VFX Town Hall Poster

I’m happy to see a turnaround from last year. 2009 was a very slow freelance year. Right now I have four projects going at once with clients based in New Mexico, California, North Carolina and Africa. I just delivered the poster that I designed for Lee Stranahan and his VFX Town Hall event. I am also working on a major corporate webcast, a network re-design, and a title and animation change for a pilot. I hope this is a sign that the economy is beginning to rebound. I am happy to say that all of my current clients are also repeat clients. I’ve always said that repeat business is the most important kind if you want to grow and maintain your business. I hope you are all having a good start to your year.

My biggest freelance pitch was in 2001. My good friend Terry Castagnola was helping to produce a new reality show called “The Amazing Race” and he called to see if I was interested in doing the graphics package for the show. A few days later my partner on the project, John Ridgway and I met with Bertram van Munster, one of the show’s creators at Jerry Bruckheimer’s office in Playa Vista, California. Bert and his team were very excited about the project and they were open to our initial ideas for the graphics. We were told that only one other design company was doing a pitch. That company was John’s former company and my former employer, Novocom, also in Playa Vista. We had SOME challenge ahead of us. We spent a week or so brainstorming and storyboarding some ideas. We thought that they were pretty strong. We met with the producers again and receive very positive feedback. A day or two later we were told that Novocom had been dropped from the pitch process. We of course assumed that the project was ours. We didn’t hear anything for a few days. I called Terry and it turned out that Bruckheimer’s people had hired an FX company that they used for their films, and decided not to go with us. We were, of course, disappointed, but the process was enjoyable and the producers were very professional throughout the process. Pitching is a risky race to enter, but as long as you are paid for the pitch, it is all part of the game.

storyboard for interstitial element

Early Open Storyboard

My website realizetv.com has gone through a post-modern/minimalistic re-design. Inspired by a recent poster design project that I did for “VFX Fairness”. It has become a simple five link site with a bold, graphic look that recalls early modern poster design. I’ve also incorporated a recent chalk drawing that I created for the Hope For Haiti Now telethon. I’ve changed the “News” section to a direct link to this blog for future, engaging bloginess. I hope you like it.

I don’t do a whole lot of website work but when my long time collaborator, The Halo Group asked me to join them on a webinar project for a major corporation, I couldn’t say no. After changing direction on the concept we are moving along nicely. The client is very well organized and knows what they want. A west coast video and photo shoot is completed and I’ve got a nice look for the web pages. The East coast shoot is next week and then I begin creating custom animations for the videos. I will give more details once we finish the project.

The good folks at Blur-Designs interviewed me for their blog. It posted today. Have a visit http://bit.ly/cCLu8I

I am very proud that I was able to donate my time and my art for the Hope For Haiti Now telethon. I hope that my Haiti-inspired drawings helped to inspire some to donate to the cause. My chalk drawings were featured in screens behind Wyclef Jean and other Haitian musicians at the close of the show. Please enjoy the song again and donate!

There’s a mouse under my drafting table…

…but I have to ignore him because I have an open bottle of ink on my right and I just got most of the last spill out of the carpet. Usually the blaring Led Zeppelin keeps the mice away but today I have the waxer plugged in and the smell attracts rodents.

This was a common scenario less than 20 years ago for many graphic artists. The only thing that crashed was the needle on the record player when your Rapidograph pen rolled off the table and landed on the vinyl disks.

It’s hard to imagine that just a few years ago graphic artists did all of their work by hand. You literally CREATED an ad or a magazine or a book cover. I can remember that when college galleries had graphic art shows, most of the displays were paintings and illustrations used on album and magazine covers. When people asked me what I did for a living I told them that I was an Artist.

And I was.

Being an artist those days was a dangerous undertaking. I have two tattoos on my hands from sharp mechanical pens that rolled off my tilted table and landed in my flesh. I have twice cut the edge of my finger off with an X-Acto knife while trimming a galley of text for some magazine pages. I didn’t have any hair on my knuckles because melted wax dripped onto them daily. This all may be the reason that there were far fewer graphic artists back then.

We did have one other piece of equipment for our craft that had to be plugged in. It was called a stat camera. It lived in a darkroom because it used photographic paper that had to be developed in the dark with photochemicals, and then dried before use. This machine was about the size of a Smart Car. Maybe a little bigger. A great way to make a headline for an ad or a magazine layout was to use Letraset rub down letters on a blue lined board and then enlarge it on a stat camera . This would all take about a half an hour to do. Of course that didn’t include the time that it took to find the font that you liked in your typography books and then pray that you had the font in-house. If not, you had to order it from the art store. You paid extra for rush orders. Think about that the next time you’re yelling at your computer for crashing and having to wait a whole five minutes to get back to work.

Not everything was this work intensive. If you needed a vector-like illustration for your project, you just had to look through your library of newspaper sized, clip-art books and cut one out. Of course if it didn’t happen to be the size that you needed, you had to visit the darkroom again. What? You say you want a color image? Well now you either have to separate the image on acetate overlays or send it out to the color-seperator which will take another few days.

What I really miss from those days, is designing my projects with tissue paper, soft pencils and gummy erasers. I got to draw almost everyday and I really felt like an artist. I got really good at rendering type fonts with beveled pencils and drawing shapes with my plastic shaped templates. I wish I had saved more of those sketches.

I still have a lot of my old tools. I use my pica pole and X-Acto knife when I’m helping my kids with their school projects, and I still use a pencil for all of my writing and sketching. But now if there’s a mouse under my desk, I pick it up, put the batteries back in and re-establish the bluetooth connection with my computer.

Our profession has become much more technical, and in some cases somewhat automated by scripts and expressions. I’m glad that the speed of the process has increased a thousand fold, but I’ve become a DESIGNER now and I kind of miss the ARTIST part.

Garry Gershaw has released the first 5 episodes of his reality-parody web series. The series feature logo and graphics package by Realize Design.

Another upcoming series from Hayden Black called “The Cabonauts” has used the services of Realize Design to create a custom sci-fi CEO office for it’s star, Star Trek Legend Nichelle Nichols. The show plans to launch in 2010 and features many other stars of the sci-fi world.

I had the pleasure of working with Hayden Black again. I was asked to design the overall look of the internet show “The Occulterers” including logo, open imagery, set backgrounds for green-screen shoots. promo materials, etc. Hayden Black created, writes, produces & stars in the critically acclaimed online series Goodnight Burbank and its spin off “GNB: Hollywood Report“ “The Occulteres” was commissioned by Babelgum.com.