I got to see my very first 3D film when I was 10 or 11 years old. It was an IMAX movie called Across The Sea of Time; it fell in line with most IMAX features of the day as being "educational" first and "entertaining" second (I put both those in quotes because, really, it was neither). At the time, 3D – like IMAX – was nothing more than a novelty, so they were a perfect match for each other. The movie was less than an hour long and told the story of immigration to Ellis Island through the eyes of a young boy. Of course, it included a litany of novelty shots that such as sweeping panoramas of New York and items popping out at you. If I'm remembering correctly, they also had archival stereoscopic pictures that they merged together to show on the screen...if there was any saving grace of the movie, that was it. 

The technology being used at the time was an expensive shutter glasses system. It's a rather ingenious solution in-which the film is played at twice the normal frame rate with each alternating frame being for either the left or right eye.  The oversized eyewear communicated with the projector & screen through an IR receiver. This allowed them to sync up and shut off each eye for a fraction of a second (presumably 1/12th?) to allow the other one to see the appropriate image. You never felt like more of a dork than when you wore these helmet-like glasses. But it worked, and it gave people a good idea of what new 3D technology could do – especially since most people still associated 3D with the old red and blue cardboard glasses.

However like I said 3D was just a novelty, like IMAX itself. It was expensive (both from a production and a ticket price standpoint), and much like sound in the early 1920's, still in its infancy. But it was pretty clear that if these hurdles could be overcome then there would certainly be a place for it in the future of cinema. When you think about it 3D films were like the flying cars of cinema technology – nobody knew how or when it would happen, but there was a general consensus that it would be an inevitability in our future.

A Revival

In the late 1990's few things happened…namely: DVDs, big widescreen TVs, the internet, computers, and an endless supply of cheap electronics which allowed even the poorest of college students to have a rather impressive home theater. Suddenly movies could be experienced in the home with a near theater-level quality system. Going to the theater became far less valuable, and the movie industry suffered for it. They needed a differentiator, since all that was really left was the sheer size of the screen and that wasn't going to cut it much longer. What they needed was 3D.

In 2006 I was delighted to see one of my all-time favorite movies The Nighmare Before Christmas was being re-released into theaters for Halloween – and in 3D no-less! I was very eager to see how they managed to pull this off on a 13-year-old movie that was never shot with the intention of being presented in 3D. The result was spectacular. Not only were they able to breathe new life into a film I had seen close to 20 times, they did it without being gimmicky. The great success here was because none of the shots were designed to be stereoscopic- thus the end result was subtle and engrossing. At no point was I acutely aware that I was watching something in 3D. (It also didn't hurt that the movie was preceded by Pixar's 1989 short, Knick Knack – re-rendered in 3D – something that I found so cool, I was disheartened it was being wasted on the theater full of 8-year-olds.)

Being the first 3D film I had seen in nearly a decade, this was also the first time I got to experience the polarized Real-D system; a technology I consider a vast improvement over the LCD shutter system (though I'm sure some would argue otherwise). Having a rudimentary understanding of how light works, I was really impressed with the ingenuity of this system. Also, as someone who wears glasses beneath the 3D ones, it was nice to have something smaller than a motorcycle helmet to put on. Finally, whereas the IMAX shutter system came along with ushers screaming at you to return the $100+ glasses, all you get with Real-D is a friendly request to recycle. All-in-all, an improvement in my eyes.

The Nightmare Before Christmas has been re-released each subsequent year in 3D around Halloween, and I've been sure to catch it every time; both because it's one of my favorite childhood movies, and because the 3D version is an excellent example of how to do this sort of thing right. However, even in 2006 and 2007 the list of movies being presented in Real-D was pretty thin. It was mostly limited to CGI-animated features from Dreamworks and traditional IMAX education films. As a result, I didn't come across anymore 3D movies until Coraline was released in 2009. 

