Every month we collaborate with wemakeit, in order to show you successful projects and behind-the-scene knowledge from the projects' initiators. It's amazing to see what the combination of creative ideas and the power of people can create.
For Erica Dorn, working on Isle of dogs was a first for she never worked in the movie industry before. Until 2015, when she got asked to work with Wes Anderson, she only did projects in advertising designing for agency clients as a freelancer and her own clients.
Since Wes Anderson always has the aspiration to make his movies as authentic as possible, he needed a designer who is fluent in both English and Japanese. That is how Erica got offered her first job in the movie industry without any experience in the field. A dream coming true for any cineast. After passing a two-week-audition, she found a mentor in Grand Budapest Hotel- Designer Annie Atkins: “Annie gave me a crash course not just in film design work but also in the Wes Anderson method, which would have otherwise taken a lot longer to figure out.”
Overall, Erica and her team created over 1000 pieces that appear in the scenes of Isle of Dogs. She worked very closely with the people who crafted the items. Nothing is by accident, everything was intended the way you see it now on screen – from the colour of the fur to the typography on several packages.
Wes always had his eye on everything that has been done. As the perfectionist he is, he was involved in every step along the way: “Wes was very hands-on, right down to the pixel. Sometimes when you finish something you go ‘Did I do that? or was that Wes?’ It might take one try or it might take 25 before Wes decides it’s done.”
How much love and time went into the details can be noticed, for example, in the dog tags: “The machine-engraved typography on the dog tags couldn’t be too perfect,” Dorn explains. “We intentionally messed up the spacing and pushed the second S on ‘BOSS’ too far over and a little too high up because we wanted to show the hand-made-ness of everything.”
Since the movie was filmed in stop-motion every prop had to be built to scale. It was a tough process with many steps until Erica and her team achieved the perfectly produced tiny results. Just to have a look at how small the items are in real life, see the comparison of the beer can and an actual British coin.
One difficulty Erica faced during the project was the need for the items to not only look different in their design but also as if they were collected over a long period of time. An intense example is the evidence board of the American exchange student Tracy were she connects the dots behind the dog deportation conspiracy: “We actually wrote all of those articles that were pinned to the wall and made real content for the ID cards and receipts and maps,” Dorn says. “It was all hands on decks with seven of us churning out these pieces.”
The movies by the master Japanese authors Akira Kurasowa and Yasujiro Ozu served Erica and her team as inspiration. “We spent a lot of time watching their movies and collecting graphic details. Every time we saw a bookshelf or a wallpaper pattern or an arm badge, we’d screen-shot the image and file it. Later, whenever we needed interior details, textiles, things like that, we’d look at the stuff from Kurosawa and Ozu. About half of our references came from those movies.”
Get more details about Erica’s work at her talk at Forward Festival Hamburg in July. Tickets are available here.
Every month we collaborate with wemakeit, in order to show you successful projects and behind-the-scene knowledge from the projects' initiators. It's amazing to see what the combination of creative ideas and the power of people can create.
When looking at Roger Ballen’s photographs you might think “What the fuck?!, “Who are these people?”, “Where do they live?” and “Jesus, who the hell took these pictures?”. Well at least that was, what Yolandi & Ninja, better known as Die Antwoord, thought when they saw his work for the first time. They knew instantly that they have found the identity and style for their music project that was still in its infancy at that time.
Roger gets a lot of requests of artists who want to work with him, but since he didn’t know the duo personally he first rejected them. After a while he received many messages about a band that has risen in popularity and used his photos and drawings. Everybody wanted to know what he thought of them. Only then he realised who they were talking about and Die Antwoord finally got Roger’s attention.
The photographer was born in New York, but moved to South Africa 30 years ago. Just like almost every South African, Yolandi & Ninja were struggling with their heritage and national identity, until they saw their nation represented in Roger’s pictures. They threw away all the music and imagery they’ve worked on for years and started from scratch to fit their new found concept – the “Roger Ballen freak-mode-zone”.
The raw, demented graffiti Roger used in his photographs affected the two artists in a psychological way by ripping open the filters that limited their creativity. They finally were able to open up to their animal-like subconscious zones. Roger, on the other hand, was overwhelmed to have sparked such inspiration.
Six years after Roger and Die Antwoord first met, the video to “I Fink U Freeky” premiered. It was Roger’s first music video and it was shot in 5 days at an old warehouse. Just like for every other of his projects he walked around the location to collect the props for the video – he even found the stuffed lion in a room of the abandoned warehouse. Everything else came naturally, Roger can not recall whose idea certain sequences were, because they were so in sync.
