It is an opportunity

Your portfolio is an opportunity for you to demonstrate that you are creative. So the portfolio must be creative. Approach the preparation of portfolio professionally. Make it a perfect blend of your skills, qualities, and achievements.

Apply rationale in your portfolio

Arrange your skills in a rationale order. It should be attractive as well as in a logical order. Never mix your skills with your general qualities. Skills must be professional and related to your works. You have to exhibit your enthusiasm in completing your works and applying your skills professionally in your areas of design works. You must have substantial evidences in your portfolio to exhibit your skills.

Know your readers/ viewers

Prepare your portfolio after understanding who will be your audience. An employer needs one pattern and your customer needs another. So you have to be very much careful in planning your portfolio based on the audience. You have to apply some logic when putting things together for your portfolio considering who will be making a perusal. For this your basic situation has a major role, because it decides to whom you are placing your portfolio and what you need out of your portfolio. So prepare your portfolio for a potential client or for a potential employer. If you are looking for a job in the design industry remember they will have a keen eye for the look of your work and will want to know what will be your contribution to each project. Your customer on the other hand will be looking at your experience and creativity. They will be very much keen the variety and marketability of the work.

Do some pre-analysis or study before submitting

When you have to present your work, have some pre analysis or studies to mould your presentation as per your audience’s expectation. This would help you to adapt well with the situation.

Pick right projects

You pick right and relevant projects from your total work before the audience. They should be selected based on various parameters especially as meeting yours and your audience’s expectations. Select only very creative works from your collection.

Minimize the number and maximize the quality

You have to ensure quality in presenting your portfolio. So try to minimize the number of works and enrich your works with qualitative projects. Select your best works to add in your portfolio. Highlight the areas that you would like to do.

Speedy work than quality work: a mistake

Finishing your works very fast is good and all organization or clients enjoy it too. But being very fast and not bothered about the quality of it is a dangerous thing. That can simply blemish your portfolio.  You are not going to gain out of a point where your speed is up and your quality diminishes.

Tips: You must go very fast in your works, but we must learn to apply breaks wherever necessary. That can make you more safe and authentic. Speed naturally increases with experience and by learning new things day by day. When you are engaged with a project where you can go in maximum pace you may proceed but make sure you have regular checks, and in certain technical areas you have reduce the speed and ensure the quality of work. So it better to have a mix of speed and accuracy approach in designing profession.

We need to have acceleration, gear systems, breaks, control checks, fueling, etc for a better drive of a designing project and they all are need to be in accurate time. Fueling means rest, enjoying the surroundings, etc for gathering the required energy for your free thinking and acting.

Narrow vision and imbalanced consideration

Suppose you have completed one of the major projects with your utmost sincerity and with extra care to the cover design. Then you have submitted to the customer who found a small mistake in the bottom line of middle page. What is the result? What will be your reaction and you will again put in peril. Preoccupations will haunt you till you get some other remarks or positive feedback from anybody else. This has happened because you might have concentrated more on the front page and not proper care was given to other parts. You were striving to make a singular part of the project so good, so perfect and attractive.

Tips: Equally give importance to all the areas, you may take more time or attention to certain areas, but adequate attention must be given to all the parts without omission. Try to prepare a checklist and follow as per the list and if available make another person just go through the things and give you suggestions before finalizing. Give attention to all parts rather than attending the biggest piece alone.

Improper work load and engagement

Any creative design one person does is the real product of his own innovative thinking and clarity of imagination. If he is over occupied with so many things he lacks the above said major ingredients in his design world. The quality of his design works will be affected by his preoccupations and improper work schedule. This is to be limited to a proper workload with adequately sufficient and matured work schedule. The designer will lose his imagination and thinking if too many things are pooled for finishing at a time.

Tips: Be very much assertive in choosing your projects. You may have to say no to some of the project when you are over loaded with too many projects. It should not be money or fame that leads you in your career. You need to get time to think independently about your project and your areas of creativity.

Taking up all the events in the project alone 

When a project is entrusted you by a very well reputed organization, which was your dream too, you take it up wholly without a double thought. You have such a lot of works in that project like, modeling, photo shoot, voice recording, etc in a continuous sequel. You are also negotiating the budget with the organization, finding out the contractor, etc. If you are a freelancer your responsibility is too heavy.

Tips: This problem can be solved by approaching this very scientifically and in an organized way. So schedule your daily time specifically and follow that time plan accurately and also find a system of organizing the roles so that it works best for you.  You may write down all the positions of a project and under those positions plan what needs to happen, when it should happen, and how long I have to do it. Mark you diary as per the schedule and block out your time specifically for what you have planned.

Over confidence and feeling of over shining

Some people never check the quality of their own works. They send their works directly to the customer immediately after completing their designing job even without checking whether it erroneous or not. It doesn’t mean that they are careless or any less valuable, but it’s not in their usual career to recheck their work. Some people are easily distracted and their minds wander here and there without focusing on a particular point. They set a timeline which they can never follow and then they usually struggle at the end of the timeline. The personality type of the designer can easily affect the whole episode of his career and works or products.

Tips: Avoid a timeline which you can’t meet. Create a distraction free work environment or ambiance for your work and it should be your own choice. Some of the things you may have to avoid during your creative hour are distracting emails, unnecessary phone calls, etc. You may also collaborate with others who can provide you with so many creative ideas and suggestions.

Imaginary project roles

In certain cases there won’t be proper allocation or assigning of responsibilities. So each person in the team assumes their own responsibilities and work without any coordination. It becomes more dangerous for a designing job when there is no person to coordinate all the jobs or responsibilities. One who is responsible of lay outs need not to bother about the spelling errors in the matter. Sometimes nobody is assigned to check for errors. So the whole work will be in vein if the proper coordination is not there in the group projects.