Coming from the same director as The Nightmare Before Christmas, Henry Selick, Coraline was a stop-motion animated movie made in true 3D (in comparison to Nightmare, which was merely converted to 3D) – a big task when compared to the CGI movies coming from the likes of Pixar and Dreamworks. Naturally, I was very excited to see the film, and of course I planned to see it in 3D. I was nothing less than amazed, it ranked high as one of my favorite movies in a long time, and I felt it was well-deserving of praise both for it's story-telling, and it's 3D execution. Then I saw the DVD…

Too Many Dimensions

Watching a 3D movie is obviously a very different experience, but few people can really put their finger on why. After seeing Coraline in both 2D and 3D, it became very clear what is lost: Peripheral vision. When you watch something presented in 3D, your eyes are forced to focus on one point, and the rest of the image melts away into your periphery. This is what creates that all-engrossing experience. However, the fatal flaw here is that you begin to lose the vision and composition of the director and the cinematographer, and you also begin to lose the ancillary details that make movies like Coraline so incredible. Henry Selick is a fantastic director and Coraline, like his pervious films, has a impressive level of detail that can only really be appreciated by viewing it as a flat composition. It's a nice gimmick to be able to feel like you're in the world with these tiny characters, but I find it more impressive to experience the craftsmanship of the film from a technical perspective. Thinking back to my original reaction to The Nightmare Before Christmas in 3D, I realized my near-encyclopedic memory of the film filled in many of the gaps that I normally would have lost had I first viewed the movie in 2006.

As a graphic designer and amateur photographer, I put a lot of importance into the structure and composition of an image. Very graphic (compositionally, not in-terms of questionable content) directors like Wes Anderson (who very-smartly shot The Fantastic Mr.Fox in 2D) and Quentin Tarantino would probably not benefit from shooting in 3D. Their inspired cinematography works perfectly as composed scenes, meant to be taken-in with the framing as a considered part of the shot. (However, as of this month, Tarantino has gone on-the-record as saying had the technology used for Avatar been around in 2003, that's how he would have shot the Kill Bill series. This is something I find very disheartening.)

Here's a half-assed attempt at demonstrating how perception and peripheral vision changes in 3D verses 2D. Your eyes are naturally forced to focus on one element – in this case the characters at the table. As a result your brain can't process the surrounding information, and you lose both the detail and the strong composition.

This fetishizing of 3D as the ultimate cinema experience needs to stop. It's is neither a superior nor inferior way to view any one movie. If anything, it creates confusion in the marketplace as to which version to see. It shouldn't land on the consumer to have to pick which movies will benefit from the technology and which wont. This is why I was so happy with the aforementioned The Fantastic Mr.Fox. I don't believe for a minute that Wes Anderson wasn't given the opportunity to shoot this movie in 3D...not after Coraline (Anderson had worked with Selick on The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou...so you know the discussion happened). This was a perfect example of a director knowing what was best for his film and his vision.

Perhaps this is happening more often than I'm imagining. Maybe there's a whole legion of directors who are resisting 3D technology for all-but-the-best implementations. I'd like to think this were true, but I doubt it. I had an opportunity to ask Henry Selick about his adoption of 3D when he held a fantastic Q&A a few months back. I expressed my concerns about what was lost when viewing a movie in 3D and how I felt Coraline was a far more interesting experience in 2D Without getting into direct quotes (because I really can't remember), he said that 3D was essentially the endgame in movies. It's what filmmakers had been striving for since the beginning and is the ultimate way to engross and audience. I'm sorry, Mr.Selick, but there's no way that can be true. If 3D is the best way to express visual art, then painters would have given up for sculpture long ago; photographers would have given up for laser-driven holography; and traditional animators would be all working for Pixar. The concept of a composed, 2D, framed image is as relevant and important as it's ever been. 3D works, but not for everything. To his benefit, Selick urged everyone in attendance that night to not watch the "red & blue" 3D version of his film that's included as a marketing gimmick on the DVD. I wholeheartedly agree.

Engrossing

Watching Avatar in 3D (like most of the world has apparently done), I was once-again reminded where 3D could benefit a film. The all-engrossing experience of this movie is perfect for the technology. Pandora is a world so fantastic that presenting in 3D aided in making the experience more believable. James Cameron used 3D as storytelling tool to help drag you into this otherwise unbelievable world. Traditionally I'm not a science fiction fan, but the sheer achievement of this movie (the horrible dialog not withstanding) leads me to believe that there is a potentially bright future for 3D. I just hope it's used for good, and not evil. I'm hoping that the costs associated with shooting like this will help curtail the deluge of bad executions that surely await us.

