The Blog of Will Mayo

The challenge: Fill 90 seconds of film with a short story representing an object or concept.

My answer: A piggy bank. Obviously.

When I first saw this project the title confused me a little, which is where the dictionary comes in handy and to my surprise Simulacrum is an actual word.

Simulacrum - noun

An image or representation of someone or something.

Ok, so there is more to this than just making a 3D model of a piggy bank, or I should hope so otherwise I will get a rubbish mark. My concept is exploring the use of the object over a generation, the wear and tear, and the handing down to children to start a new life.

Piggy will begin life sparkling and new in the loving hands of a toddler, but as the years go by interest in the object fades and neglect sets in. Accidents happen (Yes, I’m going to smash the damn thing, didn’t see that coming!) but eventually the film ends as Piggy is handed down to a new generation, and the cycle begins.

This is what I have been working on with the team for the past month. Enjoy.

www.clarity3d.com

The Marketing Project is very hush hush at the moment, our group is just waiting for next monday to come around when we will reveal all in the presentation. And what a cracker it will be, looking at the other groups projects, we are in a different league.

Thank you to the idiot that told us the deadline was today, turns out it wasn’t but we finished up last night, so with a week to spare we can sit back and relax.

4 ways to get more colour into your designs. Because this blog lacks it.

1. Color Schemer Studio

This one is my favorite. Full of tools for every situation, this app practically hands nice colours to you on a plate. Pick a colour and the suggested harmonies can show you which colours go together, with a choice of styles like vibrant or minimalistic.

When you are finished making a theme open up the quick preview to see how your colours look together on a simple web page, saving oodles of time messing around in CSS code to get the right ones.

They also have a boat load of ready made themes available to download on their website.

Give it a go, download the demo for Windows or Mac.

2. Kuler

Hot off the press from Adobe Labs comes Kuler, a neat online Flash application for creating and sharing colours.

Handy for making colours on the fly, or when you don’t want the hassle of installing software. Kuler is integrated nicely with the Adobe suite with the ability to import downloaded themes straight into Photoshop.

3. Photography

The lazy mans colour scheme. Sometimes nature knows better than we do, so bring out last years holiday snaps and start grabbing with the pipette tool. If you are out and about and you see a colour you like in the sky or a flower, take a photo and use it in your next web design.

Photo from http://terje.sorgjerd.no/

Places I like to go for photo inspiration include Stock Xchange, Flickr or any old wallpaper site

4. Widgets

Can’t be bothered to put together your own colours? Get someone else to do it for you, and deliver it free of charge every day to your desktop.

Galleria or Color Burn will inspire you with fresh colours to use however you like, and they even show the hex values to take all the hard work out of being lazy.

A little inspiration.

Yes, it’s going to look like this :)