Finally it’s May! We have waited so long for this event. Already packing bags and heading slowly to the airport. I got a feeling that this year will be even more fun. Anyone is coming?

See you in Lisbon!

Related link:
OFFF’08

Frantic Films Software, the software development arm of VFX studio Frantic Films, produced commercial campaign for Snickers Russia. The two-spot effort via ad agency BBDO Moscow and Spy Films, Toronto, combines feature film-quality VFX with live-action to tell a story of biomechanical creatures that use Snickers as their energy supply. The first spot “RUGBY,” is currently airing throughout Russia, while a second spot, “TAG,” breaks in fall 2008.

Related link:
Karakatoa on Rugby

We are pleased to announce that we won one of the prestigious Kreatura Awards for our illustration series: Freedom (w/ Drew Flaherty), New Day & Stay Alive. Ars Thanea was also nominated for new company identity. This year the members of international jury awarded only 17 projects from all media: TV, outdoor, radio & internet. Congratulations for all winners and nominees.

Related links:
Kreatura Awards
Few photos from the event

The KDU recently collaborated with Translation Marketing and the Strategic Group to execute visuals for the 2 Kings event during NBA All Stars in New Orleans. During this project we put together a true KDU Global Dream Team. Si Scott from London, Peter Jaworowski from Poland (Ars Thanea, The Hejz), Justin Maller from Australia, Matt Andrews, Philippe Richardson / Laundry from Los Angeles, along with the KDU NYC core team worked together to create the work. Even the team from Proof 7 NYC jumped in to handle printing. Special thanks to everyone that helped make this go as smooth.

Related links:
The KDU

Bought new house or maybe just thinking about re-decorating? Now you can do that without making a mess in your home or drawing dozens of room plans - mydeco.com is coming to help you. This is an amazing project, it’s a community where the main thought is “interior design”. But that’s not all! You can plan your room, decorate it as you like using thousands of real components (all kinds of furniture, paints, wallpapers etc.) and on the end… you can buy all of them. You can even see your room from the point you like, mydeco gives you a tool which creates a 3D render of your room in just a couple of seconds! Still, it’s not everything. You can meet there real interior designers, read their advices, browse their designs.

It may look like an ad, but really, try it. Did your girlfriend spend hours on The Sims? Show her mydeco.com and she’ll love it! :)

We’re also very proud we can tell that we’re involved in mydeco 3D room planner project. With Radek and our new developer - Jacek Jarosiewicz, we have been developing new functionalities for this tool for couple of months now and I must say this is quite ambitious job. We learnt quite a few new things and I hope we still will.

Robert Lingdstrom (Designchapel), Andreas Pihlstrom (Suprb) and their North Kingdom crew have just launched a new design portal named The Designers Monarchy with some cool contributors on board. Your new daily bookmark.

Related links:
The Designers Monarchy

Showcase of an incredible talented artist Andrzej Dragan. In the past he gained PhD in quantum physics, then he was music composer and in 2003 he starts to shoot pictures. Many of photographers consider his works controversial because of strong retouching of his photography. They say that his works are not a good example of photography. Personally I don’t understand why some people are so envy about his attempts when guy is trying to move small step forward in digital photography. Still one of the best photos (paintings?) I’ve seen lately. Strongly recommended.

Related links:
Andrzej Dragan Photography

VideoTrace is a system for interactively generating realistic 3D models of objects from video-models that might be inserted into a video game, a simulation environment, or another video sequence. The user interacts with VideoTrace by tracing the shape of the object to be modeled over one or more frames of the video. By interpreting the sketch drawn by the user in light of 3D information obtained from computer vision techniques, a small number of simple 2D interactions can be used to generate a realistic 3D model. (via ACoVT). Outstanding idea. Enjoy watching.

Related links:
Australian Centre of Visual Technologies - Videotrace

Johnny Chung Lee from Human-Computer Reaction Interaction Institute came up with an idea which allows head tracking with Nintendo Wii Remote and pair of sensors mounted on your head. It creates really outstanding effects with flat VR Display. Hope soon game developers will use it into some new productions. Check it out.

Since we didn’t have much time lately to finish up our proper website we thought it would be good to have simple showcase with more information and works in compare to splash. Hopefully there will be a chance to get done our main website soon. For now please sit back, relax, grab a cup of coffee and check our temporary showcase.

This is the last entry on our blog in 2007 so…We wish you all Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 2008. With cheers from our team! See you in January 2008.

Related link:
www.arsthanea.com