Hasta La Motion!

Google’s latest gloriously ambitious initiative, Project Loon, is all over the news this week. This beautiful piece – directed by Google Creative Lab with Mixtape Club acting as the production company – explains Project Loon. Wired has also written an in-depth look at the history and goals of the project.

Project Loon is groundbreaking work. But it’s only one of many futuristic projects that Google is involved in. From self-driving cars, to the future of energy, to artificial intelligence, to (yes) Google Glass, the ways in which Google pursues so many mad scientist initiatives – many of which are only distantly related to what actually makes Google money – are what makes the company so interesting.

But do you have to be Google to be so ambitious? Does it take billions of dollars to have the freedom to pursue these crazy (awesome) goals? I don’t think so. We work in an industry that, on a good day, is filled with brilliantly creative folks. What kind of crazy projects are we doing to help create the future? I’m interested to know. Share your stories in the comments – and I’ll put together a roundup.

Directed by Google Creative Lab
Production Company: Mixtape Club
Producer: Bruce Moreau
3D Artists: Sean Moller, Luciano Tapia, Arthur Hur, John Haley, Paul Villacis
2D Artists: Danny Kamhaji, Arthur Hur, Adam Sacks, Jake Armstrong, Bryan Cobonpue, Josh Goodrich

Posted on Motionographer

Chris Milk and Aaron Koblin, who brought you The Johnny Cash Project and The Wilderness Downtown, are back with a lovely new dynamic music video for Danger Mouse and Daniele Luppi’s Spaghetti Western-inspired concept album ROME. With help from Mirada, North Kingdom, and the folks at Google, the music video for 3 Dreams of Black further tests the realtime dynamic abilities of the web to give unique, artfully directed experiences.

Personally, I’m excited that Milk and Koblin are emphasizing how the open-source nature of these tools can help grow a community that will create even more experiments in the future. On the tech end, it does require Google Chrome and not all graphics cards are supported, including the desktop I first tried this out on :(. There’s still a lot of goodies and documentation on the website, so go explore.

HTML5 “experiences” seem to be popping up more and more, for example the new desktop version of Smith & Foulkes’ The Chase. As we move forward, will learning how to work with dynamic systems, rather than locked thirty or sixty second films become a necessary part of our workflow? Also- what does it say about us when the first thing someone does, after finding out that they can contribute to a landscape, is create a 1-up mushroom?

Posted on Motionographer

After much speculations and rumours, Google launches its own eBookstore today. Lots of talk about its pros and cons, as well as discussions about whether this would turn people away from other paperless book formats, such as Kindle, and so on.

But luckily for us all, this is a Motion Design blog, so let’s get to the juicy bits–here’s the spot announcing the launch. Once again Google favours the hand-crafted aesthetic, which I personally think is a smart move. Not only it is in keeping with the rest of Google’s campaign (eg. Chrome), but it also somewhat appeals to consumers like me who prefer the paper to pixel. In addition to saving trees, (although I don’t claim to know the exact carbon-cost advantage of eBooks), this campaign may just be the final push I need to switch to this new way of reading.

Thanks for the tip, Mungo and for the research, Igor!

Posted on Motionographer

I love Chrome (and pretty much anything Google), its extremely fast, has yet to crash on me and its features are quite convenient. On the speed factor: some speed tests were completed at actual web page rendering times. Also a making-of to see.

You have to really admire the Japanese and their animation. They can take something as mundane as how Google Street View works, and transform it into something so quirky and charming! I really enjoy all the contraptions employed to get the job done, it stokes that little fire in my heart that Wallace and Gromit sparked as a child.

Unfortunately my ability to read Japanese is about on par with my Chinese, so I’ve no idea who created the animation. If you do know, then please let me know.
Made by Pangra!

Posted on Motionographer