Whenever you see the Paragon blog go quiet for a while you know it’s because we’re really busy. But I wanted to share a quick tutorial that came in handy last week for one of the projects that’s been keeping us busy.
We needed to create several natural effects like snow, sand, fog and a waterfall and use them as transition elements for this project, but we were also on a tight deadline so trying for photo-real wasn’t an option. CC Particle World to the rescue!
I’ll tackle the waterfall in this post and share the other natural effects in a separate post.
Here’s the effect we ended up with.
Simple huh? I bet the seasoned pros can already tell how this is done. But for the rest of you, here goes…
A few months back our MINI-enthusiast friend sent me a link to MINI’s new commercial. The concept of the ad was “minimalism” and was communicated in a simple metaphor using markers. The MINI, played by a fine tipped, precision marker was being chased by (but easily out-running) a host of heavy-tipped ink-guzzling markers that bled everywhere, but then quickly ran out of ink. The MINI was agile and fast, used minimal ink, and very cleverly manipulated the fat markers into creating a masterpiece. The caption on MINI’s YouTube channel aptly describes it as “a breathtaking race between David against Goliath”.
What I loved about it was the action, complete with some Matrix-style slow-mo moves!
Have a look:
And as you’d expect, what appears to be a simple concept in the commercial really took a lot of planning and was quite complex to execute. I was happy to find “Making of MINIMALISM” on MINI’s channel as well.
For those of you who enjoy the real action (behind the scenes), enjoy:
We took this pic for our first press release, trying to look professional. Also in the pic is our buddy Eric who was with us for a while in the very beginning.
About a week and a half ago, we celebrated eight years of Paragon-ness. I couldn’t let the occasion go by without mentioning it, and saying special thanks to two of the most awesome people I know, Drew and Phil. As corny as it sounds, I don’t know where I’d be without these two incredible guys in my life. We started the Paragon right out of SCAD, not having a clue what it took to run a business, but with the idealistic zeal of freshly minted designers, thinking we could change the world with our designs and love where we worked.
Skip ahead to 2009 and it makes me happy that we’re well on our way to reaching our goals. We’re doing our part to help our community and our world, working with amazing clients who trust us with their brands and their friendship, and best of all, we’re getting to do it together.
The entire journey has been amazing, intimidating, inspiring and life-altering…and we’re just getting warmed up!. Thanks to my boys and their families: Drew & Carla, Phil, Marissa & Eli.
