on my work and trying to visit some company's and get an insight into the working world and see how things work in the professional design industry, an asked if it would be possible for me to bring my portfolio into flame and show someone there my work, to which the woman i spoke to replied saying it might be possible and to hold while she would ask some of the designers there and so i waited and she returned to tell me that there head of design would be willing to see me if i was available on march 16th to which i replied that i was and so the meeting was arranged for 2pm and i thanked her for taking the time to speak to me and ask the designers to see me.