<p><a href="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/TDW119.t_trans.opener.jpg" rel="lightbox[35093]"><img alt="" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-35098" height="348" src="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/TDW119.t_trans.opener.jpg" title="TDW119.t_trans.opener" width="580" /></a></p> <p class="strap">Transformers week draws to a close with this video training from Dan DeEntremont. Master key animation skills in this Transformer-style tutorial as you rig a robot to animate its transformation from train to humanoid</p> <p>To celebrate <a href="http://www.3dworldmag.com/2012/03/07/digital-tutors-releases-new-transforming-robot-tutorials/">Digital-Tutors’ new Transformation training</a>, we thought we’d make an event of it and post online all things Transformery!</p> <p>We’ve already posted up two making-of Transformers articles:<br /> <a href="http://www.3dworldmag.com/2012/03/07/the-making-of-transformers/">The making of Transformers</a><br /> <a href="http://www.3dworldmag.com/2012/03/08/the-making-of-transformers-2/">The making of Transformers 2</a></p> <p>And you can also read a making-of article on the cult Transformers-style advert for Citroën - <a href="http://www.3dworldmag.com/2012/03/13/the-embassy-the-art-of-robotics/">The Embassy: The art of Robotics</a></p> <p>To complete the Transformers roundup, here’s the train-transforming video tutorial from <a href="http://www.3dworldmag.com/2009/07/02/3d_world_119_now_on_sale_in_the_uk/">issue 119 of 3D World magazine</a>.</p> <h3>Rig your own Transformer in LightWave</h3> <p>This article demonstrates the workflow for creating a transforming robot, similar to the designs in the live-action Transformers movies.</p> <p>The films’ director, Michael Bay, is well known for taking the level of special and visual effects over the top in his films. These Transformers are not the simple ones everyone has seen in the cartoon show, but a gigantic mass of moving metal that somehow manages to form a human-like (or sometimes animal-like) robot. The transforming train that you’ll rig and animate has about 300 moving parts.</p> <p>There are three videos available to show in detail the techniques described here. The first two videos focus on setting up the upper arms of the robot: you can take the principles you learn and apply them to the remaining parts of the figure. The first video will focus on rigging the upper arms. In this section, you will also be setting up the rig in a way that helps to cut the animation time nearly in half, using the useful Follower modifier. Bones will be used for moving the parts instead of separate layers.</p> <p>In Video 2, we will continue with the animation of the rigged upper arms. Here, I will demonstrate how to bring each piece to its destination position without causing geometry to intersect. I will also demonstrate a number of key techniques to help the movement of the different sections to be more realistic.</p> <div class="wp-caption alignleft" id="attachment_35099" style="width: 590px;"><p class="wp-caption-text">Discover how you can rig this robot to animate its transformation from train to humanoid</p></div> <p>Video 3 has a completely rigged transforming train. This video focuses on animating the transformation from a train to a robot, ending in a cool pose. A proxy version of the train will be used in this video. IK/FK Blending will also be implemented to allow smoothness in the transformation. If you get stuck at any point, the CD includes completed scene files you can study.</p> <p><em>Click Next to begin the train-transforming video tutorial</em></p> <img border="0" height="1" src="http://3dworldmag.com.feedsportal.com/c/33151/f/538495/s/1d821264/mf.gif" width="1" /><div class="mf-viral"><table border="0"><tr><td valign="middle"><a href="http://share.feedsportal.com/viral/sendEmail.cfm?lang=en&title=Video+tutorial%3A+Rig+your+own+Transformer+in+LightWave&link=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.3dworldmag.com%2F2012%2F03%2F16%2Fvideo-tutorial-rig-your-own-transformer-in-lightwave%2F%3Futm_source%3Drss%26utm_medium%3Drss%26utm_campaign%3Dvideo-tutorial-rig-your-own-transformer-in-lightwave" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="http://res3.feedsportal.com/images/emailthis2.gif" /></a></td><td valign="middle"><a href="http://res.feedsportal.com/viral/bookmark.cfm?title=Video+tutorial%3A+Rig+your+own+Transformer+in+LightWave&link=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.3dworldmag.com%2F2012%2F03%2F16%2Fvideo-tutorial-rig-your-own-transformer-in-lightwave%2F%3Futm_source%3Drss%26utm_medium%3Drss%26utm_campaign%3Dvideo-tutorial-rig-your-own-transformer-in-lightwave" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="http://res3.feedsportal.com/images/bookmark.gif" /></a></td></tr></table></div><br /><br /><a href="http://da.feedsportal.com/r/129200441230/u/49/f/538495/c/33151/s/1d821264/a2.htm"><img border="0" src="http://da.feedsportal.com/r/129200441230/u/49/f/538495/c/33151/s/1d821264/a2.img" /></a><img border="0" src="http://da.feedsportal.com/r/129200441230/u/49/f/538495/c/33151/s/1d821264/a2t.img" /><img height="1" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/3dWorldrss/~4/VscwAZ8sOVc" width="1" />

<p><a href="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/ftr.jpg" rel="lightbox[35136]"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-35137" height="243" src="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/ftr.jpg" title="ftr" width="580" /></a></p> <p class="strap">Find out how this atmospheric, painterly animated short was created using Maya, Photoshop and After Effects. Watch the film here too</p> <p>For the Remainder depicts the last moments of a house cat who bids farewell to its home before leaving to perish. The short was a graduation project created by Omer Ben David while studying at the <a href="http://www.bezalel.ac.il/en/">Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design</a> in Jerusalem, Israel. Ben David first began working on the plot in November last year. </p> <p>“I was dwelling on a concept of a cat that leaves his house and searches for his final resting place for some time before then,” he says. “I pondered on that notion since hearing the rumour that old cats sometime leave their home to die somewhere else unseen by their beloved ones or enemies. I felt that this essence of a story is very poetic and thus should be treated as a song rather than a narrative.”</p> <h4>First impressions</h4> <p>After developing the main plot, the director carefully considered the importance of the film’s characters and what role each would play. </p> <p>“From the beginning, the story was about a cat and a house,” Ben David explains. “The cat’s owner was also a main character but I wasn’t sure if he would be performing or his presence just suggested. The spider came somewhat in the middle of the storyboarding stage, when I was searching for a death motif to allow the cat to deal with.”</p> <p>“I was greatly inspired by sketches and calligraphy, and some colour blocking when searching for the look of the characters. I figured the house, as a character, should be mostly colour blocked while the cat should be wired so they were in contrast.”</p> <p><a href="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/ftr1.jpg" rel="lightbox[35136]"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-35138" height="243" src="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/ftr1.jpg" title="ftr1" width="580" /></a></p> <h4>Creating perfect brush strokes</h4> <p>The film’s unique style was inspired by a number of sources. “I was very moved by a series of paintings by <a href="http://lukpazera.blogspot.com/">Lukasz Pazera</a> called <a href="http://postcardsfromthezone.com/">Postcards from the Zone</a> and his brilliant <a href="http://lukpazera.blogspot.com/2011/06/dog-of-zone-animation-sample.html">Dog of Zone</a>, which I figured would be awesome animated,” Ben David says.</p> <p>While researching, the director also watched Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Stalker. “I thought it to be the exact poem-like atmosphere I was searching for both visually and musically. I love the ambiance and slow rhythm,” he says. “I was also greatly inspired by color block paintings such as <a href="http://www.gerhardmozsi.com/">Gerhard Mozsi’s</a>, and the dreamy feel and pace in animated films such as Tekkonkinkreet or Ghost in the Shell which I adore.”</p> <div class="wp-caption alignleft" id="attachment_35159" style="width: 590px;"><a href="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/remainder_infl.jpg" rel="lightbox[35136]"><img alt="" class="size-full wp-image-35159" height="389" src="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/remainder_infl.jpg" title="remainder_infl" width="580" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">One of the film’s main influences was a series of paintings by Lukasz Pazera called Postcards from the Zone. You can see similarities in tone and style between them and For the Remainder</p></div> <p>Ben David’s extensive research and inspirations helped him to develop the unique painterly style of the film. In order to achieve this in 3D, he turned to the powerful tools of Maya. </p> <p>“This software was vital to production,” he explains. “It was an inherent rendering method that got the look for my characters and objects, combined with the overlapping textures on the sets. Photoshop was of course crucial for painting the textures, but Maya allowed me to rig and control almost everything I needed.”</p> <p>The film’s style, however, also presented some technical challenges. “The whole sketchiness and painterly look was the biggest technical issue,” says Ben David. “I did a lot of research about NPR (non photo realistic) rendering before developing the technique for creating it, and it was pretty much an experiment throughout the entire process. I didn’t have a clear point of reference on a technical level on how to achieve this look, and so I did a lot of testing until I reached a certain point where I knew that the composited render would satisfy me.”</p> <p>Despite extensive research and testing, Ben David managed to complete the film within a fairly short time period. “It took me around nine months to finish the short,” he says. “I did some touch-ups, on and off, for a few months afterwards as I was not completely happy with some renders and I’ve worked some more on mastering the soundtrack with <a href="http://onili.com/">Onili</a>. I’m very pleased with the final result. Both on the aesthetics and the feel of it.”</p> <p></p> <h3>Like this film?</h3> <p><a href="http://www.3dworldmag.com/category/showcase/shorts/">Check out the selection of other awesome animations on our shorts page</a></p> <p><em>Make sure you visit next week for more Friday Animation Fun!</em></p> <img border="0" height="1" src="http://3dworldmag.com.feedsportal.com/c/33151/f/538495/s/1d81a18a/mf.gif" width="1" /><div class="mf-viral"><table border="0"><tr><td valign="middle"><a href="http://share.feedsportal.com/viral/sendEmail.cfm?lang=en&title=Friday+Animation+Fun%3A+For+the+Remainder&link=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.3dworldmag.com%2F2012%2F03%2F16%2Ffriday-animation-fun-for-the-remainder%2F%3Futm_source%3Drss%26utm_medium%3Drss%26utm_campaign%3Dfriday-animation-fun-for-the-remainder" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="http://res3.feedsportal.com/images/emailthis2.gif" /></a></td><td valign="middle"><a href="http://res.feedsportal.com/viral/bookmark.cfm?title=Friday+Animation+Fun%3A+For+the+Remainder&link=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.3dworldmag.com%2F2012%2F03%2F16%2Ffriday-animation-fun-for-the-remainder%2F%3Futm_source%3Drss%26utm_medium%3Drss%26utm_campaign%3Dfriday-animation-fun-for-the-remainder" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="http://res3.feedsportal.com/images/bookmark.gif" /></a></td></tr></table></div><br /><br /><a href="http://da.feedsportal.com/r/129200396320/u/49/f/538495/c/33151/s/1d81a18a/a2.htm"><img border="0" src="http://da.feedsportal.com/r/129200396320/u/49/f/538495/c/33151/s/1d81a18a/a2.img" /></a><img border="0" src="http://da.feedsportal.com/r/129200396320/u/49/f/538495/c/33151/s/1d81a18a/a2t.img" /><img height="1" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/3dWorldrss/~4/W9nf4RJbbCw" width="1" />

<p><a href="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/johncarter_desert_cinesite.jpg" rel="lightbox[35145]"><img alt="Disney's John Carter movie still" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-35150" height="242" src="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/johncarter_desert_cinesite.jpg" title="Disney's John Carter movie still - opener" width="580" /></a> <p class="strap">Cinesite has completed 831 VFX shots and converted 87 minutes of film into stereoscopic 3D for Disney’s John Carter, which hit cinemas last week</p> <p>The 3D work in John Carter - Andrew Stanton’s first live-action feature film, based on Edgar Rice Burroughs ‘Mars’ series of novels - was split between three leading London FX houses: Cinesite, Double Negative and The Moving Picture Company. </p> <p>Cinesite, renowned for its photoreal environment work, was responsible for creating and populating the majority of environments for John Carter. The team of 310-strong completed 831 visual effects shots, which included creating and populating the majority of environments for the film. They also converted 87 minutes of the film into stereo 3D.</p> <p>Cinesite’s VFX supervisor Sue Rowe spent several months on set in the UK and Utah. Due to the scale of the project, Rowe divided the work between four other VFX supervisors.</p> <div class="wp-caption alignleft" id="attachment_35151" style="width: 590px;"></p> <p><a href="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/johncarter_wireframe_helium_cinesite.jpg" rel="lightbox[35145]"><img alt="John Carter VFX shots" class="size-full wp-image-35151" height="242" src="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/johncarter_wireframe_helium_cinesite.jpg" title="johncarter_wireframe_helium_cinesite" width="580" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Helium is shown from different angles throughout the film, and is used as the backdrop for the final battle sequence</p></div> <p>Christian Irles supervised work on Princess Dejah’s city, Helium. The city presented a challenge as it had to match the art department concept stills. While this was easy enough to do in matte painting, it was very time-consuming and render heavy to get actual full 3D renders. Projections were created for the terrain and these were worked up in matte painting to achieve the level of detail required. </p> <div class="wp-caption alignleft" id="attachment_35152" style="width: 590px;"><a href="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/johncarter_helium_cinesite.jpg" rel="lightbox[35145]"><img alt="John Carter Helium city" class="size-full wp-image-35152" height="242" src="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/johncarter_helium_cinesite.jpg" title="John Carter Helium city" width="580" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Cinesite created a matte painting of the outside of the city of Helium and, using projections, built up the terrain using high-res stills taken on location in Utah</p></div> <p>The shots presented the city as a whole with both Helium Major and Helium Minor visible, resulting in a huge amount of texture maps and shaders. Render time was very high for these shots and all layers, such as crowds, terrain, etc were rendered separately. </p> <p>Helium stats:</p> <ul> <li>346 models in the city structure</li> <li>74 individual props created</li> </ul> <div class="wp-caption alignleft" id="attachment_35153" style="width: 590px;"><a href="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/Zodanga_cinesite.jpg" rel="lightbox[35145]"><img alt="" class="size-full wp-image-35153" height="242" src="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/Zodanga_cinesite.jpg" title="Zodanga_cinesite" width="580" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">The mobile city of Zodanga crawls like a myriapod across the surface of Mars: giving the city a sense of scale and animating the digital legs was challenging</p></div> <p>Jonathan Neill supervised Cinesite’s work on the mobile city of Zodanga, a mile-long rusty metal tanker that crawls like a myriapod across the surface of Mars. The city was heavily textured using a combination of Photoshop, Mari and Mudbox in tandem with bespoke shaders and lighting development, to give an industrial look and feel.</p> <p>A handful of sets were built which were locations within the city, but these needed considerable extension work to make the depth and scale of the city believable. Cinesite modelled thousands of pieces of geometry for the city buildings, and created hundreds of CG props to dress the sets.</p> <div class="wp-caption alignleft" id="attachment_35154" style="width: 590px;"><a href="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/johncarter_city_cinesite.jpg" rel="lightbox[35145]"><img alt="John Carter VFX. Interior of city" class="size-full wp-image-35154" height="242" src="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/johncarter_city_cinesite.jpg" title="John Carter VFX. Interior of city" width="580" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Cinesite filled the city with warships and troops, before dressing it with hundreds of CG props</p></div> <p>With 674 legs, the mobile city was technically challenging to animate: Timed animation caches were used to ensure the digital legs moved in a random fashion. “Variations in movement and secondary animation such as cogs and cabling were used to create interest in the leg movement,” says Cinesite.</p> <p>Zodanga City Model stats: </p> <ul> <li>291 structural element models</li> <li>Up to 20,000 objects in a single shot</li> <li>1-2 billion polygons, dependent on camera position and detail required</li> <li>242 CG props created to populate the city</li> </ul> <p>Zodanga City Legs stats:</p> <ul> <li>674 legs </li> <li>44 claws</li> </ul> <div class="wp-caption alignleft" id="attachment_35155" style="width: 590px;"><a href="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/johncarter_airship_cinesite.jpg" rel="lightbox[35145]"><img alt="John Carter" class="size-full wp-image-35155" height="242" src="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/johncarter_airship_cinesite.jpg" title="johncarter_airship_cinesite" width="580" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">The texturing and detailing of the giant airships had to be spot on since they feature in many close up shots</p></div> <p>Ben Shepherd oversaw the huge aerial battle between Zodanga and Helium. His team created each side’s airships which use solar wings to travel on light, as well as explosions, fire, people and set extensions.</p> <p>The giant airships needed to be finely detailed for close-up shots. A challenge for look development was that they were required to be more like a 19th-Century sailing ship, than the type of spaceship which a modern-day audience might expect. </p> <p>For Sab’s flagship corsair, a partial set was created for the bridge/cockpit and one deck of a single ship. This was scanned and photographed for reference and recreated. The remaining areas were created as full CG models. </p> <p>Dejah’s ship and the flagship Helium ship, the Xavarian, were created in 3D also. Each ship had a full set of wings which were sized and laid out specifically for each ship. These were controlled by pulleys and ratchet-type controls to give a sailing look. Each of the wings was covered in hundreds of individual solar tiles which needed to be able to be controlled in animation. </p> <div class="wp-caption alignleft" id="attachment_35156" style="width: 590px;"><a href="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/Thern-Sanctuary_Final-Comp.jpg" rel="lightbox[35145]"><img alt="John Carter movie" class="size-full wp-image-35156" height="242" src="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/Thern-Sanctuary_Final-Comp.jpg" title="John Carter movie" width="580" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">The entire Thern effect system was designed and built from scratch using a combination of Maya, Houdini and custom software developed in house</p></div> <p>Simon Stanley-Clamp directed work on the Thern sanctuary, a huge underground cave that forms around Carter and Dejah as self-illuminating blue branches as the characters walk through it. </p> <p>The entire Thern effect system was designed and built from scratch using a combination of Maya, Houdini and custom software developed in house. Based on the principles of nanotechnology, the system provided a semi-automated way to ‘grow’ Thern into any environment and geometry. It took a full year of development time to evolve and bring to the big screen.</p> <div class="wp-caption alignleft" id="attachment_35157" style="width: 590px;"><a href="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/Thern-Sanctuary_3_Final-comp.jpg" rel="lightbox[35145]"><img alt="" class="size-full wp-image-35157" height="247" src="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/Thern-Sanctuary_3_Final-comp.jpg" title="Thern-Sanctuary_3_Final-comp" width="580" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">These ‘growing Thern’ shots were some of the most complex VFX shots Cinesite undertook, and can be seen to great effect in 3D</p></div> <p>In the sequence, as the tunnel itself ends, the main Thern Sanctuary room is seen to build itself, opening out within the Thern matrix of the pyramid interior. This shot required extensive Thern simulation and growing effects, blending multiple elements together in Nuke to build the shot up.</p> <p><em>John Carter is in cinemas now. We’ve not seen the film yet, and reviews so far seem to be fairly mixed, so if you do go, let us know what you think of it via the comments box below, or on Facebook or Twitter </em></p> <h3>The making of John Carter</h3> <p>This article focuses on Cinesite’s contribution to the film, but the 3D work was split between three leading London FX houses: Cinesite, Double Negative and The Moving Picture Company. </p> <p>Read the making-of John Carter article in issue 155 of 3D World magazine, where Renee Dunlop takes us behind the scenes of all three VFX facilities.</p> <p><strong>Issue 155 of 3D World goes on sale on 27th March</strong></p> <img border="0" height="1" src="http://3dworldmag.com.feedsportal.com/c/33151/f/538495/s/1d801946/mf.gif" width="1" /><div class="mf-viral"><table border="0"><tr><td valign="middle"><a href="http://share.feedsportal.com/viral/sendEmail.cfm?lang=en&title=Disney%E2%80%99s+John+Carter%3A+The+VFX+of+Cinesite&link=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.3dworldmag.com%2F2012%2F03%2F16%2Fdisneys-john-carter-the-vfx-of-cinesite%2F%3Futm_source%3Drss%26utm_medium%3Drss%26utm_campaign%3Ddisneys-john-carter-the-vfx-of-cinesite" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="http://res3.feedsportal.com/images/emailthis2.gif" /></a></td><td valign="middle"><a href="http://res.feedsportal.com/viral/bookmark.cfm?title=Disney%E2%80%99s+John+Carter%3A+The+VFX+of+Cinesite&link=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.3dworldmag.com%2F2012%2F03%2F16%2Fdisneys-john-carter-the-vfx-of-cinesite%2F%3Futm_source%3Drss%26utm_medium%3Drss%26utm_campaign%3Ddisneys-john-carter-the-vfx-of-cinesite" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="http://res3.feedsportal.com/images/bookmark.gif" /></a></td></tr></table></div><br /><br /><a href="http://da.feedsportal.com/r/129200459259/u/49/f/538495/c/33151/s/1d801946/a2.htm"><img border="0" src="http://da.feedsportal.com/r/129200459259/u/49/f/538495/c/33151/s/1d801946/a2.img" /></a><img border="0" src="http://da.feedsportal.com/r/129200459259/u/49/f/538495/c/33151/s/1d801946/a2t.img" /><img height="1" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/3dWorldrss/~4/SAa9hvj4MmU" width="1" />

