Tokyo Bladerunner: Android Dreams

One of my all-time favorite movie is Bladerunner and I stumbled upon Samuel Cockedey's time lapse movie, Android Dreams, which is a homage to Ridley Scott's film. A breathtaking beautiful moving photograph.

"Do you know, I always thought Unicorns were fabulous monsters, too? I never saw one alive before." "Well, Now that we have seen each other." said the Unicorn. "If you'll believe in me, I'll believe in you."   - Lewis Carroll

android dreams from Samuel Cockedey on Vimeo.

Bon Voyage, 2012! Thank goodness you've arrived, 2013!

Well folks. It's that time again. Time to bid bon voyage to 2012. The minty fresh scent of the new year is wafting in and it makes me think about my resolutions for 2013. 

In retrospect, I think I did pretty good with crossing off items on my list for 2012. I didn't do a full 10k, but ran 2 5ks, which adds up to 10k… so to me that means a dotted line that crosses off #2. :) It was a rough year but with some amazing milestones and happenings peppered throughout. One of which is adding a new family member. Meet Nico. 

My 2013 new year's resolutions are: 

1. Get fit enough to run a 10k
2. Learn how to sew
3. See my family (especially the new niece and nephews) in San Francisco
4. Clean up my financial house
5. Be a better friend to my peeps

This year, I want to do something a little bit different by calling out a new month's resolution, each month. Maybe this will boost my chances of making it happen and get closer to the newer, hotter, more fabulous me. 

1. Month of January: Get organized with personal and work stuff

Bring it on, 2013! 

X♥X♥

Skip the movie, watch the titles!

"Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" Title Sequence by Blur from Motionographer on Vimeo.

In an alternate life, I would have grown up to be a movie titles designer (or more accurately, both a movie titles designer AND music video director). Imaginary Forces, the brainchild of one of my design heros, Kyle Cooper, blew my mind with the title sequence from "Se7en", back in 1995. Every since, I've always paid more attention to the titles than the feature film. Sometimes, I've skipped the film entirely if the title sequence is lacking. Yes, I admit, I'm a nerd.

When I stumbled upon the titles for "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" Title Sequence by Blur at a friend's house, I literally ran home and put that movie in my Netflix queue. Mesmerized by the beauty of these 2 minutes, I watched it a dozen times before I watched the rest of the film. Check out these articles to get a more in depth look at Blur's process: 

An exclusive look at the making of "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" by Jezebel
Oily Secrets of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo’s Title Sequence by Wired

Tremor Video and Ad Age Super Creative Video Ad Challenge

I normally don't share work related stuff, but I'm especially proud of this little tidbit. When I was at Scanscout, before it got acquired by Tremor, I worked really closely with the Product and Business Development team to create Super Video ad formats like the Super Pre-Roll. This ad format turns plain vanilla pre-rolls into a more interactive and engaging ad unit and makes it a lean-forward experience. The very first one I created was one for Unilever's Vaseline Sheer Infusion.

Other old articles about Super Pre-Roll:

ScanScout Introduces the Super Pre-roll Ad Unit
IAC Outstanding Online Video award for Scanscout Super Pre-Roll

Fast forward to a couple of years later and now this ad format makes up the majority of our ads at Tremor. What's even cooler is that we, at Tremor Video, have teamed up with Ad Age to create a competition for ad agencies to put together the best Super Creative Video Ad:

We know you're silently judging creativity every chance you get. Here's your chance to weigh in on some super star contenders who put their creativity to the Super Pre-Roll test in Ad Age and Tremor Video's ultimate challenge. See how they

transformed their pre-roll into a super experience that moves people to lean forward and interact.

How'd they do? Visit the Contestant Gallery to rate all the contenders for the People's Choice Award!

Check out the creative ads and vote! 

http://superadchallenge.com

Jildy: List-a-mania!

I love Jildy, the iPhone app. It's election day and the app is my gauge of social media sentiments within my own group of friends on who have voted and for whom - all in one nifty snapshot.

I admit it. I'm a Facebook addict. But as much as I like FB, it drives me insane when I see the same poster show up 25 times in a row in my newsfeed. This is why I was so excited to have the opportunity to work with Mark Drummond, the CEO and his amazingly talented engineering team from Jildy, a mobile app company that sorts your Facebook (and Twitter and Linkedin) friends and their posts.


When we first started out with version 1, the UI focused mostly on lists AND on PSI (Personal Social Infographics) which created on-the-fly infographics of your friends' age, gender, relationship status and Zodiac signs.


With the second version, Mark narrowed the focus to be all about lists, which really sharpened the value of Jildy and solves this common problem with feeds in Facebook. Jildy's main power is the technology of auto-magically grouping my friends with photos or by posts or by my preferred topic using algorithms, or manually, and also using lists that were set up in Facebook. Download the Jildy app now and take control of your Facebook/LinkedIn/Twitter

Jildy Mobile App

Jildy Website

NY Times Review of Jildy 1.0
Jildy
See more on my portfolio site

One super burrito, please

Please make my burrito, super. Apparently, my love for burritos has just gone "plush'. This genius, Lauren Venell, created the burrito body pillow. In my opinion, the best thing since sliced bread. I want to meet this girl.


If I truly became what I ate, this would be me frolicking around SF.

Buy your burrito body pillow from Bold Italic

Open Studios in Boston

One of the things I dearly miss in San Francisco is Open Studios that happens twice a year (which started off in Bayview but has expanded to so many neighborhoods). I finally checked out the Fort Point Open Studios here in Boston this past weekend.

Two highlights from touring various artist's spaces and art, were Lara Loutrel and Luther Price.

I love Loutrel's work and am a proud owner of a Russian eye chart-like screenprint. Loutrel's work is really arresting - abstract black and white prints. Her more recent pieces are more sculptural and 3-D which extends her very structural lines in her pieces. I really love this evolution she's embarking on with her work.

Luther Price is an experimental film maker whose studio was this enormous warehouse that featured his installation, The Sound of Singing through Dust. There were hand-made slide projections that was a combination of old personal photographs, found film stills that had various music pieces accompany them. His process is so interestingly different in that he really deconstructs the concept of mainstream film and physically collages these found-objects and reshoots them on Super 8mm. After turning them into slides, he manipulates and destroys the slides with mold, dust and overexposure. To me, they seem rough, sometimes perverse, but somehow delicate and poetic at the same time.