Category: Art

Finalist: Hamish Fulton: Walking Artist

URL: www.hamish-fulton.com

Creator: Andy Foulds — Freelance Flash designer/developer.

Artist’s Statement: Hamish Fulton is an established British artist. The brief for the site was to feature the artist’s work and encourage the viewer to linger and explore. This was accomplished by the use of a semi-randomised layout and layer-blending that produce ever-changing juxtapositions of the work as a background whilst the images are directly accessable via a grid of buttons.

At the artist’s request the site has been kept deliberately minimal with detailed information contained in the earlier version 01 site, accessible via the link at the foot of the page.

Category: Art

Finalist: Cream

URL: go-to-cream.com

Creator: Go Kamiyama

Artist’s Statement: A year ago, I had only created a website for a restaurant. Intrigued by the Flash technology, I started to create the website “cream”, which is now my portfolio site. My goal has been to spread my inner world through my website. I am honored to be nominated as one of the finalist of this festival and able to share my website with many people around the world.

All my life, it has been my dream to experience different art cultures all over the world. My goal still is to continue to design, create, and connect with people.

I thank all my family, Atsuko, Miki and friend, Asami, Chieko, and Hawaiian club.

Category: Cartoon

Finalist: Andrea Auditions

URL: www.mudbubble.com/projects/twinkle_twinkle.html

Creators: Andrea Rose Georgenes (voice over, inspiration); Chris Georgenes (designer, animator)

Artists’ Statement: The production for this animation was very organic in terms of process. I recorded Andrea for no other reason but self-amusement and posterity. Realizing upon playback how precious the recording was, I came up with the concept of an audition. From there it all fell into place quite easily as much of the animation was taken from Andrea’s own gestures and mannerisms.

Flashforward Note: If you have a toddler, check this one out right now. Not only will it sound EXACTLY like your kid, he or she will be drawn to it like a magnet. If Chris produces a whole DVD of this stuff and sells it to parents it will earn him a trillion dollars.

Oh, and Chris will be presenting a session at Flashforward2006 Austin: “Characters, Motion Graphics and Production Techniques,” one of several from acclaimed Flash animators at this event. Don’t miss the chance to learn from the best!

Category: Instructional

Finalist: How to Draw a Head

URL: media.academyart.edu/freeclass/index.html

Creators: Academy of Art University, Online Education Development & Video Team
Martha Breen — designer & Flash Developer
Mark Daugherty — art director
Jason Bowen — author & artist
Peter Barker & Micheal Baker — editor
Eugenio Castro & Bob Toy — photography
Mike Carroll — voice artist
Craig Nelson — example gallery
Facundo Lujan — video editing
Jason Shaeffer — supplementary voice
Amy Morrell — model

Artists’ Statement: The Academy of Art University prides itself on the foundational skills it teaches young artists. New students are taught the basic art skills of drawing, color and composition that they will use through out their professional career.

This tutorial gives you a little taste of the richness of our online classes. In “How to Draw a Head” we are targeting a young audience who are just beginning their artistic journey. It was our desire in “How to Draw a Head” to communicate what it feels like to be a student here at the Academy, and to capture the warmth and texture of being in one of our studio classes.

Our creative team was inspired by graffiti that students have tagged the lecture halls with. We loved the raw, energetic feel. Animating in Flash allowed us to break the learning process into a step-by-step approach, and the interface allows the student to repeat sections over and over again.

Category: Original Sound

Finalist: Islands of Consciousness

URL: incubator.quasimondo.com/flash/islands_of_consciousness.php

Creators:
Code, Visuals, Random Sound Engine: Mario Klingemann / Quasimondo
Composition, Sound Selection, Sound Editing: Oleg Marakov / Corpuscul

Artists’ Statement: When Oleg Marakov pointed out the similarities between his piece of randomly arranged music Islands and my random movie creator Flickeur it was immediately clear that a combination of both projects would definitely result in something very interesting. The result of this fusion - Islands of Consciousness - is not a simple combination of the two concepts but a great advancement.

Sound and Images enter a very close relationship in which the randomly arranged musical phrases are taking direct influence on the visual outcome. So when you look at this piece keep in mind that all the visuals are assembled in realtime using photos downloaded from Flickr.com. All the transitions and effects are entirely random and only happening on you screen. Other people will see a movie and hear a soundtrack that is totally different from yours.

Whilst the basic idea of Flickeur - an endless virtual videoloop that is in perpetual metamorphosis - has remained I have altered the visual engine and the image selection algoritm in many aspects. I have added several new elements to the visual grammar and there are now permanent as well as temporary manipulations applied to the material. The selection of the images is not totally random but follows an associative stream-of-consciousness rule - each new image shares at least one tag with the previous one. As you will see this creates a visual rhythm that follows certain thematic patterns. Sometimes the story seems to get caught for minutes in a monothematic impasse but then suddenly it escapes it and heads into the strangest compositions of seemingly non-related topics.

The infinite soundtrack is built upon Oleg Marakov’s idea to run multiple mp3 players parallel in shuffle mode just like musicians playing different instruments. In this case the instruments are not only pianos or synths but also natural atmospheres and sound effects. Islands of Consciousness consists of four parallel layers: Layer one plays synth background pads, layer two is the piano track, layer three holds ambient atmospheres and layer four contains all kinds of different sounds and effects. Just like in a regular composition the sounds vary in length and in fidelity and a very important part is also the space in between the notes - the pauses of different duration. There are about 40 MB of sound fragments that will be downloaded for the complete piece. Still you should hear random sound phrases pretty quickly even if you have a slow connection as the internal sound library accumulates samples dynamically. Though it must be noted that with a slow connection the probability is higher to hear repetitions more often. The same goes for the visuals - with a faster connection you will notice a higher rate-of-change between the the images.

Flashforward Note: A static screenshot cannot begin to do justice to this work; go see for yourself and be certain you have the sound up or there’s no point!