<p><a href="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/TDW152.f_tintin.tin17_998034v28.jpg" rel="lightbox[35108]"><img alt="" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-35134" height="247" src="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/TDW152.f_tintin.tin17_998034v28.jpg" title="TDW152.f_tintin.tin17_998034v28" width="580" /></a> <p class="strap">Weta Digital embarked on a new quest with The Adventures of Tintin, complete with crashing waves, pirate battles and an extremely stylish wardrobe. Renee Dunlop takes us behind the scenes</p> <p>As the Blu-ray of The Adventures of Tintin goes on sale, we thought we’d share this article from <a href="http://www.3dworldmag.com/2012/01/07/3d-world-152-create-fire-water-and-more/">issue 152 of 3D World magazine</a>. </p> <p>If you haven’t watched the film already, we suggest you do - The Adventures of Tintin looks like a mix of live-action and CG, which adds up to something unique on screen. It’s possible that The Adventures of Tintin missed out at the Oscars this year because of this very thing, which is a real shame as we think the film has some of the best CG we’ve ever seen. </p> <h3>Weta’s Adventures of Tintin</h3> <p>Weta Digital is delving into a new world – that of the journalist. Enter Tintin, a popular post-World War One comic strip hero who travels about with his dog, Snowy, cracking cases with a little help from his friends. Created in 1929 by the artist and writer best known as Hergé, the stellar artists of Weta, led by director Steven Spielberg and producer Peter Jackson, have brought the story to 3D animated life on the big screen. </p> <p>It took some of Weta’s best to tackle the wide array of arduous effects required to complete the film. Keith Miller, one of five VFX supervisors, was among those appointed to the task. He was in charge of roughly 340 shots.</p> <div class="wp-caption alignleft" id="attachment_35113" style="width: 590px;"><a href="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/TDW152.f_tintin.opener_ships1.jpg" rel="lightbox[35108]"><img alt="" class="size-full wp-image-35113" height="326" src="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/TDW152.f_tintin.opener_ships1.jpg" title="TDW152.f_tintin.opener_ships1" width="580" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">An epic sea battle required Weta Digital’s team to simulate stormy ocean waves</p></div> <p>For Miller, the big challenge was the pirate battle. “It’s such a dynamic sequence,” he says. “There are nearly 60 pirates running about, two ships that are sailing in 60-metre seas complete with lightning storms, rain, hurricane winds, fire, explosions – you name it, it’s all there.” The most difficult challenge was the water, with 60-metre waves interacting with the ships that needed to compositionally match the representations provided by the pre-viz team.</p> <p>Miller’s team approached the work from a few different angles. “First, we updated our FFT [fast Fourier transform] library, a system of generating waves using measurements collected in oceanic research,” says Miller. They also completely rewrote their library using a more up-to-date spectrum that provided the ability to incorporate the ideas of the depth of the ocean and the fetch, or the distance that wind stays at a constant velocity. “We added those new variables into the system and we were able to generate much more realistic wave scenarios for the high wind systems,” he adds. </p> <p>Weta’s FX team did quite a bit of work approximating the surface velocity from the newly generated ocean surfaces and applied those to Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) particle simulations, much of which was used for the white water simulation, breaking waves that rode on top of the ocean surface. These were pushed through Weta’s in-house 3D effects solution, Synapse, a node-based system that’s a container for solvers. In some cases, Naiad data was also incorporated into Synapse for the initial bounded simulation elements.</p> <div class="wp-caption alignleft" id="attachment_35116" style="width: 590px;"><a href="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/TDW152.f_tintin.pirate1.jpg" rel="lightbox[35108]"><img alt="" class="size-full wp-image-35116" height="245" src="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/TDW152.f_tintin.pirate1.jpg" title="TDW152.f_tintin.pirate1" width="580" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">The battle sequence combines water, fire, wind and lightning, and featured as many as 60 pirates in combat</p></div> <p>In addition to reworking the FFT system, senior water TD Chris Horvath updated Weta’s shading model for raytraced water, using an improved model for participating media for underwater light extinction and scattering. He also made improvements to the procedural texture foam system. </p> <h4>Creating the hands</h4> <p>While Miller and his team battled with the pirate ships, Weta’s digital creature supervisor Simon Clutterbuck focused on some of the smallest of details through his modelling department. “We build the animation puppets, the deformation rigs, we do all the cloth and hair simulations, muscle dynamics, flesh dynamics – anything that has to do with the monster or character,” he says. “We interact with all the departments in the studio to produce stuff for them to use, like the puppets or the baked light, and we work closely with shots and animation.” </p> <p>The creature department work includes providing all the puppets for the animators. “Our animation puppet isn’t the thing that gets cached and ends up in the shot,” says Clutterbuck. “The animation puppets are kind of an interactive, almost real-time version of the character. They don’t have to see amazing hand deformations to pose the hand correctly, so they’re just posing [and] animating this thing that’s much lower resolution.” Clutterbuck’s Creature Department provides the animators with approximations of clothes and low-res hands and bodies that allow for faster animation. “Then the animation data is cached off of that puppet and plugged into a high-resolution creature rig, which gets cached and given to lighting,” he says. “This way there’s no requirement for interactivity in our actual deformation models.” </p> <div class="wp-caption alignleft" id="attachment_35111" style="width: 590px;"><a href="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/TDW152.f_tintin.new_013025261.jpg" rel="lightbox[35108]"><img alt="" class="size-full wp-image-35111" height="326" src="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/TDW152.f_tintin.new_013025261.jpg" title="TDW152.f_tintin.new_013025261" width="580" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">A single complex rig was used as the basis for all characters’ hands</p></div> <p>It’s hardly all low-res work, though. “There’s a big focus on faces and hands in the show, so a good deal of time was focused on building a detailed hand rig,” says Clutterbuck. “We had all these incredibly close shots of Tintin’s hands. It’s a treasure hunt, so there are all these clues that lead to the treasure, and there are lots of shots where he’s inspecting things. The shots are incredibly long, so you’ll have minutes focused on their face or hands. The stability of the cloth solve, the fidelity of the hands [and] the deformation all had to be very high. It was pretty unforgiving.”</p> <p>Weta Digital’s workflow uses a generic model called Gen Man as a baseline for building humanoid characters. This starting point is used for reference, scanning and motion capturing, tailoring clothes, and even cross-referencing MRI data. Clutterbuck explains: “We produced a whole bunch of life casts in all different poses that were used to build support moulds, 36 in all, that went into the MRI machine, so the character could put his hand into a similar pose and hold it there. Then we could derive the meshes of his joints from the MRIs.” The result was a series of high-resolution joint meshes of his actual skeleton in the selected poses. </p> <div class="wp-caption alignleft" id="attachment_35110" style="width: 590px;"><a href="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/TDW152.f_tintin.new_00402825.jpg" rel="lightbox[35108]"><img alt="The story requires characters to grip and manipulate objects" class="size-full wp-image-35110" height="326" src="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/TDW152.f_tintin.new_00402825.jpg" title="TDW152.f_tintin.new_00402825" width="580" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">The story is a treasure hunt, so there are lots of shots where the characters have to pick things up and be able to manipulate them</p></div> <p>“The metacarpals in the wrist do all these crazy rolling motions – it’s really complex,” Clutterbuck says. “We couldn’t build that complexity into the animation puppets because it would have been prohibitive to animate with, but we also needed the correct degrees of freedom in the wrist and joints to give us the right deformations of the hand.” It took nearly five months to get the hands working the way they wanted.</p> <p>“The hand rig looks pretty amazing,” says Clutterbuck. “The hand model propagates out into the show, procedurally warped into new shapes, so we built one hand rig and it was fitted to all the characters’ hands. We have a process that was developed on Avatar to transfer the rig and deformation data onto other models.” </p> <p>Weta Digital’s model supervisor Marco Revelant was responsible for all the assets created in the model department and was involved with grooming and developing the fur system from the user side for the dog, Snowy. However, it was the clothing that both Clutterbuck and Revelant found the most challenging. The multiple layers and the way the different fabrics fell and moved presented a daunting task. </p> <h4>Folding the clothes</h4> <p>Weta Digital set up a Tintin-specific costume department that helped define the design of the clothing, offering insight into how the fabric would drape and move over a character. “The problem is,” says Revelant, “when you do digital clothing and give it to a modeller, the modeller will try to put in features like wrinkles and folds, but won’t necessarily take into account the quantity of fabric.”</p> <div class="wp-caption alignleft" id="attachment_35114" style="width: 590px;"><a href="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/TDW152.f_tintin.other1_04800542SS_dist.jpg" rel="lightbox[35108]"><img alt="" class="size-full wp-image-35114" height="326" src="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/TDW152.f_tintin.other1_04800542SS_dist.jpg" title="TDW152.f_tintin.other1_04800542SS_dist" width="580" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Care was taken with getting clothing folds to animate correctly</p></div> <p>To manage this issue, the Creature Department worked closely with modelling, providing tools that helped drape the character as they were modelling so that they could see how the fabric was behaving, rather than waiting until the Creature Department ran their simulations. Weta used NCloth in Maya, but spent a huge amount of time up-front shooting parameters and getting the topology in the models and construction correct, especially in cross-sections such as sleeves. </p> <div class="wp-caption alignleft" id="attachment_35124" style="width: 590px;"><a href="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/TDW152.f_tintin.tin8_020003215SS.jpg" rel="lightbox[35108]"><img alt="" class="size-full wp-image-35124" height="326" src="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/TDW152.f_tintin.tin8_020003215SS.jpg" title="TDW152.f_tintin.tin8_020003215SS" width="580" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">There are eight principal characters, and several have multiple costumes. In all, there were 551 individual costumes to build for the film</p></div> <p>Several characters had multiple layers of clothing, requiring layers of geometry to simulate friction. There were eight principal characters, and several – including Tintin, Captain Haddock and Sakharine – have multiple costumes. In all, there were 551 individual costumes to build for the film. “Take the Captain,” Clutterbuck says. “He had a big woollen jacket, a woollen jumper, trousers, and socks and shoes.” Again, proper reference was key. Weta filmed a man running on a treadmill wearing a tailored suit they provided, and gathered reference on how cloth breaks across the seams, collecting data on details such as the effects of double versus single stitching. </p> <p>Weta first tried just solving the visible clothing, but found that it didn’t quite look correct. “We ended up going for full coupled solutions where everything was solved,” says Clutterbuck. “Tintin might enter with his trench coat on, then take it off and toss it onto the back of a chair, and continue the scene wearing the rest of his costume,” says Clutterbuck. “We had to handle this level of complexity where we had all these variations of costume elements and they had to solve coupled. We hadn’t really done anything that complicated before in terms of clothes.” </p> <p>Coupling affects even supporting characters such as Silk, who dresses in a formal jacket, a waistcoat and a shirt. “We didn’t solve the shirt, then put the waistcoat on, then the jacket,” says Clutterbuck. “We solved everything at the same time, so the solutions were all fully coupled. All the costume elements are plugged into one solver. Since they’re all plugged in, they all interact.”</p> <p>Weta defers everything to its render wall. The costumes were assembled as a master file that contained a costume description. During the baked simulation step that file would assemble the costume, plug it into all the solvers, bring it in, attach it to the character, then do the simulation. The result was a final sim and a series of files generated to show what Weta calls pre-files, which are pre-simulation. The individual costume assets are iterated in parallel as an ensemble of costume elements. </p> <div class="wp-caption alignleft" id="attachment_35130" style="width: 590px;"><a href="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/TDW152.f_tintin.tin14_03802770SS.jpg" rel="lightbox[35108]"><img alt="" class="size-full wp-image-35130" height="326" src="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/TDW152.f_tintin.tin14_03802770SS.jpg" title="TDW152.f_tintin.tin14_03802770SS" width="580" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text"> “There’s a big focus on faces and hands in the show, so a good deal of time was focused on building a detailed hand rig,” says Clutterbuck</p></div> <p>The costumes took several minutes a frame to simulate, but there was no interactivity requirement because that’s all happening on the render wall and animation was working with real-time puppet versions. “So we have these two parts of every character, with the puppet which goes to animation and the creature deformation model that’s the thing the animation curves get plugged into that simulates on the wall,” says Clutterbuck. </p> <p>Weta’s flexible pipeline paid off, according to Miller. “I know a lot of facilities tend to lock down their technology, branch it off and continue developing it outside of current shows, but that’s very different from how Weta works,” he says. “It’s got pros and cons for sure, but it’s one of those things that helps us to stay at the leading edge of technology. We’re constantly throwing in new technology and updating and developing new aspects, and trying to get it pushed into production all the way through the course of the show.” </p> <h4>Setting the scene </h4> <p>The entire Tintin project was done in-house at Weta Digital, including the artwork for the environment and character studies. The translation of the environments from 2D to 3D was left to Weta’s modelling department under modelling supervisor Marco Revelant’s guidance. An internal art department was assembled to research information about the time when the film takes place. </p> <div class="wp-caption alignleft" id="attachment_35133" style="width: 590px;"><a href="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/TDW152.f_tintin.tin16_08900835.jpg" rel="lightbox[35108]"><img alt="" class="size-full wp-image-35133" height="326" src="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/TDW152.f_tintin.tin16_08900835.jpg" title="TDW152.f_tintin.tin16_08900835" width="580" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">“Every element that was drawn in the book, we tried to find the respective real element from that period that could have been the inspiration for the Hergé drawing," explains Revelant. "Everything was checked against real period data.” </p></div> <p>“One important thing is [creator] Hergé was very careful in depicting a kind of reality that was around the 1940s,” explains Revelant. “Every element that was drawn in the book, we tried to find the respective real element from that period that could have been the inspiration for the Hergé drawing. Everything was checked against real period data.” </p> <h4>Creating the hair </h4> <p>Weta was working on Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Tintin at the same time. While the requirements for hair on Tintin weren’t anything near what they were for Apes, some of the aspects translated over. Tintin required wind effects, wet hair and a lot of development to get the hair to work coupled with the clothes. </p> <div class="wp-caption alignleft" id="attachment_35125" style="width: 590px;"><a href="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/TDW152.f_tintin.tin9_030016v405.jpg" rel="lightbox[35108]"><img alt="" class="size-full wp-image-35125" height="246" src="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/TDW152.f_tintin.tin9_030016v405.jpg" title="TDW152.f_tintin.tin9_030016v405" width="580" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Character hair in The Adventures of Tintin has to interact with objects and the environment</p></div> <p>With the hat on, the Captain has a groom, styled so his hair doesn’t stick through the hat. When the hat is off, the hair is groomed appropriately. Sometimes the Captain put his hat on or took it off, so transitional shots with appropriate grooms were needed. The Captain’s hair ended up having a very dense particle set on the hair and collision objects with the hat, and his hair would spring up a bit during the transition. </p> <p><a href="http://www.myfavouritemagazines.co.uk/design/3dworld-magazine-back-issues/3d-world-feb-12/">Buy issue 152 of 3D World magazine to read the full article</a></p> <p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Adventures-Tintin-Two-Disc-Blu-ray-Digital/dp/B0034G4P4Y/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1331150699&sr=8-3">Buy the Blu-ray of The Adventures of Tintin via Amazon</a></p> <img border="0" height="1" src="http://3dworldmag.com.feedsportal.com/c/33151/f/538495/s/1d77d052/mf.gif" width="1" /><div class="mf-viral"><table border="0"><tr><td valign="middle"><a href="http://share.feedsportal.com/viral/sendEmail.cfm?lang=en&title=Weta+Digital+on+the+making+of+The+Adventures+of+Tintin&link=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.3dworldmag.com%2F2012%2F03%2F15%2Fweta-digital-on-the-making-of-the-adventures-of-tintin%2F%3Futm_source%3Drss%26utm_medium%3Drss%26utm_campaign%3Dweta-digital-on-the-making-of-the-adventures-of-tintin" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="http://res3.feedsportal.com/images/emailthis2.gif" /></a></td><td valign="middle"><a href="http://res.feedsportal.com/viral/bookmark.cfm?title=Weta+Digital+on+the+making+of+The+Adventures+of+Tintin&link=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.3dworldmag.com%2F2012%2F03%2F15%2Fweta-digital-on-the-making-of-the-adventures-of-tintin%2F%3Futm_source%3Drss%26utm_medium%3Drss%26utm_campaign%3Dweta-digital-on-the-making-of-the-adventures-of-tintin" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="http://res3.feedsportal.com/images/bookmark.gif" /></a></td></tr></table></div><br /><br /><a href="http://da.feedsportal.com/r/129200327135/u/49/f/538495/c/33151/s/1d77d052/a2.htm"><img border="0" src="http://da.feedsportal.com/r/129200327135/u/49/f/538495/c/33151/s/1d77d052/a2.img" /></a><img border="0" src="http://da.feedsportal.com/r/129200327135/u/49/f/538495/c/33151/s/1d77d052/a2t.img" /><img height="1" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/3dWorldrss/~4/D4s7vJZZjr8" width="1" />

<p><a href="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/19.jpg" rel="lightbox[35032]"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-35091" height="326" src="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/19.jpg" title="19" width="580" /></a></p> <p class="strap">Find out how this ultra photorealistic film was pieced together using 3ds Max and V-Ray. Watch the animated short here too</p> <p><span id="more-35032"></span></p> <p>The Accuracy of Time is a depiction of part of the process of building a watch, more specifically the ceramic crown. Created by art director Javi Martinez, the short was made as a case study for his upcoming <a href="http://lightrendergroup.com/">CGI training roadshow TAOT2012</a>.</p> <p>The idea was to replicate a real advertisement and the entire production process behind it. The film will be used as part of the roadshow training to highlight some of specific challenges currently facing digital artists.</p> <p>The project was created using a 3ds Max and V-Ray pipeline. “The decision to use this software was simply to make a technical demonstration of the many capabilities offered by the two working together,” explains Martinez. </p> <h4>3ds Max and V-Ray: an ideal combo</h4> <p>“3ds Max allowed us to develop the short very easily using the new MASSFX to perform physical dynamics and the ceramic particles and at the same time offered great performance in the modelling and animation of objects and cameras. The reason we chose V-Ray was the quality of representation of light, versatility, simplicity to recreate materials and the optimisation of production times.”</p> <p><a href="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/14.jpg" rel="lightbox[35032]"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-35092" height="326" src="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/14.jpg" title="14" width="580" /></a></p> <h4>More-than-reasonable render times</h4> <p>Rather amazingly, The Accuracy of Time was created using only one workstation! It just goes to show what can be achieved if you’ve got the right amount of dedication: “The short includes the processing of raw materials [to create the watch], the material injection to obtain the piece itself, then it passes through the baking stage and ends with the exposure of the product with elegance and quality,” says Martinez. “But the whole film was in fact a very simple macro CG production playing with a basic geometric model, a virtual light and virtual camera. Given that the piece was produced using a single workstation, the render times were very manageable, ranging from five to 35 minutes per frame.”</p> <h4>Playing with the look</h4> <p>It wasn’t all plain sailing, however. Due to the style and close-up nature of the short, Martinez had to work out solutions in order to achieve the correct look. “The animation treatment and lens blurs were resolved by ZD channels and working on it in post,” Martinex explains. “The animation of the camera lens can easily change the meaning of a sequence so experimenting with this technique was very attractive to me.”</p> <p>Overall, the short took Martinez approximately just under a year to complete from start to finish. “The 10-month production time was an amazing experience,” Martinez says. “But it led to a lot of sacrifice and [it was a] joy to finally get my work out to reach the community of artists in an industry which is so difficult and exquisite.”</p> <h4>Watch the new animation short:</h4> </p> <p></p> <h4>Watch The Accuracy of Time making of video:</h4> <p> <p> </p> <h4>Want more animated shorts of the same calibre?</h4> <p>If you liked this film, check out a selection of other awesome animations on our <a href="http://www.3dworldmag.com/category/showcase/shorts/">Shorts page</a></p> <img border="0" height="1" src="http://3dworldmag.com.feedsportal.com/c/33151/f/538495/s/1d6f8c5d/mf.gif" width="1" /><div class="mf-viral"><table border="0"><tr><td valign="middle"><a href="http://share.feedsportal.com/viral/sendEmail.cfm?lang=en&title=New+animation+short%3A+The+Accuracy+of+Time&link=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.3dworldmag.com%2F2012%2F03%2F14%2Fnew-animation-short-the-accuracy-of-time%2F%3Futm_source%3Drss%26utm_medium%3Drss%26utm_campaign%3Dnew-animation-short-the-accuracy-of-time" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="http://res3.feedsportal.com/images/emailthis2.gif" /></a></td><td valign="middle"><a href="http://res.feedsportal.com/viral/bookmark.cfm?title=New+animation+short%3A+The+Accuracy+of+Time&link=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.3dworldmag.com%2F2012%2F03%2F14%2Fnew-animation-short-the-accuracy-of-time%2F%3Futm_source%3Drss%26utm_medium%3Drss%26utm_campaign%3Dnew-animation-short-the-accuracy-of-time" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="http://res3.feedsportal.com/images/bookmark.gif" /></a></td></tr></table></div><br /><br /><a href="http://da.feedsportal.com/r/129200299806/u/49/f/538495/c/33151/s/1d6f8c5d/a2.htm"><img border="0" src="http://da.feedsportal.com/r/129200299806/u/49/f/538495/c/33151/s/1d6f8c5d/a2.img" /></a><img border="0" src="http://da.feedsportal.com/r/129200299806/u/49/f/538495/c/33151/s/1d6f8c5d/a2t.img" /><img height="1" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/3dWorldrss/~4/HB_RZPTmu4k" width="1" />

