Ars Thanea recently finished a new project commissioned by Discovery Networks CEEMEA for one of their biggest brands – Discovery Channel. The campaign has been on air since mid-March in Central Europe and will finish by the end of April.

The idea behind it was to combine three popular shows (Dynamo the Magician, Bearing Sea Gold Rush and the new season of Storm Chasers) into one powerful visual to create a Discovery Channel world. As usual Ars Thanea managed to come up with a beautiful and incredibly detailed visual combining custom shot photography with 3D elements and plenty of effects. The end result is stunning and what I personally enjoy the most is to study the close ups. The more you look at it the more details you pickup and you realize just how much work went into one single image.

To further help promote Dynamo the Magician they went to an office building of N Tv (partner of Discovery in Poland) and literally turned the building’s cafe upside down with the message “Feel the thrill of Discovery. More magic on Tuesday 10PM only with “Dynamo. The Magician”. Brilliant!

Swagg is an app for iPhone and Android that lets you manage gift and rewards cards, get offers and send gifts from your phone. Being a new company they needed a proper introduction so they approached Juxt Interactive which is a great interactive studio with offices in San Francisco and New Port Beach, California. Juxt has helped to develop most of their online presence producing branded content, website, mobile and iPad site and in-app intro video.

To make things interesting Juxt has setup a shoot to film various gift objects being thrown down through a hole and shot at super slow motion. This was then used as a background video on Swagg’s website. Certainly a clever integration with the concept behind the app.

The making of video has a lot of energy and is a great watch. You can find it inside the post.

On a side note I’ve been running out of stuff to write about recently (hence the lack of posts), so if you have anything interesting that you think deserves to be on here, please use the suggestions link in the navigation or drop me an email.

Recently featured on Behance was the Odooproject identity designed by Hidden Characters (site under construction), a duo of graphic designers from Budapest. The project itself is a submission of an innovative architectural solution for the use of solar energy by a team of university students in Budapest.

Hidden characters have been brought on the team to help with things like logo system, visual identity manual, business cards, promotional posters, brochures, web design and more. And what a job they did!

Building the whole visual identity around the submission itself, at the base of the logo system is an aerial view of the proposed house design which is simple enough. What they decided to do however, is to include the effects of the sun on the house throughout different parts of the day, casting shadows that form the dynamic identity that further ties it back to the theme of solar energy. What they ended up with is a really fantastic visual solution that perfectly captures the essence of the project and is flexible enough to cover a whole range of different applications.

Dynamic identities have become pretty common in the recent years, but they rarely end up working very well, mostly because they are usually applied to applications that cannot be dynamic, like print items, which seems a bit illogical. But worse than that is the fact that with the ones I have seen (I’m looking at you AOL) there is usually never any good reason to develop something dynamic in the first place. It almost seems like designers cannot propose simple effective solutions anymore so they end up offering clients a shape filled with random textures or images, which is hardly a good solution.

This on the other hand seems perfectly worthy of something dynamic and I think it really adds a lot to the project. I especially like the way it’s implemented on the website, where it displays the current time and shows what shadow the building would cast, as well as the inclusion of time and date below the versions of the printed logo. If I had to nitpick I’d say it’s a shame that the name doesn’t start with the letter “H” as that’s pretty much all I can see looking at the versions of the logo. Or maybe it’s a shame that the house itself is not built in an O shape. Could’ve been interesting as well.

Regardless, these are minor issues with what is otherwise an outstanding identity system!

Damn Ugly Photography is the website of a New York based photographer with a great sense of humor – Brad Trent. Growing up in Western Canada he, like many great photographers, began shooting at an early age and later moved to NYC where he started shooting for the Life magazine at the age of 25. Since then he’s done work for major magazines like Time, Newsweek, Esquire, The New York Times and photographed everyone from Barack Obama to Steven Spielberg to CEOs of some of the largest corporations in the US.

Over time as he started shooting with more complex lighting setups, he began a great series he calls “The Artificial Portraits” where he shoots his subjects together with the lights and all gear to show the unreality of the portraits we all see every day. In another series called the Light Tests he shoots his subjects with gray cards and color checkers. Absolutely love these ideas. He also documents some of his shoots on his blog, some of which I will be covering later in the future. Be sure to check out his website for higher res images. More photos inside the post.

Roughly a year and a half ago Aardman Animations (creators of Wallace and Gromit) have teamed up with Nokia to create the world’s smallest stop-motion animation shot on a Nokia N8. It was created to promote few different things. The back then unreleased Nokia N8 and its great imaging capabilities, the Cellscope which is a device that can be mounted onto a cellphone to take microscopic images at 5x-60x magnification used for diagnosing diseases in developing countries and last but not least is an attempt to create the world’s smallest animation and have it certified by the Guinness World Records.

