Save your identity!

When you sit down at your PC, open up your 'Apple Mac' or play around on your smartphone, you are actively contributing and feeding your personal information into the hands of your service providers and into the ever-growing information technology cyberspace.

'Network' by Michael Rigley is not only a visual stunning physical representation of how our personal data is created and built, but also somewhat disheartening in our active participation within this. Rigley perfectly puts this into a tangible form, using clarity and simplicity of explanation to convey his message.

It's amazing after watching just a 3 minute animation, how you can begin to re-think our voluntary contribution to companies profiting off our data. 

Maybe it's time to take back our personal information from ISP's. Occupy the internet, anyone?

FUEL VFX takes on Alien

So if you haven't seen this trailer by now, you should probably just get off the internet forever.

Prometheus is the HIGHLY anticipated prequel to Alien. The cast is stellar; Noomi Rapace, Aussie Guy Pearce, Charlize Theron and the incriedible Michael Fassbender (mmm... Fassy...) and Ridley Scott is helming the project, so you know it's going to be good.
Now, I'm not gonna lie I haven't seen Alien (I know, the shame) but this movie is everywhere. Literally everywhere and everyone is talking about it. However success is not a stranger to Sydney based VFX studio Fuel VFX.

Born in 2000 Fuel boasts a client list of Baz Luhrmann's Australia, Cowboys & Alien, Mission Impossible and have clearly found dedicated clients in the Marvel universe, working on the whole Avengers crew; Iron Man 2, Captain America, Thor and of course this year's blockbuster The Avengers.

So what have we learnt? Two things specifically. The first, if you need VFX these guys should probably be your first port of call. Remember that the next time you and your friend thumbtack a sheet to your garage wall in lieu of a green screen, I'm sure they do pro-bono work.
The second, safe to say if they weren't already dominating, Fuel is definitely making paper thus bringing more and more of the entertainment industry to our humble country and for this I thank them.

Now discuss, Alien SEQUEL, dnw or...? I wonder if little Fassy will make a sophomore appearance?

VSCO Cam

With Facebook recently acquiring Instagram for roughly $1 billion, this leaves two options for camera and photo sharing app companies. Either see Instagram's success as inspiration, or view the colossal buy-off as a symbol of market-domination.

I'm sure the guys at Visual Supply Co would say they have been left with nothing but illumination and motivation to create their very own app. Introducing 'VSCO Cam'. It showcases a similar style to Instagram, but also offers some noticeable differences upon viewing the introductory video above.

It's the simplistic design that catches your eye and how it utilises colour filters as opposed to Instagram's named filters. It also differs through the ability to implement 'precision filtering' including fade, fill and saturation.

Strategically speaking, releasing 'VSCO Cam' now is clever as we can only expect some changes to come within Instagram, changes that may not please all users who may look to go elsewhere.

You can buy 'VSCO Cam' for 99c at the app store.

Takuya Hosogane makes a Point

This creation is from Japanese artist Takuya Hosogane. He's the featured artist on Pause Fest today. The young talent's work creates a dialogue between flash animation visuals and sound cues.

Vanishing Point in particular, triggers memories of watching Windows Media Player visualisations, except Hogosane's animations are much more iTunes in my opinion. He has a great way of really hitting those nuances in the music using image.

Read Lucy Down's profile on Takuya Hosogane here.

As Down mentions, Hosogane lists video anime series FLCL and Noein among his inspirations. Thoughts? Can you see the parallels in his animation style? Or is has his process drawn him closer to resemble more post modern works?
I can see a definitive line between his work and David O'Reilly's.