Regarding Pixar

This past fall, in order to drum up some excitement for Toy Story 3, Pixar released the original two films in 3D, presented as a double-feature. Being the huge Pixar fan that I am, I went, and I enjoyed every second. Neither Toy Story movie ever felt like a compositional achievement worthy of being preserved in 2D. For me, it was more exciting to think that they had to go back to their original files from 1994 & 1998 and re-render them using 2008 technology. A few months earlier, I also saw Up in 3D. While not as successful as I had hoped, it was none-the-less an enjoyable experience. I would say Up is equally impressive in either 2D or 3D. It seems that Pixar's style, while detailed, doesn't lose much when being viewed with glasses on. Pixar to me has always been about storytelling, character design, and color theory (that's right). None of these elements change drastically when you lose your peripheral vision, so I'm cautiously optimistic when it comes to Real-D releases coming from them. This may just be another in a long line of things that they simply know how to do right.

Get Out Of My House

At the most recent Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the big buzzword (or words? acronym?) was 3D. Nearly every major television manufacturer showed off a set using some sort of 3D presentation technology. Most used glasses and a DLP-based system similar to Real-D, while a select few had glasses-less systems. It's nice to see the technology being pushed forward, but I'm a firm believer that until the glasses-less systems are perfected, they'll never find their way into the house (seriously, are you going to keep 8-pairs of Billy Joel glasses on-hand and force everyone to wear them when you want to watch Law & Order?). It's taken over a decade for HD to be adopted into American homes; I can only imagine how long it's going to take before content is shot, produced, transmitted and displayed in 3D. I give it 20 years, easy. And even with all that, I'm not so sure I'm ready to kick the movie theaters in the balls that quickly. Just when they seem to have finally found a nice niche to attract people to their over-priced palaces again, the consumer electronics industry is right there, ready to pull it away and plop it in your living room. I like the theaters, and I like having a reason to go to them again.

All images used in this post have been linked back to the source from-which they were derived. Coraline © 2009 Focus Features and Laika Entertainment. Screen shot used under fair use.

Next week I'm going to be launching my third website designed and hosted on Squarespace, and I thought it might be worthwhile to write a quick review of my experience, as a non-web-designer, with the service. This is a rambling, self-indulgent post, so please excuse me.

Some background: Years ago while in school I made a conscious decision not to pursue web design as my area of study. At the time it seemed like there were three main directions one could go in the Graphic Design department at SVA- web, print, or motion. Print was (is) slowly dying, and while I certainly enjoy the geekier elements of the internet, I'm pretty miserable with regards to coding and syntax– something I would consider an essential skill for web. For me, motion design was the natural choice. It allowed me to play with technology I was comfortable with (video), and had a promising future since it didn't depend on any one medium. But web would always be there, hovering. The internet is a big place, and when you come down to it, every single page out there has to be designed to some degree.  That's a lot of potential client work. Nonetheless, I've never felt like I'm missing out on money. I did, however, feel like I was missing out on self-promotion. The internet has become the de facto stomping grounds for freelancers and entrepreneurs of all types. This is where I began to fall short.

Despite my shortcomings with web design (or rather, my blatant decision not to learn anything about it), I still maintained several sites either out of necessity, or just as a hobby. They were all shoddily-built (eh-hem, Dreamweaver) and lacking any of the polish I would typically like to see from my designs. They all followed the "oh well, it works" school of design. In recent years my interest in updating these pages had waned, knowing the result would be a disappointment. 

Last fall I started to plan my NYC Grid project. In its earliest stages I still wasn't sure what form it would take - photos? podcast? written blog? After eventually settling on a photoblog, I knew I would need a fairly traditional blog engine to power it. I've never been a tremendous fan of templated sites, so popular players like Blogger and Wordpress weren't looking too good. It wasn't until last year that I began to play with Squarespace out of sheer curiosity. It was an impressive system- but what sold it for me was the balance it struck between WYSIWYG design, and the ability to edit small snippets of code to get the results you want- all while keeping things (almost) perfect across all browsers. After signing up I began the task of editing a template until I had a design I felt would best serve the site. In November I launched NYC Grid, with the (admittedly) ambitious goal of documenting one city block every single weekday. Each post would include 20-30 photos, a Google map, and a brief write-up. Even though I had already spent a few weeks designing Grid, it wasn't until I began these regular postings that I got very familiar with the service.