All things considered it was a successful project on all fronts and the result is a cute animation of a girl waking up in a bizarre giant world being chased by a huge wave.

Around 50 versions of the 9 mm model were first sketched, then modeled in 3D software and finally printed on a 3D printer. These were then handed to a painter, who in order to paint the 9 mm models precisely had to stop breathing for a few seconds to do the brush strokes. Quite an incredible project with some great ideas behind it. Making of video inside the post.

Project Fox which is one of my favorite projects ever, is an initiative by Volkswagen from 2005 to promote their back then new car – the Volkswagen Fox. The project consisted from 3 parts. There is the car, which until 2011 when they stopped the production was manufactured in Brazil and then there’s the gastronomic contest where 40 students from Europe’s top hotel and catering schools competed for the chance to work at the Hotel Fox. Which brings me to the most interesting part of the whole project.

Hotel Fox (previously called Park Hotel) is an old hotel located in Copenhagen that has been completely redesigned by 21 visual artists (graphic designers, urban artists, illustrators and graffiti artists) invited from 13 different countries to transform the hotel’s 61 rooms into works of art. Each room has been individually designed and furnished by one of the artist so none of the rooms are the same. Some really exceptional interior design came out of it as a result and even though I have yet to make it to Copenhagen, at least I know where I’ll be staying when I get there. Be sure to check out a full list of the rooms on their website, especially if you are planning a visit to Copenhagen in the future.

The video is more of a short documentary but definitely worth a watch!

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Think Big is an initiative by the mobile provider O2 that was created to help young people in the UK and Germany (aged 13-25) to convert their ideas into actual projects, with the aim to positively impact local communities.

It works like this – you have an idea you think might help a larger group of people within your community, you submit your idea to O2 and if the idea is good you get £300 in UK or €400 in Germany to make your project happen within 3 months. Obviously that’s not a lot of money so it’s meant to be smaller projects that are possible to realize within that amount. If the project is successful you might get invited to a second phase where you could be given £2500 or €1000 to take it one step further.

Making of video inside the post.

To help promote this initiative Sehsucht Berlin created a 55 second spot using installations of common objects like bricks, balloons, toy cars and sneakers, just to name a few. What they ended up with is a great commercial that tells the story flawlessly but more importantly, does it in a fun and engaging way.

Considering the Grammys just ended I thought it would be appropriate to post this great case study created by an agency who I’m sure doesn’t need much introduction – Warsaw based Ars Thanea.

Using a combination of CGI, stock photography and various simulation and particle systems they were able to create stunning imagery that was used as a base for all media before and during the 54th Grammy Awards show.

Driven predominantly by Peter Jaworowski’s visual style who has been working as a freelancer on various campaigns under the name Hejz and later co-founded Ars Thanea where he now works as an executive creative director, Ars Thanea has since employed a small team of talented designers, programmers and 3D artists making it possible to create unmatched advertising and interactive campaigns for some of the biggest brands in the world. If you haven’t yet checked out their portfolio I highly encourage you to do so.

Breakfast Interrupted is a video shoot created for Marlin Network’s annual breakfast event by the talented folks at Bruton Stroube – a still and motion studio based in Saint Louis, Missouri.

Their specialty is (delicious) food photography although they shoot everything from animals through food & beverages to portraits and landscapes.

In this piece, shot mostly with the Phantom Gold HD at 1000 fps, they tried to “showcase food in a beautiful and unusual way”. Capturing thrown and spilled food in super slow motion certainly looks mesmerizing and it also looks like they had a blast doing it. Be sure to check out their portfolio for more great images and motion work. BTS video and more photos after the break.

Two worlds is a stereo 3D cinema commercial created for Sony by a Canadian production company Spy Films. Sony wanted to create something emotional and the result is a story about two characters who see each other from across the street striking a powerful connection where everything physical breaks as they walk towards each other. Ending with a great line “Don’t just watch. Feel.” it really is quite breathtaking to watch, though I’m sure it would be much better on a big screen in 3D the way it was intended.

Making of video inside the post.

The making of video really is a great watch that shows what it takes to create a commercial like this. Most of the environment is full CGI with only a few real items like the books, smoke and sparks shot with actual cameras. What I found incredible is the amount of light and power (500 000 watts!) they had to use to effectively light the models with the slow motion cameras shooting at rates of 500-2500 frames per second.

While personally I am not a big fan of 3D, I do realize that it’s still a relatively new technology and with the right people standing behind the camera, I think there are opportunities to create new lasting experiences rather than meaningless explosions and flying bullets I get tired of watching after two minutes. Even though I’m not sure that this commercial manages to create that experience to its full potential, I do like the idea behind it and think it’s definitely a step in the right direction.