So I’m not sure what ver­sion this new ver­sion of my site really is, but it’s new that’s for sure. I’ve been con­stantly redesign­ing my site pretty much since I’ve had it, and I think I’ve finally arrived at a ver­sion I’m really happy with. At first I was all into Flash and felt that with my back­ground in video work, Flash would be the best envi­ron­ment to show­case my work. As I started doing more print and web work, I started to real­ize that updat­ing a Flash site is a major pain, and hav­ing a site that in dynam­i­cally updated allowed me to focus more on my work, and less on mak­ing my site work. After teach­ing myself a bit about CSS and get­ting on the Word­press train, I found that using Word­press as a CMS would work really well for me.

So after work­ing with sev­eral ideas of what I wanted my site to look like, I revisted some of the ear­lier ver­sions of my site for inspi­ra­tion (what did I like then, and what looked good). I was happy with my last update because I really enjoyed hav­ing a semi-abstract dec­o­ra­tive ele­ment (i.e. the dark pat­terned tex­ture), and with some of my ear­lier work I was using a lot of wood­grain, for the organic, nat­ural beauty. With the newest ver­sion of the site I was able to keep an organic, mod­ern feel, that I feel serves well for the kind of work I like to do. From here on out I think that I’m going to pri­mar­ily focus on print and web work, and stop show­cas­ing my video work. I had at one time a pod­cast where you could down­load pretty much all of my video work, but feel that because I’m focus­ing more on graphic design now, and less on motion work, I can present my caba­bil­i­ties in the best pos­si­ble light, and more impor­tantly, focus on the kind of work I hope to get more of.

I’m excited to revisit some of my older work and improve some sketched-out ideas I’ve devel­oped, to be able to improve the over­all qual­ity of all the work I turn out. I’ve learned a lot in the last year about who I am as a designer and what I’d like to bring to the design world, but feel I can always learn more. Check back in a few weeks, as I’m always devel­op­ing work. Thanks for reading.

I sup­pose the strangest thing about this film is the fact that it’s actu­ally kind of good. It’s good in the way that “hey I can see the aspects of this film that are really very clever” or “I really like the way that shot looks”. But over­all this film will be very dis­ap­point­ing for many peo­ple, mainly huge fans of Don­nie Darko who expected this film to be like that. I’d heard from a friend that Richard Kelly said after mak­ing Don­nie Darko that he wouldn’t be mak­ing another film because he’d made the per­fect film. This kind of direc­tor ego­tism is usu­ally reserved for direc­tors like David Lynch, whom can pretty much make what­ever film he or she wants to make and not care if their fans actu­ally like it. This is quite evi­dent in this film, that is overtly com­plex, and unabashedly vague on what’s actu­ally going on. I think that Richard Kelly fig­ured that if he under­stood what was going on, it would be clear to the audi­ence, but over­all I can’t believe this to be true.

Another aspect that made this film so unusual for me was see­ing a ton of actors who usu­ally do com­edy work in a seri­ous roles (i.e. Will Sasso from Mad TV, or even Cheri Oteri from SNL). Essen­tially South­land Tales is about a post-apocalyptic/post-9.11 world where we are run­ning out of nat­ural energy sources and a sci­en­tist who devel­ops what they refer to as a per­pet­ual motion machine which takes waves from the ocean, gath­ers the energy and sends giant pulses of energy toward land, pow­er­ing any­thing from cars to fac­tory build­ings infinitely.

So that’s one aspect of the film, sec­ond, because of the energy cri­sis and other polit­i­cal fac­tors includ­ing a fic­ti­tious bill that was passed for height­ened pub­lic secu­rity, there are essen­tially watch tow­ers through­out the city where Justin Timberlake’s char­ac­ter (an ex-marine) will sit and mon­i­tor the city for pub­lic vio­lence through the scopes of their guns and shoot to kill any indi­vid­u­als caus­ing dis­tur­bances. This part of the film is impor­tant to under­stand because the over­all polit­i­cal theme of the film is that the coun­try is divided in two, and that the Repub­li­can party is try­ing to win over Cal­i­for­nia and gain power so they can run the coun­try ruth­lessly (sound familiar?).

So on top of all that Dwayne Johnson’s char­ac­ter (yeah, that’s right, the Rock is the main char­ac­ter in this film) is a movie star who was abducted and drove into the desert and returns with amne­sia and a screen­play that pretty much details this dystopian future in which the film takes place. I won’t bore you with the details, but essen­tially every­one in the film is double-crossing one another to try and enhance the chance that the Repub­li­can party will win the polit­i­cal race by using Dwayne Johnson’s char­ac­ter as black­mail. So why was he abducted into the desert? Because a giant vor­tex exists where if some­one dri­ves through it they go back in time and come out with a twin copy of them­selves that is from 69 min­utes in the future.