<p><a href="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/TDW94.t_trade.ad_seq3.jpg" rel="lightbox[35067]"><img alt="" class="alignright size-full wp-image-35088" height="348" src="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/TDW94.t_trade.ad_seq3.jpg" title="TDW94.t_trade.ad_seq3" width="580" /></a></p> <p class="strap">Do you remember the original Transformers-style Citroën C4 spot? Five years ago it became a worldwide cult hit and we asked The Embassy’s CG team to reveal some of the ad’s technical secrets. Catch up as Transformers week continues…</p> <p>To celebrate <a href="http://www.3dworldmag.com/2012/03/07/digital-tutors-releases-new-transforming-robot-tutorials/">Digital-Tutors’ new Transformation training</a>, we thought we’d make an event of it and post online all things Transformery!</p> <p>We’ve already posted up two making of Transformers articles:<br /> <a href="http://www.3dworldmag.com/2012/03/07/the-making-of-transformers/">The making of Transformers</a><br /> <a href="http://www.3dworldmag.com/2012/03/08/the-making-of-transformers-2/">The making of Transformers 2</a></p> <p>We plan to post up a <strong>train-transforming walkthrough tutorial</strong> this week too, so remember to check back.</p> <h3>Here’s the Embassy’s making of the Citroën ‘Runner’ spot</h3> <h4>ABOUT THE ORIGINAL AD</h4> <p>Created for the launch of Citroën’s C4 range, The Embassy Visual Effects’s original 2004 ad, ‘Alive with Technology’, opens with a hand-held camera shot of a car that transforms into a robot, performs an?impromptu series of dance moves and then reverts back to vehicular form.</p> <div class="wp-caption alignright" id="attachment_35068" style="width: 590px;"><a href="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/TDW94.t_trade.orig_ad.jpg" rel="lightbox[35067]"><img alt="" class="size-full wp-image-35068" height="320" src="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/TDW94.t_trade.orig_ad.jpg" title="TDW94.t_trade.orig_ad" width="580" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">The Embassy Visual Effects’s original 2004 ad, ‘Alive with Technology’, opens with a hand-held camera shot of a car that transforms into a robot, performs an?impromptu series of dance moves and then reverts back to vehicular form</p></div> <p>As well as making other VFX teams green with envy, the spot proved to have unexpected longevity. A full two years on, it was regularly appearing on TV, picking up fresh awards, and inspiring numerous spoofs and tributes, including a memorable parody replacing the C4 with a rather less glamorous Citroën 2CV and a viral for Danish bacon. The Mill even got a shot at producing a follow-up, before The Embassy itself jumped back on board for a third in the series.</p> <p>“It’s hard to say what it was about that original ad that hit people,” says studio president Winston Helgason. “Technically we did a good job, but something else struck a chord with them. While the ad has that geek factor, it’s just really fun to watch.”</p> <p>Television audiences got their first taste of vehicular dancefloor magic back in 2004. A?relative newcomer to the field of CG, Vancouver-based VFX studio The Embassy Visual Effects had already turned heads with its viral short film <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1zGLx6H3f4&feature=related">Tetra Vaal</a> and some impressively photoreal ads for the likes of Nike.</p> <p>But it was the Citroën ‘Alive with Technology’ ad that really put the studio on the map – and a spring in the step of CG?based car ads. Fusing perfectly believable virtual visuals, directorial flair, and some seriously cool dance moves, The Embassy created what is now regarded as a?genuine classic.</p> <h3>Watch the Citroën ‘Alive with Technology’ spot</h3> <p></p> <p>Now the studio is back on board for the third spot in what is becoming an increasingly long-running campaign, and has been working hard to push the concept of a car that transforms into a robot to even greater heights.</p> <p>In contrast to the original spot, for which director Neill Blomkamp utilised a virtual camera and 3D environment constructed from photographs, the new ad’s director, Trevor Cawood, chose to undertake a live shoot in South Africa – a location chosen principally for its favourable lighting conditions. A new transforming CG vehicle was then integrated into the plates with the help of elements rebuilt in?3D to aid the creation of shadows and reflections.</p> <p>“The brief was pretty open,” says The Embassy president Winston Helgason. “The idea was to have the robot running, but other than that, it was simply ‘make it look cool’. The client did come back and ask if we could find something else for the robot to do, though, so we came up with the rail slide [which the bot performs along the restraining barrier by the side of the road].”</p> <p>Here, the studio’s 3D and compositing staff reveal just how their cybernetic star was rigged and animated to perform such a stunt. They also explore some of the shading and lighting techniques used to generate the photorealistic renders of the modified car necessary to composite it seamlessly into the background plate.</p> <p>Helgason reveals that the studio’s preferred tool for this kind of work is LightWave 3D’s own renderer, its raytracing proving particularly well suited to hard surface lighting. Dropping HDRI set data into the program and adding additional lights, the studio is able to get a scene fully lit in a matter of minutes. But ultimately, he says that the real secret of photorealism in the Citroën ads is simply attention to detail.</p> <p>“The most important thing is to understand how lighting really works, and then learn to match the way it reacts to metallic surfaces,” he says. “That, and then adding loads of extra model detail is what makes the results so effective.”</p> <h3>Watch the Citroën ‘Runner’ spot</h3> <p></p> <p><em>Click Next to read about how ILM had to rip apart the original robot design</em></p> <img border="0" height="1" src="http://3dworldmag.com.feedsportal.com/c/33151/f/538495/s/1d689117/mf.gif" width="1" /><div class="mf-viral"><table border="0"><tr><td valign="middle"><a href="http://share.feedsportal.com/viral/sendEmail.cfm?lang=en&title=The+Embassy%3A+The+art+of+robotics&link=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.3dworldmag.com%2F2012%2F03%2F13%2Fthe-embassy-the-art-of-robotics%2F%3Futm_source%3Drss%26utm_medium%3Drss%26utm_campaign%3Dthe-embassy-the-art-of-robotics" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="http://res3.feedsportal.com/images/emailthis2.gif" /></a></td><td valign="middle"><a href="http://res.feedsportal.com/viral/bookmark.cfm?title=The+Embassy%3A+The+art+of+robotics&link=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.3dworldmag.com%2F2012%2F03%2F13%2Fthe-embassy-the-art-of-robotics%2F%3Futm_source%3Drss%26utm_medium%3Drss%26utm_campaign%3Dthe-embassy-the-art-of-robotics" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="http://res3.feedsportal.com/images/bookmark.gif" /></a></td></tr></table></div><br /><br /><a href="http://da.feedsportal.com/r/129200298402/u/49/f/538495/c/33151/s/1d689117/a2.htm"><img border="0" src="http://da.feedsportal.com/r/129200298402/u/49/f/538495/c/33151/s/1d689117/a2.img" /></a><img border="0" src="http://da.feedsportal.com/r/129200298402/u/49/f/538495/c/33151/s/1d689117/a2t.img" /><img height="1" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/3dWorldrss/~4/z_DGLpUWdbI" width="1" />

<p><a href="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/r_iclone5.hero_.jpg" rel="lightbox[35061]"><img alt="iClone's new toon shader" class="alignright size-full wp-image-35062" height="326" src="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/r_iclone5.hero_.jpg" title="iClone's new toon shader" width="580" /></a> <p class="strap">Real-time 3D animation tool, iClone, has everything you need to set up your directorial ?debut. But is it too limited, asks Paul Champion?</p> <p>PRICE?: $200.? Upgrade from $120. ??Other editions: Standard, $80??<br /> PLATFORM?: Windows??<br /> MAIN FEATURES: <ul> <li>Real-time animation?</li> <li>In-screen motion editing and puppeteering?</li> <li>Advanced timeline editing with transition curve?</li> <li>Animate in real-time with motion-capture device??</li> </ul> <p>DEVELOPER: <a href="http://www.reallusion.com">Reallusion</a></p> <p>Converting your finished story idea into a pre-viz or polished animation often presents some daunting challenges, and selecting the right software applications to use can be a key factor in the time (and cost) spent completing it. </p> <p>iClone5 Pro offers a happy medium between high-end applications that have seemingly endless options to tweak, and frustratingly feeble, user-unfriendly low-end software. The latest version of iClone has new animation tools, is still a breeze to use and remains competitively priced.?</p> <div class="wp-caption alignright" id="attachment_35063" style="width: 590px;"><a href="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/r_iclone5.assets.jpg" rel="lightbox[35061]"><img alt="iClone5" class="size-full wp-image-35063" height="463" src="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/r_iclone5.assets.jpg" title="iClone5" width="580" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Now you can create your own version of Pixar’s The Incredibles, in a park and on a merry-go-round!</p></div> <p>If you’re unfamiliar with iClone, it’s primarily a template-based hassle-free solution for real-time animation with plenty of bells and whistles. In terms of workflow, you’re limited to working with the rudimentary content supplied with the application, unless you’re prepared to buy additional assets via Reallusion’s Content Marketplace (which always seems to have some sort of deal on offer). </p> <p>Getting your own assets into iClone5 Pro is quick and easy, but it requires Reallusion’s 3DXchange4, which converts files from applications such as ZBrush, Photoshop, Blender, Poser, Daz Studio, Vue and Maya, and costs $80 for the Standard version. You’ll need 3DXchange4 Pro ($120) to use assets in FBX, 3DS, OBJ and SKP formats. ?</p> <p>Pre-viz users or anyone presenting a concept pitch to clients should find that the content provided is more than adequate for demonstration, where the actual look of assets is less relevant. End users, who will no doubt grow tired of the limited content provided, will be disappointed that they have to shell out for 3DXchange to import more material.?<br /> With the assets in place, it’s time to animate, and there are many new tools to help you with this.??</p> <div class="wp-caption alignright" id="attachment_35064" style="width: 590px;"><a href="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/r_iclone5.market.jpg" rel="lightbox[35061]"><img alt="iClone5" class="size-full wp-image-35064" height="402" src="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/r_iclone5.market.jpg" title="iClone5" width="580" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Whether it’s sexy girls, gym kits or vampires you’re after, the marketplace has plenty of assets for you to buy</p></div> <h4>New features</h4> <p>?<br /> Direct Puppet lets you record your actor’s animation in real time, and if necessary lock body parts to locations. MixMoves enables seamless blending between motions. Body Motion Puppeteering enables the user to control the animation speed and direction. ?</p> <p>Simple floor contact is taken care of with Human IK Motion Editing for Actors, and allows props (which can now be animated in real time) to be held onto realistically. The Timeline has been updated so that animation curves can be varied in playback by adding curve adjustments such as Ease In and Ease Out. For physics animation there are Rigid and Soft Body options for simulation, and other uses such as game prototyping.?</p> <div class="wp-caption alignright" id="attachment_35065" style="width: 590px;"><a href="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/r_iclone5.effects.jpg" rel="lightbox[35061]"><img alt="iClone5" class="size-full wp-image-35065" height="464" src="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/r_iclone5.effects.jpg" title="iClone5" width="580" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Effects can help to enhance your movies, but they are limited to a maximum of five within a project</p></div> <p>The premium new animation tool being touted for use with iClone5 Pro is the Mocap Device plug-in. With this you can act out your animations in real-time – the recorded mocap data is then applied to actors. </p> <p>At $140, this is a lot cheaper than buying your own professional mocap studio, although it requires you to have an Xbox 360 with Kinect. It’s also only compatible with the Pro edition. </p> <p>The plug-in is a significant add-on that falls outside the remit of this review. Judging by forum responses, however, it’s a successful product and great for anyone who wants to physically generate their own movement.</p> <p>?Other notable tools and settings, with which Reallusion is catching up with market competitors rather than introducing groundbreaking innovations, include Ambient Occlusion, which improves the quality of visual output with barely any impact on render times; post-FX tools for colour and blur, which are easy to apply; and cartoon rendering, which can be achieved with just a few clicks and some minor texture corrections. ?</p> <div class="wp-caption alignright" id="attachment_35066" style="width: 590px;"><a href="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/r_iclone5.rigid_.jpg" rel="lightbox[35061]"><img alt="iClone5" class="size-full wp-image-35066" height="371" src="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/r_iclone5.rigid_.jpg" title="iClone5" width="580" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Rigid body simulations can pep up high-speed chases. In iClone5 Pro they are easy to deploy</p></div> <p>There’s still plenty of room for improvement in the renderer. The options are minimal and simplistic – which is part of the general charm of iClone, but it doesn’t always do justice to the end result. Multiple cameras and Picture-In-Picture features offer greater control between shots. Much-requested duplication settings enable you to instance objects with ease, and adjustable pivots, snapping and aligning tools are now possible for objects.?</p> <p>More resource-hungry improvements include higher poly counts for actors, with notable increases to head meshes, which enable more natural deformations. In practice this works far better than before, and since faces are areas that most viewers’ eyes are naturally drawn to, it’s a clearly visible improvement. However, it can still be difficult and time-consuming to tweak. </p> <div class="wp-caption alignright" id="attachment_35062" style="width: 590px;"><a href="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/r_iclone5.hero_.jpg" rel="lightbox[35061]"><img alt="iClone's new toon shader" class="size-full wp-image-35062" height="326" src="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/r_iclone5.hero_.jpg" title="iClone's new toon shader" width="580" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">The new Toon Shader is found in the Atmosphere section of the Stage tab, and can be adjusted for your project needs</p></div> <p>Cartoon character facial controls have been advanced to include exaggeration. Height Map Terrains now allow bigger landscapes, but they are limited to just five. Smart iProps have been updated for game-like interaction.</p> <p>?During testing, these new tools all worked admirably, yet iClone crashed a number of times for no apparent reason. When pushed to reasonable extremes for any shot – such as 20 actors set up with different parameters and animations applied – iClone responded well. But other times it would crash with, for example, a fairly empty scene during terrain set-up. Ordinarily, this would only be a minor annoyance, but since there’s no autosave option in the program, it becomes more ?of a frustration. </p> <p>?Hardware-wise, iClone doesn’t require an overly demanding system. Rather misleadingly, it’s listed as being 32-bit and 64-bit Windows compatible, but it’s not actually a native 64-bit release, so it won’t take advantage of any extra memory installed over 32-bit limitations. It’s rumoured that a 64-bit update will be released, although this was unconfirmed as we went to press.?</p> <p>Overall, iClone5 Pro remains an easy-to-use application, and it can be a real time-saver for pre-viz work and presentations. The learning curve isn’t too steep, and setting up shots is intuitive. For existing iClone users, it should be a no-brainer to upgrade because content from previous versions is compatible, the upgrade price is good, and the new tools (and mocap plug-in, if you choose to buy it) will enhance its usability. New users will need to assess whether they have the funds for additional content and a copy of 3DXchange. </p> <h3>VERDICT</h3> <h4>PROS</h4> <ul> <li>Simple for novices without previous animation experience?</li> <li>Easily modifiable preset models?</li> <li>Ready-made animation categories?</li> <li>Intuitive editing?</li> <li>Options for advanced animators</li> </ul> <h4>??CONS</h4> <ul> <li>Facial profiles are difficult to tweak?</li> <li>Additional content incurs extra costs</li> <li>Rendering options still limited?</li> <li>Not a true 64-bit application??</li> </ul> <p><strong>A speedy solution for pre-viz but hampered by limited content options, basic render settings, and lack of true 64-bit support</strong></p> <h4>About the author</h4> <p>?Paul Champion is the demonstrator for undergraduate and postgraduate 3D and VFX courses at the National Centre for Computer Animation, Bournemouth</p> <h3><a href="http://www.3dworldmag.com/2012/02/06/win-a-copy-of-reallusions-iclone5-pro/">Win a copy of Reallusion’s iClone5 Pro</a></h3> <p>Enter our <a href="http://http://www.3dworldmag.com/2012/02/06/win-a-copy-of-reallusions-iclone5-pro/">iClone5 Pro prize draw</a> for your chance to win one of four packages featuring Reallusion’s real-time animation suite, <strong>worth $1,352 in total</strong></p> <img border="0" height="1" src="http://3dworldmag.com.feedsportal.com/c/33151/f/538495/s/1d5d1225/mf.gif" width="1" /><div class="mf-viral"><table border="0"><tr><td valign="middle"><a href="http://share.feedsportal.com/viral/sendEmail.cfm?lang=en&title=Software+review%3A+iClone5+Pro&link=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.3dworldmag.com%2F2012%2F03%2F12%2Fsoftware-review-iclone5-pro%2F%3Futm_source%3Drss%26utm_medium%3Drss%26utm_campaign%3Dsoftware-review-iclone5-pro" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="http://res3.feedsportal.com/images/emailthis2.gif" /></a></td><td valign="middle"><a href="http://res.feedsportal.com/viral/bookmark.cfm?title=Software+review%3A+iClone5+Pro&link=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.3dworldmag.com%2F2012%2F03%2F12%2Fsoftware-review-iclone5-pro%2F%3Futm_source%3Drss%26utm_medium%3Drss%26utm_campaign%3Dsoftware-review-iclone5-pro" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="http://res3.feedsportal.com/images/bookmark.gif" /></a></td></tr></table></div><br /><br /><a href="http://da.feedsportal.com/r/129168239143/u/49/f/538495/c/33151/s/1d5d1225/a2.htm"><img border="0" src="http://da.feedsportal.com/r/129168239143/u/49/f/538495/c/33151/s/1d5d1225/a2.img" /></a><img border="0" src="http://da.feedsportal.com/r/129168239143/u/49/f/538495/c/33151/s/1d5d1225/a2t.img" /><img height="1" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/3dWorldrss/~4/FfSl8XDXlLw" width="1" />

<p><a href="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/Mass_effect_3_trailer.jpg" rel="lightbox[35052]"><img alt="Mass Effect 3 trailer" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-35053" height="325" src="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/Mass_effect_3_trailer.jpg" title="Mass Effect 3 trailer" width="580" /></a> <p class="strap">Remember the phenomenal CG trailer that Bioware released a few weeks ago? Don’t worry if you missed it: as Mass Effect 3 goes on sale in the UK, we take a look at Bioware’s cinematic for the final installment of the massively popular RPG</p> <p>We’re so lucky that big budget games can’t be released without an accompanying cinematic teaser to go alongside the standard gameplay trailer, as the animations produced are truly stunning. </p> <p>Bioware’s Mass Effect 3 trailer is a fine example - the teaser features children, aliens and devastating lasers. The cinematic action really gets your adrenaline pumping. </p> <p>One YouTube user commented that if the video keeps going like it does, [the character you play] Shepard has only got about 30-35 minutes to take back Earth, tops, before it’s completely annihilated!</p> <h3>Watch Bioware’s Mass Effect 3 trailer online</h3> <p></p> <h3>Want to learn how Bioware created the cinematic?</h3> <p>So do we, that’s why we’ve asked Bioware to contribute a ‘making of’ article for 3D World magazine. So look out for that in the next issue!</p> <h3>Want more like this?</h4> <p><a href="http://www.3dworldmag.com/2012/03/09/platige-images-witcher-2-trailer-and-making-of-video/">Watch Platige Image’s Witcher 2 trailer and making of video</a></p> <img border="0" height="1" src="http://3dworldmag.com.feedsportal.com/c/33151/f/538495/s/1d4c5888/mf.gif" width="1" /><div class="mf-viral"><table border="0"><tr><td valign="middle"><a href="http://share.feedsportal.com/viral/sendEmail.cfm?lang=en&title=Bioware%E2%80%99s+Mass+Effect+3%3A+Take+Earth+Back+trailer&link=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.3dworldmag.com%2F2012%2F03%2F09%2Fbiowares-mass-effect-3-take-earth-back-trailer%2F%3Futm_source%3Drss%26utm_medium%3Drss%26utm_campaign%3Dbiowares-mass-effect-3-take-earth-back-trailer" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="http://res3.feedsportal.com/images/emailthis2.gif" /></a></td><td valign="middle"><a href="http://res.feedsportal.com/viral/bookmark.cfm?title=Bioware%E2%80%99s+Mass+Effect+3%3A+Take+Earth+Back+trailer&link=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.3dworldmag.com%2F2012%2F03%2F09%2Fbiowares-mass-effect-3-take-earth-back-trailer%2F%3Futm_source%3Drss%26utm_medium%3Drss%26utm_campaign%3Dbiowares-mass-effect-3-take-earth-back-trailer" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="http://res3.feedsportal.com/images/bookmark.gif" /></a></td></tr></table></div><br /><br /><a href="http://da.feedsportal.com/r/127698767040/u/49/f/538495/c/33151/s/1d4c5888/a2.htm"><img border="0" src="http://da.feedsportal.com/r/127698767040/u/49/f/538495/c/33151/s/1d4c5888/a2.img" /></a><img border="0" src="http://da.feedsportal.com/r/127698767040/u/49/f/538495/c/33151/s/1d4c5888/a2t.img" /><img height="1" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/3dWorldrss/~4/NvLT8p93M8g" width="1" />

