Bruce Wymer

Bruce's portfolio is very impressive. starting out with a print and illustration basis he expands into branding, motion and installation work. Very stylish and mega-cool. It would be good to collabrate with illustrators for motion work whilst at college. It could be a great opportunity for all concerned.

Louise Fili

Louise Fili is a specialist designer of logos and restaurant identities, and also has a pedigree stretching back to the 1970's, when she was a senior designer for Herb Lubalin. She has also collaborated with Steven Heller on many books generally covering design history, such as Victorian era typography and art deco. This is reflected in her identities for restaurants.

I am very much interested in a wide range of typography, from hand-drwn to historical stuff. My dad was on course to become an art teacher when I was a kid of about 4 or 5, and he was totally into the 1930's era. Art Deco, Busby Berkely and that depression era between the two world wars, and the art and cinema of that time. He had these books about when I was growing up, and I used to copy the lettering. I guess that decorative style made an impact on me even when I was only about 13. Strangely enough, my dad didn't end up in art, and has been a social worker since the late 1970's. He still has great taste, and I find now I am studying again that he is into loads of cool stuff, Man Ray, Brassai, Toulouse-Lautrec (Great Posters, love the typography). Hopefully from all this there is a connection.

Panda Panther

Excellent new studio, although the people concerned have worked with many of the big creatives in the industry, so the reel is full is full of well known clips. I like the Illustration angle with the motion graphics.

Panda Panther do branding, short films, music videos, graphics and illustration.

Blind / Crazy

Blind are another of those big Californian design companies that also have a NY office. They have huge clients for all the usual monster brands like Nike and Microsoft, however I am just posting this as I'd seen the video for Gnarls Barclay "Crazy" many times (the world's best selling track of 2006), which appears to be an After Effects / graphic type project.

This is something I am very interested in. I also have many contacts in the music world, and could possible be able to at least be able to pitch ideas for this kind of thing if I had the skills/talent/ideas. This for me is a huge motivation!

Their main site is here.

Paper Fights back

BBDO NY, Dante Ariola, Digital Domain, and an army of paper demons raise a little hell in this new spot for Pepsi Cola's energy drink Amp.

Fuel

Fuel are a huge mutidisciplinary design / motion graphics studio based in California. They seem to do lots of very corporate work, but have a very inspired approach. There is a great spot they have done for McDonalds here

Their 2006 reel can be viewed here.

Some of the other students in our first year critical studies class seem to think that anything linked to the big corporations is fundamentally wrong, yet it's those very companies that hire the coolest people and fund this kind of great creative work. Creative people must eat!

In my previous job as a dance music remix producer, for a very long time dance music was really big, and during that period money was made by doing 'cool' underground work to gain credibity, but getting money for remixing very big multinatonal acts. The record companies wouldn't necessarily want commercial work. They always wanted to link their act or barnd to your 'cool' thing. I think this is the case at the moment with the motion graphics people.

Dstrukt

Originally hailing from Manchester, Chris is a skilled motion designer, animator and art director. Inspired by movie titles and with a background in both online and traditional media, Chris began working under the name Dstrukt producing work for a number of high end clients including MTV Networks Europe, Channel 5, BBC, Vodafone, Discovery Channel and VH1.

Chris is also regularly featured in design and industry magazines, such as Computer Arts and IdN, and presents at design conferences around the world. As well as running Dstrukt and numerous personal projects, he co-founded the experimental film collective Devoid of Yesterday with Rob Chiu from The Ronin. Chris is passionate about photography, music and cinema and channels these influences into his glitchy, dark and edgy creations

Dstrukt is currently a fully active Motion Graphics studio catering in 3D, Compositing, Animation & Art Direction. Chris is also a key member of London based motion house Wyld Stallyons.

Watch The VH1 "Smells Like The 90's" short here

See the AWESOME showreel here

Neu Black

Illustrator Paul Huang, creator of Nanospore, recently teamed up with animators Chris Riehl and Sean Starkweather to create an amazing animated video for Nike Japan. The piece is part of a viral marketing campaign promoting the Nike Free Trainer 7.0.

Commissioned as a short film, the video depicts the selling points for Nike’s new “Meta7″ shoe. The story was both illustrated and written by Huang. The characters, Anieruz (circle), Seveno (square), and Manipith (triangle), disappear from their oppressed lives and return transformed with new powers. Accompanied by a print and sculpture campaign, the pieces toured Asia debuting at Tokyo Designer’s week.