Iain McCaig: a career of being creative
"Iain is an internationally recognized and award winning artist and one of the motion picture industry's leading conceptual designers. His exceptional command of human anatomy, character, emotional expression and visual narrative make him on of the most sought after artists working in the entertainment industry today."
(Iain McCaig, University of New South Wales)
Fig.1 Published on 25 Jul 2011 by UNSWCommunity
[At 19:00 the interviewer explains that Andrew Pienaar from Pixar describes his process of becoming 'creatively unstuck' as one where he refers to images that he has collected which he has stored in a drawer at Pixar. He explained that sometimes it's enough to just imagine the images in the collection for him to become 'unstuck'. Iain McCaig (19:45 - 20:45) builds on this by explaining that he understands the same process in terms of a metaphor of a library where the library is a 'resource in your mind' that you constantly keep referring and adding to -that you constantly keep re-reading.]
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
The Six Million Dollar Man: the evolution of an iconic title sequence
"The Six Million Dollar Man started off as a novel by [Martin Caidin] called Cyborg, but over the course of its development from book to movie to TV show, it not only changed name, it changed tone.
The book is essentially a thriller that tries to ground itself in reality as much as possible to make Steve Austin a super-spy. Sure he has a bionics left arm (yes, bionics in the book, not bionic), bionics legs and bionics eye. But he can't feel anything in his bionics limbs and his bionics eye won't let him see, only take pictures. And sure, he's very strong, but when he kicks a golf ball, that bionics toe of his still gets crushed by the impact.
It was bionics, but still tried to be relatively aware of the laws of physics and what was practical."
(The Medium is Not Enough TV blog, 9 July 2010)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Hundred Pacer: a contemporary origin myth of a native Taiwanese superhero
"This is my final project for motion graphic design, which is a Flash animation that depicts an 'origin myth' of the self-created hero, Hundred Pacer.
The name Hundred Pacer derived from a kind of very venomous snake that exists in mountain areas of Taiwan called Hundred Pacer snake, and the protagonist, Hundred Pacer, was an ordinary Paiwanese Indigenous girl until her and her father were killed by the mudslide, and the snake God chooses her to revive in passing down the power...
The story was inspired by the Typhoon Morakot happened in August 2009, which killed nearly 500 people and destroyed half of Taiwan at that time."
(Jonghsiang Kwan, 2010)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
a critique of consumer goods and advertisement imagery
Hu Jieming's "highly acclaimed photo-manipulated images Raft of the Medusa (2002) he references to Théodore Géricault's seminal and allegorical image, the Raft of the Medusa (1819). The historical painting serves as a mytho-poetic memorial of the 150 lost souls onboard the raft after a fatal shipwreck, from which only 15 survived. The painting very elegantly undermines the traditional heroic 19th century historical painting, and, instead, conveys a society in sinking collapse. Hu Jieming parallels this historic occurrence to the regime of the Cultural Revolution with all its sinister cruelty. His Raft of the Medusa, thus, is more than just a reference to the past: The photos are composed of today's excessive amount of consumer goods and advertisement imagery. Additionally, Hu Jieming juxtaposes pictures of today's youth in gestures of self-indulgent hedonism with monochrome grey pictures of the suppressed people in traditional mao-uniforms. These compositions made of images appropriated from different socio-political realities signify a strong critical engagement with both history and the present - it is a concern ranging beyond pure private considerations."
(ShanghART Gallery)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
The Magnificent Seven: shattering the romanticism of the cowboy life
CHRIS: it's only a matter of knowing of how to shoot a gun.
CHICO: How can you talk like this, your gun has got you everything you have, isn't that true?
VIN: Yeah, sure everything. After a while you call bartenders by their first name - maybe 200 of them, rented rooms you've lived in - maybe 500 of them, meals you eat in hash-houses - maybe 1000, home - none, wife - none, kids... none, prospects - zero. I suppose I left anything out?
CHRIS: Yeah, places you're tied down to - none, people that have a hold over you - none, men you step aside for - none.
LEE: Insults swallowed - none, enemies - none.
CHRIS: No enemies?
LEE: Alive!
CHICO: Well, this is the type of arithmetic I like!
CHRIS: Yes, so did I at your age.
John Sturges, (1960). 'The Magnificent Seven'
[Chris Adams (Yul Brynner), Vin (Steve McQueen) and Lee (Robert Vaughn) explain to Chico (Horst Buchholz) that living as a gunslinger is a lot less romantic than he had thought.]
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The Constellations ProjectSHARE