<p><a href="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/Scene-2.jpg" rel="lightbox[35045]"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-35047" height="244" src="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/Scene-2.jpg" title="Scene-2" width="580" /></a></p> <p class="strap">Find out how this new short about a fascinating sensory condition was created using a combination of Maya, After Effects and Photoshop. Watch the film here too</p> <p>Synaesthesia tells the life experience of a synaesthete; a person with a condition where two or more of the five senses that are normally experienced separately are involuntarily and automatically joined together. Synaesthetes can experience sounds, tastes, smells, shapes, or touches in almost any combination. Synaesthesia features a character as a small boy, an adult worker and a retired man, who can see and feel shapes and depicts his different reactions to the phenomenon.</p> <p>The short was a final year project created by four students - Tien Hee, Kasumi Saito, Leo Chida and Nikko Hull - of <a href="http://www.massey.ac.nz">Massey University</a>, New Zealand. The quartet had to think of an idea to suit the brief of the school, which had a self-driven component as well as a pre-defined part. “This was basically to pick a topic and find a need or something that needs changing etc,” says Hull. “We chose Synaesthesia.”</p> <h4>Things shaped up nicely</h4> <p>In order to tackle such a complicated condition, the team spent a lot of time researching Synaesthesia and how it was going to affect their characters and set designs. “We decided during the research stage what we were going to do,” says Chida. “Each character was associated with a shape as were the environments. These were contrasting, for example, the first scene the kid was a circle, round and innocent and the environment was a triangle, sharp, scary and alert.”</p> <p>The team also used many sources of inspiration to achieve the look and style they were after. “For the environments, I looked at lots of animations, <a href="http://www.studio4c.co.jp/english/">Studio 4°C</a>, <a href="http://vimeo.com/user2825043">Team Cerf</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0831888/">Tekkonkintreet</a> etc and mixed them all together to get the end result,” says Saito. “It was hard to simplify the forms to get it right. We ended up mixing all of these with our own ideas to get the style we came up with.”</p> <p><a href="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/Scene-1.jpg" rel="lightbox[35045]"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-35046" height="247" src="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/Scene-1.jpg" title="Scene-1" width="580" /></a></p> <h4>Added Layers</h4> <p>With set and character designs completed, the team began creating the film’s assets in Maya and UV layout tool, <a href="http://www.uvlayout.com/">Headus</a>. “This software is pretty awesome, I was really happy with how Headus sped things up,” says Chida. They also adopted a rendering technique which helped with production times.</p> <p>“The process was quite simple, which also helped in a way,” says Hull. “Each layer was kind of easy, it was just a matter of putting it all together in After Effects. We found the technique demonstrated (kind of) on <a href="http://www.deviantart.com/">Deviant Art</a>, I can’t remember the specific artist, but then we tried to figure it out in Maya and it worked quite well. But we didn’t choose that because of its ease, we chose it because of the style.”</p> <p>The scenes were separated to make the whole process more manageable. “The old man walking down the hall is a good example,” says Hull. “We had the walls, which were all on different render layers. The background and walls were a single layer and frame. Then anything which was moving, so the phone and the character, were on their own layers and were the only sequences. There also had to be a sequence for the shadows so they could cast on the walls. Then we had diffuse, shadows, highlight, AO and particle layers. This all went into After Effects with some lights and colour correction.”</p> <p>After two semesters worth of work, the student team completed the film and are pleased with the final result considering their prior experience in animation. “Up until the end, you have no idea what it’s going to turn out like,” says Chida. “But it was so rewarding finding out that all the effort wasn’t wasted and the film actually looked OK. I mean, some was wasted but we’re learning so it’s all good. Our degree consisted of lots of general design and even fine art so we’ve only really had about a year of animation training (in total). With this in mind, I’m pretty happy with how it turned out.”</p> <p></p> <p>Like this film? <a href="http://www.3dworldmag.com/category/showcase/shorts/">Check out the selection of other awesome animations in our shorts section</a></p> <p><em>Make sure you visit next week for more Friday Animation Fun!</em></p> <img border="0" height="1" src="http://3dworldmag.com.feedsportal.com/c/33151/f/538495/s/1d4bec67/mf.gif" width="1" /><div class="mf-viral"><table border="0"><tr><td valign="middle"><a href="http://share.feedsportal.com/viral/sendEmail.cfm?lang=en&title=Friday+Animation+Fun%3A+Synaesthesia&link=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.3dworldmag.com%2F2012%2F03%2F09%2Ffriday-animation-fun-synaesthesia%2F%3Futm_source%3Drss%26utm_medium%3Drss%26utm_campaign%3Dfriday-animation-fun-synaesthesia" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="http://res3.feedsportal.com/images/emailthis2.gif" /></a></td><td valign="middle"><a href="http://res.feedsportal.com/viral/bookmark.cfm?title=Friday+Animation+Fun%3A+Synaesthesia&link=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.3dworldmag.com%2F2012%2F03%2F09%2Ffriday-animation-fun-synaesthesia%2F%3Futm_source%3Drss%26utm_medium%3Drss%26utm_campaign%3Dfriday-animation-fun-synaesthesia" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="http://res3.feedsportal.com/images/bookmark.gif" /></a></td></tr></table></div><br /><br /><a href="http://da.feedsportal.com/r/127698680485/u/49/f/538495/c/33151/s/1d4bec67/a2.htm"><img border="0" src="http://da.feedsportal.com/r/127698680485/u/49/f/538495/c/33151/s/1d4bec67/a2.img" /></a><img border="0" src="http://da.feedsportal.com/r/127698680485/u/49/f/538495/c/33151/s/1d4bec67/a2t.img" /><img height="1" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/3dWorldrss/~4/_jN_z2Gm7AM" width="1" />

<p><a href="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/witcher2_09032012.jpg" rel="lightbox[35048]"><img alt="Witcher 2" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-35049" height="317" src="http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2012/03/witcher2_09032012.jpg" title="Witcher 2" width="580" /></a> <p class="strap">Watch the jaw-dropping animation in the trailer for The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. Then catch Platige Image’s ‘making of’ video too… </p> <p>In January, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and CD Projekt RED released the epic and impactful CG intro trailer for The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, produced by the award-winning animation studio, Platige Image. </p> <p>We were simply blown away when we watched this four-minute cinematic online at the start of the year. Directed by Tomek Bagi?ski and produced by Platige Image, this trailer is packed with stunning animation and effects. Watch it below.</p> <p>Now Platige Image has produced a behind-the-scenes look at the production of the trailer, from the early renders and mocap sessions to the final clip. You can also watch this three-minute video below.</p> <h4>Behind the scenes of Witcher 2</h4> <p>“The idea of the script came from CD Projekt couple years ago, right after the premiere of ‘The Witcher’. It was so called ‘soft’ version and we used it as basis for the work. In spite of vast changes we made, the project went on hold for almost two years until it was brought back to life in Xbox 360 version.”</p> <p>“As it turned out these two years gave both parties necessary perspective. Once we started working on the script again we were able to create new, better and richer version very fast.”</p> <p>“What was left from the original is the ship and main characters. All the rest has been changed. For example in the first version a hornet’s nest was used in the attack. The ship was turned into chaos - all crew started running around. They looked like a group of crazy or electrocuted people. Well… we got rid of this ‘dance’ but left the chaos and add a lot of steroids. It helped,” says director Tomek Bagi?ski.</p> <p>“It was one of the most demanding projects in Platige Image history. The script set up very high standards. As for such a short movie there were a lot of main, detailed characters, difficult face close-ups, very dynamic action full of special effects: cloth and particles simulation and hard slowmotion shots.”</p> <p>“The ship also became one of the main characters. First our graphic artists created a fantastic scenery and most of all great, very detailed sailing ship. Then the particles simulation team went rough with it. They created a vast interaction system covering the whole construction with milions of ice crystals and they smashed the whole thing,” adds CG Supervisor Maciek Jackiewicz.</p> <p>The team of 40 graphic designers and animators was involved in the project for couple moths.</p> <p>The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings is due on on Xbox 360 on 17 April. The Windows version is shipping now.</p> <h3>Watch the Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings trailer:</h3> <p></p> <h3> Watch the making-of video for the cinematic:</h3> <p></p> <p><a href="http://www.cgsociety.org/index.php/CGSFeatures/CGSFeatureSpecial/the_witcher_2_cinematic">Read a longer interview with CG supervisor Maciej Jackiewicz on CGSociety</a></p> <h4>If you liked this, look out for our ‘making of’ Mass Effect 3 cinematic, due in the next issue of 3D World</h4> <img border="0" height="1" src="http://3dworldmag.com.feedsportal.com/c/33151/f/538495/s/1d4b9af0/mf.gif" width="1" /><div class="mf-viral"><table border="0"><tr><td valign="middle"><a href="http://share.feedsportal.com/viral/sendEmail.cfm?lang=en&title=Platige+Image%E2%80%99s+Witcher+2+trailer+and+making+of+video&link=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.3dworldmag.com%2F2012%2F03%2F09%2Fplatige-images-witcher-2-trailer-and-making-of-video%2F%3Futm_source%3Drss%26utm_medium%3Drss%26utm_campaign%3Dplatige-images-witcher-2-trailer-and-making-of-video" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="http://res3.feedsportal.com/images/emailthis2.gif" /></a></td><td valign="middle"><a href="http://res.feedsportal.com/viral/bookmark.cfm?title=Platige+Image%E2%80%99s+Witcher+2+trailer+and+making+of+video&link=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.3dworldmag.com%2F2012%2F03%2F09%2Fplatige-images-witcher-2-trailer-and-making-of-video%2F%3Futm_source%3Drss%26utm_medium%3Drss%26utm_campaign%3Dplatige-images-witcher-2-trailer-and-making-of-video" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="http://res3.feedsportal.com/images/bookmark.gif" /></a></td></tr></table></div><br /><br /><a href="http://da.feedsportal.com/r/127698762514/u/49/f/538495/c/33151/s/1d4b9af0/a2.htm"><img border="0" src="http://da.feedsportal.com/r/127698762514/u/49/f/538495/c/33151/s/1d4b9af0/a2.img" /></a><img border="0" src="http://da.feedsportal.com/r/127698762514/u/49/f/538495/c/33151/s/1d4b9af0/a2t.img" /><img height="1" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/3dWorldrss/~4/b7YwnVrsgeA" width="1" />

<p class="intro">The <a href="http://tdc.org">Type Directors Club</a> in New York City has been holding an annual competition for the best in typography (that is, the use of type in graphic design) since the 1950s. In 1997, James Montalbano and Paul Shaw founded TDC2, a second competition that dealt specifically with the design of typefaces. Together, they chaired the first two TDC2 competitions, and they have remained closely involved with it ever since.</p> <p><span id="more-13538"></span></p> <p>As Paul wrote in his chairman’s statement for that first competition, “The genesis for the Type Directors Club Type Design Competition (TDC2) came about from my frustration, shared by the other type designers on the Board of Directors of the TDC, over the number and quality of type designs chosen in the annual competition.” Until then, type designs had been judged alongside books, brochures, annual reports, and packaging. Now they would be judged on their own merits, by judges who understood the design of type.</p> <p>One of the crucial factors in judging the design of a typeface is seeing it in use. For the first TDC type competition, Montalbano and Shaw devised a template that they hoped would show all of the typefaces in comparable situations, at a variety of sizes. As James said in his chairman’s statement, although they had “created a poster that most people liked,” they had also “created submission templates that most people hated.” In later years, designers were free to send in their typeface samples in any form they liked, though the organizers encouraged them to include a complete character set and to show off their work at its best. (When I chaired the type-design competition in 2001, we asked for 11″×17″ or A3 proof sheets, one typeface per sheet, and explained: “Each proof should show the typeface in whatever way seems appropriate for that face; proofs may include, but are not limited to, headlines, short or long passages of text, sample pages/double-page spreads of book or magazine make-up, or multiple-column text.”) But not all type designers, even the best ones, are very good graphic designers; this problem of displaying the typeface at its best for the judging has bedeviled the competition from the beginning.</p> <p>This year’s competition—the fifteenth, if I’m counting right—was chaired by Maxim Zhukov, who chose an all-star jury of well-known names: Matthew Carter, Roger Black, Erik Spiekermann, and Paul Shaw. The number of submissions was slightly down from the year before (173 entries from 27 countries); submissions from outside the United States outnumbered the US entries, but not by as much as they had the year before. (In 1997, that first competition had twice as many submissions – but then, it <em>was</em> the first, and its scope was larger, as it covered the entire decade up to then. Subsequent competitions have covered only single years.)</p> <p><img alt="" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/12/TDC12001_Judging_007.jpg" title="TDC12001_Judging_007" /></p> <p>From the outset, the TDC type design competition has encouraged submissions of non-Latin type designs, although it is sometimes a problem making sure that there are judges who are familiar with each script. Many type designers can judge the soundness of character designs in a script that they can’t read, but to evaluate how a text typeface works in practice requires familiarity with the language it’s used for. Even when he wasn’t chairing the competition, Maxim has made heroic efforts over the years to back up the juries with expert advice on unfamiliar writing systems.</p> <p>The judging takes place in New York over a weekend in January. The essentials of a type-design judging are always the same: the judges walk along a series of long  tables where the type specimens are laid out side by side,  peering down at the designs, sometimes bending close to examine details, other times clustering together to discuss a particular question. The first cut is where the unsuccessful designs get weeded out. In some competitions, the judges choose which ones to eliminate; in others, they indicate which ones they think should stay in for the next round, and the rest are eliminated. TDC2 uses the latter method. Either way, the second round is where it gets interesting: narrowing it down to the truly best designs. This is where the judges start arguing, or at least discussing the merits of particular typefaces and what works and doesn’t work about them. As I recall from the year I chaired the competition, these discussion were the most fascinating; they really brought out the judges’ individual experiences and knowledge, as each wrestled with fundamental questions of how to evaluate quality.</p> <p>This year, the TDC2 jury chose only thirteen typefaces as winners – an unusually low percentage of those that were entered. The general feeling among the judges seemed to be that while there were plenty of good type designs submitted, there weren’t very many that stood out for their excellence. As Paul Shaw said afterward, “During the judging we all agreed that the level of type design has risen so much in recent years that we found ourselves looking for typefaces that had something extra. Just being a very good, very usable typeface was no longer enough to be chosen.” Many of the entries seemed to be good but not great: “We had a difficult time finding typefaces that seemed fresh and exciting.” Or, as Roger Black put it, “As we’ve seen in magazine and web site design, if the bottom is to be raised, the best design has to be more than accurate, clean and professional. It has to hit it out of the park.”</p> <p><img alt="" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/12/TDC12001_Judging_014.jpg" title="TDC12001_Judging_014" /></p> <p>This is a constant debate in design competitions: should the winners be limited to those that are spectacular and original, or should they include those that are steady and craftsmanlike but not outstanding? It’s far from obvious which answer is preferable. In every aspect of graphic design, including the design of type, there is work that’s pyrotechnic and in your face, but that lacks real craft in how it’s put together. Then there is work that is solid and reliable, that rises to the best standards of competence, but that doesn’t break out of the box in any way.</p> <p>As Roger Black pointed out, “The problem here is exactly what the AIGA was trying to address [in a recent debate about its own design competitions]: how do you judge design, when all the qualities may not be on the surface? A print advertising competition, a book cover competition, or even a book design competition are easier to judge than, say, a web site, where how it works is as important a part of the design as how it looks. With typefaces, the TDC is relying on the experience of judges to assess these issues. A stylish new stencil font (which was a winner this year), is easier to vote for than a new agate font, which really must be seen in use… And as for web fonts, God spare the judges.”</p> <p>It’s easy to forget that during the judging process, the jury is seeing a whole host of entries all at once, which have to be judged quickly, intuitively, without any time to put them through their paces and see how they work in the real world. (The equivalent in book-design competitions is that the judges don’t have time to sit down and try to read any of the books, which is the ultimate test. It’s always easier, and tempting, to judge by the display typography or the images or the title page.)</p> <p>A counter to this, for the individual submitters, is to produce a specimen showing off their typefaces the way they would most like to see them used. But too many of them don’t do this very well. “Some perfectly good typefaces were probably unfairly rejected,” according to Paul Shaw, “but the fault lay with the submitters more than with the jury. Many submitters do not showcase their typefaces properly.” The designs of the typeface showings need to be “both compelling and appropriate.” Paul said that he had voted for some typefaces that he was already familiar with and thought were excellent, but that the other judges didn’t agree. “Upon reflection, I realized that the showings were a let down. I was able to see beyond that because I had previously seen what the fonts were capable of. This may seem unfair, but it is the same way that fonts are often judged in the marketplace. It is not enough to be a good typeface. It is essential that a typeface show why it is good and what it is good for.”</p> <p><img alt="" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/12/TDC12001_Judging_042.jpg" title="TDC12001_Judging_042" /></p> <p>There is another factor, which complicates the matter of showing all the aspects of a digital font: the increasing popularity of advanced OpenType layout features, whether they be something subtle like small caps and alternate styles of numerals or something exuberant like an explosion of ligatures and alternate letter forms. Complex scripts like Arabic or Devanagari complicate the problem because there’s so much to show; similarly, Chinese and Japanese fonts contain so many characters that it would be almost impossible to showcase them all in any meaningful way. As Maxim, this year’s chairman, put it, “Evaluating and judging OpenType entries to design competitions has become more challenging for the jurors than TrueType or Type 1 fonts, partly for the same reason: their glyph sets often transcend the traditional boundaries of text, display, pi, Latin, and other design and script categories used for the submission of entries.” Not only might a single OpenType font include a plethora of alternates and special features, it might also contain what is essentially more than one typeface. Many current type releases, for instance, include Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic versions in one font. (This is what Adobe means when it calls a font “Pro,” although most of us tend to think of this as indicating the presence of small caps, old-style figures, and related typographic niceties of the Latin alphabet.) All of this needs to be displayed gracefully and compellingly in the type specimen, if the designer hopes to have the jury adequately judge his or her work.</p> <p>It’s also possible, as Maxim points out in his chairman’s statement, for one part of a large OpenType font to work better than another. Does the display version work as well as the text? Does the Greek match the quality of the Cyrillic? In past TDC competitions, sometimes the judges have decided to give an award to just one part of a type family, even though the whole family was submitted as one entry.</p> <p>Paul Shaw sums up the perennial problem of judging a design competition: “I am looking for excellence more than innovation, but innovation always gets one’s attention.” But let’s give Roger Black the last word:</p> <p>“When the TDC judges went over to a Pratt Institute building that weekend to look at the type design submissions, we saw a variety of designs, representing a wide range of styles from informal cursives to fresh takes on classic Romans. Nothing knocked us dead. But there were no howlers, either. We agreed that the bottom has been raised a great deal. There is better type design education (at Reading, RISD, and now Cooper), and better training of junior designers at dozens of foundries (following the example of David Berlow and the Font Bureau). This is encouraging, but we were left wistful and unsatisfied.”</p> <p class="footnote">Video of TDC Salon: The Judges Night 2012. A panel discussion with Roger Black, Matthew Carter, Paul Shaw and Erik Spiekermann. Moderated by Maxim Zhukov.</p> <p></p> <p class="footnote"><a href="http://johndberry.com">John Berry</a> usually describes himself as an editor & typographer — reflecting his care for both the meaning of words and how they are presented. He is president of ATypI (Association Typographique Internationale) and the former editor and publisher of U&lc (Upper & lower case). He writes, speaks, and consults extensively on typography, and he has won numerous awards for his book designs. He has written and edited several books, including Language culture type: international type design in the age of Unicode (ATypI/Graphis, 2002), Contemporary newspaper design: shaping the news in the digital age (Mark Batty Publisher, 2004), and U&lc: influencing design & typography (Batty, 2005). He has been a program manager on the Fonts team at Microsoft, where he established improved typographic standards for Windows and other Microsoft products. He lives in Seattle with the writer Eileen Gunn.</p> <p><br /><br /> <a class="noborder" href="http://www.typography.com/index.php?affiliateID=250"><img src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/10/idlewild-light-fonts.png" /></a> <br /> Sponsored by <a href="http://www.typography.com/index.php?affiliateID=250">H&FJ</a>. <br /><br /><a href="http://ilovetypography.com/2012/12/09/tdc-type-design-competition-2012/">TDC type-design competition 2012</a></p> <div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=yeLuwPI0LuA:ZVN2bvQtX4g:gIN9vFwOqvQ"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?i=yeLuwPI0LuA:ZVN2bvQtX4g:gIN9vFwOqvQ" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=yeLuwPI0LuA:ZVN2bvQtX4g:F7zBnMyn0Lo"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?i=yeLuwPI0LuA:ZVN2bvQtX4g:F7zBnMyn0Lo" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=yeLuwPI0LuA:ZVN2bvQtX4g:qj6IDK7rITs"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?d=qj6IDK7rITs" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=yeLuwPI0LuA:ZVN2bvQtX4g:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?i=yeLuwPI0LuA:ZVN2bvQtX4g:V_sGLiPBpWU" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=yeLuwPI0LuA:ZVN2bvQtX4g:D7DqB2pKExk"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?i=yeLuwPI0LuA:ZVN2bvQtX4g:D7DqB2pKExk" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=yeLuwPI0LuA:ZVN2bvQtX4g:TzevzKxY174"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?d=TzevzKxY174" /></a> </div><img height="1" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ILoveTypography/~4/yeLuwPI0LuA" width="1" />

