“Daily Dose of Pride” is an animated commercial created to promote the 2009 Los Angeles Pride Festival. The theme  was based on the idea of a 50s-style vitamin commercial. Watch it here.

For the Outfest 2009 festival campaign, DWD created an animated trailer that promoted the festival and a longer version which opened every film in the festival. Creative Director and animator Dustin looked to recapture that feeling of experiencing a film together as a community in the animation and key art, where the forest creatures come together to put on a show. Watch it here.

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We were also awarded a W3 Silver Award for our motion work on The Duchess website for our video intro created to introduce the characters on the site. Watch it here.

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And last week, Print Magazine awarded us a winning spot in their Regional Design Annual 2009 for our work on the Alison Berger Glassworks catalog for Plug Lighting. This thoughtfully luxurious catalog features award-winning lighting designer Alison Berger’s hand blown glass lighting pieces. See more of it here.

Nerdcore Rising

Nerdcore is a micro-genre of hip hop, created by some hardcore nerds who like to rap about computers and the dorkiness of their lives. At the center of this documentary is MC Frontalot, the “godfather of nerdcore.” (Check his website http://frontalot.com/). The film follows him and his group out of Brooklyn and on the road to various obscure college towns for their first national tour in 2007. Playing to crowds of maybe 10 hardcore fans who drive hours to see them, the four guys see nerdcore as a possible way to reach fame beyond being a web designer(!). The tour culminates  to play to a crowd of 7000 at a video gamer’s convention (Penny Arcade Expo.)

Negin Farsad’s documentary is hilarious even when the music is a bit grating. It gives a peek into the lives of those couples who meet at Star Wars conventions and guys who spend more time playing Word of Warcraft and other role playing games, than they do working. And they wonder why they haven’t gotten laid in over a year… Most of the nerdcore rappers are white males, and their rhymes of “lonely me, I’m a dork,” couldn’t be further from mainstream hip hop, which glorifies rappers and their bling. You have to admire Frontalot’s tenacity. Rent it now!

The Big Easy celebrates Halloween with four days of parties — all for charity — with the 2009 Halloween New Orleans event. This year marks the 26th year of parties and fundraising. The mission is to provide funding for Project Lazarus, a home in New Orleans for men and women with AIDS, so that they may provide health care and support services for their residents. Total donations to Project Lazarus from the 2008 event surpassed $4 million.

This year’s theme of “Twisted Seasons” will give each night of the event a different seasonal backdrop, each with a little twist of Halloween New Orleans!

Thursday — “An Autumn Indulgence” at The Shops at Canal Place:
The kickoff for Halloween New Orleans, this “dressier” event features a taste of New Orleans food from restaurants around the city, silent auction and a performance by America’s Got Talent’s Amy and Freddy.

Friday — ” Wicked Winter Wonderland” at Generations Hall:
At this popular dance club in the Warehouse district, DJ Seth Cooper will warm you up with his hot smile and tunes, but get ready to dance through a blizzard!

Saturday — “A Midsummer Night’s SCREAM” at Blaine Kern’s Mardi Gras World:
This brand new location on the East Bank of the Mississippi promises to be a night to remember. Rarely happening on Halloween night, this costume extravaganza and DJ Roland Belmares-led dance party is bound to be full of Halloween treats (and tricks!) The official Halloween New Orleans Costume Contest will take place at 11 p.m., and the midnight show is sure to thrill! Amazing Host lounge! Note: the theme of Saturday implies Shakespeare, but word on the street is dark and scary — it’s Halloween! Feel free to buck the system, but remember: you must be in costume to attend.

Sunday — “Spring Rejuvenation” on the Natchez Riverboat:
A perfect way to end the weekend for visitors and residents alike. Experience the beauty and romance of the New Orleans skyline on the authentic Steamboat NATCHEZ, New Orleans’ only authentic steamboat! Lunch, entertainment and dancing on the third floor deck.

This is sure to be one of the biggest Halloweens yet! This year, New Orleans also is hosting a huge convention and the VooDoo Music Experience over Halloween weekend, so I recommend booking a New Orleans hotel room early to secure your spot!

Visit the site for more info!

Santa Monica pier is a centenarian today. I have lots of fun childhood memories from the Santa Monica pier, eating fried clams and playing ring toss games. To celebrate the centennial, there will be festivities all day, capped off with a fireworks display.
http://bit.ly/h67Mf
The pier features the world’s first solar-powered ferris wheel, lifting riders over 130 feet above the ocean! They just ended their Twilight Dance series of Thursday night concerts but it’s a good spot to visit any time of the year.