Tips: If it is a group project make sure that you are having proper guidelines regarding the type of job or responsibility you have to perform though out the project. Also help others with their own works and avoid redundancy. Also assign somebody to coordinate all the works and put them in right track for timely and successful completion of the project.

Improper or unclear communication

When there is a project discussion you need not necessarily understand everything about the project. Sometimes you may not get time to ask the doubts you have about the works. So you don’t have opportunity to clarify your doubts. You may have a lot of doubts which you could not communicate in time.  You could not get the real expectations of the customer. Then your works will be displaying your own meanings.

Tips: Get time to communicate with your customer in detail. Clarify your doubts in the formal sessions if not possible try to arrange meetings in person. Adequate communication must be made prior to the beginning of the project work.

Look for your previous works

You can inspire yourself by looking at you own previous works. That can motivate you to think further. The line of imagination and thinking process will be enhanced by seeing those works.

Let creativity be spontaneous

Never force yourself to be creative always, because you are using all your potentials to make yourself creative rather than being creative. You have to finish of your job without worrying about whether it is creative or not.

Follow something others consider very simple

Try to consider those things which others may consider simple, because they can give you better ideas. They are ideas which can be developed, but when you go behind big things remember they are already developed ideas.

Concentrate on a single project at a time

Concentrate on a single project at a time and move to another after completing it, so that you can avoid clash of ideas and thoughts.

Read or watch something new

Every day find some time to read or watch new things. It can be either from books, media or from real world experience.

Keep your mind fresh

Keep yourself fresh to receive a lot of ideas and accommodate changes. A fresh mind can bring a lot of novelty in what you think and do.

Relax yourself

Relax yourself every day and find time to engage yourself in relaxation techniques.

Avoid unnecessary comparison

Avoid comparing your works against the creativity of other people unnecessarily, but can have discussions and comments with other people.

Keep good contact with society

Society is the real source of new ideas and imaginations. You have to have good contact and interaction with real life situations, so that they can supplement you with real life situations.

Phatch (Mac, Windows, Linux)

Phatch is an open-source batch photo editor that can be used on Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. Phatch features an excellent user interface that’s easy to use and understand. What makes the tool different from other batch image processors is its extensbility. If you know Python, you can create Phatch scripts to perform some common Phatch actions on the fly.

Phatch handles all popular image formats and can duplicate (sub)folder hierarchies. It can batch resize, rotate, apply shadows, perspective, rounded corners and perform 35 further actions automatically.

BIMP Lite (Win)

In Battle: Los Angeles, earth is under attack from unknown forces. As people everywhere watch the world’s great cities fall, Los Angeles represents the last stand for mankind in a battle no one expected.

For years, there have been documented cases of UFO sightings – Buenos Aires in 1965, Seoul in 1983, France, Germany, China – but all of these had official stories that covered up and dismissed these inexplicable events. For example, on the night of February 24-25, 1942, with America on nationwide alert following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Angelenos were wakened to air raid sirens. The 37th Coast Artillery Brigade fired anti-aircraft shells at the flying craft over Santa Monica – some flying very slowly, and others estimated to be traveling as fast as 200 miles per hour. The shells did no damage to the crafts – only to the city itself. Though there would be several official investigations and conclusions explaining what exactly was in the sky over L.A. that night – weather balloons, etc. – it has even been suggested that secret government documents exist that show a divided opinion among military experts. “I love how the real-life event just grounds the movie, says producer Ori Marmur. “For the film, we decided that all previous UFO sightings, including that one, were scouting missions… gearing up for the coming invasion by unknown forces.

“Battle: Los Angeles is the exact type of movie I love to go to the theater to see, and dreamed of directing, says Jonathan Liebesman, who helms the story of one small group of people who find themselves taking on an unimaginable foe.

The visual effects in Battle: Los Angeles created a number of challenges for VFX supervisor Everett Burrell, and at the top of the list was the concept of the film as Liebesman envisioned it: to tell the film from the Marines’ POV, Liebesman would employ handheld cameras, and it can be a challenge to incorporate the effects into these shots. “He was very upfront with the vendors: ‘I don’t want to hear any whining,’ laughs Burrell.

In Battle: Los Angeles, the City of Angels is destroyed by unknown forces… and Everett Burrell. Preparing to do his worst, Burrell flew in a helicopter between San Diego and Los Angeles, taking digital photos of the southland – wide shots that would become the background plates for the film for Burrell to use as a tool of his trade. “Once Jonathan had chosen the shots he liked, we could add smoke, fire, and city destruction, Burrell explains.

But making the destruction was just the beginning – Burrell and his team were also responsible for creating the destroyers. Liebesman collaborated with a team of artists to create the aliens for Battle: Los Angeles and bring his vision to life. “While I had a very clear idea of what I wanted for the look of the aliens, the collaboration between concept artists and our post-production team ensured the aliens became far more complex and fascinating creatures than I could have ever imagined, says the director.

“It’s always difficult to get the design down because there are endless possibilities, says Burrell. Of course, when designing an alien, even the sky isn’t the limit: anything is possible. Where to begin? And how do you know when you’re done? “We went through a lot of different concepts with Jonathan to get the alien right – to get what he envisioned. This is mainly due to the fact that it was such a different type of thing we were going for. We wanted ours to be very different, like nothing anyone’s ever seen before. CGI allowed us to tinker with the look all through production, until he was completely satisfied.