<p>Today I’ve released two limited edition prints along with some originals. The prints are based on words penned by William Shakespeare and Dylan Thomas.</p> <p><em>‘The Voice of all the Gods’</em> is a quote from Shakespeare’s ‘Loves Labours Lost.’ The first time I read the passage in which this phrase occurs I couldn’t get it out of my head for weeks. The words are extraordinarily rich, and I wanted my visual interpretation to reflect this. The main source of inspiration for the letterforms comes from the 18th century, but I’ve tried to rework or re-imagine them in the spirit of our time. Above all, I wanted my interpretation of Shakespeare’s words to capture their shimmering beauty and harmony.</p> <p><span id="more-13549"></span><br /> <a href="http://seblester.co.uk"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-13558" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/11/VoiceOfAllTheGods_4_LR.jpg" title="VoiceOfAllTheGods_4_LR" /></a></p> <p style="font-family: lemonde-sans, sans-serif; font-size: .9em;">‘The Voice of all the Gods’<br /> Signed edition of 100, 594 X 420 mm.<br /> Metallic Gold ink on black Plike art paper.</p> <p>Dylan Thomas’s <em>‘Do not go gentle into that good night’</em> is one of the most powerful and compelling poems I know. I have always found the words incredibly moving. Dramatic, fiery, beautiful and poignant — I wanted my interpretation to capture that. I developed a modern, sharpened italic style which I felt suited the tone of the piece, with what might be described as sharpened flourishes carefully integrated into the design. The forms are based on my cursive italic calligraphy which you can see demonstrated in the video below. I tried to do something unconventional and progressive with this piece. I wanted all the forms to be extremely graceful but also have a tension about them in keeping with the words. I wanted to evoke flames, lightning, and stars blazing in a night sky.</p> <p><a href="http://seblester.co.uk"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-13565" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/11/DoNot_Detail2_LR.jpg" title="DoNot_Detail2_LR" /></a></p> <p style="font-family: lemonde-sans, sans-serif; font-size: .9em;">‘Do Not Go Gentle’<br /> Signed edition of 200, 594 X 420 mm.<br /> Gold foil blocked on Midnight blue Plike art paper.<br /> © The Trustees for the Copyright of Dylan Thomas</p> <p>I have also released several original pieces of art today. Here are two of them, the rest are on my website.</p> <p><a href="http://seblester.co.uk"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-13570" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/11/Arse_Bollocks_sebLester.jpg" title="Arse_Bollocks_sebLester" /></a></p> <p>I designed bespoke Roman monumental capital letters. I then commissioned a very talented and respected letter carver to carve rude words into the finest Welsh slate using them.</p> <p><a href="http://seblester.co.uk"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-13569" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/11/Bollocks_Slate1_LR.jpg" title="Bollocks_Slate1_LR" /></a></p> <p style="font-family: lemonde-sans, sans-serif; font-size: .9em;">‘Slate 1’<br /> Bespoke Roman monumental capitals carved in Welsh slate.<br /> 50cm X 12.5cm X 7.5cm. Signed by the artist.<br /> One of a series of three.</p> <p><a href="http://seblester.co.uk"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-13566" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/11/Slate_2_LR.jpg" title="Slate_2_LR" /></a></p> <p style="font-family: lemonde-sans, sans-serif; font-size: .9em;">‘Slate 2’<br /> Bespoke Roman monumental capitals carved in Welsh slate.<br /> 25cm X 12.5cm X 7.5cm. Signed by the artist. <br /> One of a series of three.</p> <p>It has become apparent to me that doing calligraphy makes you a better type designer, and doing type design makes you a better calligrapher. That was a beautiful revelation to me and one that I hope I will continue to benefit from.</p> <p></p> <p class="footnote"><a href="http://seblester.co.uk">Seb Lester</a> is a designer and artist whose clients include Apple, Nike, Intel, Absolut Vodka, Levi’s & The New York Times. You can find him on <a href="https://twitter.com/seblester">Twitter</a> and <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Seb-Lester/143768095661303">Facebook</a>.</p> <p><br /><br /> <a class="noborder" href="http://www.typography.com/index.php?affiliateID=250"><img src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/10/idlewild-light-fonts.png" /></a> <br /> Sponsored by <a href="http://www.typography.com/index.php?affiliateID=250">H&FJ</a>. <br /><br /><a href="http://ilovetypography.com/2012/11/01/new-prints-from-seb-leste/">The Voice of all the Gods</a></p> <div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=CNQE-Ih7y5s:vhX0SwLP_eo:gIN9vFwOqvQ"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?i=CNQE-Ih7y5s:vhX0SwLP_eo:gIN9vFwOqvQ" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=CNQE-Ih7y5s:vhX0SwLP_eo:F7zBnMyn0Lo"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?i=CNQE-Ih7y5s:vhX0SwLP_eo:F7zBnMyn0Lo" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=CNQE-Ih7y5s:vhX0SwLP_eo:qj6IDK7rITs"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?d=qj6IDK7rITs" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=CNQE-Ih7y5s:vhX0SwLP_eo:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?i=CNQE-Ih7y5s:vhX0SwLP_eo:V_sGLiPBpWU" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=CNQE-Ih7y5s:vhX0SwLP_eo:D7DqB2pKExk"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?i=CNQE-Ih7y5s:vhX0SwLP_eo:D7DqB2pKExk" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=CNQE-Ih7y5s:vhX0SwLP_eo:TzevzKxY174"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?d=TzevzKxY174" /></a> </div><img height="1" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ILoveTypography/~4/CNQE-Ih7y5s" width="1" />

<p class="byline">The week in type</p> <p>Let’s start with some fantastic news: Issue #2 of <a href="http://codexmag.com/" title="codex journal of typography">Codex magazine</a> is now available for pre-order. What’s more, you can now purchase a subscription. The second issue is rather special — A new Editor in Chief (Paul Shaw), a complete redesign (Linda Florio), more pages, more of the very, very best content. Spread the word.<br /> <span id="more-13222"></span><br /> <a href="http://codexmag.com"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-13533" height="288" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/10/codex-ilt.png" title="codex-ilt" width="500" /></a></p> <h3>Inspiration</h3> <p>More <a href="http://vimeo.com/13124405">Luca Barcellona</a> in action in Firenze:</p> <p></p> <p>Erik Spiekermann talks about Type on Screens at <a href="http://www.creativemornings.com">Creative Mornings</a> Berlin:</p> <p></p> <p>I posted this Ampersand Balloon project by <a href="http://www.conoranddavid.com/project/ampersand-poster/">Conor & David</a> months ago. Have just discovered the making of video:</p> <p></p> <p><a href="http://uppercasemagazine.com/beautifulbitmaps">Beautiful Bitmaps</a>, a project from Uppercase mag. Here are a couple of my favorites:</p> <p><a class="noborder" href="http://uppercasemagazine.com/beautifulbitmaps"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-13458" height="311" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/09/beautiful-bitmaps.jpg" title="beautiful-bitmaps" width="500" /></a></p> <p>Each letter of the alphabet is available as a print from the <a href="http://uppercasemagazine.com/beautifulbitmaps">Uppercase</a> store.</p> <p>Great idea from Tim Brown: <a href="http://nicewebtype.com/notes/2012/10/05/type-set-match/">Type Set Match</a> hosted on Dribbble.</p> <p><a class="noborder" href="http://nicewebtype.com/notes/2012/10/05/type-set-match/"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-13523" height="188" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/10/type-set-match.jpg" title="type-set-match" width="500" /></a></p> <p><a href="http://50watts.com/20-Swedish-Posters-for-1930s-Hollywood">Twenty Swedish Posters</a> for 1930s Hollywood:</p> <p><a class="noborder" href="http://50watts.com/20-Swedish-Posters-for-1930s-Hollywood"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-13522" height="715" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/10/01-Eric-Rohman-poster-for-Sky-Hawk-1929.jpg" title="01-Eric-Rohman--poster-for-Sky-Hawk-1929" width="500" /></a></p> <p>HT: @<a href="http://twitter.com/tealtan">tealtan</a></p> <h3>Books</h3> <p>I’ve ordered mine, and can’t wait to get my hands on it. <a href="https://www.uniteditions.com/shop/herb-lubalin" title="Herb Lubalin">Herb Lubalin</a> from Unit Editions:</p> <p><a href="https://www.uniteditions.com/shop/herb-lubalin"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-13326" height="252" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/09/HL_banner_3_page-header-500x252.jpg" title="Herb Lubalin" width="500" /></a></p> <blockquote><p>This meticulously researched book offers a complete career overview of Herb Lubalin, beginning with his early days as one of the original Mad Men in the New York advertising world of the 50s and 60s, and continuing into the years of his greatest achievements as one of the world’s most influential typographers and graphic designers.</p></blockquote> <h3>Process</h3> <p>An interesting short read on a logo(type) <a href="http://www.typejockeys.com/blog/Cleaning-Up">redesign</a> by Typejockeys:</p> <p><a class="noborder" href="http://www.typejockeys.com/blog/Cleaning-Up"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-13330" height="274" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/09/Saubermacher-logo-old-new-500x274.gif" title="Saubermacher logo old and new" width="500" /></a></p> <p>The <a href="http://klim.co.nz/blog/airnz/">Air New Zealand Logotype</a> Design Process from Kris Sowersby:</p> <p><a class="noborder" href="http://klim.co.nz/blog/airnz/"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-13333" height="300" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/09/AirNZ-Sketches-Composite-500x300.jpg" title="AirNZ Sketches Composite" width="500" /></a></p> <h3>New fonts</h3> <p><a href="http://www.fountaintype.com/typefaces/taca" title="Taca fonts from fountain type">Taca</a> designed by Rúben Dias, and released through Fountain Type — a kind of Jean Claude Van Damme meets Eurostile:</p> <p><a class="noborder" href="http://www.fountaintype.com/typefaces/taca"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-13469" height="832" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/10/Taca_spec.png" title="Taca fonts" width="500" /></a></p> <p>The really lovely <a href="http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/laura-worthington/hummingbird/">Hummingbird</a> from Laura Worthington. Replete with a bucket-load of contextual alternates:</p> <p><a class="noborder" href="http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/laura-worthington/hummingbird/"><img alt="" class="noborder" height="491" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/10/hummingbird.png" title="hummingbird font" width="500" /></a></p> <p><a href="http://www.fountaintype.com/typefaces/gira-sans" title="Gira Sans fonts">Gira Sans</a> by Rui Abreu of Fountain Type:</p> <p><a class="noborder" href="http://www.fountaintype.com/typefaces/gira-sans"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-13337" height="766" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/09/GiraSans.png" title="Gira Sans fonts" width="500" /></a></p> <p>And a lovely promo <a href="http://vimeo.com/48936929" title="Gira sans fonts promotional video">video</a>:</p> <p></p> <p>Another script from the maestro Ale Paul. <a href="http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/sudtipos/hipster-script-pro/" title="hipster script font">Hipster Script</a>:</p> <p><a class="noborder" href="http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/sudtipos/hipster-script-pro/"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-13319" height="500" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/09/ILTdiscount-500x500.jpg" title="Hipster Script Pro font from Ale Paul of Sudtipos" width="500" /></a></p> <p>New from Typotheque, <a href="http://www.typotheque.com/blog/beauty_and_ugliness" title="karloff fonts">Karloff</a>:</p> <p><a class="noborder" href="http://www.typotheque.com/blog/beauty_and_ugliness"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-13452" height="800" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/09/karloff-fonts.png" title="karloff-fonts" width="500" /></a></p> <p>Read more about the design process and inspiration in <a href="http://ilovetypography.com/2012/09/25/beauty-and-ugliness-in-type-font-design/" title="beauty and ugliness in font design">Beauty & Ugliness in Type Design</a>.</p> <p></p> <p>A large family from Adobe, <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/sourcesans.adobe/">Source Sans Pro</a>. And free to download, including the source files (open source):</p> <p><a href="http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/cultivated-mind/luella/">Luela</a> from Cindy Kinash is fun. Combine it with Luela Frames for Etsy-esque feel:</p> <p><a class="noborder" href="http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/cultivated-mind/luella/"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-13462" height="250" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/09/luella-500x250.jpg" title="luella fonts" width="500" /></a></p> <p>From Font Bureau, <a href="http://www.fontbureau.com/ReadingEdge/">The Reading Edge</a>™ Series of fonts for small sizes on screens:</p> <p><a class="noborder" href="http://www.fontbureau.com/ReadingEdge/"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-13322" height="386" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/09/Screen-Shot-2012-09-13-at-6.53.52-PM-500x386.png" title="reading edge series of fonts for small sizes on screens" width="500" /></a></p> <p>The site itself is testament to what can be achieved typographically on screen. Great stuff.</p> <p>A fun way for kids or adults to learn Korean:</p> <p> <p><a href="http://vimeo.com/25892113">Korable Block</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/user5164213">Allied Operations</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p> <h3>Type-related book marks</h3> <p><a href="https://github.com/daneden/Baseline.js">Baseline.js</a>, a jQuery plugin for fixing vertical baselines.<br /> <a href="http://observatory.designobserver.com/michaelbierut/feature/the-typeface-of-truth/35428/" title="The Typeface of Truth">The Typeface of Truth</a>.<br /> <a href="http://www.kerning.it">Kerning</a> — the Italian typography conference.<br /> <a href="http://fontsinuse.com/uses/2181/paris-vs-new-york-a-tally-of-two-cities">Paris vs New York</a> — Fonts in Use.<br /> <a href="http://blog.typekit.com/2012/09/24/introducing-adobe-edge-web-fonts/">Abobe Edge Webfonts</a>.<br /> <a href="http://webfonts.info/using-font-face-resolution-independent-graphics">Using @font-face for resolution independent graphics</a>.<br /> <a href="http://craigmod.com/satellite/publishing_startups/">Publishing startups and great fuzziness</a>.</p> <h3>Finally</h3> <p>Don’t forget to order your copy of <a href="http://codexmag.com">Codex journal of typography</a>! You’ll love it.</p> <p><br /><br /> <a class="noborder" href="http://www.typography.com/index.php?affiliateID=250"><img src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/10/idlewild-light-fonts.png" /></a> <br /> Sponsored by <a href="http://www.typography.com/index.php?affiliateID=250">H&FJ</a>. <br /><br /><a href="http://ilovetypography.com/2012/10/16/hipster-hummingbird-type-font-news-ilt/">Hipster Hummingbirds</a></p> <div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=CnED0fPdQo4:bNl3mFQrRRs:gIN9vFwOqvQ"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?i=CnED0fPdQo4:bNl3mFQrRRs:gIN9vFwOqvQ" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=CnED0fPdQo4:bNl3mFQrRRs:F7zBnMyn0Lo"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?i=CnED0fPdQo4:bNl3mFQrRRs:F7zBnMyn0Lo" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=CnED0fPdQo4:bNl3mFQrRRs:qj6IDK7rITs"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?d=qj6IDK7rITs" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=CnED0fPdQo4:bNl3mFQrRRs:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?i=CnED0fPdQo4:bNl3mFQrRRs:V_sGLiPBpWU" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=CnED0fPdQo4:bNl3mFQrRRs:D7DqB2pKExk"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?i=CnED0fPdQo4:bNl3mFQrRRs:D7DqB2pKExk" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=CnED0fPdQo4:bNl3mFQrRRs:TzevzKxY174"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?d=TzevzKxY174" /></a> </div><img height="1" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ILoveTypography/~4/CnED0fPdQo4" width="1" />