Yolandi & Ninja studied Roger’s work so well, they know it better than most gallerists and had a clear vision of what they wanted to implement. In the end, their aesthetics fused. The theme of both, Roger’s & Die Antwoord’s work is a dark and raw illustration of the basic human instinct. It depicts how we all are just animals in the most unfiltered way. The main subjects are those characteristics that make us human, such as sexuality. But sexuality in a subtle way that requires more interpretation by the audience. The style of Roger’s images and drawings is so iconic, it got his own adjective: ballenesque.
Roger Ballon’s talk will definitely be one of the highlights of this year’s Forward Festival in Munich. You should not miss it!
Find out more about him on his speaker profile and get your ticket here.
Issue 8 of Max Siedentopf's magazine Ordinary puts a spotlight on toilet paper. From Siedentopf, one of our upcoming speakers at Forward Festival Munich and Hamburg, we didn't expect anything less odd and hilarious as this.
Originally from Windhoek, Namibia, Siedentopf works as an artist, publisher, director at “riffraff”, co-founder of “Ordinary magazine” and creative director and partner at “KesselsKramer”.
In this issue, one can learn that toilet paper is not only well used as a cleaning tissue for fecal material and other bodily fluid releases.
[caption id="attachment_11147" align="alignright" width="1500"] Aaron Tilley for Ordinary Magazine[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_11148" align="alignright" width="1500"] David Uzochukwu for Ordinary Magazine[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_11149" align="alignright" width="1500"] Rottingdean Bazaar & Annie Collinge for Ordinary Magazine[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_11156" align="alignright" width="1500"] Mauricio Alejo for Ordinary Magazine[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_11150" align="alignright" width="1500"] Dexter Lander & Max Blotas for Ordinary Magazine[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_11151" align="alignright" width="1500"] Peter Langer for Ordinary Magazine[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_11152" align="alignright" width="1500"] Nico Krijno for Ordinary Magazine[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_11153" align="alignright" width="1500"] Michael Hauptmann for Ordinary Magazine[/caption]
Check out Ordinary Magazine's Website for more info: http://ordinary-magazine.com. More about the artist: http://maxsiedentopf.com/
Daphne Seiwald
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4 months ago
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Facebook’s tool for building augmented reality effects, 
YACHT 2019 Landscape[/caption]
Indie Rock Group YACHT have always been curious about AI and the ways it could be used the music industry. So when AR filters were huge on Snapchat, the band seized the opportunity to test a potential application of AR in music.
They have spent the last three years working on their new album Chain Tripping, describing their work “a machine-learning generated composition process.” The results shows that AR is not limited to visuals: The group filtered their entire back catalogue of 82 songs through machine learning software and used the midi-data that was fed back to them to produce the album’s tracks.
"AI seemed like an almost impossible thing, it was so much more advanced than anything we had dealt with… And we wanted to use this to not just technically achieve the goal of making music—so we can say, ‘Hey an AI wrote this pop song’—rather we wanted to use this tech to make YACHT music, to make music we identify with and we feel comes from us.”
Another band interested in AR is the 1975, who created a whole campaign featuring a 
In times like these, designers should have ecological and sustainable principles in mind during the whole design process. Such as recycling, the use of renewable energy in production, material, durability, function, and cost. The shape of a product should follow sustainable design principles to effectively reduce waste and carbon emissions in order to save natural resources.
We collected some beautiful design inspirations that are aiming to save our world:
This 
Greenpeace's advertising campaign deliberately plays with fake news to draw attention to unrealistic best-before dates. It aims to point out that foods often have a much longer shelf life than indicated. There is a call-to-action as well motivating people to sign the petition against food waste.
Agency: Merlicek & Grossebner Text: Lukas Grossebner, Michael Wittmann Grafik: Peter Mayer, HFA Studio Illustration & Lettering: 
Tala is a British lighting brand based in London. Founded in 2013, the company specializes in low-energy LED lighting products that recreate the warm glow of traditional bulbs.
The founders weren't happy with the LED brands on the market, so they founded their own company on the premise that good design can help mitigate climate change. From their London-based studio, they explore the tension between sustainability, technology, and design. They also support reforestation programs around the world.
More info: 
From starting your own project to helping other brands spread their message through your beautiful design - there are literally millions of ways you can help the planet by being a designer.
The Main Title Sequence celebrates the strength in standing out from the crowd. It depicts three abstract worlds using immaculate CG to portray the truly distinct markings of a fiercely independent black panther.
The Brief
To celebrate the 5th year anniversary of Forward Festival, we wanted to commission a film centered around the ‘odd’ number 5. The brief was largely left open but contained some leading quotes including: “Odd is strange” “Odd behavior” “Odd is peculiar”.
The Process
After his impressive talk at Forward Festival 2018, we identified Mill+ Director Raj Davsi as the director to bring this embryonic idea to life. Starting with very early sketches on paper, Raj and the team were able to deliver a technically complex and emotionally stirring film from concept to delivery.