Now, 11 months into the project, I've probably spent as much time on Squarespace software at night as I do AfterEffects during the day.

After about 5 months of working on Grid, I decided it would be a good time to update my personal portfolio site (previously designed as a super-simple HTML situation) to Squarespace. This is where I really began to see the service's strengths and weaknesses. While NYC Grid was as much a learning experience as it was a design exercise, redesigning my personal site was vastly different. Not only were its needs completely new, but I demanded a bit more out of myself this time. My goal was to create a simple, no-frills site that would act as my home-base on the internet. I wanted people to be able to explore all aspects of my "personal brand" (as Gary Vaynerchuk would like to say) while still focusing on my core competencies (graphic design and motion graphics). As a result, I ended up with a dead-simple 3-page setup. Using some subtle Squarespace trickery, I was able to create unique page-specific description boxes. In the end, it was almost exactly as I had imagined. I was beginning to realize just what Squarespace was and wasn't capable of- and as a result, the planning stages of my designs began to conform to that.

Unlike using Dreamweaver, or other antiquated web packages, the strength of Squarespace lies in its template system, which more-or-less guarantees that each page of our site will match the last…pixel for pixel. It also offers a level of nuanced control that you normally only see in the likes of Photoshop and Illustrator. However, these controls come at a cost- most notable flexibility. While the tool and feature set offered is quite vast, if you want to do something outside the scope of that toolset, you may find yourself cursing their name more times than you'd care to admit. Software like Wordpress prides itself on being expandable and open, while Squarespace is a completely closed system. At the end of the day, you're at the whim of the company. When they make a change to the core service, it affects all users. This can be a worrisome thought, especially when your site is your livelihood. Though with more and more of our digital lives existing in the cloud, I think it's a modus operandi that many of us are getting used to.

Earlier I mentioned that I had made several sites over the years out of necessity. Of those, Iconize Me is the only one to live through to today. Started in 2001 as a simple caricature service, Iconize Me is now celebrating it's eighth year. There's now two other illustrators in addition to myself, and the site has really begun to show its age. Finally feeling rather confident using Squarespace, I set forth to create a brand new version of the site that would fix all the short-comings of the old one. While I would still never consider myself a web designer, Squarespace had now become a piece of software I was comfortable using. I felt like I had some degree of control over the outcome– something I never felt with Dreamweaver (or iWeb, or anything else). While there were still shortcomings to contend with, the majority of the design process was a refreshing experience that was much closer to something you'd experience with print.  

I realize this entire post sounds like one long shill for Squarespace – but really I'm just surprised how much my views towards web design has changed in the past year as a result of designing these three sites. And for what it's worth, I'm not pretending these are the greatest sites ever made- they're not. Hell, NYC Grid is down-right ordinary. But for me – a non-web-designer – to be able to create a website that even resembles my original vision, is nothing short of incredible.

Last month I was given a very interesting opportunity in the form of an offer from Rosetta Stone (yes, the language learning folks). They were exhibiting at the Carnegie Mellon University Job Fair and were wondering if I was available to draw caricatures for the attendees in their booth. I had been drawing digital caricatures through my Iconize Me site for almost a decade but  had never attempted to do it live, in-person. It was a daunting thought to say the least.

 I immediately accepted, seeing this for the unique experience that it would be, and got to work figuring out how I could best execute a live, digital caricature. You may be wondering "So what? People draw live, on-demand caricatures all the time".  Yes, they do - with regular pen, pencil and paper. A digital caricature is a very different beast.  In some ways, it's far more flexible, but that flexibility comes at a price.  There's a whole "administration" layer that's added.  Because that person can simply walk away after I snap their picture, I need to collect their name and email addressed.  I then need to correctly associate that information to their image and caricature and make sure everything stays in order. However, this is all great for the individual because they don't need to sit for the drawing – freeing them up (in this case) to continue walking around the career fair. 