<p class="intro"><a href="http://www.typotheque.com/authors/peter_bilak" title="Peter Bi?ak">Peter Bi?ak</a> on the process of designing his newly released <a href="http://www.typotheque.com/blog/beauty_and_ugliness" title="Karloff fonts">Karloff</a> typeface, demonstrating just how closely related beauty and ugliness are. Karloff explores the idea of irreconcilable differences — how two extremes could be combined into a coherent whole.</p> <p><span id="more-13370"></span></p> <p>In 2010 I was invited to a design conference in Copenhagen to speak on the subject of conceptual type. The organisers were interested in examples of typefaces whose principal design feature was not related to aesthetic considerations or legibility, but rather some underlying non-typographical idea. In my address I argued that there is no such thing as conceptual type, since type design is a discipline defined by its ability to execute an outcome; the process that transforms the pure idea into a functional font is a critical part of the discipline. Having rejected the topic of the conference, I nevertheless went on to speculate on what a true example of a <a href="http://www.typotheque.com/articles/conceptual_type">conceptual typeface</a> might be like.</p> <p><img alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-13374" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/09/Karloff-sketch1080.jpg" title="Karloff-sketch1080" /></p> <p>At the time I was also interested in the idea of irreconcilable differences and how two extremes could be combined into a coherent whole. As an example, I looked for the most beautiful typeface in the history of typography — as well as the ugliest one — and for a way to meld them.</p> <p class="no-indent"><strong>The Beauty</strong><br />While any choice representing beauty is bound to be very personal and subjective, many agree that the high-contrast typefaces created by Giambattista Bodoni and the Didot clan are some of the most beautiful in existence.</p> <p>Bodoni was one of the most widely-admired printers of his time and considered amongst the finest in the history of the craft. Thomas Curson Hansard wrote in 1825 that Bodoni’s types had “that beautiful and perfect appearance, which we find it difficult and highly expensive to equal.”<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/ILoveTypography?format=xml#_ftn1" id="_ftnref1" name="_ftnref1">¹</a> In his <i>Manuale Tipografico</i> of 1818, Bodoni laid down the four principles of type design “from which all beauty would seem to proceed”, namely: regularity, clarity, good taste, and charm.</p> <p><img alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-13426" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/09/Manuale-Tipografico1.jpg" title="Manuale Tipografico, Bodoni" /></p> <p>His close competitors in France were the Didots. Not only did François-Ambroise Didot invent many of the machines used in printing, but his foundry endeavoured to render the types more beautifully than his rivals Baskerville and (later) Bodoni. Some considered Didot’s works the most beautiful types that had ever been used in France (up to that period),<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/ILoveTypography?format=xml#_ftn2" id="_ftnref2" name="_ftnref2">²</a> though others found them delicate but lifeless.<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/ILoveTypography?format=xml#_ftn3" id="_ftnref3" name="_ftnref3">³</a></p> <p><img alt="Didot, Impremirie Nationale, 36pt" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-13407" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/09/IN-didot-36pt.jpg" title="Didot, Impremirie Nationale, 36pt" /></p> <p class="no-indent"><strong>The Ugliness</strong><br />I have to admit that dealing with ugliness was a lot more interesting than revisiting the beauty contests of the classicist printers. The search for ugliness triggers a certain primal, voyeuristic curiosity, and from the designer’s perspective there is simply a lot more space to explore. Capturing beauty has always been considered the primary responsibility of the traditional artist, and even now it is rare to find examples of skilled and deliberate ugliness in type design, (although examples of inexperience and naïveté abound).</p> <p>The eccentric ‘Italian’ from the middle of the Industrial Revolution was a clear choice. This reversed-contrast typeface was designed to deliberately attract readers’ attention by defying their expectations. Strokes that were thick in classical models were thin, and vice versa — a dirty trick to create freakish letterforms that stood out in the increasingly saturated world of commercial messages.</p> <p><img alt="Five-Line Pica Italian" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-13413" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/09/5-line-pica-italian.jpg" title="Five-Line Pica Italian" /></p> <p class="no-indent">No other style in the history of typography has provoked such negative reactions as the Italian. It was first presented in Caslon & Catherwood’s 1821 type specimen, and as early as 1825, in his <i>Typographia</i> Thomas Hansard called the type a “typographic monstrosity”. Nicolete Gray called it “a crude expression of the idea of perversity”<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/ILoveTypography?format=xml#_ftn4" id="_ftnref4" name="_ftnref4">?</a>, while others labeled it as “degenerate”.<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/ILoveTypography?format=xml#_ftn5" id="_ftnref5" name="_ftnref5">?</a></p> <p><img alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-13429" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/09/FourLinePica.jpg" title="FourLinePica" /></p> <p>The goal of my project was to show just how closely related beauty and ugliness are. Donald Knuth, an American computer scientist with a special interest in typography identified over 60 visual parameters that control the appearance of a typeface. I was interested in designing typeface variations that shared most of these parameters, yet included both the ugliest and most beautiful letterforms.</p> <p><a href="http://www.typotheque.com/fonts/karloff_positive">Karloff</a>, the result of this project, connects the high contrast Modern type of Bodoni and Didot with the monstrous Italians. The difference between the attractive and repulsive forms lies in a single design parameter, the contrast between the thick and the thin.</p> <div class="img-caption-overlay"> <a class="noborder" href="http://www.typotheque.com/fonts/karloff_positive"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-13415" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/09/Positive.png" title="Karloff Positive" /></a> <div class="caption-overlay">Karloff Positive</div> </div> <div class="img-caption-overlay"> <a class="noborder" href="http://www.typotheque.com/fonts/karloff_positive"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-13417" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/09/PositiveItalic-new.png" title="Karloff Positive Italic" /></a> <div class="caption-overlay">Karloff Positive Italic</div> </div> <div class="img-caption-overlay"> <a class="noborder" href="http://www.typotheque.com/fonts/karloff_negative"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-13419" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/09/Karloff-Negative-Bold.png" title="Karloff Negative Bold" /></a> <div class="caption-overlay">Karloff Negative Bold</div> </div> <div class="img-caption-overlay"> <a class="noborder" href="http://www.typotheque.com/fonts/karloff_negative"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-13420" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/09/Karloff-Negative-Bold-Italic.png" title="Karloff Negative Bold Italic" /></a> <div class="caption-overlay">Karloff Negative Bold Italic</div> </div> <p>I asked Pieter van Rosmalen for help, and both of us worked on both versions. While at the beginning I looked at the Didot from Imprimerie Nationale as a reference, Pieter departed from this model and made the project more personal. We worked on both models at the same time, trying to be very strict about mathematically reversing the contrast between two weights. The advantage of working on both versions together was that we could adjust both of them to achieve the best forms, rather than creating one as an afterthought of the other.</p> <p><img alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-13422" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/09/AAA.png" title="AAA" /></p> <p><img alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-13423" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/09/BeautyUgliness_orange.png" title="BeautyUgliness_orange" /></p> <p>Towards the end of the project, I worked with Nikola Djurek, our frequent collaborator, who helped with interpolation and fine-tuning of the fonts. Having designed two diametrically opposite versions, we undertook a genetic experiment with the offspring of the beauty and the beast, interpolation of the two extremes, which produced a surprisingly neutral low contrast version. Karloff Neutral required only minimal intervention, because the master weights from which it was interpolated were well defined.</p> <p class="no-indent"><strong>About the name</strong><br />Karloff was the artistic name of the British actor William Henry Pratt. He chose this pseudonym to prevent embarrassment to his dignified family, who considered him the black sheep of the family. Although he played mainly sinister characters, in real life, Karloff was known as a very kind gentleman who gave generously, especially to children’s charities.</p> <p class="no-indent"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-13424" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/09/boris_karloff.jpg" title="boris karloff" /></p> <p class="footnote no-indent"><em>Thanks to Paul Shaw, James Clough, and David Shields.</em></p> <p class="footnote no-indent"><a id="_ftn1" name="_ftn1">1.</a> Hansard, Thomas C. <i>Typographia: an Historical Sketch of the Origin and Progress of the Art of Printing</i>, 1825.<br /> <a id="_ftn2" name="_ftn2">2.</a> <i>Encyclopædia Americana</i>, 1832.<br /> <a id="_ftn3" name="_ftn3">3.</a> Updike, Daniel B. <i>Printing Types: Their History, Forms, and Use</i>, 2001.<br /> <a id="_ftn5" name="_ftn4">4.</a> Gray, Nicolete. <i>Nineteenth Century Ornamented Typefaces</i>, 1938<br /> <a id="_ftn5" name="_ftn5">5.</a> Benson, John H and Carey, Arthur J. <i>The Elements of Lettering</i>, 1940</p> <p><br /><br /> <a class="noborder" href="http://www.typography.com/index.php?affiliateID=250"><img src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/10/idlewild-light-fonts.png" /></a> <br /> Sponsored by <a href="http://www.typography.com/index.php?affiliateID=250">H&FJ</a>. <br /><br /><a href="http://ilovetypography.com/2012/09/25/beauty-and-ugliness-in-type-font-design/">Beauty and Ugliness in Type design</a></p> <div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=Oeh9NVfwBLY:JhyOWNg7qT8:gIN9vFwOqvQ"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?i=Oeh9NVfwBLY:JhyOWNg7qT8:gIN9vFwOqvQ" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=Oeh9NVfwBLY:JhyOWNg7qT8:F7zBnMyn0Lo"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?i=Oeh9NVfwBLY:JhyOWNg7qT8:F7zBnMyn0Lo" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=Oeh9NVfwBLY:JhyOWNg7qT8:qj6IDK7rITs"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?d=qj6IDK7rITs" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=Oeh9NVfwBLY:JhyOWNg7qT8:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?i=Oeh9NVfwBLY:JhyOWNg7qT8:V_sGLiPBpWU" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=Oeh9NVfwBLY:JhyOWNg7qT8:D7DqB2pKExk"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?i=Oeh9NVfwBLY:JhyOWNg7qT8:D7DqB2pKExk" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=Oeh9NVfwBLY:JhyOWNg7qT8:TzevzKxY174"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?d=TzevzKxY174" /></a> </div><img height="1" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ILoveTypography/~4/Oeh9NVfwBLY" width="1" />

<p class="byline">A review by James Puckett</p> <p>When it comes to the Gilded Age, the canon of design history teaches of broadside posters and the Kelmscott press. Wood type and artistic printing have attracted a following and are fighting their way in. Further outside the canon lies a neglected facet of design woven into society, personal lives and business — engraved stationery. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1616890673/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1616890673&linkCode=as2&tag=japanagocom-20"><em>The Complete Engraver</em></a> introduces engraving as a subject worthy of the canon, and is an approachable, interesting, and compelling read.<br /> <span id="more-13345"></span><br /> Designer, teacher, and historian Nancy Sharon Collins is a leader in the preservation and revival of engraved stationery. She collects engraved ephemera, restores vintage presses, and designs stationery that has drawn praise from the likes of <em>Martha Stewart</em> and <em>Vogue</em>. Collins is erudite, formerly of the elite New York design establishment, and now works in New Orleans. She is eminently qualified to tackle the challenge of broadening our view of design history.</p> <p><a class="noborder" href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1616890673/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1616890673&linkCode=as2&tag=japanagocom-20"><img alt="The Complete Engraver cover image" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-13353" height="700" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/09/CompleteEngraver_cover_41.jpg" title="The Complete Engraver cover image" width="500" /></a></p> <h3>Writing</h3> <p>Like letterpress and lettering, engraving is attracting renewed interest from artists and designers who want to express themselves via analog processes. Collins writes for them, and for those who aspire to be them, persuading readers to engage with a tradition that is not dead, but merely in slumber. </p> <p>Collins reminds us that engraving is an integral part of the bigger picture of printing and design history. She makes this case by weaving an elaborate history from threads about paper, department stores, and postal mail. These connections are critical to bringing engraving into the canon of design history rather than treating it as an aside. </p> <p>Of course Collins explores the intersection of type design and engraving. Around the turn of the twentieth century type designers blatantly lifted designs from the work of engravers. Engravers later used popular typefaces in modern business stationery. We see stark evidence of this mutual expropriation in a specimen of engraved lettering styles that includes Franklin Gothic Extended, Helvetica, and Eurostile’s predecessor, <a href="http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/urw/microgramma/">Microgramma</a>.</p> <p>What makes engraving an especially compelling aspect of design history is the personal significance of engraved stationery. Stationery was inextricably linked to Gilded Age high-society, with young people demanding impeccable calling cards that spoke to their status. Personal monograms were common among the upper classes. Mourning required special stationery that changed to express the stages of grief.</p> <p><a class="noborder" href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1616890673/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1616890673&linkCode=as2&tag=japanagocom-20"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-13358" height="405" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/09/SteelDie.jpg" title="Steel Die" width="500" /></a></p> <p>Collins does not limit herself to engraving’s past. <em>The Complete Engraver</em> introduces engraving and printing techniques. Logo designers will find her examination of monograms and ciphers relevant. And Collins makes a case for reviving the calling card as a sort of business card without static contact details. The practice of serious letter writing is explained and advocated, although it may be a lost cause in this age of poor penmanship.</p> <p><a class="noborder" href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1616890673/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1616890673&linkCode=as2&tag=japanagocom-20"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-13359" height="511" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/09/steel_Die.jpg" title="steel Die" width="500" /></a> </p> <h3>Format</h3> <p>Designers Paul Wagner and Elena Schlenker created an appropriate vehicle for this content and subject. Formal script juxtaposed with all-caps sans type has never looked so good in a book. Similar to Marian Bantjes’ digestibly small <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1580932967/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1580932967&linkCode=as2&tag=japanagocom-20">I Wonder</a></em>, Collins’s <em>The Complete Engraver</em> is an octavo that one can sit down and read comfortably. Books this size are welcome in design, a field overrun with bloated, oversized tomes best suited to <a href="http://www.subtraction.com/2012/09/12/are-design-books-meant-to-be-read">winning awards and collecting dust</a>.</p> <p><a class="noborder" href="http://www.fonts.com/browse/promotions/the-complete-engraver"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-13355" height="731" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/09/jmc-engraver.png" title="jmc engraver" width="500" /></a></p> <p>Two companion fonts, both revivals of engraving alphabets, were created by Steve Matteson and Terrance Weinzierl of Monotype. A short study of their process is presented as an appendix. Both fonts can be <a href="http://www.fonts.com/browse/promotions/the-complete-engraver" title="free fonts">downloaded for free</a> from fonts.com.</p> <h3>Conclusion</h3> <p>Covering so much in 216 richly illustrated pages makes <em>The Complete Engraver</em> more of a complete introduction than a comprehensive encyclopedia. But The Complete Engraver is a grand introduction that should ignite further explorations of engraving. Collins herself will no doubt follow with years more writing and speaking. And young designers with a passion for elegance will find plenty of historical inspiration and justification for their work. <em>The Complete Engraver</em> succeeds as a welcome addition to the canon of design history.</p> <p class="footnote"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1616890673/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1616890673&linkCode=as2&tag=japanagocom-20">The Complete Engraver: A Guide to Monograms, Crests, Ciphers, Seals, and the Etiquette and History of Social Stationery</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=japanagocom-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1616890673" style="border: none !important; padding: 0; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" /><br /> ISBN: 978-1-61689-067-4<br /> <a href="http://www.nancysharoncollinsstationer.com/">Nancy Sharon Collins</a><br /> Foreword by Ellen Lupton</p> <p class="footnote">James studied graphic design at the Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington, DC. He developed a love of typography at the Corcoran and wrote a thesis about the development of versatile typefaces as branding devices. After graduating with honors James decided to pursue type design full-time. In 2009 he started <a href="http://www.dunwichtype.com/">Dunwich Type Founders</a> in New York City.</p><</p> <p><br /><br /> <a class="noborder" href="http://www.typography.com/index.php?affiliateID=250"><img src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/10/idlewild-light-fonts.png" /></a> <br /> Sponsored by <a href="http://www.typography.com/index.php?affiliateID=250">H&FJ</a>. <br /><br /><a href="http://ilovetypography.com/2012/09/24/free-fonts-and-book-review-the-complete-engraver/">The Complete Engraver</a></p> <div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=tF-Pm7Rxxbg:ZPXuwZkh6Yc:gIN9vFwOqvQ"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?i=tF-Pm7Rxxbg:ZPXuwZkh6Yc:gIN9vFwOqvQ" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=tF-Pm7Rxxbg:ZPXuwZkh6Yc:F7zBnMyn0Lo"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?i=tF-Pm7Rxxbg:ZPXuwZkh6Yc:F7zBnMyn0Lo" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=tF-Pm7Rxxbg:ZPXuwZkh6Yc:qj6IDK7rITs"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?d=qj6IDK7rITs" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=tF-Pm7Rxxbg:ZPXuwZkh6Yc:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?i=tF-Pm7Rxxbg:ZPXuwZkh6Yc:V_sGLiPBpWU" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=tF-Pm7Rxxbg:ZPXuwZkh6Yc:D7DqB2pKExk"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?i=tF-Pm7Rxxbg:ZPXuwZkh6Yc:D7DqB2pKExk" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=tF-Pm7Rxxbg:ZPXuwZkh6Yc:TzevzKxY174"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?d=TzevzKxY174" /></a> </div><img height="1" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ILoveTypography/~4/tF-Pm7Rxxbg" width="1" />

<p class="intro">The <a href="http://coopertype.org/condensed">Condensed Typeface Design Program</a> at the Cooper Union is a five-week-long studio course that at first glance, simply teaches the basics and traditions of typeface design. In reality, it was an amazing and intense summer spent with passionate people immersed in the world of type. During the 12-hour days (with breaks!) we studied type history, calligraphy, different drawing techniques, and learned the process of designing and digitizing a font. Most of the program time was spent on a final project in which each of us created an industry-standard OpenType font.</p> <div id="theDeck-1"></div> <p><span id="more-13231"></span></p> <p class="no-indent">This year we were split into two groups, each taught by renowned typeface designers. Group 1 was with Just van Rossum and Hannes Famira; group 2 with <a href="http://typofonderie.com/about/foundry-team/">Jean François Porchez</a> and <a href="http://www.stephaneelbaz.com">Stéphane Elbaz</a>. <a href="http://stonetypefoundry.com/aboutsumnerstone.html">Sumner Stone</a> was on hand with his expertise and knowledge of design history, as were other visiting designers and lecturers who rounded off the course. As a student it was incredibly enriching to be around these luminaries, and the diversity of our peers only enhanced the experience. The 29 students represented 16 different countries; most being graphic designers, and all sharing a passion for typography. Some of us came with the intention of becoming typeface designers, while others wanted to better understand type to become better designers. Experience levels were across the board: some had never drawn letters before, while others had published multi-weight typefaces.</p> <div class="img-caption-overlay"><a href="http://ilovetypography.com/"><img alt="" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/08/cooper-type-condensed.jpg" title="cooper-type-condensed" /></a> <div class="caption-overlay">Left: Critique session with Erik Van Blokland.<br />Right: Class with Just Van Rossum.</div> </div> <p class="no-indent"><strong>The Final Project</strong><br />At our final presentations on the last day, we each introduced our completed typeface and talked about the journey we took to get there. Despite everyone beginning the course the same way, we all were pleasantly surprised to see the variety of work. Projects ranged from revivals based on tombstone lettering, to traditional Baskerville-inspired faces, to beautifully ornate display type, to text families with 7 weights geared towards publications. Some had created a bold version to accompany their font, while others created a sans accompaniment. Knowing how much time and effort we put into our work, each and every one of us was proud of the results.</p> <div class="img-caption-overlay"><a href="http://ilovetypography.com"><img alt="" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/08/condensed-type-design-sample1.png" title="condensed-type-design-sample" /></a> <div class="caption-overlay">Just five of the many typefaces. Clockwise from top left: Barapa by Etienne Aubert Bonn; Moriarty by Kevin Paolozzi; Cancellarecta by Lara Captan; Cumulus by Laura Coombs; Robin by Sian Binder.</div> </div> <p class="no-indent"><strong>How We Got There</strong><br />Before we started on our final font design, the instructors put us through the following course of exercises aimed at teaching us the ins and outs of letterforms, their traditions and history, the rules of construction (and how to modify them), and how to critique our works in progress.</p> <p class="no-indent"><strong>Calligraphy</strong><br />During the first days we did not touch a computer, but instead kicked things off with an introduction to calligraphy. We began with the broad-nib pen, focusing on correct construction of the letterforms, a process that helped us understand the proportions of each letter and why they look the way they do. Group 1 also worked on italics and how they differ from roman shapes, while Group 2 worked on Carolingian and Renaissance models before moving on to tracing the letters, then modifying the outlines and creating new forms.</p> <div class="img-caption-overlay"><a href="http://ilovetypography.com/"><img alt="" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/08/calligraphy.jpg" title="calligraphy" /></a> <div class="caption-overlay">Left: Chalk Calligraphy.<br />Right: Chavelli’s Calligraphy.</div> </div> <p class="no-indent"><strong>Understanding Serifs</strong><br /><br /> Using selected letters to base our alphabet on, we worked on refining them by hand (again, based on broad-nib pen strokes) and adding serifs. After focusing on medium contrast forms, we moved on to low contrast then high contrast forms which taught us the relationship between serifs and letter strokes.</p> <p class="no-indent"><strong>Sketching & Exploring</strong><br /><br /> When it came time to consider our final project, some people had ideas for the direction they wanted to go in, but others were open to ideas and were encouraged to sketch and seek inspiration for their final project (or use TypeCooker!). For some that meant looking at found letters and developing a full font based on those forms; and for others it meant applying a strict set of rules and a concept to drawing new letters. There were a variety of approaches and sources of inspiration.</p> <div class="img-caption-overlay"><a href="http://ilovetypography.com"><img alt="" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/08/draw-trace.jpg" title="draw-trace" /></a> <div class="caption-overlay">Left: Ron’s Carolingian Calligraphy.<br />Right: Ron’s tracing.</div> </div> <p>We were taught to approach a typeface design by first experimenting, drawing by hand, searching for the right forms, and only then, when the design is cohesive and consistent, go to the computer. Instructors showed us Gerrit Noordzij’s approach to sketching letters, a method more efficient than drawing outlines first, as the focus is more on form and contrast from the outset.</p> <p class="no-indent"><strong>Digitizing</strong><br /><br /> After a quick FontLab tutorial we were expected to dive straight in, scan our precise sketches and move to drawing bezier curves instead of pencil lines. We had wonderful TA’s to help and answer questions, they themselves having gone through the same learning process as they were students in the <a href="http://coopertype.org/extended/" title="typeface font design education">Extended Type@Cooper program</a>. The fonts were all digitized and perfected using the program of our choice. We learned how to use <a href="http://www.fontlab.com" title="fontlab font editor">Fontlab</a>, but <a href="http://doc.robofont.com" title="robofont font editor">RoboFont</a> and <a href="http://glyphsapp.com" title="Glyphs app font editor software">Glyphs</a> were other options too.</p> <div class="img-caption-overlay"><a href="http://ilovetypography.com/" name="SumChez"><img alt="" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/08/fontlab-stone-porchez.jpg" title="fontlab-stone-porchez" /></a> <div class="caption-overlay">Left: Ron’s proofs & comments.<br />Right: Sumner Stone & Jean François Porchez. (best caption wins a copy of <a href="http://ilovetypography.com/2012/08/05/inside-paragraphs-book-review-cyrus-highsmith/" title="Inside paragraphs by cyrus highsmith">Inside Paragraphs</a> — seriously.)</div> </div> <p class="no-indent"><strong>Critiques & Lectures</strong><br /><br /> Our daily studio sessions were supplemented with guest critiques and lectures. The first night featured a type design panel moderated by <a href="http://elupton.com">Ellen Lupton</a>; <a href="http://coopertype.org/faculty/allanhaley">Allan Haley</a> and <a href="http://www.letterror.com">Erik van Blokland</a> lectured in later weeks, along with Valerie Lester, who spoke in depth about Bodoni (the person, not the typeface) and really brought him to life. There were also intimate group critique sessions with Erik in week four, as he evaluated the progress of our typefaces and gave us tips on spacing. <a href="http://occupant.org">Cyrus Highsmith</a> critiqued our work in the final week as our typefaces were coming together for the final presentation.</p> <div class="img-caption-overlay"><a href="http://ilovetypography.com/"><img alt="" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/08/19_Hannes-plus-wall.jpg" title="19_Hannes-plus-wall" /></a> <div class="caption-overlay">Left: Class with Hannes Famira.<br />Right: Zeynep’s Wall.</div> </div> <p class="no-indent"><strong>Library Visits & Type History Talks</strong><br /><br /> Every Friday gave us a little break from studio time with field trips to rare books libraries. Sumner Stone shared his invaluable knowledge of typographic history from the Gutenberg Bible through to the present in our visits to the New York Public Library, Columbia University’s Butler Library, as well as the Grolier Club. During the week, 45 minutes were dedicated to learning about the evolution of letters all the way back from cuneiform, further bolstering our type education.</p> <p class="no-indent"><strong>Conclusion</strong><br /><br /> All in all the program was fantastic. We won’t lie and say it was easy, as it required a huge amount of focus and dedication. Sleep and socializing took second place as we devoted our attention to perfecting curves and tweaking serifs. Most of us would come home from 12-hour days of class only to spend a few more hours working on our typefaces. We did the same on weekends. It was a fun experience though, and at the final presentation, the fruits of our hard labor were clear and most certainly worth it.</p> <p>The energy and dynamic of the people involved (students as well as instructors) was really inspiring, and we were all incredibly sad to see the course come to a close. While five weeks is not enough time to learn everything about type design, this course makes the most of that time and does a great job of jumpstarting things. Anyone looking to enhance their graphic design knowledge or get into the world of typeface design would definitely benefit from this course. The program is now in its second year and is still evolving, so we guess it will only get even better.</p> <p class="intro no-indent" style="margin-top: 3em;">Special Thanks<br /><br /> We’d like to thank Cara Di Edwardo, the coordinator of the program; our teachers Just van Rossum, Hannes Famira, Jean François Porchez, Stéphane Elbaz and Sumner Stone; and all the great students that we got to meet and work with during the program.<br />Text & images by <a href="http://kishkoosh.com/">Ron Gilad</a> & <a href="https://twitter.com/chavellitsui">Chavelli Tsui</a>.</p> <p><br /><br /> <a class="noborder" href="http://www.typography.com/index.php?affiliateID=250"><img src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/10/idlewild-light-fonts.png" /></a> <br /> Sponsored by <a href="http://www.typography.com/index.php?affiliateID=250">H&FJ</a>. <br /><br /><a href="http://ilovetypography.com/2012/08/24/condensed-typeface-design-program/">Condensed Typeface Design Program</a></p> <div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=B63tLx0T19Y:O_eUNgaXMJg:gIN9vFwOqvQ"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?i=B63tLx0T19Y:O_eUNgaXMJg:gIN9vFwOqvQ" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=B63tLx0T19Y:O_eUNgaXMJg:F7zBnMyn0Lo"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?i=B63tLx0T19Y:O_eUNgaXMJg:F7zBnMyn0Lo" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=B63tLx0T19Y:O_eUNgaXMJg:qj6IDK7rITs"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?d=qj6IDK7rITs" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=B63tLx0T19Y:O_eUNgaXMJg:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?i=B63tLx0T19Y:O_eUNgaXMJg:V_sGLiPBpWU" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=B63tLx0T19Y:O_eUNgaXMJg:D7DqB2pKExk"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?i=B63tLx0T19Y:O_eUNgaXMJg:D7DqB2pKExk" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=B63tLx0T19Y:O_eUNgaXMJg:TzevzKxY174"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?d=TzevzKxY174" /></a> </div><img height="1" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ILoveTypography/~4/B63tLx0T19Y" width="1" />