Moritz agrees. “We went through a very comprehensive alien development stage. During pre-production, we looked at many, many different alien designs. We obviously didn’t want to duplicate anything that had been done in other movies, but we also wanted to make sure that our aliens were believable in a way that actually made sense for our story – why they came here, what they were looking for, how they were able to defend themselves, what made them a better, stronger opponent for our armed forces. Jonathan came in with a really cool, unique, scary alien – when we finally had the design, we brought in a huge, life-size alien to show the studio, it was a great feeling to know that we had nailed it. Everyone was every enthusiastic.

CGI can do a lot of things, but sometimes, an effect is best achieved with a physical prop. On Battle: Los Angeles, this was true for the alien autopsy sequence, in which the Marines see up close what the aliens are made of and figure out how they can stop them. “I come from creature effects, makeup effects, says Burrell. “Our full-scale alien really is the best way to get the effect when it has to interact with the actors closely.

“Jonathan was very involved in the creature effects – the look of the alien, how he wanted it to react, what he wanted it to feel like, says Alien Creature FX Department Head Joel Harlow, who was charged with heading the team that created the physical creature effects on the movie. Even once the design had been finalized, Liebesman was involved with casting parts – what would be silicone, or skin, or bone, or metal.

At the end of the day, the physical alien for the autopsy was an impressive presence. “The autopsy alien is about eight feet tall, with a 20-foot-long tentacle coming out of its leg. When they drag this thing, there’s a residual trail of blood and goo. They bring that in, throw it down in the interior of the police station, cut it open and do an autopsy on it and that’s a separate element – every time that the cast interacts physically with one of these aliens, it’s something that we have made.

For the aliens’ aircraft, the design began with a happy accident. “Jonathan was playing around with the visual effects and, by mistake, there was a large ship with a separate piece broken off, says Burrell. They liked that idea – and in the end, the UFO became a ship composed of nine smaller drones -”like a pizza cut into slices, Burrell explains. “They’ll destroy the world in thirty minutes or less or your money back.

(Source: Sony Pictures Digital Inc., Edited and compiled by Team-Artooz)

The webmasters of those design blogs are designers, but they’re also entrepreneurs – they have turned their blogs into huge communities, loved by millions of people around the globe.

Interview with Walter Apai of Webdesigner Depot

I’m sure most of you are familiar with the popular design blog Webdesigner Depot. In much less than a year WDD has become one of the leading blogs in the niche. I recently had a chance to interview the man behind WDD, Walter Apai.

Interview with David Leggett: Founder of Tutorial9.net

David Leggett is a designer, blogger, and founder of Tutorial9; a leading website that provides Photoshop, Web Design, and Photography tutorials. David shares his experience in developing and growing Tutorial9, and provides advice for bloggers who are just getting started.

Interview with Fabio Sasso

You may be familiar with Fabio’s blog, Abduzeedo and his company site, Zee in Brazil with business partner, Fabiano Meneghetti. His design focus is on Graphic and Web design (he is very talented and I admire his work!), he also does regular tutorials for PSDTuts.

Interview With Steven Snell From Vandelay Design & DesignM.ag

Here’s the interview with Steven, I hope you like it! Make sure you stop by in the comment section and feel free to ask Steven questions!

Interview with Nick La

I am very excited to present today’s interview with Nick La. Nick is a well known freelance illustrator and web designer based in Toronto. He is the founder of N.Design Studio, and popular blog Web Designer Wall, Design Jobs on the Wall, and Best Web Gallery. He also recently launched his new site Icondock exclusively dedicated to icons.

Joseph Kosinski is very clear in defining his approach to the making of “TRON: Legacy”: “My goal was to really make it feel real. I wanted it to feel like we took motion picture cameras into the world of TRON and shot it. So I wanted to build as many sets as possible. I wanted the materials to be real materials: glass, concrete, steel, so it had this kind of visceral quality to it.”

To achieve the exciting, iconic look for “TRON: Legacy,” Kosinski gathered around him artists from diverse disciplines. “We pulled people from the world of architecture, from automotive design, people who have never worked in movies before. We flew people in from all over the world,” says Kosinski.

Kosinski and his team knew they would be pushing the boundaries of what current effects technology can achieve to make “Legacy” in the spirit of “TRON.” The result is a complicated blend of techniques, from blue screen to 3D cameras, that Kosinski and his team have melded together for the film. Kosinski explains, “I’m going more on instinct rather than experience, but a lot of the technology we’re using is stuff I’ve used bits and pieces of in commercials. However, this is the first time we’re using it simultaneously at this scale.”

In addition to the technological complexities of “TRON: Legacy,” it is also produced in 3D. As Bailey comments, “3D is definitely a challenge technically; the cameras are bigger and heavier and there are a lot of extra variables that you have to take into account, so it definitely slows the process down. But I think it’s a great reason to go to the movies because it’s an experience that you just can’t recreate on an iPhone or your laptop or at home.”

Kosinski continues, “It is a lot more work to shoot in 3D; the VFX are being finished in 3D, which is also a challenge. Having to create separate imagery for both eyes makes it that much more work.”For shooting “TRON: Legacy” in 3D, the filmmakers employed the newest generation of camera, built specifically for them, and used a 3D technique that is a combination of technologies—completely digital motion-capture of a character and the live-action camera system.

