New work in wild

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Bunch of our work currently on Nike, INC. Fun projects too I might add.

Danklife at Nike World Basketball Festival.

Check out the work we did for the Nike World Basketball Festival. The big white athlete imagery was all done by us. Swapped out the backgrounds, the uniforms, the numbers on the uniforms, the socks and the shoes. As always, fun stuff.  Big thanks to everyone at Nike for the great direction and work on a very complicated project. Over 30 images were completely built from scratch.[gallery link="file" order="DESC" columns="1"]  

Thanks goes out to Dina, Corey, David, Jeremy and George!

7 Reasons Why I Can’t Do “Free”

I worked my butt off to make it through business school. I had to work full-time in conjunction with school pretty much from my teens. I’ve been in business for over 20 years. I’ve paid my own dues. I am a professional. My knowledge and expertise, even if it simply a matter of answering one question – has value. It may have taken me over 2,000 working hours just to have the knowledge to answer a brief question skillfully.

Amen... AAAAAAAAAAAAMEN....

New Nike work live

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Some new Nike work is live on their website.  The smoke stuff was a lot of fun.  The shoes had to be colored up for over 20 NFL teams. I attached a full image without the tongure graphic so you can see how big it was built.  Shoes were shot on a white sweep, fully illustrated the background.  It looks like they cropped tight, darkened them and removed a shoes after we were done.  We will try to get before and afters live in about 6 months after embargo.

You can see them live at this link here.

New work for Nike

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Some recent work we did for Nike recently went live.  Check out the shots at Nike.

Why We Have to Go Back to a 40-Hour Work Week to Keep Our Sanity

Odds are that you’ve been doing this for months, if not years, probably at the expense of your family life, your exercise routine, your diet, your stress levels, and your sanity. You’re burned out, tired, achy, and utterly forgotten by your spouse, kids and dog. But you push on anyway, because everybody knows that working crazy hours is what it takes to prove that you’re “passionate” and “productive” and “a team player” — the kind of person who might just have a chance to survive the next round of layoffs. This is what work looks like now. It’s been this way for so long that most American workers don’t realize that for most of the 20th century, the broad consensus among American business leaders was that working people more than 40 hours a week was stupid, wasteful, dangerous, and expensive — and the most telling sign of dangerously incompetent management to boot. ’s a heresy now (good luck convincing your boss of what I’m about to say), but every hour you work over 40 hours a week is making you less effective and productive over both the short and the long haul. And it may sound weird, but it’s true: the single easiest, fastest thing your company can do to boost its output and profits -- starting right now, today -- is to get everybody off the 55-hour-a-week treadmill, and back onto a 40-hour footing.

Airbrushed make-up ads banned for ‘misleading’

Well, that is interesting. I have to say I am all for it.

Swinson said it was "shocking" that the ASA was not allowed to see the pre-production pictures of Roberts due to contractual agreements with the actor. "It shows just how ridiculous things have become when there is such fear over an unairbrushed photo that even the advertising regulator isn't permitted to see it," she added.

In the case of both the Roberts and Turlington ads the ASA said it was not provided with enough information to evaluate what impact the digital enhancements had on the final image.

"On the basis of the evidence we had received we could not conclude that the ad image accurately illustrated what effect the product could achieve, and that the image had not been exaggerated by digital post-production techniques," the ASA said.

"Pictures of flawless skin and super-slim bodies are all around, but they don't reflect reality," said Swinson. "Excessive airbrushing and digital manipulation techniques have become the norm, but both Christy Turlington and Julia Roberts are naturally beautiful women who don't need retouching to look great. This ban sends a powerful message to advertisers – let's get back to reality."

Beauty retouching is in a fairly unrealistic place, hopefully this will temper some of the crazier Art Directors out there.

Two Illustration tips

So I have a large collection of Photoshop brushes here. So large in fact that it can crash my system. Because of this I have deleted most of them from Photoshop.  Now I use this awesome little plug in that allows you to use the Mac's Quick Look function to preview them. Select one in the finder, hit the space bar for a preview and see if you want to load it. Life saver. BrushView QuickLook PlugIn.

Free of course. Saves me a ton of time.

I also tracked down a pretty amazing set of AI brushes doing research for another project. Colorburned has posted a set of 105 retro brushes that are amazing time savers and very functional. Bringing these into Photoshop make me a happy camper. You can copy and paste between all Adobe apps now in case you did not know.

Yeah, this is the stuff that gets me excited....

 

Another day in the studio

 

Why yes, I am shooting a disembodied leg in front of  green screen.  What, you don't see all the practical uses of this?  Huh... well... I dunno what to tell you then.

And so it goes....

Companies brace for end of cheap made-in-China era - Yahoo! Finance

At the other end of the scale, some in research-intensive sectors such as pharmaceutical, biotech and other life sciences companies are also reconsidering China for a range of reasons, including costs and incentives being offered in other countries.

"Life sciences companies have shifted some production back to the U.S. from China. In some cases, the U.S. was becoming cheaper," said Sean Correll, director of consulting services for Burlington, Mass.-based Emptoris.

That may soon become true for publishers, too. Printing a 9-by-9-inch, 334-page hardcover book in China costs about 44 to 45 cents now, with another 3 cents for shipping, says Goodwin. The same book costs 65 to 68 cents to make in the U.S.

"If costs go up by half, it's about the same price as in the U.S. And you don't have 30 days on the water in shipping," he says.

Even with recent increases, wages for Chinese workers are still a fraction of those for Americans. But studies do show China's overall cost advantage is shrinking.

Labor costs have been climbing about 15 percent a year since a 2008 labor contract law that made workers more aware of their rights. Tax preferences for foreign companies ended in 2007. Land, water, energy and shipping costs are on the rise.

In its most recent survey, issued in February, restructuring firm Alix Partners found that overall China was more expensive than Mexico, India, Vietnam, Russia and Romania.

Tales of Hippie Crack

Inside the Nitrous Mafia, an East Coast Hippie-Crack Ring - Page 1 - Music - New York - Village Voice

Throughout the year, the Nitrous Mafia travels from state to state, selling balloons at concert sites. The scene in Williamsburg is only a small preview of what happens in summer, when the outdoor festival season kicks into gear. During these campground events, which last two to four days, the Mafia, which is divided into two rings, based in Boston and Philadelphia, can burn through hundreds of nitrous tanks. With the ability to fill up to 350 balloons per tank, which they sell for $5 and $10, they can bank more than $300,000 per festival, minus expenses. Year after year, security guards at these events attempt to crack down on the illicit business, but, in most cases, they're outmatched by a phalanx of menacing gas dealers who have little regard for unarmed concert personnel.