<p class="byline">Book review — Inside Paragraphs</p> <p>I have long admired <a href="http://www.fontbureau.com/people/CyrusHighsmith/" title="cyrus highsmith biography font bureau">Cyrus Highsmith</a>, both for his type design (Benton Sans, Prensa, Zócalo, & many besides) and his wonderfully unique style of illustration and lettering. In his debut book, <em><a href="http://insideparagraphs.com">Inside Paragraphs: typographic fundamentals</a></em>, he brings both of these talents to bear on a single topic, the paragraph. The book might alternatively have been titled ‘Space: the initial frontier’ for its principal focus is what goes on inside — not a book, not a page, but — a single paragraph of text — and as what goes on inside is mostly space, white space, or negative space, it is the ideal starting point for an introduction to the craft of setting type, to typography.<br /> <span id="more-13189"></span><br /> <a class="noborder" href="http://insideparagraphs.com"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-13195" height="375" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/08/12_13-500x375.jpg" title="Inside paragraphs cyrus highsmith" width="500" /></a></p> <p>Usually I dislike books that are wider than they are tall. I find them uncomfortable to hold for extended periods of reading. However, <em>Inside Paragraphs</em> works despite its backwards proportions: it is light and perfect bound, happily folding back on itself for single-handed reading.</p> <p>The typography is simple and precise: Ibis Text plus Scout (both by Highsmith), generous margins, white space aplenty, beautiful and practical illustrations. The writing is informal, incisive, and fluid; the tone never condescending. <em>Inside Paragraphs</em> is a TARDIS of a book, its 100 pages peppered with gems like,</p> <blockquote><p>‘Setting type can be thought of as a collaboration between the typographer and the typeface.’</p></blockquote> <p>phrases like ‘hierarchy of white space’, plus practical advice about everything from optimal and optimum parameters for H&J, and why all-caps settings require more space.</p> <p><a class="noborder" href="http://insideparagraphs.com"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-13196" height="375" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/08/18_19-500x375.jpg" title="inside paragraphs by cyrus highsmith" width="500" /></a></p> <p>Too often introductory texts fail the reader by trying to cover too many topics superficially — like a whistle-stop tour of some great city, where you’ll be sure to see all the sites, but learn little of any substance about them. Highsmith might easily have expanded each section by tens of pages, but the book is all the better for its brevity and his abstemiousness.</p> <p>To write more about this book would demand spoiler alerts, so I will wrap it up here in, appropriately enough, a single paragraph:</p> <p><em>Inside Paragraphs</em> should be required reading for everyone who studies typography and graphic design. It will also be of interest to anyone else wondering why typography matters. It costs about three Venti Iced Peppermint White Chocolate Mochas ($15). Buy it.</p> <p><br /><br /> <a class="noborder" href="http://www.typography.com/index.php?affiliateID=250"><img src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/10/idlewild-light-fonts.png" /></a> <br /> Sponsored by <a href="http://www.typography.com/index.php?affiliateID=250">H&FJ</a>. <br /><br /><a href="http://ilovetypography.com/2012/08/05/inside-paragraphs-book-review-cyrus-highsmith/">Space: The Initial Frontier</a></p> <div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=i1OqLSMC1X4:_NjhYGt7XxM:gIN9vFwOqvQ"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?i=i1OqLSMC1X4:_NjhYGt7XxM:gIN9vFwOqvQ" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=i1OqLSMC1X4:_NjhYGt7XxM:F7zBnMyn0Lo"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?i=i1OqLSMC1X4:_NjhYGt7XxM:F7zBnMyn0Lo" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=i1OqLSMC1X4:_NjhYGt7XxM:qj6IDK7rITs"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?d=qj6IDK7rITs" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=i1OqLSMC1X4:_NjhYGt7XxM:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?i=i1OqLSMC1X4:_NjhYGt7XxM:V_sGLiPBpWU" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=i1OqLSMC1X4:_NjhYGt7XxM:D7DqB2pKExk"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?i=i1OqLSMC1X4:_NjhYGt7XxM:D7DqB2pKExk" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=i1OqLSMC1X4:_NjhYGt7XxM:TzevzKxY174"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?d=TzevzKxY174" /></a> </div><img height="1" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ILoveTypography/~4/i1OqLSMC1X4" width="1" />

<p class="byline">Closing your eyes to see, covering your ears to hear</p> <p>It has been a while since my last roundup, so buckle up. For those interested, I recently moved 4322.8 km (2686.06 miles) from my home in Japan to my new home in Vietnam. After nine wonderful years in Japan, it was time to move on. The other day I read an interview with my friend and too-infrequent chess partner, <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2012/7/24/3177332/ia-oliver-reichenstein-writer-interview-good-design-is-invisible">Oliver Reichenstein</a>, who pretty much describes my own feelings on reaching Japan.<br /> <span id="more-12952"></span></p> <blockquote><p>Arriving in Japan without any knowledge of the language, I lived in a world without words, where, almost like a baby, I had to learn everything from scratch. I think the experience of being illiterate and then slowly growing back into society has made me a better designer. When you can’t read or write and you need to interpret everything you encounter by deciphering visual clues, you begin to understand how things and people function behind the words…it was a magnificent training in basic interface phenomenology.</p></blockquote> <p>I felt the very same way coming to Japan, and feel the same kind of naive wonder as an ‘illiterate’ newcomer to Vietnam. That’s quite enough about me; let’s move on to more important matters:</p> <p>Rather than wear your heart on your sleeve, why not wear some of <a href="http://tattly.com/">these</a> — wherever:</p> <p><a class="noborder" href="http://tattly.com/collections/all/typographic"><img alt="" class="noborder" height="257" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/07/tattly-typographic-lettering.png" title="tattly-typographic-lettering" width="500" /></a></p> <p>See all of the <a href="http://tattly.com/collections/all/typographic">‘typographic’ Tattly.</a></p> <p>An enormous and beautiful collection of <a href="http://www.markerstage.at/fensterzeichen/index.html">Viennese Façades</a>:</p> <p><a class="noborder" href="http://www.markerstage.at/fensterzeichen/index.html"><img alt="" class="padb" height="345" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/07/vienese-storefronts.jpg" title="vienese-storefronts" width="481" /></a></p> <p>Via @<a href="http://twitter.com/swissmiss">swissmiss</a></p> <h3>New fonts</h3> <p><a href="http://www.typonine.com/fonts/font-library/thema/" title="Thema fonts">Thema</a> from Typonine, the beautiful un-stenciled version of <a href="http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/typonine/ty-stencil/" title="Typonine Stencil fonts">Typonine Stencil</a>. I can see these two teaming up particularly well for editorial design.</p> <p><a class="noborder" href="http://www.typonine.com/fonts/font-library/thema/"><img alt="" class="noborder" height="500" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/07/thema-specimen.png" title="thema fonts specimen" width="500" /></a></p> <p><a href="http://www.typography.com/fonts/font_overview.php?productLineID=100043" title="idlewild fonts">Idlewild</a>, a new all-caps sans from H&FJ:</p> <p><a class="noborder" href="http://www.typography.com/fonts/font_overview.php?productLineID=100043"><img alt="" class="noborder" height="500" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/07/idlewild1.png" title="idlewild fonts from h and fj" width="500" /></a></p> <p>TypeManufactur’s wonderful revival of Georg Salden’s <a href="http://www.typemanufactur.com/eng/index.html" title="daphne fonts">Daphne</a> typeface of the same name:</p> <p><a class="noborder" href="http://www.typemanufactur.com/eng/index.html"><img alt="" class="noborder" height="253" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/07/daphne-fonts.jpg" title="daphne-fonts" width="500" /></a></p> <p><a class="noborder" href="http://www.typemanufactur.com/eng/index.html"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-13155" height="200" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/07/Daphne.gif" title="Daphne" width="500" /></a></p> <p>Replete with numerous alternate glyphs and calligraphic swashes. Related: An interview with Georg Salden over at <a href="http://www.typeradio.org/loudblog/index.php?cat=Salden,Georg">Typeradio</a>.</p> <p>Following up on the huge success of <a href="http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/hvdfonts/pluto/" title="pluto font family">Pluto</a>, <a href="http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/hvdfonts/pluto-sans/" title="pluto sans fonts">Pluto Sans</a>:</p> <p><a class="noborder" href="http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/hvdfonts/pluto-sans/"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-13136" height="209" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/07/pluto-sans1.png" title="pluto-sans fonts" width="500" /></a></p> <p><a href="http://commercialtype.com/typefaces/atlas/grotesk" title="atlas grotesk fonts from commercial type">Atlas Grotesk</a> by Kai Bernau, Susana Carvalho, and Christian Schwartz of Commercial Type:</p> <p><a class="noborder" href="http://commercialtype.com/typefaces/atlas/grotesk"><img alt="" class="noborder" height="554" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/07/atlas-grotesk-fonts1.png" title="atlas-grotesk-fonts" width="500" /></a></p> <p>The delicious <a href="http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/filmotype/zephyr/" title="filmotype zephyr fonts from ale paul">Filmotype Zephyr</a> from Ale Paul:</p> <p><a class="noborder" href="http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/filmotype/zephyr/"><img alt="" class="noborder" height="234" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/07/Screen-Shot-2012-07-28-at-5.56.23-PM-500x234.png" title="Screen Shot 2012-07-28 at 5.56.23 PM" width="500" /></a></p> <h3>Inspired</h3> <p>Really enjoyed Stephen Coles’s <a href="https://vimeo.com/42992621">Chromeography talk</a> for Creative Mornings:</p> <p> <p><a href="http://vimeo.com/42992621">Creative Morning Berlin #10: Stephen Coles</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/berlincm">CreativeMornings/Berlin</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p> <p>And be sure to visit <a href="http://chromeography.com">chromeography.com</a></p> <p><a class="noborder" href="http://chromeography.com"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-13133" height="370" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/07/Screen-Shot-2012-07-28-at-5.27.26-PM-500x370.png" title="chromeography.com" width="500" /></a></p> <p>Celebrating <a href="http://new.pentagram.com/2012/05/the-forty-story/" title="40 years of Pentagram">40 years of Pentagram</a>. Beautifully done:</p> <p> <p><a href="http://vimeo.com/42562659">The Forty Story</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/user3163512">Pentagram</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p> <p>Support <a href="http://www.uppercasemagazine.com/typewriter/">Uppercase</a> Magazine’s crowd-funded homage to the typewriter, <a href="http://www.uppercasemagazine.com/typewriter/">The Typewriter: a Graphic History of the Beloved Machine.</a></p> <p></p> <p><a href="https://vimeo.com/43023483">Spirograph</a>, the animated typeface:</p> <p> <p><a href="http://vimeo.com/43023483">Spirograph Promo</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/animography">Animography</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p> <p>More about the project at <a href="http://www.animography.net/">animography.net</a></p> <p><a href="http://www.erikmarinovich.com">Erik Marinovich</a>’s work is brilliant:</p> <p><a class="noborder" href="http://www.erikmarinovich.com"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-13128" height="370" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/07/Screen-Shot-2012-07-28-at-5.11.55-PM-500x370.png" title="erik marinovich letterer and designer" width="500" /></a></p> <p>Nice use of Kris Sowersby’s <a href="http://klim.co.nz/blog/leaf-on-bold-street/">Karbon Slab Stencil</a> for bar and tea shop, Leaf on Bold St.</p> <p><a class="noborder" href="http://klim.co.nz/blog/leaf-on-bold-street/"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-13124" height="309" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/07/Karbon-Slab-Stencil-Leaf-03.jpg" title="Karbon-Slab-Stencil-Leaf" width="500" /></a></p> <p>Still some of Seb Lester’s <a href="http://www.keepcalmgallery.com/new/slbedblue.htm">So Much To Do</a> prints available:</p> <p><a class="noborder" href="http://www.keepcalmgallery.com/new/slbedblue.htm"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-13148" height="336" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/07/so-much-to-do.jpg" title="so-much-to-do" width="500" /></a></p> <p>Thoroughly enjoying Nina Stössinger’s <a href=" <p><a class="noborder" href=" <h3>Type sites</h3> <p>The brilliant resource that is <a href="http://fontsinuse.com/">Fonts in Use</a> is now open to the public. Now anyone can now add to the archives. What are you waiting for you?</p> <p><a class="noborder" href="http://fontsinuse.com/"><img alt="" height="295" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/07/Screen-Shot-2012-07-26-at-3.33.09-PM-500x295.png" title="new fonts in use" width="500" /></a></p> <p>Lovely redesigned portfolio site of <a href="http://www.jblt.co/v2/">Jean-Baptiste Levée</a>:</p> <p><a class="noborder" href="http://www.jblt.co/v2/"><img alt="" class="noborder" height="326" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/07/Screen-Shot-2012-07-25-at-3.51.41-PM-500x326.png" title="JBL" width="500" /></a></p> <p><a href="http://www.gridsetapp.com">Gridset</a> app is looking very good. Be sure to sign up for the beta.</p> <p><a class="noborder" href="http://www.gridsetapp.com"><img alt="" height="370" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/07/Screen-Shot-2012-07-28-at-4.16.37-PM-500x370.png" title="gridset app" width="500" /></a></p> <p>Some good work from the <a href="http://typemedia2012.com">Type & Media</a> Masters students, class of 2012:</p> <p><a class="noborder" href="http://typemedia2012.com"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-13126" height="370" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/07/Screen-Shot-2012-07-28-at-5.09.11-PM-500x370.png" title="type and media 2012" width="500" /></a></p> <p>Experiment with and combine over 23,000 web fonts with the <a href="http://beta.typecastapp.com">Typecast</a> app.</p> <p><a class="noborder" href="http://beta.typecastapp.com"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-13168" height="381" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/07/Screen-Shot-2012-07-29-at-12.42.30-PM-500x381.png" title="typecast app" width="500" /></a></p> <p>Frank Blokland’s <a href="http://www.lettermodel.org">blog</a> accompanying his PhD research at Leiden University. <em>Harmonics, Patterns, and Dynamics in Formal Typographic Representations of the Latin Script</em>:</p> <p><a class="noborder" href="http://www.lettermodel.org"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-13180" height="381" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/07/Screen-Shot-2012-07-29-at-2.04.59-PM-500x381.png" title="Screen Shot 2012-07-29 at 2.04.59 PM" width="500" /></a></p> <h3>Type books</h3> <p>I have high hopes for this book, and have ordered two: <a href="http://insideparagraphs.com/">Inside Paragraphs: Typographic Fundamentals</a>, a new title from Cyrus Highsmith.</p> <p><a class="noborder" href="http://insideparagraphs.com/"><img alt="" height="375" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/07/22_23-500x375.jpg" title="Inside Paragraphs by Cyrus Highsmith" width="500" /></a></p> <p>Perhaps it could become <em>the</em> typography primer. Read <a href="http://imprint.printmag.com/paul-shaw/inside-cyrus-highsmiths-new-book-a-typographic-classic-in-the-making/" title="paul shaw’s review of inside paragraphs book by cyrus highsmith">Paul Shaw’s review</a> over at Print Mag.</p> <blockquote><p>In roughly 100 spreads, Highsmith explains the fundamentals of typography by focusing exclusively on one thing: white space. — Paul Shaw</p></blockquote> <p>A new book from a brand new publisher: Lazy Dog offers Luca Barcellona’s <em><a href="http://lazydog.eu">Take Your Pleasure Seriously</a></em> for pre-order. Books ships in October.</p> <p><a href="http://lazydog.eu"><img alt="" height="365" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/07/luca-barcellona-book.jpg" title="luca-barcellona-book" width="500" /></a></p> <p>And it looks as though <a href="http://codexmag.com">Codex magazine</a> had a small part to play:</p> <blockquote><p>I had been following Luca Barcellona for a couple of years, ever since I’d discovered him, almost by chance, online; I was struck by his hand and its expressive, determined naturalness.<br /> Each new work fascinated me more and more. And then, late in the spring of 2011, I bought the first issue of Codex, a new American [sic] typography magazine that featured an interview with him as well as a piece of his on the cover. When his interviewer asked if he’d ever thought about publishing a book of his work he replied that, to date, he hadn’t received any good offers…<br /> That’s when lightening struck, and I realized that was the road I had to take.</p></blockquote> <p><a class="noborder" href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1592537669/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=japanagocom-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1592537669">Stop, Think, Go, Do: How Typography and Graphic Design Influence Behavior</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=japanagocom-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1592537669" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" /> by Steven Heller and Mirko Ili?:</p> <p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1592537669/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=japanagocom-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1592537669"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-13113" height="503" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/07/typography-and-graphic-design.jpg" title="typography-and-graphic-design" width="500" /></a></p> <h3>Bookmarks</h3> <ul style="margin-bottom: 1.5em;"> <li>New and <a href="http://blog.typekit.com/2012/07/19/new-improved-embed-code/">improved embedding code</a> for Typekit.</li> <li>An <a href="https://www.fontfont.com/news/interview-with-nick-shinn" title="interview with nick shinn">interview</a> with Nick Shinn.</li> <li>A new design podcast from Matt McInerney (Pentagram) and friends: <a href="http://onthegrid.co">On the Grid</a>. Also available on <a href="">iTunes</a>.</li> <li><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/nadine-chahine/cern-comic-sans-a-time-and-a-place-for-ty_b_1650339.html" title="Nadine Chahine typography">A Time and a Place for Typography?</a></li> <li><a href="http://opentype.info/blog/2012/06/27/logo-font-indesign/">Generating a logo font</a> in InDesign.</li> <li><a href="http://www.vanseodesign.com/web-design/responsive-typography/">How To Maintain Readable Type</a> In Responsive Design.</li> <li>Monotype Imaging: <a href="http://monotypeimaging.com/ProductsServices/TypeEnhancementsAndroid.aspx">Type Enhancements for Android.</a></li> <li>Ministry of Type: <a href="http://ministryoftype.co.uk/words/article/typographic_rhythm/">Typographic Rhythm.</a></li> <li>A new <a href="http://blog.fontdeck.com/post/23601339698/body-text-tester">body text tester</a> from Fontdeck.</li> <li>Event: two-day <a href="http://www.typographichub.org/diary/entry/industry-and-genius-in-the-printing-trade/">printing history conference</a>, 4-5 September 2012.</li> <li>Benefits of <a href="http://blog.webink.com/benefits-of-using-import-and-tags-for-web-fonts/">using @import and tags for web fonts.</a></li> <li>An interview with type designer, <a href="http://www.camcreative.net/2012/05/31/qa-with-jeremy-tankard-talking-typefaces-follow-up/">Jeremy Tankard</a>.</li> <li>How to Explain <a href="http://www.commarts.com/Columns.aspx?pub=5566&pageid=1595">Why Typography Matters.</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.roughtype.com/?p=1615">Reading with Oprah.</a></li> <li>H&FJ: <a href="http://www.typography.com/ask/showBlog.php?kwID=142&blogID=25">Books as furniture.</a></li> <li>Kindle: <a href="http://dailyexhaust.com/2012/06/improved-reading-experience-no.html">Improved reading experience?</a> No.</li> <li>Trent Walton: <a href="http://trentwalton.com/2012/06/19/fluid-type/">Fluid Type.</a></li> <li>Typedia: <a href="http://typedia.com/blog/post/type-news-tall-bold-slugger-set-vivid/" title="typedia type news">Tall Bold Slugger Set Vivid.</a></li> </ul> <p>Issue #2 of <a href="http://codexmag.com">Codex magazine</a> is coming next month (August). We have settled on a twice a year publishing schedule. Issue #3 will be available in March 2013.</p> <p><a href="http://codexmag.com"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-13119" height="647" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/07/codex-magazine-issue-2.png" title="codex-magazine-issue-2" width="500" /></a></p> <p>Sign up to the infrequent <a href="http://codexmag.com">newsletter</a> to learn more.</p> <p>ILT will be five years old come August 8. How shall we celebrate? Any favorite or memorable moments?</p> <p>Hope you enjoyed this edition of <em><a href="http://ilovetypography.com/category/the-week-in-type/" title="typography and font news from i love typography">the week in type</a></em>. Have a stupendously great weekend.</p> <p><br /><br /> <a class="noborder" href="http://www.typography.com/index.php?affiliateID=250"><img src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/10/idlewild-light-fonts.png" /></a> <br /> Sponsored by <a href="http://www.typography.com/index.php?affiliateID=250">H&FJ</a>. <br /><br /><a href="http://ilovetypography.com/2012/07/29/the-week-in-type/">The Week in Type</a></p> <div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=c8yoV5JcGx0:GX-socir2Mo:gIN9vFwOqvQ"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?i=c8yoV5JcGx0:GX-socir2Mo:gIN9vFwOqvQ" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=c8yoV5JcGx0:GX-socir2Mo:F7zBnMyn0Lo"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?i=c8yoV5JcGx0:GX-socir2Mo:F7zBnMyn0Lo" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=c8yoV5JcGx0:GX-socir2Mo:qj6IDK7rITs"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?d=qj6IDK7rITs" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=c8yoV5JcGx0:GX-socir2Mo:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?i=c8yoV5JcGx0:GX-socir2Mo:V_sGLiPBpWU" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=c8yoV5JcGx0:GX-socir2Mo:D7DqB2pKExk"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?i=c8yoV5JcGx0:GX-socir2Mo:D7DqB2pKExk" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=c8yoV5JcGx0:GX-socir2Mo:TzevzKxY174"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?d=TzevzKxY174" /></a> </div><img height="1" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ILoveTypography/~4/c8yoV5JcGx0" width="1" />