The filmmakers and designers of “TRON: Legacy” let their creativity soar to develop an exciting aesthetic for the film that would immerse audiences in a stunning visual landscape never before seen—or imagined.With director Joseph Kosinski at the helm to steer the film’s look and Darren Gilford tapped as production designer, it was clear to both of them that keeping the first film’s spirit alive was key. “The first film established a look that was so iconic,” Gilford explains, “and a lot of that was because of the limitations of the computer, what they really could do back in the ’80s. It was very geometric, very simplistic. With the computer technology we have now, it’s limitless what we can do. But we made a conscious decision that we would not go totally organic. We’d soften shapes and forms where we could, but we would definitely try and maintain those basic ‘TRON’ geometric shapes.”

To accomplish this, heavyweight talents were required, including concept artist David Levy. It was his job to convert Kosinski’s ideas to drawings and designs and establish the new film as its own world. “Joe’s vision evolved the visuals from the first film. He wanted the Grid to feel exactly like our reality, but with a twist,” Levy says.
Kosinski’s aim was to blend the real and the unreal without anyone noticing. “I don’t want the audience to know where the line rests, so sometimes I’m going to shoot everything completely practical, and then sometimes, it will be one practical set piece surrounded by blue screen. And if we do it right, it should be unnoticeable; it should be seamless,” says Kosinski.

In this respect, “TRON: Legacy” strays far away from the original. “The marriage of photorealistic computer-generated images and actual practical sets really gives you a sense of the world that you’re in,” says Jeff Bridges. “In the original ‘TRON’ we didn’t have that because it was basically black duvetyn with white adhesive tape marking things; we never got the feeling of where we actually were. There’s nothing like walking onto the set for the first time and seeing it all dressed.”

Twenty to 25 designers in various art departments churned out concepts and from those Kosinski and his team created the sets—from real-world locations, mixtures of real architecture with blue screen, to fully digital sets. Gilford estimates that there are between 60 and 70 unique settings in the film, split between 15 impressive fully-constructed sets and varying levels of computer-created landscapes.

Finally, since “TRON: Legacy” will be released in 3D, filmmakers were confronted with a unilateral challenge, one which would influence every decision made on the visual aspects of the film. Production designer Gilford says, “There are certain aspects that we had to design around and certain rules we had to obey. For example, when moving the 3D camera rig, one camera could reveal a light source a split second before the other. It can be a nightmare.”

Much care and foresight was also taken in the production design to incorporate iconic images from the mythology of “TRON.” For example, the art department incorporated many of the original film’s images and props into Flynn’s secret lab beneath the arcade. Those with a sharp eye will recognize the Master Control Program desk caddy from the original film, the tabletop computer interface and a condensed version of the Shiva laser, which takes Sam into the Grid. Others will make out a map of the Grid embedded in the code of the background image and Sam’s drawings from childhood on the wall.

While creating the look wasn’t always easy, Gilford admits that it proved to be immensely gratifying: “For a designer, this was a dream, and for my team as well. I really felt that we were able to assemble one of the most unbelievable art departments for ‘TRON: Legacy.’ It was incredibly challenging—but we had a blast doing it.”

The most important unifying element in the Grid is light. “In our film light links everything together. There are ribbons of light that form beneath the street then crawl up sidewalks and buildings, continuing for miles up into the city,” comments production designer Gilford. “Streetlights arise out of and wrap over the street to give the illusion they’re cradling the street.”

At the End of Line Club at the top of the Grid’s mile-high skyscraper, light is embedded in almost every surface: ribbons of light wrap around the floor and ceiling and around the booths. Even the drinks are illuminated. And the club’s roof and walls are glass, offering a view of the city lights and the beacon of the distant portal.But the element of light is perhaps best identified in the lit suits, which were a challenge to construct. Lead concept artist Neville Page and director Kosinski believed the suits they conceived could be made and shot “practical,” that is, without the use of CGI—so the designers went to work to make them a reality.

In the end the lighted suits were created by using electroluminescent lamps made from a flexible polymer film. Most of the form-fitting suits were made out of foam latex, but the Sirens’ suits were made by spraying balloon rubber over spandex, giving an incredible, super-sleek shape. The actors wearing those suits had to be severely compressed within the suits to compensate for the bulk of the electronics.

“In addition to the main cast costumes,” adds Christine Bieselin Clark, who worked with the film’s costume designer Michael Wilkinson, “we also built all of our background costumes. Once you go into the Grid, everybody has some element of light. We ended up making over 140 foam suits, which there is no precedent for”.The body-molded suits with their distinct lighting patterns are influencing clothes and shoe designers, with “TRON: Legacy” fashion elements showing up on runways and in fashion magazines. The distinctive hairstyles, such as upswept hair, and the bold eye-makeup treatments are setting new style trends around the world.

Lightcycles are an important and vital part of the TRON mythology. One of the designers who worked on the sleek, reconfigured Lightcycles in “TRON: Legacy” is Daniel Simon, a former car designer for Bugatti, who used, as a basis, the original sketches by Syd Mead, the designer of the Lightcycles for “TRON.”

Simon explains the challenges: “A Lightcycle forms a visual unit with its rider. His helmet and body become part of the bike design and stance—but you still need to give him freedom to move. That’s not in your catalogue; you have to start from scratch.” Moreover, adds Simon, “The Lightcycles are created out of a baton, so I had to design the entire inside of the bike, every screw and gear, so Digital Domain could transform it in animation. That was interesting, developing the look of how a vehicle might grow.”

Other vehicles in “TRON: Legacy” include the Light Runner, on the Grid a powerful racing car but in the Outlands a tough off-roader; the Recognizer, a huge, U-shaped vehicle that roams the streets looking for wayward programs; Solar Sailers that are flying cargo ships; and Clu’s Rectifier battleship, which is three times larger than any aircraft carrier in the real world, holding Clu’s entire army.