List of new food trucks: LA Times put together a good comprehensive list of the major “nouvelle food trucks” roaming our city

California Taco Truck: there’s even a blog dedicated to taco trucks and food truck news: http://bit.ly/SxFIO

Looking forward to trying some of the more unusual ones: Like Marked5,  based on my old fave from Tokyo days, Mos Burger. Their Schtick was a chicken teriyaki burger on a bun made of rice! Their motto was something like: “Of course, it always tastes so good!”  Marked5 seems to be an homage to Mos, with dishes like  Katsu Pork on a rice bun, and the Shoosh Salmon Sandwich.  They recently launched and haven’t been great about putting locations on their site or on their twitter in a timely manner so I haven’t been able to track them down yet.

Another truck worth chasing is Lets be Frank in Culver City near Helms Bakery and in Glendale, specializes in gourmet, natural hot dogs. Find them on twitter.

Dosa Truck, with an Indian snack-inspired menu,  sounds good too, although we haven’t caught up with them yet either. Twitter: @dosatruck

Let us know if you have found one of these or another creative food truck worth sharing info about.

Scott Boswell (@chefscottb): Chef and owner of Stella! and Stanley in New Orleans
Brooke Boudreaux (@whereneworleans): From her hidden Where Magazine
Lizzy Caston (@misslizzyc): New New Orleanian and marketing and urban planning guru
Lorin Gaudin (@loringaudin): New Orleans Food Diva, and WGNO star

OVERVIEW:
This was a tasty meeting of food journalists, dining and hospitality communications professionals, foodies and social media specialists.

Chef Scott said that people are following what he tweets about and ordering those dishes.

Big Do’s and Don’ts for social media:

Do: Be positive, Be yourself and Think before you Tweet!

Don’t: Sell too hard and RT everything.

Live by “if you wouldn’t want to read it, don’t tweet it!”

Twitter was the main focus of the panel’s discussion although several of them also found success using blogs, youtube, facebook and flickr. Myspace seems to be in the echoing past, with hardly anyone keeping up their profiles there. In using social media, be aware of who your audience is and how to best communicate with them.

Panel members share a passion for food and social media is one way to share that.
Lorin mentioned an amazing blog by an 18 year old foodie: “Passionfruit butter” http://passionfruitbutter.com/ .

We were starved after this discussion and ate at Ralph’s. Leslie had saffron braised lamb cheeks with Israeli couscous and Dustin chowed on a baked oyster quartet! Mmmmmm.

Monday’s keynote speaker, Randy Thom of Skywalker Sound spoke about designing a movie for sound and the importance sound has as a character in a film. In creating successful sound for your film, consider what your characters HEAR and remember that dialog, music and sfx in most cases should be like a baton being passed – not happening all at once. This got me excited about animating to sound again as my CalArts thesis, “Everybody Bowl” was created based on sound recordings I did at bowling alleys.

3D teleconferencing

interactive geotextile mesh - it moved!

I loved the emerging technologies exhibits featuring everything from “multimodal flooring” (that simulated standing on a frozen pond – as it’s CRACKING beneath you!) to 3D teleconferencing to garment folding robots!

One of the best talks came from Will Wright (creator of Sims and Spore) on “Playing with Perception” and the idea of being an “entertainment designer”. As consumers, we search out forms of entertainment that fit our current mood (experiential/voyeuristic, story or play). Such a great observation, I never viewed our target audiences by their current moods! Knowing our targets may be up for silly comedy one night and an AFC fight the next gives us more insight into how to design for them. He also discussed captured vs. synthetic images and imagined vs. actual realities and that much of the interesting new work is coming at the very crossroad of these four dimensions.

I ended my stint at this year’s conference with the Computer Animation Festival. For the first time, they allowed the real-time animation of games to be part of the festival which I thought was a great addition. A beautiful new game called “Flowers” was the highlight. The live demonstrator “flew” a group of flower petals around a grassy field growing larger as he passed over patches of flowers.  A few other favorites included “Partly Cloudy“, “Anima” and “Window Pains“.

Pixar teapot

I left the conference feeling inspired and excited to animate something new!

Oh, and I got one of the coveted Pixar walking teapots!

I want to remind you that Outfest, the oldest continuous film festival in Los Angeles, kicks off this week.  Dustin W Design has been an official sponsor of Outfest for the last eight years, contributing work for the festival website. This year we identified Outfest as our primary cause-oriented organization to support, for our mission of supporting “conscious design.” (Conscious design is a core initiative for Dustin W Design.) For 2009, we stepped up our game and donated an entire brand package to Outfest. This includes Key Art, Website, Billboards, Animation at Hollywood & Highland and the Trailer/Stinger that will screen before every show! I urge you to show your support for Outfest and check out as many of their films as you can. Outfest is also one of my personal favorite causes. I would especially encourage you to see a screening at the Ford Amphitheater — it was the inspiration for this year’s artwork. Check out the site for film schedules, etc. at http://outfest.org/fest2009 . I’ll be in town for the entire fest, July 9th through 19th., so hope to see you all at a screening!

Here are a few fantastic photos of flawless forms from the parade

cheerleaders at LA Pride parade

Pride parade 2009

more photos can be found at http://bit.ly/qdBMJ