<p class="intro">Stéphane Elbaz is graphic and type designer working in New York and Paris. In 2009 he was awarded the Certificate of Excellence in Type Design from the Type Directors Club of New York for his type family <a href="http://typofonderie.com/fonts/geneo-family/">Geneo</a>, recently published by Typofonderie. He is the first typeface designer from outside the foundry to be published by Typofonderie.</p> <div id="theDeck-1"></div> <p><span id="more-13013"></span></p> <h3>How do you define yourself?</h3> <p>I am a designer. I intend to solve problems with aesthetic solutions, but at the same time develop a personal expression. It’s this gap that I find interesting.</p> <p>My taste for letters appeared really early in my life, during my teenage years. At that time it wasn’t properly an interest in type, but certainly a taste for letters as plastic shapes. Going to the Arts Décoratifs school in Paris led me to discover classic typography. How could one not to be nostalgic when contemplating those school years? It’s very important for me because of how much I learned during these years. Classes with <a href="http://www.rudi-meyer.com/">Rudi Meyer</a> and Jean François Porchez gave me the context and the latitude to look at the subject with a more experimental way of thinking.</p> <p><img alt="" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/07/StephaneElbazInterview_Stephane_and_JeanFrancois_BW1.jpg" title="Stephane Elbaz and Jean Francois" /></p> <p>It was during the type design courses lead by Jean François Porchez that I was involved in the creation of the <a href="http://porchez.com/ateliertypo/155">Caffeine</a> and <a href="http://porchez.com/ateliertypo/119/CookerBlacksemaine8finale">Cooker Black</a> typefaces. This was clearly an important starting point for me; I don’t know if I would have been brave enough to involve myself in rigorous typographic projects without this first step. Thus letters for me became the dominant element of my graphic design. Type design is a discipline that requires a taste for abstraction plus a systematic mind — two things that fit well with my professional mindset.</p> <p><img alt="" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/07/StephaneElbazInterview_caffeine_cookerblack.jpg" title="StephaneElbazInterview_caffeine_cookerblack" /></p> <h3>You do both web design and type design, which is pretty rare. How does this affect how you work?</h3> <p>Concerning my web design skills, it’s a question I should ask of my colleagues. I don’t know if working with headlines devoid of kerning, or the inability to set a nicely ragged left paragraph is more difficult for me to live with than it is for others. I do, however, have good reasons to be optimistic. Things are evolving more quickly and always improving. The future will bring with it more and more screens and resolutions, and it is important that the typographic quality on these devices improves accordingly.</p> <p>I think what has occurred on the Internet for some years is a perfect illustration of the importance of typography in graphic design. The capacity to use a large font palette, in comparison to the three or four standards that were used for dynamic texts, changes everything, and permits designers to express different identities.</p> <p><img alt="" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/07/4fb2767e47d321.14862674.png" title="Geneo fonts" /></p> <p>Beyond the technical constraints of various screens, I don’t think there is any fundamental difference between the content presented on a screen or on paper — in much the same way as I don’t think that twitter or text messages radically changes our language. After all, it’s the graphic designer that has to choose the typefaces appropriate to the subject, and deal with technical constraints with a broader focus than just the screen or the piece of paper.</p> <h3>Why did you leave France to live and work in New York? From there, what can you say about type design in the United States and in France?</h3> <p>I like the charm of tiny cities. Seriously though, the United States is a big country and therefore has a great diversity of expression. There is certainly a tone in American graphic design that is quite different; the references are not exactly the same as in France. It seems, for instance, that the idea of tradition and the images associated with it are not the same in Paris and New York. The shapes and the imaginative world of tradition are an important foundation upon which type designers work, thus there are going to be differences in the type aesthetic.</p> <p><img alt="" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/07/Screen-Shot-2012-07-14-at-3.37.59-PM.png" title="Geneo Bold New York" /></p> <h3>What is the genesis of your typeface, Geneo?</h3> <p>Geneo was a personal project that I began without thinking of a context or a specific use. I was attracted to slab serifs and began drawing a really thin weight, a little like a typewriter character, but with some kind of Renaissance spirit. I think that I was trying to find an anachronistic mix that actually worked. I was also fond of the brush-made flourish shapes of the Art Nouveau period, and I was particularly inspired by them. All of these elements combined could feel a bit heavy, but my idea was to make a contemporary character where the shapes had to be synthetic while at the same time retaining some flesh, some of the organic.</p> <p><img alt="" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/07/StephaneElbazInterview_ensad2004_01.jpg" title="StephaneElbazInterview_ensad2004_01" /></p> <p>Geneo won the <a href="http://tdc.org/">TDC</a> prize back in 2009, and today it is distributed by Typofonderie, although it’s not exactly the same typeface. Its original identity remains intact, but it had to evolve to conform with the foundry’s standards. This meant a lot of work, but I benefitted from the guidance and exceptional eye of Jean François Porchez. We worked together on both the design of each particular glyph’s details as well as the weight scale of the entire family. Time was also spent designing dingbats and alternative glyphs.</p> <p><img alt="" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/07/Screen-Shot-2012-07-14-at-3.49.36-PM.png" title="Geneo Thin" /></p> <p>I believe that this new typeface family permits a great diversity of uses. The lighter weights used in headlines can convey both a delicatessen or a piece of literature. The intermediate weights can be used to set body text in an academic journal or in the logo of a new social network. We imagine the heavier weights being used on posters or in editorial design. The family as a whole can also be used in works needing a complex typographic hierarchy. Also, I think that in the context of a rational and minimal text layout, Geneo can add a connotative dimension, a level of contrast. For me, an even more exciting prospect is to see my typeface appear in ways that I couldn’t have envisaged. It’s from other graphic designers’ creations that I am waiting to see new and interesting interpretations.</p> <h3>Can you share something about the new typefaces you are working on?</h3> <p style="margin-bottom: 1.5em;">I have a few things in progress, which I think is often the case with type designers; having several typeface ideas in the back of their minds. What determines if a typeface will one day be completed and released or not is the relevancy of its shapes and its identity. Some others will never be finished because they are shaky in their concept or just not original. I currently have a sans-serif project that I would like to finish. Unfortunately, it’s a category that already appears saturated and therefore is particularly challenging, but nonetheless stimulating.</p> <p class="intro no-indent">Interview by <a href="https://twitter.com/jjjlllnnn">Jérémy Landes-Nones.</a><br /><br /> Graphic and type designer Stephane Elbaz holds degrees in Visual Communication (2003) and Interactive Research (2004) from the <a href="http://www.ensad.fr/">École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs.</a> In 2009 he was awarded the Certificate of Excellence in Type Design from the Type Directors Club of New York for his type family Geneo (published by Typofonderie). He works in New York and Paris.</p> <p><br /><br /> <a class="noborder" href="http://www.typography.com/index.php?affiliateID=250"><img src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/10/idlewild-light-fonts.png" /></a> <br /> Sponsored by <a href="http://www.typography.com/index.php?affiliateID=250">H&FJ</a>. <br /><br /><a href="http://ilovetypography.com/2012/07/17/interview-with-font-designer-stephane-elbaz/">An Interview with Stéphane Elbaz</a></p> <div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=QNAIhoEdG8o:l84A2uutjnM:gIN9vFwOqvQ"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?i=QNAIhoEdG8o:l84A2uutjnM:gIN9vFwOqvQ" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=QNAIhoEdG8o:l84A2uutjnM:F7zBnMyn0Lo"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?i=QNAIhoEdG8o:l84A2uutjnM:F7zBnMyn0Lo" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=QNAIhoEdG8o:l84A2uutjnM:qj6IDK7rITs"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?d=qj6IDK7rITs" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=QNAIhoEdG8o:l84A2uutjnM:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?i=QNAIhoEdG8o:l84A2uutjnM:V_sGLiPBpWU" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=QNAIhoEdG8o:l84A2uutjnM:D7DqB2pKExk"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?i=QNAIhoEdG8o:l84A2uutjnM:D7DqB2pKExk" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=QNAIhoEdG8o:l84A2uutjnM:TzevzKxY174"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?d=TzevzKxY174" /></a> </div><img height="1" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ILoveTypography/~4/QNAIhoEdG8o" width="1" />

<div id="theDeck-1"></div> <p>In a way, my research into the ‘Amsterdamse Krulletter’ (Amsterdam’s Curly Letter) began eight years ago as I was walking down the streets of what is possibly the city’s most beautiful district, the Jordaan. As every local knows, this area hosts quite a few of the old, traditional pubs that the locals call ‘bruin cafés’ (brown cafés). In urban environments, type designers are always looking at letters, and especially at hand-painted ones. It didn’t take me very long to notice that many of the pubs in the area had their windows painted in a very interesting and beautifully executed script. Later I discovered they had been painted throughout other parts of Amsterdam too, notably also in the De Pijp area.</p> <p><span id="more-12957"></span></p> <p><img alt="" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/05/image-01.jpg" title="image-01" /></p> <p>Upon closer inspection of the letters painted on the windows and wooden panels, it was obvious that the style was very consistent. Leaving aside the natural variations you would expect from work done by hand, each letter had a defined design that had been strictly followed every time. Interestingly, this mysterious script was unknown to me. I could tell it had influences from seventeenth-century Dutch penmanship, but it also differed in many ways from the handwriting that Jan van den Velde, Felix van Sambix, and Cornelis Boissens — among others — had published in their writing manuals.</p> <p><img alt="" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/05/image-02.jpg" title="image-02" /></p> <p>I started asking Dutch colleagues about this pub lettering tradition, but no one had much information about its authors or origins. It is true that almost without exception every ‘connoisseur’ of good lettering who took a look at them immediately expressed admiration, but the specialized press and Dutch design authors had never seriously taken this tradition into consideration. <a href="http://www.pietschreuders.com/">Piet Schreuders</a>’s groundbreaking essay ‘Lay in - Lay out’, first published in 1977, had dedicated two separate chapters to two of the most representative and original of Amsterdams’s vernacular letters: the ‘Bruggenletter’ and the almost extinct ‘Spiegelglas’ letter. However, there is not a single mention in the book of pub lettering, which at that time would have been omnipresent.</p> <p>In a more recent example, the 2008 photography book ‘<a href="http://www.mimoa.eu/blog/?p=416">Amsterdam in letters</a>’ by Marteen Helle, features numerous examples of fine Amsterdam lettering, but, again, the ‘Krulletter’ is absent.</p> <p>It was only in 1983 that the trade magazine, ‘Grafisch Nederland’ published an issue including an article entitled ‘Kijk! Letters!’ (Look! Letters!), with pictures of several pub facades bearing the style along with an interview with Leo Beukeboom, one of the two people responsible for painting it. Nevertheless, the article focused more on the most general and everyday aspects of Mr. Beukeboom’s work, and it failed to delve any deeper into the origins of his most celebrated letters and what may have influenced them.</p> <p>The fact that such gorgeous and original letters have largely been ignored in a country with such a rich type- and letter-making tradition reminds me of the plot of Edgar Allan Poe’s famous story “The Purloined Letter”. In the story, an important document cannot be found because it is lying in plain sight. Sometimes things can become invisible to us because of their very familiarity.</p> <p>I have mentioned the name of Leo Beukeboom. This talented and prolific sign painter, responsible for many of the best ‘Krulletter’ that still can be found in Amsterdam and neighbouring cities, began painting them in 1967 when he was hired by the Heineken Brewery to be its in-house letter painter and to provide services to the pubs sponsored by the firm. But the history of the style goes back further than that. It was created by the sign painter Jan Willem Visser (Amsterdam, 1911-1987) who from the early 50s to 1968 worked for the Amstel Brewery (the company was sold to Heineken that same year, almost at the same time as Leo Beukeboom began painting the style for Heineken).</p> <p><img alt="" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/06/image-04.jpg" title="image-04" /></a></p> <p>Jan Willem Visser was the son of Johannes Visser, another letter painter, and he was very gifted and highly respected by his colleagues, but his story has never been properly told. He learned the trade from his father, and in 1941 he opened his own workshop in Da Costakade street. At its peak it was one of the biggest in Amsterdam, with 24 employees.</p> <p><img alt="" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/06/image-05.jpg" title="image-05" /></p> <p>Numerous images kept in the Amsterdam Photographic Archives show that by the early 50s Mr. Visser had already painted the ‘Krulletter’ in many bars in a manner almost identical to the one that still can be found today.</p> <p>For a long time I wondered what exactly had influenced him. His capital letters were undoubtedly inspired by one particular plate published in the second volume of “Spieghel der Schrijfkonste” (1605), Jan van den Velde’s most important work, but some of the details of the lowercase letters were too original to have come from that source, and were unlike anything published in the works of the famous calligrapher.<br /> Thanks to a visit to his daughter, Annick Visser, who kindly allowed me to inspect her father’s belongings and documents, I was able to solve this little palaeographic mystery. Jan Willem Visser owned a book published in 1885 entitled ‘Letters en hare grondvormen naar de beste bronnen bewerkt voor schilders, steenhouwers, graveurs en voor het onderwijs aan Ambachts en Kunstnijverheidsteekenscholen’ by the engraver P. van Looy Jr. The book was a catalogue of different alphabets ‘from the best sources’, designed to serve as a guide for craftsmen in the rendering of letters. This volume featured three plates that had undoubtedly served as models for Visser’s pub lettering. In hand-written captions, the book’s author P. van Looy Jr. gives credit for the images, indicating that these models were taken from J. Heuvelman’s work.</p> <p><img alt="" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/05/image-06.jpg" title="image-06" /></p> <p>Johannes Heuvelman was a Dutch writing master from Haarlem, and his only known published book is: ‘Stichtich ABC tot Nut der Jeucht geschreven’ from 1659. A comparison of the script models of J. Heuvelman, P. van Looy Jr., and J. W. Visser is particularly interesting. Although each of them could have made an exact copy of his predecessor’s lettering, none of them chose to do so. Each of them introduced variations and diverse influences that made their versions richer and more remarkable. Realizing this fact had important consequences for the development of my revival. I had worked for a long time on a model that was an attempt to reproduce the Kruletter design as accurately as possible. I was very concerned that Amsterdam might be about to lose one of the most distinctive and beautiful elements of its graphic identity. Many of the window displays with the painted letters had been lost forever due to renovations of bars or changes in ownership, and there are no letter painters left in the area with the skills to paint the style properly.</p> <p><img alt="" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/06/image-07.png" title="image-07" /></p> <p>But at the end of 2011 I suddenly came to the conclusion that I was on the wrong track. These letters had been painted to meet needs different from those that my letters would serve. The letters’ finishing required the use of a fine-pointed brush, and their contrast had been planned to work in really big sizes. I was seeking something with a wider range of possible uses, and the letters as they were written were of limited use in the contemporary graphic industry.</p> <p>Even more, I felt just as Visser had, that instead of simply creating an accurate copy, as a designer my role should be to offer my own interpretation, changing things I considered undesirable or incorrect while enshrining the attributes in new letters of my own. In this way I would be preserving the tradition and making my discreet contribution.</p> <p>Therefore I redrew my version and made ‘<a href="http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/jazzfonts/krul/">Krul</a>’ more ‘typographic’: a disconnected script, a bit more ‘rationalistic’ and less sloped. Some problematic characters were altered or downgraded to the category of ‘alternates’, while new letter shapes which were not present in Visser’s model but were part of the Dutch formal penmanship tradition were included. The style owes both its name and much of the appreciation it has earned from Amsterdam’s people to the abundance and exuberance of its plentiful swashes. Naturally, ‘Krul’ includes many of these typographic decorative elements like different swashy ascenders, ending forms, numerous fleurons and ornaments.</p> <p><img alt="" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/06/image-08.png" title="image-08" /><br /> <img alt="" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/06/image-09.png" title="image-09" /><br /> <img alt="" src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/06/image-10.png" title="image-10" /></p> <p>For the moment it is too early to tell what the fate of this attempt to revive a endangered fine lettering tradition will be, but there is something I know for sure: I have done all I possibly could to recover a forgotten chapter of Amsterdam’s popular culture and to give its protagonist the credit he deserves.</p> <p class="no-indent"><a href="http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/jazzfonts/krul/" title="Krul fonts">Krul</a> fonts on MyFonts.</p> <div style="width: 100%; margin-top: 3em; background-color: #25120d;"> <p class="intro" style="background-color: #25120d;">Author: <a href="http://www.re-type.com/">Ramiro Espinoza</a>.<br />Acknowledgements:<br /> I would like to thank the following people and institutions for helping me in different parts of my research: Tom Croiset van Uchelen, James Mosley, Mathieu Lommen, Annick Visser, Leo Beukeboom, Library of the University of Amsterdam, & Noord-Holland Archives.</p> </div> <p><br /><br /> <a class="noborder" href="http://www.typography.com/index.php?affiliateID=250"><img src="http://cdn.ilovetypography.com/img/2012/10/idlewild-light-fonts.png" /></a> <br /> Sponsored by <a href="http://www.typography.com/index.php?affiliateID=250">H&FJ</a>. <br /><br /><a href="http://ilovetypography.com/2012/06/18/krul-the-untold-historyof-the-amsterdamse-krulletter/">Krul & the untold history <br />of the ‘Amsterdamse Krulletter’</a></p> <div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=nW5oXhmbqGs:TbG7HAjxXUQ:gIN9vFwOqvQ"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?i=nW5oXhmbqGs:TbG7HAjxXUQ:gIN9vFwOqvQ" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=nW5oXhmbqGs:TbG7HAjxXUQ:F7zBnMyn0Lo"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?i=nW5oXhmbqGs:TbG7HAjxXUQ:F7zBnMyn0Lo" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=nW5oXhmbqGs:TbG7HAjxXUQ:qj6IDK7rITs"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?d=qj6IDK7rITs" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=nW5oXhmbqGs:TbG7HAjxXUQ:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?i=nW5oXhmbqGs:TbG7HAjxXUQ:V_sGLiPBpWU" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=nW5oXhmbqGs:TbG7HAjxXUQ:D7DqB2pKExk"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?i=nW5oXhmbqGs:TbG7HAjxXUQ:D7DqB2pKExk" /></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?a=nW5oXhmbqGs:TbG7HAjxXUQ:TzevzKxY174"><img border="0" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ILoveTypography?d=TzevzKxY174" /></a> </div><img height="1" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ILoveTypography/~4/nW5oXhmbqGs" width="1" />