And while one would expect these amazing vehicles to be entirely computer-generated creations, many were also practically built for certain scenes, in keeping with Kosinski’s desire to constantly blur the line between CGI and reality. The filmmakers contracted a company called Wild Factory, who builds prototypes for Volkswagen, to take on the task of bringing some of the vehicles to reality.

On the back of every illuminated suit is a light disc and as in “TRON,” the discs play very significantly in “TRON: Legacy.” The light disc represents the power source, essence and memory bank of every program.Used as a weapon, it will return to its user like a boomerang. The light discs that were created for the film consist of 134 LED lights, are radio-controlled and attached to the light suits with a magnet. They also house the batteries and electronics that power the light suits.

For Grid-dwellers the baton is an important piece of equipment that can be used as a weapon or to store huge amounts of data and utility programs, and by keying in codes, it can create a Lightcycle or other vehicle around the user. As director Kosinski explains,“The baton is the Swiss army knife of this world. It can form any number of vehicles and it can also form different weapons depending upon your specialty.”

“TRON: Legacy” is a showcase for today’s technology and features some firsts in cinematic history: It is the first 3D movie to integrate a fully digital head and body to create the younger version of Jeff Bridges’ character; the first to make extensive use of self-illuminated costumes; the first to create molded costumes using digital sculpture exclusively, creating molds directly from computer files using CNC (Computer Numerical Cutting) technology; and the first 3D movie shot with 35mm lenses and full-35mm chip cameras.

“TRON: Legacy” took the technology known as facial capture to an extraordinary new level. Using a 3D scan of Jeff Bridges, a mold of his face was built and from that a mask was made with 52 holes in it, acting as a template for the facial marker dots tracked by four lipstick cameras attached to a carbon-fiber custom helmet. Meanwhile, a three-dimensional digital version of Bridges was created by Digital Domain using dozens of photographs of Bridges in his early 30s, its movements correlated with the 52 facial markers on the performance mask.It was the filmmakers’ biggest technical hurdle. As director Kosinski says, “I don’t think there is anything more difficult than creating a digital human that’s going to be in the same scene with other real human beings. And to top that off, it’s a digital human that people know…and we must capture all the charisma and personality of Jeff Bridges.”

When playing Clu, Bridges had the 52 markers drawn on his face and wore the Helmet Mounted Camera (HMC); his facial movements fed into the computer and were used to control the expressions and movements of the digital head. Thus, the digital performance of a younger Bridges was controlled by the real Bridges’ performance, as if the younger Bridges were actually on screen. The information sent to the computer made it possible to instruct the digital head to speak and emote in the exact same way Jeff Bridges would on set.

“Clu had to look, feel, breathe and act exactly like the young Jeff,” comments Academy Award® winner Eric Barba, the film’s visual effects supervisor. “Jeff gave us some really great performances to do that with, but it had to be a believable, realistic human—and in this case a perfect early-1980s Jeff Bridges. We took our E-motion Capture technology and pushed it far beyond anything we’ve done. It raised the bar higher than we’ve seen before.”

“TRON: Legacy” is the first film to use the Helmet Mounted Camera in live action, allowing the actor to interact with others in the scene. The technique, as producer Sean Bailey points out, “enabled us to come up with scenes that weren’t possible. And we had a different challenge than ‘Benjamin Button’: what Brad Pitt looks like at eighty years old is speculative, but most people know what Jeff Bridges looked like when he was in ‘Against All Odds,’ so we had to match that. It wasn’t just technology for technology’s sake; it enabled us to write in a whole new way.”

As technology strives to create ever more realistic immersive experiences, the question arises as to how far the integration of humans and computers can really go. Does the premise of “TRON: Legacy” bear any relation to reality? The filmmakers wanted the movie to be grounded in a sense of reality and have a sense of scientific truth. They felt if the audiences feel there is some underlying scientific premise that has been broken, then the story won’t feel real.So through producer Jeffrey Silver the filmmakers reached out to the National Academy of Sciences’ Science and Entertainment Exchange to advise them, asking questions like: Could you inject a digital version of a human being into a computer? And, could a digital personality be reconstituted into human form? They brought scientists in for a roundtable discussion just to talk about some of the fundamental concepts of “TRON: Legacy.”

The answers surprised them. It seems that if one had enough computing power and employed the principles of quantum physics in a theoretical process known as quantum teleportation, then it could happen. “We were delighted; it set off our imaginations. Science fiction is not supposed to be reality; it’s an extrapolation of what is possible, intended to ignite the imagination,” says Silver.

The 3D experience of “TRON: Legacy” will bring viewers into the Grid, and along for the ride, more than any other film in cinematic history. Using the next generation of 3D technology developed after “Avatar,” “TRON: Legacy” will allow the audience to experience the digital grid and be part of the action in the highly stylized landscape.

The “TRON: Legacy” audiences will discover an exciting, evolved grid that pulsates with the latest technology, stunning visual effects and leading-edge design. With an insightful father-son story that’s grounded in cultural reality, a strong, relatable female lead and a unique, one-of-a kind style, “TRON: Legacy” blends what’s real with super-imaginative, eye-popping visuals and 3D action.

(Source : Walt Disney Pictures , Compiled and Edited by Team- Artooz)

The behind-the-scenes production team includes cinematographer Michael Watson (A Perfect Getaway), editor Nicholas Wayman Harris (Sinner), production designer Drew Dalton (The Big Jump), costume designer Bobbie Mannix (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) and composer Matthew Margeson (Burning Palms). Creatures for the film are designed by the team of Alec Gillies & Tom Woodruff, JR. (AVPR: Aliens vs. Predator-Requiem).

Since their teens, brothers Colin and Greg Strause (collectively known as the Brothers Strause) have been immersed in the world of visual effects. They began their careers crafting VFX for music videos and commercials and created their firm, the Santa Monica, California, based Hydraulx, as a full-service VFX house. After several years directing shorter-form projects, they were hired to helm the latest chapter in the blockbuster franchise that pits brutal aliens against galactic predators: 2007′s AVPR: Aliens vs. Predator-Requiem. When they considered making another film, they knew it would only happen if they could craft it in-house and control every aspect of production.

A few weeks before Thanksgiving in 2009, the brothers were having lunch with longtime animation supervisor of Hydraulx, Joshua Cordes, and frequent writer of their music videos and commercials, Liam O’Donnell. They began to discuss ideas for a project they could entirely create within their own team.

Director Colin Strause elaborates on the film: “It’s a visually powerful epic alien-abduction movie with a great character story and heart. The premise is mass abduction on a global scale. For example, most people driving on a freeway who see an accident would look at the wreck. If some entity used these instinctual weaknesses against us, then it would wipe us out instantly. The event makes everyone equal. Everything flatlines at that point, and they are trying to survive what could be the end of the Earth.

As the team discussed ideas for the brothers’ first “homegrown film, they fleshed out the idea of what would happen when hundreds of thousands of people were enticed outside to stare up at the sky, just before they are sucked into alien ships and Earth becomes a vacant lot. They knew they could deliver the iconic visuals that had made Hydraulx the go-to group for VFX, but they also realized they had to answer big questions for the audience. Once all the people have been abducted, what happens to them? What do the people who are left to survive do next?

Colin Strause reflects that what most interested his brother and him was that there would be no compromise on their vision with Skyline, as they had the capabilities to make an independent film with enormous scope. ” One of the coolest things about what the filmmakers behind Paranormal Activity did was that they just did it themselves, Colin Strause says. ” They didn’t have to answer to anyone. We thought, ‘We could do that, but we could do that 100 times bigger…because we have an effects studio, we’ve worked on almost 70 movies and we own our own equipment.

The tightly knit group they had assembled would make the casting, designing, shooting and editing of Skyline much more streamlined. It didn’t hurt that two siblings were helming the process. Explains Cordes: “Because you have co-directors and because they’re brothers, it allows for more collaboration.

While the brothers had to be unerringly strict with certain aspects of production, they had many luxuries of which other shoots can only dream. That included having people they know and trust serve in multiple capacities on the project. Though Joshua Cordes co-wrote the script, he also served as second-unit director, pre-and post-VFX animator and occasional camera operator. Kristian Andresen was not only producer of the sci-fi thriller, but also worked as first assistant director and location manager. As well, co-writer O’Donnell served as script supervisor for the 42-day shoot.
While many sci-fi thrillers are set and shot at night to compensate for any issues with the inevitable CGI, it was important to the brothers to showcase the terror during the day. They felt confident their work on dozens of big-budget films had prepared them to pull it off. States Colin Strause: “We combined the scale of an event movie with the action of an invasion film. Having people watch as dozens of motherships are sucking up millions of people off the face of the Earth…that’s something you have to see during the day. At nighttime, that wouldn’t look like much. In the daytime, there’s a constant reminder that there’s nowhere else you can go.

When deciding upon the best method to meld the live-action performances with the aliens’ attacking the City of Angels, the brothers decided that they didn’t want to use green screens to re-create the action. Rather, they chose to rely on the specificity of their lightweight RED cameras to film everything. According to Colin Strause: “One of the big things we’ve encountered with using green screen is that it’s usually a weird crutch. It should only be used in extreme situations. It feels artificial because you often shoot your foregrounds but don’t get the same lighting on your backgrounds. Everything feels out of sync.

In order to make the action look realistic, the team shot all the interactions between the actors and stunt players (who served as points of reference) on camera. That way, the actors could punch, knock down or get knocked down by the “aliens without the DP, camera crew and directors fussing over the green screen’s placement. Greg Strause elaborates: “In order to have green-screen coverage everywhere, you can’t physically put the lights you want to create the fill light for an exterior; that’s because the green screen is there. So now you’re trapped. Doing something that was the most cost-effective allowed us to get shots that looked better and cost a lot less to create in post.

More complex rigging and stunts also benefitted from this logical choice to shoot complex sequences entirely in camera. One of the more intricate sequences stunt coordinator MARK NORBY choreographed was something few in Los Angeles-not to mention in the Marina del Rey complex-had ever seen. Colin Strause shares: “We built this giant wire rig on the helicopter pad of the building, pulling actors up into the air and shooting the whole thing in camera with fans blowing. We actually had the real sun setting in the background as the actors were being hoisted up. The shots just look beautiful, and you’d never get that on a green screen.

Indeed, the actors on the helicopter pad were a full 20 stories from the ground for these shots. As the filmmakers lined up their cameras and framed shots against the marina, they already knew exactly where a menacing mothership would be hovering. That allowed the brothers and team to add the ship into the shot in postproduction.

opposed to creating the whole background from scratch. Colin Strause explains the rationale: “Once more than 50 percent of your imagery is CG, it can start looking faker much more quickly. But with our method, we start with a completely real place and we’re just augmenting that reality. It just makes it look more photo real.

In order to make the action look realistic, the team shot all the interactions between the actors and stunt players (who served as points of reference) on camera. That way, the actors could punch, knock down or get knocked down by the “aliens without the DP, camera crew and directors fussing over the green screen’s placement. Greg Strause elaborates: “In order to have green-screen coverage everywhere, you can’t physically put the lights you want to create the fill light for an exterior; that’s because the green screen is there. So now you’re trapped. Doing something that was the most cost-effective allowed us to get shots that looked better and cost a lot less to create in post.

More complex rigging and stunts also benefitted from this logical choice to shoot complex sequences entirely in camera. One of the more intricate sequences stunt coordinator MARK NORBY choreographed was something few in Los Angeles-not to mention in the Marina del Rey complex-had ever seen. Colin Strause shares: “We built this giant wire rig on the helicopter pad of the building, pulling actors up into the air and shooting the whole thing in camera with fans blowing. We actually had the real sun setting in the background as the actors were being hoisted up. The shots just look beautiful, and you’d never get that on a green screen.

Indeed, the actors on the helicopter pad were a full 20 stories from the ground for these shots. As the filmmakers lined up their cameras and framed shots against the marina, they already knew exactly where a menacing mothership would be hovering. That allowed the brothers and team to add the ship into the shot in postproduction.

opposed to creating the whole background from scratch. Colin Strause explains the rationale: “Once more than 50 percent of your imagery is CG, it can start looking faker much more quickly. But with our method, we start with a completely real place and we’re just augmenting that reality. It just makes it look more photo real.

As the team designed the invading aliens, they wondered what kind of sentient beings would attack when we’re most susceptible…in the wee hours just before dawn. Though the standard in sci-fi movies is that invaders will arrive in big metal spaceships, when this group pondered the look of their creatures…they decided that their alien ships should be organic. As they worked to distinguish Skyline, the production team wondered: “What if it’s not a mothership? What if it’s just a giant organism, and everything is biologically designed?

The key alien characters in the film are the haunting siren light, the tankers, the drones and the hydra. The brothers explain the distinctive purposes. “The siren light is similar to those deep-sea fish that have a floating front lure with a light that attracts all the other fish, Colin Strause offers. “From there, you have the tankers, which are King Kong-sized creatures with tentacles that serve as the cleanup crew. They’re the heavy lifters that drop down and quell any fighting resistance from humans. There are also creatures called hydras and drones.

His brother elaborates upon the latter creatures. “The hydras are flying jellyfish crossed with a fighter jet, says Greg Strause, “while the drones are the smallest critters we have in Skyline. Their size allows them to get into buildings, seek and hunt out any of the stragglers that the sirens missed during the first pass of abduction.

As they began preproduction, the brothers looked to a certain cephalopod for inspiration. “One of the movement references we had was the octopus, Colin Strause notes. “They have tentacles to support their weight, and there’s a weird ballet to their motion that’s smooth and beautiful. They can also be very frightening and lock on to things. We used that as our base animation reference for the drone and the hydra. For the tanker, we went much more gorilla. It has less of a zero-gravity propulsion and more of an actual physics-based one. For example, the big brother that drops down and checks things out would naturally come down to the surface. It was always a galloping, pissed-off 65-foot-tall gorilla.

The Skyline team brought aboard visual effects house Amalgamated Dynamics, Inc. (ADI) to assist with creature designs, and creatures for the film are designed by the team of Alec Gillis & Tom Woodruff, Jr. Producer O’Donnell notes that the entire team quite enjoyed making up aliens from scratch. As this is the first possibly in a series, there were no expectations for the creatures’ look and feel. He notes: “It’s freeing to wonder, ‘What if this guy has tentacles that come out of his arms?’ You don’t have to go back and have it line up with any history or canon. It was fantastic to create our own mythology, biology and MO of how they take us out.

“We knew that the monsters needed to be iconic, screenwriter Cordes explains. “We wanted to see what ADI could come up with without any limitations on them. The final drone was taken from one of the original tanker designs and became a smaller monster in the film. They nailed our main flagship alien within the first day of designs. And in post, we added bioluminescence to the creatures that brought a whole new dimension. Our main designer at Hydraulx, KINO SCIALABBA, created all the amazing ship designs, which really sets the movie apart from its predecessors.

The production wanted to honor the work of Hitchcock and Romero and keep the events fast-paced and interesting for the audience as they watch people who are stuck in one setting. Knowing that the characters’ vantage point was key to understanding the scope of the creatures and the destruction, the team had to guarantee that every visual was stunning.

O’Donnell shares a story of how this process evolved from page to screen: “There was a line in the script that describes the characters watching a firefight in the distance through a telescope. You’re just supposed to see a few plumes and explosions. Instead, Colin thought it would be cool to have a tanker that is ripping apart all these people and throwing a truck over and smashing them. That’s better than explosions on the horizon.

Keenly understanding that owning your own effects shop meant the sky was the limit, the brothers gave their team the freedom to go bigger and bigger with their monster designs. After all, there was no reason that invading aliens needed to be proportional to the humans they were grabbing. Remembers producer Andresen: “We went from a 20-foot-tall tanker to a 60-foot-tall one because Colin and Greg thought that it needed to look as if the tanker could cross over to the 10th balcony. Everybody said, ‘Alright…60-foot aliens it is!’

Skyline shot for 42 days in the Los Angeles area, primarily on the 19th floor of the building in which Greg Strause lives. The writers and directors believed that when you’re in the contained areas of the luxury skyscraper, you must feel an intimate connection with the characters and focus on their survival story. They also wanted to ensure that every time our heroes open the blinds, there would be something huge that was happening. All this had to be accomplished with a crew of approximately 20 people.
“Everything had to be very lightweight because we had to do the work of 80 people with only 20 people, he continues. “We couldn’t physically fit more than that many people on set. At a certain point, you have too many lights, cameras and stuff everywhere, and you can’t move or shoot anything without having all the gear in the shot. We had to be very guerilla in that regard.