In the midst of all this planning, it struck me – this is performance art. It's not so much about the end-result as much as it's about the process. I rather liked this idea. It somehow took the pressure off. It meant all I had to do was my job, and it'd be a success.

When the day arrived, I went to Pittsburgh – complete with laptop, drawing tablet, digital camera, and a plethora of wires – and set up shop with the awesome people from Rosetta Stone. 

We eventually settled on a lottery system, by-which attendees would come by, pose for a photo and hand me their information. This created a small library of photos, which I would then pick from at random every 30 minutes. At this rate, I was able to complete 12 caricatures throughout the day.

The cherry on top of all of this was that we arraigned to have a computer monitor mirror my laptop and face the show floor.  This allowed for anyone walking by to watch what I was drawing at that very moment. I'm very pleased to say, we had a very interested (and friendly) crowd huddled around nearly the entire day.  Granted, most of them were simply waiting to talk to the Rosetta Stone recruiters, but I like to think I livened up the queue.

For me, this was a blast. Just imagine doing the work you regularly do everyday, and having people sit and watch with unrelenting interest. It provides a slight ego boost, I can assure you. It also vindicates what you do as "interesting" and "worth-while". The blurred line between visual art and performance art is definitely something I could see getting into more. 

QuickTime X's use of overlays to function as an interface is down-right irritating. In the new version Apple has heavily borrowed from it's iPhone / iPod touch media playback conceits – which work great in a mobile setting – In fact, I can't imagine a more appropriate way to display media controls in a confined space. But on a desktop, where the smallest screen we're ever going to encounter is 13", a media player should treat the content with respect - allowing nothing to be obstructed unless the user asks for such an obstruction (such as brightness or contrast controls, or something). There was never an instance in QuickTime 7 where I thought: "Gee, I wish this interface wasn't covering up so much of my desktop! Why can't they just cover up my video instead?"

As a motion designer I depend on Quicktime as a method to display my portfolio of work. But now I either have to revert to 7 or live with 3 full seconds of animation being obstructed by a large control scheme. I know, it sounds trite. But considering that, in some cases, 3 seconds of animation can take up to a week to complete, this is inexcusable. 

Why Apple feels the top example is an acceptable way to present video escapes all logic.

Add to this the laundry list of missing features, or inexplicable changes:

• No in or out points ("Trim" is a sorry replacement)
• Thumbnail timelines DO NOT WORK.
• Completely modified keyboard commands - including many missing ones
• No A/V controls
• No Property Controls
• Less information in the Movie Inspector
• No export control - your only options are YouTube, MobileMe, iTunes or Save For Web - which admittedly creates a pretty cool little website example complete with embed code, but still lacks any export control.
• No preferences - either in the player, or System Preferences

Luckily, Apple knows what it's done. QuickTime 7 remains in the computer should you so-choose. This will continue to be my tool of choice until QuickTime X comes up-to-par with its predecessor – hopefully with a Pro option as previously offered.

Each of the 31 pages depicts the current date (1-31) in Arabic-Indic numerals - which in many cases have a striking resemblance to how they're rendered in the European manner. However, being a designer, what I fell in love with was the sheer graphic impact that each page had.

Each numeral acts as a mask, revealing an abstract painting or pattern. In stark contrast to the numbers, each page has a small line drawing, which seems to have some relationship to the painting or pattern. Overall, I find the entire thing to be just beautiful. I love the idea of having a piece of art that changes each day act as something functional.

You can see the calendar in its entirety below:

I've been playing around with this song on the piano for several months now, and while I'm quite happy with it, there's still much work to be done. It's initially been written as a faster piece, but I wanted to see how I could affect the feeling by playing around with tempo and interpretation.

Below I've embedded two versions: The first is the original (perhaps a bit too fast), without the lyrics which I'm in no position to record as they're not near complete.The second is a slow (about twice as long as the original), almost improvised interpretation of the original idea.

Personally, after having heard the "fast" version so many times, there's something very satisfying about the slow one.  It almost sounds like something from a (depressing, unprofessional) piano bar.

Pardon the mistakes, that's just par for the course with me.

Fast:

Slow: