Collect all 10!

I finally got around to making some business cards recently, to suppress the embarrassment I always felt when writing my contact info on a napkin or crumpled receipt. (more…)

One of my designs: the Kama Sutra Flirt.

While working for Nervo, I helped concept, design, and animate a number of interactive experiences for Viximo, a development company creating applications for the iPhone using their own proprietary creation engine, VixiML. It was quite a challenge to create a lush, emmersive experience with a variety of obstacles such as download limit (about 1 mb per flirt) and playback issues.

Check out the application in the iTunes store here.
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For this project, I worked with JD Hooge of Gridplane to help bring to life a variety of design concepts for the XBOX 360 console menu system. Along with help from Martin Linde and Nando Costa, we developed a subtle but polished look for the animations to keep the UI as intuitive as possible.

Recently, I was hired to animate a logo for Operation Phoenix, a non-profit initiative created by the fitness company CrossFit. (more…)

In this whimsical web film that Nervo created for Premiere Global Services and their eMarketing division, Brian Merrell and I composited and animated together all of the illustrations and 3D renders based on the work of artist Betsy Walton. The main challenge was how to properly bring her paintings to life, without relying on a cliched stop-motion effect. (more…)

Music: Calexico “Waitomo”, Tool Box [2007]

Bethel Woods, NY, home to the original Woodstock festival, is now the location for the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts. In June 2008, a new museum dedicated to this historic festival and its significance in the transformative 60s was opened, containing a number of interactives created by Second Story. One of my last projects while working full time was creating an animated, birds-eye view of the 3-day event. (more…)

A screenshot from one of the animations.

Last year while working at Second Story, I was tasked to design and animate two high-definition projections for the future, $103 million Gettysburg Museum visitor center. Using archival photographs and paintings, each seven minute video quickly highlights the major battles, troop movements, and the various military leaders involved before and after the battle of Gettysburg. (more…)

I finally wrapped up work on a broadcast spot for Nervo, featuring the TIMEX iControl Watch for the iPod. I helped animate a number of the elements, including building many of the particles from scratch and creating the waveform that travels through most of the piece, using a variety of expressions to allow the most amount of control over its look and movement. You can see the style frames and certain ‘behind-the-scenes’ shots at Nervo’s Flickr post. (more…)

I spent a few days helping out the guys over at Nervo on a series of online promos for Let Us Kiss. With this one, I was tasked to animate the feathers from a beautiful illustration done by Linn Olofsdotter, spending hours cutting out individual strands and writing expressions in AfterEffects to efficiently control the speed and fluidity of the animation.

Nervo has posted a few behind-the-scenes shots of this piece here.

UPDATED, August 26, 2008. After all the great feedback and general interest in the making of these flipbooks, I thought I’d answer some questions and present more detail with the process. The following is the original post with added details and other thoughts.

I can’t quite remember how I got the idea, but I thought it would be fun to create some flipbooks based off of video I had shot. The challenge was to be able to efficiently process the frames from a 3-5 second clip, have them printed by a photography shop, and assemble them as easily as possible. (more…)

One of two interactive tables at the Liberty Memorial Museum.

In 2006, Second Story created a number of interactives for the Liberty Memorial Museum in Kansas City, now officially the National World War I Museum, including all the content for two, 26 foot long interactive tables. These tables engage the viewer to learn about the technology and strategies used during the Great War. I designed and directed the production of eight table-wide video presentations, which play during a special group-mode interactive. (more…)

A fellow friend and musician Brede Rorstand came up with a conceptual project where he would write a 15 second long fragment for 15 separate songs. He then had an artist or designer create a video for each excerpt. This was my submission.

Course of Righteousness: Christian Bannister’s awesome (and evil) design

Holocene approached Second Story to design a hole for their annual Mini-Golf Invitational, where local designers and studios compete for most creative, or outlandish, hole. Of course, being a studio with experience in interactive installations, I pitched the idea of a “virtual hole”, in a very 80s arcade game style. (more…)

A frame from the attract animation.

After several years of renovation, the Portland Armory opened to the public in 2006, an icon of Portland’s relatively young history transformed to a theater housing the local performance company Portland Center Stage. Within the lobby, Second Story produced a unique “peep show” cabinet to tell the Armory’s 100+ year history. (more…)

The Lagoda, as seen in the animation.

Second Story was asked to create an interactive kiosk to showcase life aboard the Lagoda, a 19th century whaling ship. After the interactive kiosk was almost completed for the New Bedford Whaling Museum in Massachusetts, I helped direct and create an attract animation to play when the kiosk was not in use. Using many of the same historical assets as the interactive, as well as the 3D model created in house, we composed a “movie trailer” for the Lagoda. (more…)

The 30 foot long, 16-screen media wall.

If choreography across four screens was difficult, doing the same for 16 screens of different sizes and positions posed another challenge entirely. (more…)

“A View Upon the Body”, the video installation which begins the exhibit.

In early 2006, Second Story completed the digital media elements for the National Library of Medicine’s two year exhibit Visible Proofs: Forensic Views of the Body, which covers the history and methods of forensic science. I led the design and animation for two pieces: a mysterious and emotive video installation greeting the viewer at the front entrance to the library, and an interactive “Autopsy Slab”, which allows the user to try their hand at a virtual autopsy. (more…)

A view of the space after initial setup.

In 2005, Second Story was approached by Third Angle, a contemporary music ensemble in Portland, to create visuals for a composition by musician Brede Rørstad. What followed was an intense two weeks of visual effects, 3D modeling, compositing, and rendering of a 15 minute, four-screen animation. (more…)