The Chop Shop iconic series of designs continues — and is going ape. Okay, so maybe “ape” is taxonomically too specific. Let’s just say the design features a bunch of chimpanzees, monkeys, gorillas and even a few human-ape hybrids to please the sci-fi crowd. That is a total of celebrated simians from various sources of film, television, comics, cartoons, video games, literature and children’s entertainment. Read More…
Last week we set forth upon the internets (YouTube) a fun little short film/project envisioning what the daily life of a creative team might be like if Photoshop had never been invented.
The project started off the exact same way the video does: with somebody, as designers or photographers frequently do, asking: “Can you imagine what the world would be like without Photoshop?” Most often this question is followed up with a series of silly geeky design/photography references until somebody eventually adds: “it would suck.” This time however, we did the math… if Photoshop is 20 years old then it came out in 1990, leaving us with the comedic gem of an alternate reality that is oddly stuck in the late 80’s (plus the silly geeky design tools).
This defining moment of clarity was then followed by 2.5 insanely humorous weeks of joke telling, script writing, casting, prop building, location and equipment rental that amazingly consolidated when we launched worldwithoutphotoshop.com and Adobe (who had become aware of what we were doing) featured part of the video in the Photoshop World keynote.
Had a blast working with the cast and crew, the response to the project has been fantastic. We will be posting an additional scene and outtakes next week, as well as more details on some of the props and tricks used in the video.
I kicked off the start of the fall teaching semester a little differently this morning. When it comes to drawing, writing and telling stories, there are few places more humbling & inspiring than SVA’s Illustration as Visual Essay Graduate program. This year, in addition to the Digital Portfolio class with the 1st year students, I have been tasked (mostly by the students themselves) with the creation of a 2nd year course on the “Digital Book”.
Given the crossover with the work that goes on in the studio, and our general love for interactive storytelling – it’s my intention to share what the group is up to.
Today, in addition to discussing the history of the digital book, and watching the opening scenes of Disney’s The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977). We spent some time rifling through the small pile of iOS tablets and phones on the table, identifying & discussing the handful of apps that are currently defining the landscape of tablet based digital storybooks:
Alice for the iPad
Alice for the iPad (by Atomic Antelope) has. It’s beautiful, it makes people smile, it makes people who make stories/draw want iPads, it then inspires them to learn how to create their own storybook applications. I had not realized that the app now includes the original 249 page edition of the story.
The Pedlar Lady of Gushing Cross for the iPad
The Pedlar Lady of Gushing Cross (by Moving Tales) is a breathtakingly original story and presentation. I am looking forward to seeing how this app will be updated over time and what will come next from this group.
Jack and the Beanstalk for iPad & iPhone
Of all the digital storybooks on our iPad at home Jack and the Beanstalk (by Ayars Animation) easily gets the most screen-time from my 3 year old son. The attention to interactive detail is unsurpassed. Every page and every update reveals another treat. it seemed to get quite a few giggles from the over 20 crowd as well.
Itsy Bitsy Spider for iPad (HD) & iPhone
The folks at Duck Duck Moose have been cranking out quality interactive story apps for iOS since day one. One of the best being Itsy Bitsy Spider for iPhone and Itsy Bitsy Spider HD for iPad. Not surprisingly, discussing their applications became the catalyst for our conversation on non-linear storytelling.
Marvel Comics for iPad & iPhone
It’s hard to spend time discussing the tablet based comic book apps without getting sucked into reading a comic book or two. Between the high resolution zoom and the panel-by-panel reading experience – the Marvel Comics app could easily springboard into a semester of digital storytelling projects.
If you have any specific apps/stories that we missed, don’t hesitate to drop a mention in the comments. I’m sure this list is going to grow pretty fast. The landscape of tablet based digital books is changing every day.
We have added a few new designs from two good friends of the Shop over the past few months. Jpegasus is by Jamie Reed who also was the mastermind behind last year’s best-selling Dapper Men design. Mustache was inspired by humorist Jon Francis at Cheaply Made Dreamland in an off-hand comment which we decided to turn into a short-run tee design, illustrated by Chris Piascik. Also by Chris, is Monsters & Aliens & Bots, Oh My! which is a sci-fi take on the legendary Wizard of Oz mantra. All 3 designs are available in styles for men and women and Oh My! is even available in kid’s sizes. Read More…
We take great comfort in the fact that our core competency is design, user experience and front end development. This is not to say that we could not also build large scale web applications – it’s just not advantageous for us to offer this part of the process as a service.