The Outcome
The film was launched at Forward Festival Munich, alongside Raj's talk about the creative process behind the film. Within 2 days of release the film was awarded a Staff Pick on Vimeo.
Raj' intentions were to create a story that celebrates the individuality of being “odd” and how everyone should be proud to be different. His impression as an artist is, that every creative tries to stand out from the crowd and make work that is distinct, which is something we can all connect to. The initial focal point was to tell a story about an animal, to use their raw and unfiltered emotions to allow the viewer to build a strong connection with the message of embracing ‘the odd one out’. Also, he wanted to transport them into an ‘odd’ space: "I love telling stories through abstract art whilst trying to make an emotional connection with the viewer."
Having conducted extensive R&D, Raj found inspiration in the black panther. A rare, unique and majestic animal, rarely filmed or seen in the wild. People know they are there but they remain hidden. He and the team experimented with various patterns, colors and even feathers for the panther, using inspiration from bird patterns and unusual skin pigmentations to develop the aesthetic, the highlights and contours of the panther’s muscles and facial features were key.
The initial shots featuring the panther sprinting through the forest established the look for the wider environment. The viewer is then transported into abstract worlds where macro cameras were used inside the panther.
Raj's inspiration for the contrasting scenes came from real-world references. The eye scene took inspiration from liquid drops which contained the pattern to give a powerful and iridescent feel. The teeth world was inspired by the Cappadocia Mountains in Turkey, an incredible landscape which bears real similarities to teeth.
Lighting and rendering were used to give the piece a fantastical feel. This meant strong volumetric, 3D fog and a lot of play with lights and shadows. As the panther was black, lighting within a dark environment was a challenge for the team. With minimal diffuse values, only the fur would catch the specular highlights.
The film used multiple disciplinary soft wares and was a real collaboration amongst teams from design through to VFX. Everything was computer generated and carefully considered from the huge epic landscape to how many trees should be in the forest. Every pixel was meticulously designed and needed to be good enough to print.
We can't say it often enough: Thank you to everyone involved in this one-of-a-kind project!
Director: Raj Davsi
Creative Director: James Allen
Producer: James Yeo
Line Producer: Supreetha Murthy
Production Manager: Rebecca Pemberton
Production Coordinator: Shivangi Mehta
Audio: Echoic Audio
www.echoicaudio.com
Art Directors: Stip, Cameron Johnson
CG Supervisor: Madhur Pole
FX Supervisor: Gaurav Mathur
Asset Supervisor: Anish Mohan
Animation Lead: Mahesh MS
2D Lead Artists: Sole Martin, Vinod Gopinathan
2D Artist: Badrinath Chinimilli, Mangesh Borkar, Nehal Desai, Prasanna Bhatt, Rajeshkumar K, James Pratt,
Rich Watson
3D Artist: Kalpesh Patel, Srikar Balakrishnan, Jimmy Thomas, Prateek Shubankar, Dhruba Sinha, Asis Kumar,
Guru Prasad, Shashi Kumar Dakoju, Nishant Kumar, Sudakshina Sridharan, Amal Arjun J P, Amit Patil, AsitMidya, Nayan Bora, Kalidas Patil, Sumit Kumar, Damudar Khuman, Rakesh Bharat
3D Design: Raquel Fernandes, Ewan Davidson, Taehoon Park, Olly Johnson, Jessica Tan, Matthew Campbell
2D Animation: Kwok Fung Lam, Sam Singleton
Design & Development: Ross Urien, Grant Berry, Adam Parry, Ivo Sousa
Colour: The Mill
Forward Speaker Max did not just direct the music video, but also stepped in for Sigrid who couldn't make it due to delayed and canceled flights: There was a team of 40 people ready to shoot, but no artist. Well...
“Literally everything went wrong. Travel with park rangers, police stops, collapsed sets, loads of bad weather…my biggest weakness is singing, and I’m now in a music video, so let’s see how it goes.” says Max.
Even the beautiful sets that the team created a few days before were destroyed by a storm. After spending one month planning the shoot, which took place in the Bulgarian mountains, 
Take a look at the video:
All of the designers got the same briefing, the results are as diverse as we humans are. From black and white to colourful, from typography to illustration – but all around the topics of equality, diversity and love.
For the selection of the designers they put a huge emphasis onLGBTQ+ artists. Contributors include Alice Bowsher, Cynthia Kittler, Elliot Kruszynski, Josh McKenna, Loveis Wise, Marcus Oakley and Sujin Kim.
The t-shirts not just only look beautiful, with every purchase something beautiful ist achieved: 50% of the profits are being donated to support 
Get ready for whichever Pride Parade you may attend and get your t-shirt 
Since Wes Anderson always has the aspiration to make his movies as authentic as possible, he needed a designer who is fluent in both English and Japanese. That is how Erica got offered her first job in the movie industry without any experience in the field. A dream coming true for any cineast. After passing a two-week-audition, she found a mentor in Grand Budapest Hotel- Designer Annie Atkins: “Annie gave me a crash course not just in film design work but also in the Wes Anderson method, which would have otherwise taken a lot longer to figure out.”