They had to guarantee that they possessed full permits and that everything was set up just so. Colin Strause concludes: “We love shooting in L.A., and what we accomplished with a few passionate people wouldn’t be possible anywhere else. We had a home-turf advantage from a filming standpoint, but there were certain challenges while shooting. For example, we had a permit to create smoke and we had a giant smoker on the rooftop of the building. Then we started hearing one fire truck, then it was four, then it was 12 that showed up. They said they had three helicopters on the way as well.

Strause film: Skyline, starring Eric Balfour, Scottie Thompson, Brittany Daniel, with David Zayas and Donald Faison. The casting is by Liz Dean, and the music is composed by Matthew Margeson. Creatures for the film are designed by Alec Gillis & Tom Woodruff, Jr., and the costume designer is Bobbie Mannix. Skyline’s editor is Nicholas Wayman Harris, and the sci-fi thriller’s production designer is Drew Dalton. The director of photography is Michael Watson, and the co-producer is Paul Barry. The film’s line producer is Tracey Landon. Executive producers for Skyline are Ryan Kavanaugh, Brett Ratner, Tucker Tooley, Brian Tyler and Brian Kavanaugh-Jones. It is written by Joshua Cordes & Liam O’Donnell and produced by Kristian James Andresen and Liam O’Donnell. Skyline is produced and directed by the Brothers Strause.

Source: (C) 2010 Universal Studios

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Your blog is very popular and respected among designers… how did you build up such a large following for it? Was it a lot of word-of-mouth or did you actively promote it in the beginning?

I didn’t promote my blog at all. I didn’t even send one e-mail to people I know that are very popular to ask to link to my blog. That’s just not me. I didn’t enter my site into a gallery either. I planned on doing so though, but before I realized it people just beat me to it. I was so surprised by that. The only time I entered my site was the CSSVault back in February 2004, but that was my previous blog, the previous design, which was actually (in my opinion) a pretty basic site. Galleries were also very new back then. There weren’t many, like 2 or 3 respectable ones and that’s it. I think the ‘new’ design and the fact that my site was picked up by every gallery gave me the push to grow in a fast and steady pace. From then on I?ve tried to keep on posting good content, content I think people are interested in. Knowing what people like and what they want to learn about is important. Also the tone of your writing can play a role. It seems that people like the way I see and approach things and how I put that into words. Always maintaining the level of quality content is what makes a blog succeed. This way chances are that bigger sites will link back to your site, and that people will follow your RSS feed.

You have an amazing, illustrative, colorful approach to design. Where do you get inspiration for such unique work?

Everywhere really. Just by looking around. I think people differ in the way they look at something. The first thing I ‘see’ is the color and then I’ll see the shape. Even if I judge artwork, I’ll see its colors first and then the composition. I’m not saying that’s how you need to judge an artwork though. It’s not that colors come first. But I think because of the way I look at everything I’ve developed a natural sense for colors. Inspiration is a mysterious thing. I usually get inspired the most if I’m in a happy mood, not pressured, a bit disconnected with the real world even, music on my ears etc. So for me inspiration has a lot to do with how I feel. If I?m happy I’m very perceptive for ideas.

How do you keep up with the latest web technologies and standards? Do you sometimes prefer designing for print because you don’t have to consider how you will code it or do you look forward to that challenge?

I like the challenge of coding and yes I always look forward to it. There are times that I prefer designing for print because of certain limitations in web, but with print I always feel a bit more scared. Scared to make mistakes. Could be technical or a simple typo. A mistake in print can have big consequences because it’s final and you can’t undo. With web design you can undo your mistake. In print you have so many factors you need to think about. People might underestimate print design and see it as more simple, but they probably forget that fact that there is a technical and technological part that is sometimes rather complex which makes coding for the web compared to it almost like a walk in the park. Just think about color management, trapping or overprint for example. I just love both and the fact that I’m being able to switch between the two on occasions.

Which applications do you mainly use? And, what does your workstation look like?

I’m mainly using Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, DreamWeaver, CSSEdit , Transmit… I’m working on a dual 2.7Ghz. PowerMac G5 with 2,5GB of RAM. The machine still works very well, but I think I’ll replace it this year.

It goes without saying that you have an incredible amount of detail in your work. Do you ever apply compositional principles such as the divine proportion or the rule of thirds, and other principles from nature or do you just have an incredible sense of line, shape, and proportion?

Thanks! I almost never use things like the divine proportion or the rule of thirds in my work. Mostly I judge on what I see in front of me and what feels natural or balanced to me. It is a bit different when designing for the web because there a grid can be a great tool to help you solve a complex layout problem.

If you could redesign anything… a favorite movie poster, an album cover, a product, etc… what would it be and why?

I honestly haven’t thought about this before really, but if I have to mention one thing, then I guess it would be the album covers of my favorite music label, Naked Music. Some of them use a nice illustrative style, a style I can find myself in. Their music gives me inspiration.

Your portfolio boasts of impressive logo works. What are the things that you keep in mind, your advice on designing a successful and impactful logo?

Try to always start in black and white. I tend to believe you have a greater chance you end up with a stronger logo this way, because you focus on the shape first. You can also be pretty sure it will look good on fax too for example and in a smaller icon. Don’t make it overly complicated and detailed. It is also not always necessary to portrait what it stands for. Try out metaphors instead.