Most of the pain points in web development stem from the fact that interactive projects, of any scale, quickly become complex machines with many moving parts. Because of this, every person involved in the process of making, selling or marketing in this medium has to constantly balance education (client, co-worker, boss) with their day-to-day workload.
While recently discussing our best client stories, as well as the often therapeutic clientsfromhell.net, Eric let loose a little gem of advice:
Before you start a job with a new client, you should take them out to lunch in a restaurant with bad service. Just watch how they handle the situation.
I thought this was seemingly brilliant compatibility test. Best case is that you quickly observe the inherent communication patterns of the team, worst case is that you are no longer hungry.
I think that too often clients/teams get a bad rap for what they don’t know. The reality is that, by choosing to work with you they have often already disclosed that they know something, yet need to know more. When you are trying to create new things, your building blocks are small pieces of unknown and yet to be proven ideas. Some blocks snap right together, some blocks take down the last 4 hours of your day. The great clients are the ones who handle what they don’t know with honor, honesty and respect – regardless of how much they understand the technical thingys.
Good clients have taught me more then I would ever consider I have taught them.
Ideally, nobody should ever have to hear sentences like: “Lupus is chronic, inflammatory disease that affects the immune system.” Yet roughly 1.5 million people in the United States, including an estimated 10,000 children have unfortunately had to confront the challenge of dealing with having Lupus.
To better help the world to understand this collection of complex diseases, our studio worked closely with the non-profit group Rheuminations to create “What is Lupus”. The 17 minute animation presents the viewer with a review of what an auto-immune response system looks like in the body of an average woman versus what that same response might look like within the body of a woman afflicted with Lupus. It does so with illustrated characters that are friendly looking enough to appeal to youngsters while not tuning out adults who may be doing research for a loved one or for their own condition.
In order to tackle this complex disease, The Chopping Block met with and was instructed by some of the best Rheumatologists available on the US east-coast. Several meetings were set-up to discuss the decipher the inner workings of the body and the cells that play a part in what would become a cohesive overview of the disease. Over the course of these meetings the overall content was story-boarded (see below) by The Chopping Block, revised and ultimately approved by Rheuminations as well as the rheumatoid specialists involved. Read More…
Last week I presented at the HOW Design Conference Denver, CO. Our objective for HOW was to present well-formed technique, design solutions and inspiration to designers looking to work online. The challenge at hand being to convince a packed room of talented yet overstimulated pro’s that the web is not as complicated/different as they are often led to believe. As promised, I have posted the Web Design For Non-Web Designers presentation online. (That was the link right there)
HTML5 was selected as the presentation engine because it was seemingly the right time to do so. A lot of designers/developers were inspired by the HTML5 slides built by Marcin Wichary & Ernest Delgado, our goal was to add some web fonts and make it look nice. Over the years I have used Powerpoint, Keynote and Flash to build out often elaborate presentations, but now I am quite content trying to push the HTML5 & JavaScript slides as far as possible. If there is continued interest I can post more information about building the presentation itself.
On the way back from Denver, I made some additions to the slides:
Removed the PDF links, replacing them with Shadowbox.js galleries.
Quickly added a print.css file, which means it will look nice when you hit print.
Enabled the display of inline notes, just hit the 2 key (on a slide with notes).
Cleaned up the copy a bit, added more resource links.
Trimmed down the file size a bit. There is always room for more optimization.
The HOW Design Conference is a force for good, and I don’t often say such things about big conferences. The attendees, speakers (and yes sponsors) are a humble & talented group. Huge thanks to the folks at HOW and everybody who stopped me to say hello and talk shop.
Finally, the original icon of office humor will finally have an official logo for all his TPS reports. Working in cooperation with the creator Scott Adams and United Media, The Chopping Block developed the new look for the legendary comic to help establish a brand beyond the well known characters of the strip. As if the Sunday comic pages were not enough, the new identity will start appearing across a large variety of Dilbert merchandise from calendars to mugs to pretty much anything you can imagine a logo could fit on. Read More…
Design life is more than a tshirt design. Its a way of life. Know what I’m sayin’? I mean, its a tshirt that’ll put some hair on your chest… Know what I’m sayin’?
The kernel of this idea came from a bowling team full of Chopping Block folks. The team name was the “Burly Bowling Brigade” and they had a silkscreened team shirt that simply featured a cluster of short stubby graphic hairs, two nipples and a sweet logo on the back. We all liked the idea so much that we decided to come up with another version that would have wider appeal than the guys on the bowling team.
This design comes in Alstyle color Sand (top) or a very limited quantity on American Apparel Black on Charcoal or Black on Black. Sizes are SML-3XL. Ladies… if you are interested, let us know. Know what I’m sayin’?
See more at 