Jun 8 Today's Mood

A common argument made in the videogame industry is that good gameplay should always come before good graphics. I’m starting to wonder if this shouldn’t be the same case for interactive design.

As interactive designer, I’ll spend hours in Photoshop designing my layouts. Setting up proper grids and spacing, finding the perfect typography, tweaking layer effects…It’s easy to get lost in the time-warp of pixel pushing. And while this may be appropriate for jobs like a basic marketing site, when it comes to designing complex web software, this process feels a bit backwards. If I’m supposed to be designing an interactive experience, then why is so much of my time being dedicated to the purely visual and stationary aspects of the design?

Going beyond, ‘How should the menu work?’

Now when I talk about interaction design, I should make it clear that I’m not just talking about what type of expanding menu to use, or what the rollover state Object A should have. With the technology and tools available to us now, we should be talking about transitions between pages, draggable object states, text input focus effects, or feedback on triggered events–just to name a few. And I don’t think we should just throw this job over to our Information Architects, since many of these decisions are tied to the visual presentation of the experience. Interactive designers should be spending just as much time figuring out how this interactive experience will ‘feel’ as they spend scouring type libraries for that perfect font, or adjusting 1px bevels on a button. Actually, we should probably be spending more time on it. Continue…

Oct 4 Today's Mood

At long last, something new.

So let’s not beat around the bush. The movie Dinoshark was pretty lacklustre. Barely passable CG and not nearly enough camp, it was a bit of a chore to get through, despite the relatively high body count. (Mostly contributed to when it crashes a local waterpolo match). What I did enjoy however, was how Dinoshark was released into the wild by the simple act of an iceberg cracking apart. That set a Dinoshark egg free, which hatched, matured in 2 minutes, and went on to kill tons of people and wreck general havoc.

This got me thinking. Those icebergs up in the North Pole seem to be holding in a lot of scary shit. I mean, they were responsible for also keeping Mega Shark and Giant Octopus in check before being busted open. And that’s not to even touch on all of Godzilla’s friends and foes that seem to get trapped up there. Now THAT’S a real scary consequence of global warming and melting polar ice caps. Continue…

May 15 Today's Mood

It’s been a long time coming. Seriously. I started this infographic about 2 months ago, but then work got in the the way and well…refer to my previous post for thoughts on that. This week, I kicked my butt into gear and finally got it done.

Now Mega Shark vs Crocosaurus definitely does not surpass its predecessor Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus because well, in my opinion, Crocosaurus was pretty lame. While Mega Shark was out there chowing down on an entire navy fleet, Crocosaurus was mostly just stressing about her eggs. Thus I wanted to put most of the focus for this on Mega Shark.

A key moment during the film is when Mega Shark eats a nuclear sub, which gives way to one of the better quotes in the movie: “The shark just went nuclear”. For a while I planned for this to be the climax event of the graphic, but after some research, I discovered that when it comes to pure destructive force, it is actually the volcanic eruption at the end that trumps any sort of nuclear threat. Continue…

Dec 10 Today's Mood

So you’ll note I haven’t called this an infographic, because well…it isn’t really, it’s more of an educational style ‘what not to do’ poster. But in any case, this has been long overdue, and I finally got a chance this week to finish it off.

A couple posts ago I put up a quickie design exercise about the movie Sharktopus, a title which really should require no explanation. A shark/octopus hybrid that was initially designed as a weapon (don’t question it, just go with it) goes out of control and starts on a totally expected killing spree. The movie itself was pretty good, with all the right amounts of gore, camp and bikini girls, but I’m not sure if it quite lived up to my expectations. Not sure exactly what my expectations were going into the movie, but it didn’t have the same magic that other creature feature movies seem to have. Continue…

Dec 5 Today's Mood

It’s been a while since any sort of update, and while I’ll hopefully have one last infographic done before the year is out, I do have a fun little holiday card to share. This all actually started at my company’s United Way auction, where my services were put up for sale to design the bidder’s holiday card. Lucky for me it was Ashley from account services, who already having seen some of my previous infographic work wanted to something similarly fun and quirky. After a brainstorm session, we came up with some ideas around how having an Abominable Snowman around for the holidays would be amazing. Continue…

Aug 15 Today's Mood

It goes without saying I’m pretty excited about the upcoming feature Sharktopus. While I’m sure I’ll need to do some information visualization after it comes out, I thought it would be good to get another design quickie out my system and make a movie poster for it. Recently I’ve been checking out old japanese movie posters, and wanted to do something along those lines, just keeping everything minimalist. I think it sets a nice tone for how epic Sharktopus is going to be! Continue…

Jul 7 Today's Mood

So yes, it’s been a while.

But rather than listening to me serve up excuses, let’s get down to what really matters, that namely being: Mega Piranha. Yet another gem from the guys over at The Asylum, this was essentially the sister movie to Mega Shark vs Giant octopus, starring Debbie Gibson’s arch rival, Tiffany. The concept itself was pretty interesting. Scientists in South America genetically engineered piranha that would rapidly grow, thus providing food for impoverished nations. Now why these scientists decided to go with piranha, and not something more traditional like salmon or tuna isn’t quite clear, but as a graphic designer who am I to argue with geneticists? Continue…

Mar 24 Today's Mood

1997′s Anaconda is easily one of my favourite creature features. Mediocre story, passable special effects, and half a cast hailing from MTV, it had all the right ingredients for greatness. Throw in John Voight to bring in some real acting chops, and you got yourself one of the best snake movies of all time. But of course the snake was the real star of the movie, and what a bad-ass snake he was. Whether it was the breakneck speeds at which he could travel and climb, or his amazing resiliency to overcome explosions and being set on fire, the movie definitely gave us a creature to fear. Continue…

Feb 18 Today's Mood

So while recently I’ve done some more in-depth design for fun (megashark & avp posters), something I’ve wanted to try doing is some more quick and dirty experiments. That is to say, taking a simple idea and creating something visual for it in about 2-3 hours max. So needless to say things will be a little rough on the edges, and I have no doubt there will be some wonderful typos and horribly written copy, but bear with me. Continue…

Feb 15 Today's Mood

Let me preface this whole post with a warning that I am a total Aliens fanboy. Loved all the movies (even resurrection), and mildly enjoyed the AVP ones as well. So with that being said, about a year or two ago when some co-workers and I were debating who would win in an Aliens vs Predator match-up, it was no surprise that I got got pretty involved–to the point where I grabbed some graph paper and started plotting out the rise and fall of both combatant’s attack potentials.

Now even as an Aliens fan, I’ll admit Predator is pretty badass. His gear is just too good, and if it came to a 1-on-1 duel in an empty room between the two, I’ll give the win to Predator. For me, the Aliens’ strength comes from their ability to rapidly reproduce. So while a Predator may be able to take down a single Alien pretty easily, it’s a different story when he’s facing 10 to 20 of them. That’s why I think time is THE deciding factor for this grudge-match. If Predator finds the Alien before it has a chance to reproduce more soldiers, it’s lights out for the Alien. But if the Alien has enough time to get a cycle of facehuggers and chestbursters going, the tables are quick to turn. Continue…

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