Overall, Erica and her team created over 1000 pieces that appear in the scenes of Isle of Dogs. She worked very closely with the people who crafted the items. Nothing is by accident, everything was intended the way you see it now on screen – from the colour of the fur to the typography on several packages.
Wes always had his eye on everything that has been done. As the perfectionist he is, he was involved in every step along the way: “Wes was very hands-on, right down to the pixel. Sometimes when you finish something you go ‘Did I do that? or was that Wes?’ It might take one try or it might take 25 before Wes decides it’s done.”
How much love and time went into the details can be noticed, for example, in the dog tags: “The machine-engraved typography on the dog tags couldn’t be too perfect,” Dorn explains. “We intentionally messed up the spacing and pushed the second S on ‘BOSS’ too far over and a little too high up because we wanted to show the hand-made-ness of everything.”
Since the movie was filmed in stop-motion every prop had to be built to scale. It was a tough process with many steps until Erica and her team achieved the perfectly produced tiny results. Just to have a look at how small the items are in real life, see the comparison of the beer can and an actual British coin.
One difficulty Erica faced during the project was the need for the items to not only look different in their design but also as if they were collected over a long period of time. An intense example is the evidence board of the American exchange student Tracy were she connects the dots behind the dog deportation conspiracy: “We actually wrote all of those articles that were pinned to the wall and made real content for the ID cards and receipts and maps,” Dorn says. “It was all hands on decks with seven of us churning out these pieces.”
The movies by the master Japanese authors Akira Kurasowa and Yasujiro Ozu served Erica and her team as inspiration. “We spent a lot of time watching their movies and collecting graphic details. Every time we saw a bookshelf or a wallpaper pattern or an arm badge, we’d screen-shot the image and file it. Later, whenever we needed interior details, textiles, things like that, we’d look at the stuff from Kurosawa and Ozu. About half of our references came from those movies.”
Get more details about Erica’s work at her talk at 
Roger gets a lot of requests of artists who want to work with him, but since he didn’t know the duo personally he first rejected them. After a while he received many messages about a band that has risen in popularity and used his photos and drawings. Everybody wanted to know what he thought of them. Only then he realised who they were talking about and Die Antwoord finally got Roger’s attention.
The photographer was born in New York, but moved to South Africa 30 years ago. Just like almost every South African, Yolandi & Ninja were struggling with their heritage and national identity, until they saw their nation represented in Roger’s pictures. They threw away all the music and imagery they’ve worked on for years and started from scratch to fit their new found concept – the “Roger Ballen freak-mode-zone”.
The raw, demented graffiti Roger used in his photographs affected the two artists in a psychological way by ripping open the filters that limited their creativity. They finally were able to open up to their animal-like subconscious zones. Roger, on the other hand, was overwhelmed to have sparked such inspiration.
Six years after Roger and Die Antwoord first met, the video to “I Fink U Freeky” premiered. It was Roger’s first music video and it was shot in 5 days at an old warehouse. Just like for every other of his projects he walked around the location to collect the props for the video – he even found the stuffed lion in a room of the abandoned warehouse. Everything else came naturally, Roger can not recall whose idea certain sequences were, because they were so in sync.
Yolandi & Ninja studied Roger’s work so well, they know it better than most gallerists and had a clear vision of what they wanted to implement. In the end, their aesthetics fused. The theme of both, Roger’s & Die Antwoord’s work is a dark and raw illustration of the basic human instinct. It depicts how we all are just animals in the most unfiltered way. The main subjects are those characteristics that make us human, such as sexuality. But sexuality in a subtle way that requires more interpretation by the audience. The style of Roger’s images and drawings is so iconic, it got his own adjective: ballenesque.
Roger Ballon’s talk will definitely be one of the highlights of this year’s Forward Festival in Munich. You should not miss it!
Find out more about him on his 
Aaron Tilley for Ordinary Magazine[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_11148" align="alignright" width="1500"]
David Uzochukwu for Ordinary Magazine[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_11149" align="alignright" width="1500"]
Rottingdean Bazaar & Annie Collinge for Ordinary Magazine[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_11156" align="alignright" width="1500"]
Mauricio Alejo for Ordinary Magazine[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_11150" align="alignright" width="1500"]
Dexter Lander & Max Blotas for Ordinary Magazine[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_11151" align="alignright" width="1500"]
Peter Langer for Ordinary Magazine[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_11152" align="alignright" width="1500"]
Nico Krijno for Ordinary Magazine[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_11153" align="alignright" width="1500"]
Michael Hauptmann for Ordinary Magazine[/caption]
Check out Ordinary Magazine's Website for more info: