My friend Tim Kowalczyk is a MFA Sculpture graduate at Illinois State University. His work is very innovative and inquisitive. You can check out his work at timkowalczyk.blogspot.com. Here is his artist statement: “Cardboard boxes are metaphors for containers of human memories. Made from clay, the cardboard boxes show the longevity and frailty of each memory. Indicative of the memory the box holds, it is shelved and stored only to be opened again. Each memory, handled differently, can be ravaged and even lost by time and feelings. The fragments of the memories left behind are protected and even hidden by the simple cardboard box. Every box is kept waiting to be remembered at a different time and in a different place.”-Tim Kowalczyk

Recently Caterpillar Racing learned of an opportunity to promote the team and the company by displaying a 30-second video on the Sprint Vision jumbo monitors at the Fontana Raceway in California. That was the good news. The challenging news? The video had to be in California in just days. Cat Racing called on The Iona Group because of their in-house capabilities to produce high-end, high impact video and because of their deep experience with the company and Cat branding. Iona was able to bring fresh ideas to the project as well as leverage existing application footage to create a video that was bold, loud and fast enough to capture the attention of even the most discerning race fan. The video crossed the finish line under budget and was at the raceway quicker than expected resulting in the client giving Iona the checkered flag.

The Iona Group won 6 Silver Peoria Addy Awards among others on Friday night for their work on the Morton Economic Development Council Website, Bradley University Gala, Black Creativity Green Revolution Video, Bradley Basketball Area Intro Video, Bradley Basketball Are You Fan Enough Commercial, and the Bradley Braves Arena Intro Video. In addition, Steve McNair and Scott McCormick (the founders of the company) were awarded the Award of Excellence for their wonderful leadership and work. Each year the Peoria Ad Club has judges choice awards that are announced the night of the awards banquet. Iona won a judges choice award for the Bradley University Gala. Congratulations to Iona and all those involved for their tremendous success at this years Peoria Addy Awards. www.ionagroup.com

links for 2009-03-02

• 11 Non-Traditional Uses of WordPress
  You might not have thought of using Wordpress like this before. Some creative uses for the blogging system.
  (tags: wordpress)
• StatOwl.com – Statistical analysis and market research of Internet usage trends
  A site featuring comprehensive aggregate Internet usage statistics on plugins, browsers and more.
  (tags: analytics stats)

Not Bad At All: Iona Wins 8 Awards at This Year’s Addys

Iona pulled in 6 regular Addy awards this year, in categories like Best Business to Business Website, Best Special Effects, Best Audio, Best Local Ad Campaign, Best Use of Text Messaging in Advertising and Non Broadcast video. (Check out the links to see the samples). In addition to the regular awards, two special awards were won, a Judge’s Choice award for the Bradley Gala Text Messaging project based on creativity, and an Award of Excellence given to Steve McNair and Scott McCormick (two of the founding partners of the Iona Group) to commemorate their 25 years of great service to the local advertising marketplace.

Congrats to all involved on these efforts. We did some great work and it got noticed. If you’re interested in learning more about the winning projects (toolsets, process, etc) mentioned in the post… let me know!

The Decline of the Dope Sheet

In a recent blog post, Micheal Sporn talks about the decline of the dope sheet, and why everyone should absolutely use them as a tool to aid in animation.

With the advent of the computer, and as you mention programs such as Toon Boom (which employs its own version of an X-sheet,) studios presumably have reduced their dependence on such charts. Since I know how valuable these sheets are in relaying information, I’ve kept them up in my studio. The sound track is read on the prepared sheets. I don’t demand that anyone fills them out – certainly not when many animators today are developing their animation in the computer – but the sheet gives an excellent way to plan the scene, and the animators can take that information and use it as they like.

We will certainly be using Dope Sheets on our film as I too believe that they are a great help to the animator. And if your looking for a resource for Dope Sheets, I have used these in the past and find them quite nice.

-Matt

Attack of the 30ft Basset Hound!

I think my students are having a bit to much fun working on this film…

Oh and please be sure to update your RSS feeds for this site, Feedburner went and changed them in the last couple of days, sorry.

On the set of Coraline

CGSociety has a great article which describes the unique process the filmmakers took to create the beautiful film Coraline. Perhaps one of the most interesting innovations was that the replacement heads for each character were created on a 3-D printer.

It is actually a very odd yet wonderful concept. A characters head is created in 3-D, on a computer. Only to then be turned into a physical form for the purpose of animation. It’s the complete opposite of how that process normally goes where clay maquettes are digitized to create 3-D computer models.

Laika had to print perhaps 70 tiny half faces at a time, building what they called “kits” for various expressions, kits that had to be produced with a rapid turnover. Throughout the production the artists were continually streamlining the models to give as much detail as needed while reducing the printing time to keep up with demand.

What a fascinating modern age we live in.

From Digg: Firefox eclipses IE6 in web share, threatens IE7

Now we’re talking about progress…. Thank the maker! Can’t wait to totally abandon support for this. We have made active steps towards pushing our clients away from this. Most of the time, IE6 support is only added as additional cost if the client asks for it or their user base requires it. Adding it in only adds extra development time.

Firefox 3 has become the first non-Microsoft web browser to overtake Internet Explorer 6 in market share, according to new data from StatCounter. The open source browser climbed to 24 percent of users in February while IE6 dipped to just over 22.6 percent, making Firefox the second most popular browser by individual versions.

read more | digg story