TwentyFortyOne Blog

Raise your hand if you’ve never played the old 8 bit Oregon Trail game…. No one…? Exactly! We all played that game in elementary school!! Well now the Swedish roof rack company, Thule, has brought back a piece of nostalgia! The objective is to get from Chicago to a music fest in California without showing up early or breaking down. I was penalized 500 points (!!!) for arriving early, but at least I made it… Only got like 1100 points though.. Make sure to talk to people along the way and see the sights! CLICK TO PLAY

This is a great example of how someone took a played out idea and executed it perfectly. The two things that work for this piece are the lighting on the car (hard to match the scene without HDRI probes) and the motion capture they did for the movement of the “robot”.



I believe this ad was created by the same company, but for a different car. The studio that created the spot is a Canadian-based firm called The Embassy Visual Effects, Inc. There is a great write-up on how they accomplished the task HERE.

You can’t animate 3D objects that well, so you have to put a guy in a wetsuit-looking thing with about 150 infrared reflectors on it whilst being recorded by special infrared cameras… NERD ALERT!

UPDATE: NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! It finally happened…. *Cue “Taps”* My iphone finally bit the dust, but I must say it went in peace. After a regular day of use and abuse I set it down on my desk after sending a text, and then…. *robot power down noise* It just went blank. I think a proper viking burial is in order, it’s the least I can do for it after all that it’s done for me!

This clip is exactly how I felt when it happened…



UPDATE: So I just opened my camera to take a pic of my puppy all passed out on the floor when I noticed that my camera was somehow in ‘disco’ mode… I can’t say for sure, but I think I might posses the ‘closest-to-busted-without-being-broken’ iPhone around! Make me a case study Apple!







I, as many are, am extremely loyal to the Apple brand. And I, as many were, was skeptical of the iPhone when it first came out. This is coming from a first gen iPod owner (which still works!) so you know it came with good reason. Now before the Apple faithful start chyming in, let me explain myself a little before the barrage starts.



Companies had been getting away with making shitty cell phones for ages before the iPhone dropped. I mean, we’re talking TERRIBLE phones! And it’s not that the technology didn’t exist, it’s just that they knew that they’d be able to continually update their hardware and release new “cutting edge” replacements to their predecessors with welcome praise from the marketplace. Queue the iPhone. Entirely touch screen, swipe – pinch – multi touch, 8 gigz of storage, full web browser(!)…. After seeing the iphone first hand at MacWorld in San Francisco, I thought, “There is no way that that little device is going to survive a SINGLE drop!” So after seeing it and reading about it, I still doubted it.

Because I believe in the Apple brand and product I knew I’d eventually get one, but I wanted to make sure that the suckers got swindled first before I jumped on. And boy did they! To think that the first people to buy an iPhone paid $600 for a devise that wouldn’t even let you create your own ringtones….? However, once the price came down and hacks came out I fell faster than a dress on prom night!



I’ve decided to post pictures of my iPhone to show the haters that there are virtually no excuses left as to why iPhones are a bad idea. This phone has been dropped, kicked, scratched, crunched, submerged, and cracked, and still works! Aside from 3G being a punter of a network, the reign of iPwn’s will live long and strong!















P.S. This is what my phone sounds like when it vibrates…. It sounds like a hooptie with a sub in the trunk, and every time the bass hits the license plate rattles. I have no idea what’s causing it, but I think it might be because the casing is super loose?….



Send me pics of your iPhone’s battle wounds and I’ll post an homage blog with all the pics in there!

Videos like this always inspire me to continue learning motion graphics and 3D. However, it’s also videos like this that make me sigh at the thought that I may never be this Judo…