Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Semi-Permanent 2005


TL+R: Ashley Wood's images, BL: The Wilderness, BR: Weta Digital

Went to the Semi-Permanent Digital Design conference last Fri 18 and Sat 19 of March.

Program was:

Friday 18 March
10:45am • Introduction
11:00am • Revolver Film http://www.revolverfilm.com/
12:00pm • Resn http://www.resn.co.nz/
1:00pm • Lunch Break
2:00pm • Ed Templeton http://www.toymachine.com/
3:00pm • Vice Magazine http://www.viceland.com/
4:00pm • Break
4:30pm • Qube Konstrukt http://www.qubekonstrukt.com/
5:30pm • DixonBaxi http://www.dixonbaxi.com/
6:30pm • End of Day One

Saturday 19 March
11:00am • TWiN http://www.atwinthing.com/
12:00pm • The Wilderness http://www.thewilderness.co.nz/
1:00pm • Lunch Break
2:00pm • Psyop http://www.psyop.tv/
3:00pm • Marok - Lodown http://www.marok.info/
4:00pm • Break
4:30pm • PlanBSE http://www.ashleywoodartist.com/, http://www.hellomuller.com/, http://www.planbse.com/
5:30pm • Weta Digital http://www.wetadigital.com/
6:30pm • Closing Comments
6.45pm • End of Conference

Ed Templeton is a 32yr old self-taught designer. He left high school two weeks before school ended as he was asked to go on a pro-skating tour. He mentioned that some people have come up to him and said they are busy with study and so therefore don't have the time to take photos and do things like Ed does. He asks them if they have a camera and if so, they can just start taking photos and get better at it. Ed said he continually learns and gets better and better at his craft and then opportunities present themselves to him. He documents his own life and uses a film camera rather than a digital camera. He likes to show suburban life as it is. His artwork for a skate magazine is pretty cool. He sees what he can get away with. He also co-owns a skateboard company and sells toys and things through his company. Interesting speaker.

Plan B Science and Entertainment consists of Ashley Wood (Perth, Aus)- comic artist and Tom Muller (UK) - web designer. They've collaborated for over 4 years online but only met in person for the first time the day before the conference. Tom saw Ashley's work and wanted to design a better website for him as he thought Ashley's website wasn't showcasing his wrok well enough. So Ashley let him do it but Tom had to do it for free. Since then, Tom's worked on many new versions of the website, putting up new images, designing comic book covers and more for Ashley. Ashley believes in doing his own thing, and doesn't want to get any clients and doesn't like being told what to do. He says Tom has helped his online profile as a comic book artist a lot. It was an interesting talk, and interesting how they were able to collaborate online. Interesting how they got together to work on personal projects rather than for commerical ones.

The TWiN brothers spoke for the second time at a Semi-Permanent conference. They're now getting more into the directing side of things.

The Wilderness are based in Auckland. They put a kind of zine together called 'Mean' http://www.meanmeanmean.com to showcase their friends' work as they like their friends' work and wanted to showcase their work without them being too worried about it being a big deal. Some of their friends worked in other fields like hairdressing, writing etc but had made some interesting artwork and so this was The Wilderness's way to get their friends involved and showing their work in a non-threatening way. So they produced a zine using cheap newspaper type print paper to convey its disposability factor. Poeple can also view all the artwork contained in the zine online.

Weta Digital's presentation was very professional and interesting. They incorporated some of the actor's facial expressions and movements into the character of Gollum. They had a human stand-in to interact and talk to the actors as Gollum so that the actors would have a real actor (creature) to talk to.