HAPPY NEW YEAR game

I wish all of you a happy new year, all the success, health and happyness you can bear and that all goes well for you and your dear ones in the future.
The Awesome New Year's Resolutions Game
Why not start the year with a fun little game? Tell us about your new year's resolutions and tell in a fun way. Make a little picture, write a poem, draw a comic, dance a dance, make a film, whatever you can think off, that discribes your goals for the next year, be it very humble or absolutely arbitrary! I am giving away five DVDs of my collection "Animations by Alexander Gellner"( PDF Index ) to the top contenders. Deadline will be Friday, 8th of January 2010. I'll announce the winners on Sunday.
I am looking forward to your entries and see you on the other side! :)
Alex

Bronto the Saurus

What's cooking good looking?
I am happy to announce that I was assigned to relaunch Spielberg's Jurassic Park. Just wait 'til this gets to the 3Dglasses stage. Blows your frakking heads off.

Face to Face | In dialogue we trust

Last Week my GF and I attended this year's "Face to Face | Indialogue we trust" conference. It was held in the proud city of Ludwigsburg by Stuttgart. The specialty of this conference was that it features both designers and clients so that visitors experience both sides of a deal. One could see, how a decent designer-client partnership is established and nurtured in many presentations.
The presentations were held in German and French, France being the partner of this year's presentation. So on top of featuring clients and designers, the conference also featured german-french team-ups which gave an interesting glimpse at design and enterpreneur cultur in both countries. I am happy to say that I did not need the services of the translator to follow along, my French classes in school paid off after all. :)

Many presentations showed that when client and designer understand their collaboration as a partnership rather a master-servant deal, the process and the final results are mostly fruitful and successful. The claim "in dialogue we trust" was enforced by the organisators by having 15min coffee brakes roughly every hour, so there was plenty of time to make new friends and discuss the topics of the presentations. The location in the "Reithaus Ludwigsburg" was nice and very fitting for the event.

For my taste, the presentations went a little too smooth at times, with no real dialogue or dispute about certain topics. That was probably due to the 20min format and overall amicality of the event and that nobody wants to make enemies at such a business meeting.

Only one presentation by Justus Oehler (Pentagram) on their public relation work for the Deutsche Kinemathek, Museum für Film und Fernsehen was a little diversion of this overall piecefulness. Oehler, rethorically strong and with a somewhat arbitrary but charming personality, opened with strong arguments regarding certain design choices of other museums and agencies and presented pentagrams designs for the Kinemathek as the real deal. His presentation was applauded but then he was challenged by a design professor, who I could not identify and Martin Grothmaak of ProjektTriangle.
They gave polite but certain criticism and I really enjoyed the short exchange and flaring conflict as it was a good example of making and countering arguments and it was entertaining to see some people who think they are the shit slugging it out. :)

Other than that, it was smooth sailing.
I recommend every designer out there to visit the next face to face event or even join the club.
It is an informative, relaxed and very professional event and most imporantly, the catering never disappoints.
--

Side notes:

-Visit the Mercedes Benz Museum as an absolute obligation for every design-, architecture or car fanatic. I was blown away by it. And I don't even like cars all that much.

- Ludwigsburg has some nice food joints. Hotel Rivera on Karlstraße has an excellent cuisine.

-According to google analytics my blog receives 90% traffic from Germany. But the idea of some guy sitting in Australia or Russia reading my shit feels so intruiging that I'll keep writing in English.

The world is at least 3D

Shit.
3D animation is a whole other ball game, my friends. If you are really good at something else and have a family and friends, I recommend to keep away. However, I've been learning some software and slowly getting the hang of it. It is fun, all mathematical and nice and clean but as it is always the case with new things, you feel like a retarded baby infant with no arms. By the time I am a 3D ninja, I probably won't be able to hold a pen and be really smelly.

Popcorn Movie

Popcorn Movie from Gellnerism on Vimeo.

Dany und ich haben den perfekten Popcornfilm gedreht. Wir lieben unser Popcorn gesalzen und mit etwas zerlaufener Butter. Abends machen wir uns oft eine Portion und genießen sie zum abendlichen Film oder Videospiel. Die Technik wurde von Generation zu Generation weitergegeben und wurde von Frau Doktor Dany perfektioniert. So haben wir meistens nur vier bis achteinhalb nicht aufgegangene Maiskörner pro 100g. Diese Quote wäre selbst für professionelle Popcornmaschinen beachtlich.

Flying Spaghetti Monster supports "Pro Reli"

The Flying Spaghetti Monster, holy deity of the Pastafarian, supports the organisation PRO RELI, that fights for religion being tought in the Berlin school system. Many enlightened celebrities joined the quest for freedom. Other then many states of the Germany Republic, Berlin has a history of separation of state and religion and Berlin school children are taught "ethics" together, no matter the race or confession of their parents. That of course, is unbearable. To become reasonable adults with the capacity for moral behavior, children have to be seperated in school into small groups of christians, muslims, jews, scientologists or pastafarians and taught all the right values that only religions can inspire.

Amen.

Cut and Paste Berlin 2009

Yeah yeah, we have been to the cut & paste event in the Tape Club last Saturday.

