Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Last Year Recap

Thought I'd put up some details of the projects I was involved with recently.

1. Rising Styles
Formerly known as 'The Brighton Hip Hop Festival', Rising Styles was rebranded for it's fifth year.
I had been involved with the festival as a volunteer the previous year and was asked to handle the re-branding and build of a new website.

The festival organisers needed a site that they would be able to update on a regular basis with information on coming events and details of events that had taken place. I chose to use the popular blogging software 'Wordpress' to power the site which I set about cutomising to fit the needs of the festival and its new branding.
Click the image above to visit the site.

2. The Elements Video

Liquid Light hired me to provide some motion graphics for a promotional video they were creating for a Land Securities mixed use £90m development ( 'The Elements') in Livingstone, Scotland. Supplied with the raw footage and motion tracking data I created multiple animated graphics which were composited over the HD footage. You can see the result here.

3. Powerhouse to Poorhouse

When English Heritage via Atacama commissioned animator and illustrator Belle Mellor to make a short film of the history of Framlingham Castle, she in turn came to me to help with the compositing side of the production. Over a number of weeks Belle wore her fingers to the bone drawing and inking frames for the animation while I composited the piece, filling in the gaps where neccessary. There were some long stressfull days and nights working on this but it all worked out well in the end and it was fun working with someone who's approach to animation is so different from mine. The film even got a screening on ITV1. You can watch it here.

4. South Coast
Fractured Films hired me to create some animated title and caption graphics for their feature length music documentary 'South Coast' which tells the story of Hip Hop finding a truly British identity in seaside England. Watch the trailer here.



5. MI21 - Mother India 21st Century Remix

MI21 is a contemporary re-presentation of the 1957 Oscar nominated Indian cinema classic 'Mother India'. Kala Phool in association with former DMC world champion DJ Tigerstyle have re-cut the 3 hour film down to 45 minutes and written a new score for it. The film is presented as a silent movie with Dj Tigerstyle and his band play the new score live in front of the projection.

I was brought in to do the video editing and branding for the project. The process has been long and arduous but the result has suprised us all as has the response to the project from the luck few who witness the few performances we have done so far.
Dj Tigerstyle and his fellow musicians would pick a story thread from the film and write a piece of music for it then send it to me to pick out the visual story line for that thread. This process work back and forth until we had a piece that while it cut out more than two thirds of the footage managed to maintain the core elements and emotions of the story. From the feedback we've recieved so far the audiences has been very positive and we're very excited about its potential. We're hoping to do a national tour with it in 2009.
You can watch a promo of the project we have made here.

6. FreeStyle Games

Over the summer I worked with FreeStyle Games to design and build a new website for them. They needed a site that they could update themselves as and when they needed to with news, announcements and job vacancies, they also wanted a site that they can easily expand when new products and projects are released. Again I used a customised wordpress theme to achieve the flexibility that was required. Being graphic heavy the site was fun to work on, requiring me to spend alot of time drawing. Click here to view the site.

7. Sri McKinnon
SRI is an artist/illustrator of Eurasian heritage who draws upon her interest in subjects of cultural diversity and mixed ethnicity. Drawing inspiration from a rich and diverse spectrum of visual and cultural influences and references, she produces artwork with an organic and distinctive feminine style. She's also a good friend. I created a simple wordpress theme for her to promote her work. Click here to visit the site.

8. Dan Lish

Dan Lish is an artist who approached me to rebuild his website. Needing something he could easily maintain, update and manage himself I chose to create a cutomised wordpress site for him. With galleries, news section and a shop it serves his needs in a simple and minimal way. We're just making final tweaks to the site before it goes live later this month so check back soon for a link to the goodness.

With any luck I'll get round to building myself a proper website one of these days, but client work comes first - obviously.