The Blob

I love the design.
Clean, simple, funny, cute animations...

>> http://gotmilk.com/

This website give me mixed feelings. I like the intro, the sound design. But I totally dislike the main concept "Vivez l'expérience" what piece of bullshit we already saw 100 times in 100 another ads. This kind of ads that clearly thinks the people are idiots. This website is just 5 parts with full of bullshit inside each of them. "Ses qualités dynamiques portées par un coeur vaillant vous procurent un plaisir de tous les instants", oh my god please... This kind of wording is so false. You CAN'T believe it, event just a second.

For the graphical aspect, it's a good work. Really well done, even in the small details. But with their old concept "each part of the website has a specific color" it give sometimes a bad mix of colors, for example in "Réalité", I HATE the little carpet near the car. Just ugly. And they fall into the old clichés: passion = red,security = blue, etc. Ok just go a little further, use something else than colors to give the good feelings and to communicate your message.

But the sound design is perfect, and the videos are big and nice. I've even found the car beautiful after watching them.

To get your own opinion: www.experience159.com

I love this totally immersive ad! Easy and simple but so efficient. And the thing I appreciate, you don't see the "technic" behind this movie. You don't think "oh but how they do that?!" or "wow impressive 3D" when seeing it you focus only on the message, but you can believe it's a piece of art and mastered by guys who know their work.

>> www.nikefootball.com
(and the design of the website is also well done, good mix of html and flash, content and entertainment)

Just so true. .

My favorite: #14 You know keyboard shortcuts that require 4 fingers.

Really nice usage of scrollbar on these websites :
http://www.webleeddesign.com/
http://silverbackapp.com/
http://weallhatequickbooks.com/
It's too bad on IE it still doesn't work. But who cares ?

Just to say I'm learning 3D in my free time. And more specifically Modo, an amazing modeler. The best modeler I have ever seen. And I've seen masters in Maya or 3Dmax or even XSI at some graphic-events. This soft get incredible tools, everything is possible and so easy with its axis tools, its deformers, in fact all the basics tools are better than everywhere (ok most of them). The basic extrude or the knife is simply as it should be everywhere.
And Modo world-class renderer cranks out stunning images, and it's not that you have to learn for 3 months before getting a realistic image. You just add your lights, your sky, you activated GI and that's it. You already get more than good image.
With modo you can aslo sculpt like zBrush, and it's not a little function hidden in a corner of the interface, no sculpting in modo is a GREAT tool. Just to convince you, see this video.
Modo can animated. Ok it's not the main goal of modo. But you can already make good cam movements, morphing, organic animations (but not yet Bones).
I really recommend to see the Luxology.tv page; which contains lot of videos to learn modo. That's one of the best part in Modo, the website is full or ressources. The manuals are excellent. The community is friendly and know their soft.

And the last part is the optimisation. Modo is stunningly fast. And YES on mac too. The rendering engine is blowing. But even in the interface, you can modelize high complex models without problem.

I hope one day, modo is going to get the Mograph engine from Cinema 4D... Mmmh lovely ! And as I'm talking about C4D, you have to know the export from Modo in lightwave and the import in C4D is good. It keep the nurbs, the names, some basics textures.

Ok I think you see my point. Just check it and tell me about this master piece. And I almost forgot to say that modo is not expensive. You can get it now for less than 900$. Actually there is a discount of 125$. So you can get if for less than 500 euros!

>> www.luxology.com

(picture is from Donald Lewis)

Automotive metaphor with gymasts from BBH. Really classy and well executed Ad for the new Audi RS6
>> Watch it on Beam.TV

Labels: ads, audi, bbh, gym, motion design

Today www.southparkstudios.com released a new episode of their show : Close Encounters of the Internet Kind. Internet down in the all world! Every people are lost and desperates can't remember how they did before Internet... I don't want to talk a lot about that show (it doesn't need it), but I love the way they often use our bad habits in their TV show.
AND
It's not new, but their website is a good new way of distributing video over internet. Ok we have to watch ads, but we have access all the episodes except a few one, not yet released on TV. I think it's a good deal. The website is easy to use and offer the necessary tools (S2F, embed, forums, avatar creation, production blog, etc)



>> www.southparkstudios.com

Here is a very interesting work on 3D in Flash from Russia, this engine is very powerful and can provide fluid online experiences.

http://blog.alternativaplatform.com/en/

It seems that their main goal is to propose multi-user application, which will allow people to create their own personal 3D world :

"Every company or end-user will be able to create personal 3D-world and to fine tune it according to own goals and preferences. We aim to give talents an opportunity to develop, to give developers tools to create great projects, to let business to market their goods and services through their own innovative personalized multy-user media."

Found via Mr DOOB

If you remember http://www.gucci.com/ was one the first website looking, moving really great with no flash. Just ajax and javascript everywhere.
Pikaboo.be use the same principle. I worked with Vinch on this project. The challenge was to make a website really cool visually but still simple and easy to use.
There is no bullshit, you know when you come on this website, ok they make videos and they are cool guys.
Pikaboo is a small company, creating great videos. I hope we've successfully make the best website for their needs.

>> www.pikaboo.be

Create your font online with this free tool.
Impressive pixel font creation tool.
Try it, it's free and fun!

It's like a mini-bomb in the world of mac users. John Nack has just posted on his blog a comment about the new CS4 version of photoshop. To resume : on windows this version is going to use full 64-bit support. And for windows ONLY.
Why ? Because they developed Photoshop in carbon instead of Cocoa. Apple decided to not support 64-bit in carbon. Adobe is trapped now and need to deploy all their big monster photoshop in Cocoa.

Why 64-bit is good for us ?
Because as designers, we use really often BIG images. We need ram as much as possible, and photoshop can use huge amount of ram in 64-bit computing (more than 4Gb). So in certain circumstances, adobe is going to run 10 times faster. Ok not all the time 10x, but... It's going to generate lot of frustration in mac users camp.
>> John Nack's blog

Some times ago I discovered a little software: ScreenFlow. Really incredibly easiest software to record screencasts. I forgot about it until now I want to make some video explanations to explain how to use an admin for a client. I'm so happy to use a soft when everything work as you expect.

And I think we should think more as a webdesigners to produce video explanation of what we sell. Instead of big mails, or big manual in PDF. Juste some simple words, a little video and VOILA. Everybody is happy !

>> Give it a try here (from Vara Software, Macos X.5 needed, 79€)

Labels: mac, screencast, video

winner of a webby in 2007 http://www.bannerblog.com.au/ is a great inspiration for webvertisers, it shows how creative can be a bannering campaign, which are often the black sheeps of advertising campaigns.