If you don't know what c&p is about, in short, it is a battle of visual artists in the tradition of hip hop competitions. Four artists are giving a topic and 15minutes to create an unique piece of artwork, a jury decides who goes to the finals and then another 15min battle for the top prize, which was some new wacom tablet and a trip to the finals in New York City. Meanwhile, a crowd can follow the creation of the artwork on big screens, sheer and support and dance to the DJ set. The categories of skirmish were 2D, 3DDesign and Motion Design, the latter being the exception with a six hour time frame and only four combatants. All in all, a very cool concept for a neat event.

The Motion Design competition had the best results working around the subject "public and private". The crowd reacted really positive, too. 2D and 3D did not really blow me away. Nobody expects master pieces within 15 minutes time. But given that the competitors were told the themes a week in advance, I think the main concepts for the pieces could have been better. It was interesting to see the people build their pieces, especially in the 3D section, where the approaches of building the pieces and use of software had been vastly different. As usual, the audience prize for this category went to the bloke who brought the most friends. Cheap. Sad to see that he also won the jury price.

In 2D, I was surprised that none of the artists really used the wacom cintiqs to actually draw on them or even do a speed painting. No, real illustrators, alot of missed potential there. People mostly stuck to collague technique and illustrator style vector and besier pushing. The cool effect that you get from actually watching someone draw was not achieved.
There was robotkid, a guy who did a fairly cool pic. He tried to put the piece together in tune with the rhythm given by the DJ. That was cool and playful.

Nobody expects super dope artwork, you don't go there to learn anything or witness photoshop revelations. The artists are supposed to show of their skills and get some of that imediate feedback that a visual artist never exeriences in normal work life. Everybody else should have a good time at on a design themed party and the sponsors and media partners could present themselves as it is common these days.

Still, I left the event rather annoyed and somewhat angered. I liked the location, I liked the audience, I could live with the artists and jury and I really liked the music that day. But the two presenters were really really horrible. First off, neither the fat bloke with the bad hair nor the air head chick spoke proper german or had the slightest idea about the event they were hosting. English is not my native tongue nor is my writing very elegant. I do not expect anyone to speak perfect German. Who does?

But a presenter should present. They were mocking. I figure the little sense the two brats were talking could have been easily understood by the audience in any other language. And I could have lived with that. Easily. What made me mad was their ill-prepared performance and blatant ignorance for the event and their audience. They did not know what they were presenting, nor did they seem to care to show some interest. They even tried to be cool and even funny. Making fun of the audience by repeatedly calling the crowd "workless graphic designers" (haha, good one) or blaming them for the bad atmosphere after they managed to turn all the enthusiasm in the room into mild boredom.

Lacking rhetoric repertoir, the fat one screamed "BERLIN!" every time he felt like something had to be yelled, expecting the crowd to go ape shit. Annoying. Some people were drunk or otherwise prepared enough to bear it, my friends and I had to leave after two and half hours.

Sad thing is, it could have been such a cool night. Everybody had the best intentions to make the event a nice party. If c&p comes back next year, I'll give them a second chance. There is a lot of potential for a good event.
Rating on the shitshockminipenguin scale: 1/5

Brütal Legend

I am so looking forward to this game


Doublefine, makers of the awesome Psychonauts, team up with panda dubbing, ever rocking Jack Black to bring us a game that almost certainly has all a gamer can wish for. Psychonauts is one of the best games I have played, but sadly did not gain the commercial success it so much deserves. I hope with Hollywood heavyweight J.B. and the support of Electronic Arts, it will get the exposure a game needs to succeed.

Thesis: Steamboat Willi (1928), Please Say Something and Bolt (both 2008)

In my thesis work I am featuring the greatly appreciated David O'Reilly whose webserie Please Say Something explores ways to find new aesthetics for animation with the new tools of the trade. I realised that in doing so, his work gets closer to the earliest works of Disney like Steamboat Willi from 1928. Abstraction of form, movement, sound and event relationship have much in common, while of course O'Reilly applies much more current storytelling structure and a format appropriate for the Interweb. High speed Soap Opera.

Steamboat Willi

Please Say Something

PSS Season 1 from David OReilly on Vimeo.
In the meantime Disney's new feature Bolt does the "old eye candy with cute puppies and some Pixar flavour" trick.

Thesis 2 : "Your Career in Animation" by David B.Levy

Last week, I got this book in the mail, and it proves very helpful for any Animation Artist trying to get some orientation. It is not a technical manual as the "Animator's Survival Kit", it covers fields like getting educated for animation, getting jobs, marketing & networking, working in a variety of studio and people types, setting up a studio, being independent, pitching projects to networks, and many other fields that can help you out and make an intersting read. I really like the book.

Unnecessary Censorship with the Sesame Street

This is way too funny not to share.

Church Fail

"Church is open"
Picture taken in East Radebeul, by Dresden.

shake it and fatman run and zero punctuation again

Still doing a lot of research for my diploma. Only some animation doodles.



and the webcomic episode by yahtzee is so funny i just have to share this.

gettheshoe.com is site of the day on Linkage!

The wonderful and awesomely attractive people from Linkage chose gettheshoe.com (which i made!) to be a pic of the day. Thank you Linkage.nl and good luck against Russia tonight! See you in the final game.

talk to the hand...

...cause my girl friend's four new friends are now listening!