Doesn’t this film sound crazy? Well it is, it’s like there are 5 dif­fer­ent films rolled into one. Not to men­tion the part of the movie where Justin Tim­ber­lake lip syncs to a Killers song for no appar­ent rea­son. So why did I say ear­lier that this film is actu­ally kind of good? Well more than any­thing the film is good because even though there is all this crazy stuff hap­pen­ing that doesn’t really make sense until the end, you’re drawn into it, and you can’t look away (kind of like a car wreck). Also, even though I wouldn’t ever say I like most of the actors in the film, they all did well. Usu­ally the actors in the film do cheesy roles that don’t amount to any­thing in the scope of Hol­ly­wood real­ity, but I hon­estly feel that all of them can really say they did a real movie, some­thing that even though it won’t be received well, will be a tes­ta­ment to form of film as art.

So if you’ve got an open mind and low expec­ta­tions I think you’ll at least be able to admire Richard Kelly’s attempt to make an artis­ti­cally com­plex film. It has that uncom­fort­able atmos­phere to it that makes you feel like you’re watch­ing a David Lynch film, yet it has all these really pop­u­lar actors so you feel that famil­iar­ity. Also, the music is quite good with lots of props to dis­so­nant Radio­head songs and other moody aspects of the score that add to the film, rather than dis­tract. At least watch the film for the fact that you can appre­ci­ate what’s try­ing to hap­pen, rather than what it actu­ally is.

Daft Punk never ceases to amaze me with their music / per­for­mance / pro­duc­tion value. I’d seen about a mil­lion clips of their 2006 Coachella per­for­mance on the web, and I’d been anx­iously await­ing my copy of Alive 2007 to come in at the library. Finally this week­end I received it, and I was blown away. I’d been very famil­iar with their music for many years and enjoyed all of their albums (yes I even really like Human After All, despite many glar­ing critiques).I had read online that there was talk of them releas­ing a DVD ver­sion of Alive 2007 so that every­one who couldn’t get to one of their live shows could see how amaz­ing of a spec­ta­cle it really was, how­ever the band decided not to release it sim­ply because there were a mil­lion copies of their live per­for­mances online and that they couldn’t pos­si­bly please fans who’d seen their per­for­mance from so many dif­fer­ent angles. So for those of you out there who must see a live per­for­mance they have a pretty great lit­tle Flash site that shows a live video or you can just look on YouTube.

As for the Alive 2007 album, it’s amaz­ing. It really is the per­fect album for Daft Punk fans who have all their other albums and want some­thing new. Basi­cally the album is divided into 12 tracks (or 13 if you get the bonus edi­tion), each track is a mash-up of two or more of their songs (i.e. Tele­vi­sion Rules the Nation/Crescendolls). So basi­cally you get new inter­pre­ta­tions of all their older songs, which in my opin­ion is the only way to expe­ri­ence Daft Punk after hav­ing lis­tened to all their albums reli­giously for many years.

I sup­pose after hav­ing given the album a thor­ough lis­ten my most poignant ques­tion is how do they do it? By that I mean how much of the actual per­for­mance is pre-recorded and how much is mixed as a live set? I mean they are up there push­ing but­tons the whole time, but do these but­tons actu­ally do any­thing? Who knows, but all I have to say is if you want to lis­ten to all of your favorite Daft Punk songs in a new way, Alive 2007 is the best way to do it, now I only have to wait a few more months for Elec­troma.

So I’ve been read­ing Smash­ing Mag­a­zine (a web mag­a­zine about web design, and other gen­er­ally cool things) for about 6 months now and I’m always amazed at the things they find on or about the web. I’ve learned a lot about CSS and how to make cool stuff hap­pen with web­sites through var­i­ous tuto­ri­als / links on the site. I think this is an amaz­ing source for any aspir­ing designer for web or graphic work, sim­ply because it’s a site made for design­ers by design­ers. Amongst other really great things I’ve found on the site are links to people’s blogs / port­fo­lios that are extremely inspir­ing. Below are a few people’s sites you should check out:

Ten Thou­sand Things — the blog and port­fo­lio of Juanma Teixidó

Design Bum — the blog and port­fo­lio of Issara Wil­len­skomer. One aspect of his site that is com­pletely amaz­ing is that he offers the actual work files for most of his projects (i.e. Illus­tra­tor and Pho­to­shop Files) because he believes that because he gained a lot of knowl­edge from other design­ers he ought to be shar­ing his expe­ri­ence and work for other design­ers to learn from. If you’re look­ing for extremely fan­tas­tic work and a true expres­sion of process, look at his work.

Aside from links to people’s port­fo­lios and blogs, Smash­ing Mag­a­zine also show­cases “Best of the Month” fea­tures which if you’ve missed a few days are a great way to catch up with excit­ing things they’ve posted on.

All and all Smash­ing Mag­a­zine is an amaz­ing resource for those of us out there who don’t have the time to scour the inter­net for inter­est­ing stuff, and need daily/weekly/monthly inspi­ra­tion on all things design related.

So my web host Dreamhost who is usu­ally totally on their game had my web­site and prob­a­bly a mil­lion oth­ers down for sev­eral hours today. It was very much freak­ing me out, as I’ve been apply­ing for a lot of jobs, and can’t have my site not work­ing. But as of 4:39 today, all is okay. So for those of you who pos­si­bly tried to view my site and it didn’t work, please do not fret, just check back.