Recently, I designed this poster to help promote an awesome event called Chairs of Hope. Vandora Springs Elementary School Art Club members (and anyone else who wants to chip in) paint chairs with different themes each year. These chairs are sold at a silent auction to raise money for Relay For Life. The theme for 2012 is “Famous Works of Art.”
In a career that requires you to be a creative problem solver, it’s always good to be able to step out and breathe a little bit. Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending another local AIGA event with a co-worker during normal work hours. It was great to be able to back away from the computer screen that we’re typically glued to and just sit, listen, learn, eat, and mingle with other creatives. AIGA Raleigh’s Homegrown Lunch & Learn series has proven to be a great refresher for a creative mind, being both informative and fun. The Web Designer’s Tool Kit presentation with Mindy Wagner of Viget was no exception.
Mindy provided many helpful insights on web design, showing Viget’s streamlined and successful workflow to an intruiged crowd at Sitti in downtown Raleigh. She took us through their process of Kickoffs, Mood Boards, Comps, and Style Guides explaining their intricacies relating directly to real projects they worked on. Mindy discussed building trust with clients, testing the waters with mood boards, etc. all while answering questions from inquiring minds in the audience.
It was quite a treat to be able to see another creative firm’s web design process from start to finish. All in all, it was a valuable experience, and I, as well as, the rest of the team at Burning Oak Studios, look forward to attending other events in this series.
Despite the suboptimal weather, my wife and I had an awesome time at SPARKcon once again!
This year for our street painting square my wife and I decided to draw a googly-eyed hermit crab! Check him out below…
Also, Raleigh, NC is home to many incredibly talented graffiti artists, and to be able to watch their process live on the street was a real treat. We saw Sean Kernick, Victor Knight, and many others creating graffiti artwork on the sides of trucks for graffitiSPARK.
For geekSPARK, we entered Fragment Labs to check out all things GEEK! Mainly this was of interest to me, and not my wife, however I was able to try out some locally developed video games and had a lot of fun. One in particular stood out to me and I ended up getting it for my iPhone. That game was Sushi Boy, and you can find it here for free.
Friday night we saw part of the comedySPARK events at Slim’s. There were various talented stand-up artists performing, including one of our friends. The night was full of hilariousness and good times.
All in all, my wife and I had an excellent time at SPARKcon even though our parade was rained on a little bit. If you are interested, please take a look at last year’s SPARKcon blog entry too!
*Our hermit crab looked kind of like a Metroid before we filled him in with detail…
Coming from an art museum background before jumping into the video production world, I understand the limitations of non-profit organizations. For many cases, non-profits rely on volunteers, donations, and a hard-working staff. My heart goes out to these types of organizations, and when I feel like I can lend a helping hand, I do. Off and on now for almost a year, I have been lending my services to the Garner Chamber of Commerce. It’s been everything from graphic design, to video production, to sound design, etc.
Recently, I received a request from the Garner Chamber of Commerce to lend that helping hand for a video interview with Judy McCreery, the mother of the most recent American Idol, Scotty McCreery. The deadline was tight to say the least, but I knew that if I worked together with the chamber we could produce a solid video in a short amount of time. Another catch was the fact that I could not be there for the filming of the interview because it was to take place in Kansas City, not Garner, NC due to the busy touring schedule.
So, needless to say, I could not use my own camera, or have physical control over how the interview was shot. Luckily, I was able to work with the chamber and explain how I thought the interview should be recorded. They had two FlipHD cameras, tripods, and even a couple of H4n Zoom audio recording devices. I drew diagrams on camera placement and cropping in order to get the preferred shots and when I received the footage & audio to edit, I was pleasantly surprised everything worked out great!
I had roughly one week to put together a nice product complete with motion graphics for Garner’s Connect & Plug in the Future Conference. So basically my nights and that one weekend in between were quite busy. I was able to complete a condensed version for the debut at the conference and you can view that below.
Also, for any of you editors out there, you may know that Final Cut hates FlipHD footage. I found a fantastic Compressor droplet that will transcode this footage for editing inside of Final Cut. Thank you Creative Cow Forums
