Smart environmental awareness October 31,2013
Arriving in a new city, a smartphone could generate and display a local push notification if it the display is on while the user is driving past a sight or famous landmark via a Taxi or public transportation. This notification could alert the user to look to their right, left, or straight up (based on the devices rotation) to not miss the sight. A tap on the notification could reveal background information and location on a city map. Modern smartphones come with hardware to efficiently monitor position, orientation, momentum and among others algorithms that determine mode of transport. If the smartphone determines the user is walking it could assume no such notification is necessary or only display it if the user is stopping in front the monument and switching on their display. After a certain time frame or after the user has been alerted of all major sights and landmarks the notifications could stop.

Wearable Tech May 5,2013
Bluetooth LE, bendable/formable displays and batteries and voice assistants are all enabling tech for wearable computing devices. What we see in Google's wearable tech Glass though is that it is still just a few hours of battery lifetime that you get from it, far less than a day. Apple could try to use the skin contact, knowledge of arm rotation the watch has to leave the display switched off a lot of the time. They also have methods to convert the motion energy of the wrist into electrical energy to charge the watch. I believe wearable tech that will have to be charged during the day won't be appreciated in a mass market. Like phones it will have to make it through at least a full day of use.

Jeff Bezos September 1,2012
What Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is doing is pretty cool and honorable. In the long term he is looking to replicate some of Apples success with innovative devices, services and Amazons ecosystem. The good thing for investors is that Amazon already has a solid, established revenue stream from its core business which helps them to try and try again and even though the earlier kindles haven't been the biggest success it is impressive at which high pace they are improving. All without outright copying Apple.

Skeuomorphism August 22,2012
I think to some degree skeuomorphism, if the ornamentals aren't decreasing functionality (for example via wasted screen space) can be helpful. Animated skeuomorphism when a digital Bill gets shredded in iOS or selecting another perspective in Maya is approached not with a cut is awesome (again when done right).

Article on Skeuomorphism

Single Handedly August 20,2012
(Smart)phones really need to be usable with one hand. A phone that is too large to be usable with one hand/thumb is a tweener and should rather be a full blown tablet that allows for the advantages of two handed use to come through (like being able to ten finger type). Of course the issue is how to design one device that works with the smallest and the largest hand alike but really the significant features like calling (an ambulance when one arm is broken) should be achievable one handedly. For the size of a tablet I believe the smallest usefull size would be a width where a virtual qwerty design keyboard would be just large enough to allow for ten finger typing.

Haptical touchscreen idea June 22,2012
A smartphone with a display that can drive haptic feedback to a users thumb resting on it could use a rotating rectangularly feeling shape to "show" directions while the user would be able to walk through unknown streets with their eyes off the device. The orientation the user holds the device wouldn't matter becasue the device is aware of its orientation in relation to the users orientation and position so the haptic feedback could acount for that.
In this use scenario the display wouldn't need to be lit to save power.

Post från Sverige March 10, 2012
A few days ago I got a mysterious letter from Sweden. It turned out to be a big surprise, one that was overdue for A LONG TIME. So, please understand my enthusiasm about it.

YEEAAHHHH

Audi Sharper Drive October 28, 2011
I'm happy, proud and relieved we can now show this to the world.
In addition to my credited roles as Junior Comp and Matchmoving I initiated a recreation of the Bonneville salt plains with e-on Vue to give us the option to have one large, coherent scene that we could easily alter, relight and render as normal or even hdri cyclorama shots. We eventually chose not to take advantage of this option though.

View Sharper Drive on Parasol Island's Vimeo Channel
View the Making Of on Parasol Island's Vimeo Channel

Internship at Parasol Island September 21, 2011
I have started my internship at Parasol Island in Düsseldorf, Germany.
Parasol Island is well known and respected for its unique designs and strong animations.

See Parasol Island's official website
Check out Parasol Island's Youtube Channel

About milliseconds in the GUI of post-PC devices June 6, 2011
When a smartphone or tablet is not able to fluently display its content, change its GUI or when the change happens fluently but after the input of the user is over it blew it. When Tech Journalists review such a post-PC era device they tend to criticize GUIs with just milliseconds of lags as a "small gripe" becasue they often lack the empathy to test the device with the eyes and hands of their target audience. The actual target audience is used to flicking a piece of paper around on a table, droping an object or opening a cardboard box. Everything that happens completely naturally, without friction. They have never used a PC in their lives becasue they perceive them to be too expensive, too unwieldy and too complicated to use. Sometimes they have never even seen a computer but in the moment they use these new devices and the GUI is just slightly lagged, the device immediately becomes artificial to these people. To their subconsciousness it is revealed as what it actually is, a computer, a machine. Milliseconds matter!

Good UI on post-PC devices,
makes the hardware and software work in concert to avoid any lag,
uses guiding animations to disguise unavoidable lag like loading times,
reacts once the device senses any input and not once the device senses the end of any input.

What I learned at Hyper Island May 29, 2011
What have been your biggest challenges during your time at Hyper Island?
Balancing and pushing creative and technical questions with the briefs and the people in the groups. Balancing personal goals with group goals and brief goals. It's all about the right balance.

What are the biggest learnings you will bring with you from your internship?
I have just started but it looks like the learning outcome will be huge. I'm not yet in my final role so I will have to wait and see, figuring out how I can contribute the most while learning the most at the same time.

What are the biggest areas you want to develop further in?
I don't have a particular area that I want to specialize on yet although that might come some time in the future. I'm always investigating manny different apps and their underlying technologies to figure out when they become a valid tool for pushing some boundaries. I'm also constantly pushing my artistic skills, I have learned a lot from the concept artist Feng Zhu recently for example.

What are the biggest challenges facing the industry you are about to be a part of?
Figuring out how I fit in the best. The "problem" is I'm neither just a generalist nor a specialist nor am I just a creative or a TD I'm somewhere in-between all of this so I have to find a way how to best combine this with actual industry needs.

Where do you see yourself in one year?
I hope in one year I will have already found the answer to the question of how to align myself the best and will be working in a stage 4 team somewhere in the world. In a role that combines all my interests. That could be in manny different places and industries.

How will you continue to develop having left Hyper Island?
I will continue to monitor the industry and new apps and invest time into learning techniques and apps that are worth it instead of wasting it on the immature or soon to be obsolete things. I will also continue to travel, learn languages and cultures in the process to widen my field of view.

The vfx time frame: From 2k to SD, to HD May 2,2011
There was a small time frame about 10 years ago where A. movies already had advanced digital vfx but B."HD" or the "home theater" didn't yet exist.
Films like "Tomb Raider" to many are only known in SD becasue when they were theatrically released people either watched them just once on the big screen or many times on DVD with just a fraction of the detail making it hard to appreciate the amazing artwork in them. I'm revisiting these gems, trying to learn as much as possible from them and given the fact that the digital artists back then had no idea that their work would one day be frame-by-framable in its "almost full" 1080p glory, there are many good, bad and interesting things to discover in them.

Developing and executing Motion Design for MTV January 30, 2011
In the "Motion Graphics and Branding" module at Hyper Island Wreck Creative
Studios commissioned us to create a graphics package
for the MTV Dancefloor Charts.
After a lot of brainstorming my group and me came up with an idea that
fulfilled the requirements and also fit into the extremly limited time budget we
were given. We developed the concept of telling the story of a dance night with the preparty, dancefloor and afterparty using a rotating, photorealistic but
isometric cube with each of the three surfaces dedicated to one of the
different locations and overlapping interactions and lighting on the edges.
Instead of getting high pacing from quick camera moves or editing we decided
to make the scene very detailed and quick instead.
While the cube rotates away from an even state the objects on the "featured" plane start to physically slide and fall and even hit some of the dancers.
As the art director my role was to develope the cube's layout in a way that
would enable these dynamics and human interactions to happen without
loosing the graphic look of the whole cube. Once the layout was decided
within the whole group I started to create a high resolution matte painting.
In the posted bumpers I was also responsible for the compositing,
dynamics simulation, graphic design, look developement and execution.
The music for the first bumper was supplied by MTV. The Music in the second
bumper is "Too Much" from Bonaparte and was used with friendly permission.

Read the full article under "The Art"
View a Video about the development of the cube
Download the moodboard as a PNG
Download a stunning poster based on the second bumper
View the first bumper in 720p
View the second bumper in 720p

Available for Internship Worldwide January 10, 2011
I'm available for internship worldwide from February 21 to May 20, 2011.
I'm putting up and defining clear goals and expectations concerning my learning and the environment I'm looking for.

I expect that I...
Contribute to conceptualisation as well as implementation of (stylised) motion design, (realistic) visual effects or viral videos/ campaigns.

Generate and communicate brilliant and beautiful ideas
in the team I'm working in or alone.

Consistently produce sophisticated work.

Show excellent and professional communication skills in
external as well as internal matters with the company.

Integrate myself well into the culture of the company and the
environment without loosing my own opinion.

Spent spare time to extend my knowledge about artistry, techniques and applications.

Absorb wisdom and knowledge of my colleagues and share my own knowledge.

Be a responsible, honest, straightforward colleague who can justify his stance and decisions and admit committed mistakes.

Show my enthusiasm for design and animation and help create a great
working atmosphere inside and outside the workplace.

Be an ambassador for Hyper Island's excellent reputation and methodology.

Refuse to take assignments that I cannot fulfil in the way I expect it from myself.

Work hard and diligently to achieve my high expectations.

I expect the company to...
Invest trust in me and my capabilities recognising that my personality is evenly distributed between a technical and a creative.

Encourage input and ideas from all their employees in an idea friendly, stimulating and positive environment that makes hard work seem like fun.

Treat me the same way they treat a normal employee and provide the guidance that I need to reach my expectations and stay on track.

Honour and encourage sophisticated work.

Provide me with constructive feedback and honest evaluation of my work.

Be brave enough to allow new and exciting solutions to surface and happen.

Give me a proper introduction to the company the first day or two.

Hyper Workshops available to everybody on Vimeo January 10, 2011
We are constantly organizing and recording new moton design related workshops at Hyper Island. I see them as a great way to share knowledge with others. You can now stream or download the workshops I was involved in on my Vimeo.

Hyper Workshop: 2.5D and 3D Tracking with Wilfried Kaiser
Hyper Workshop: AfterEffects basics with Martin Aggerholm and Wilfried Kaiser
Hyper Workshop: Cinema 4D basics with Martin Aggerholm and Toros Köse
Hyper Workshop: Cinema 4D basics Part 2

Guest article at Kwerfeldein January 9, 2011
I recently contributed a guest article about dimensionalisation in Adobe After Effects and Photoshop to German photography website Kwerfeldein.de. The animation I produced for this article can be found in 1080p on Youtube. DOF and Cloud animation in the animation are exaggerated for presentation purposes.

The next piece of the puzzle is in motion August 15, 2010
I'm honored to report I have joined the "Motion Graphics Designer and Developer" long-term program at internationally acclaimed Hyper Island in Stockholm, Sweden. Once I was awarded "Bachelor of Arts" for my "Digital Environments for Time Based Media" Bachelor project it was clear that I wanted to specialize in animation. What wasn't clear however was whether this would turn out to be vfx or motion design. I began to ponder this question day and night.
My dilemma was that while I wanted to challenge state-of-the-art tec and my creative and artistic mind to bring to life stylized as well as photo-real animations I also wanted to gain the required knowledge of how to develop and alter not only these animations but the whole concept. Rather than just executing other
people's ideas.
There are real paradigm shifts happening in the whole animation industry and one has to understand these to make decisions and predictions concerning their future.
Today vfx have become so complicated that large teams of people are often working on vfx-animations that appear just seconds on the big screen. These tasks require a strict regiment of artists that excel technically and can execute the artistic direction their supervisor communicates with them which caps the amount of innovation, creativity and artistic expression the individual artist can put into the work. Due to this separation between the development and execution of vfx it was only a matter of time that outsourcing became increasingly common, turning many vfx artists into restless nomads that follow their jobs around the planet.
In the era of viral marketing, social networking and advanced, affordable and easy-to-learn software motion design will develop into a completely different direction. In this "Next generation Viral Marketing": Nimble in-house teams,
creative powerhouses that have the ability to react super-fast to maintain the correct reception and outcome of a campaign will be much sought-after.
Old Spice's fastest growing online campaign gave advertisers just a peek of what's possible with this advanced viral marketing.
The term "customer" will become less common because the customer and the agency will be the same company.
I compared opportunities on three different continents: Vancouver Film School in Canada, Baden-Württemberg Film Academy in Germany, FH Mainz and HTWG Konstanz both in Germany, Miami Ad School in the U.S.A., RMIT in Australia. The comparison took some time because the subjects taught, motion design, cinematography, visual effects and communication design are all valid but only Hyper Island is constructed much like a real agency, serving the ideal infrastructure for me to master my interests and the aforementioned requirements for a communicator in the 21st century.

"Hyper Island= Digital Harvard."
Rob Schwartz, Chief Creative Officer, TBWA/Chiat/Day, Los Angeles, USA

"Hyper Island is an affirming, mind-opening experience to the shifting sands of the digital world."
Doug Gould, SVP, Creative Director, Hill Holliday

"Future talents need to understand the broad crossovers between the digital work of today and the PR, brand, and content work of tomorrow"
Laura Jordan Bambach, Executive Creative Director, LBi

"The entire experience was eye-opening and inspirational. It's like having kids - you can't adequatly explain the joy of it to someone who hasn't experienced it."
Tim Leake, Creative Director, Saatchi and Satchi NY

Download the Hyper Island methodology as a PDF

What it takes May 11, 2010
After successfully finishing my Bachelor project and thesis earlier this year I was both amazed at what I had achieved but at the same time disappointed because I was forced to cancel the completion of a 3D matte painting due to last minute quality issues. After I had made a full recovery from the Bachelor stress I wanted to give this topic another shot, but instead of just finishing the projection of "Alasca Echo" I decided to invest my spare rendering resources into making a full 3D jungle featuring highly detailed geometry instead of just a good matte painting projected on to simple geometry. While researching for the Bachelor thesis I learned about the work Yanick Dusseault did for the Film "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" where "Dusso" worked on complex jungle shots with moving cameras. James Cameron's "Avatar" amazed me even more when it brought this genre of vfx to a whole new level with its implementation of stereoscopy. Instead of opting for the crude stereo employed by many newer Hollywood productions that consist of 2D surfaces distributed in 3D space to "catch" the footage I knew from early on that I wanted the real deal. Every pixel of terrain, haze, water and dust was supposed to be correctly distributed in a 3D environment- just like "Avatar" did it.
With its billions of global radiosity lit polygons rendering this scene took months on numerous machines. Today I'm releasing a stereoscopic as well as a monoscopic version. In order to minimize the requirements for watching, the stereo version is made for anaglyph glasses. Starting with the Bachelor projects I have begun to produce all my time based media work in 2K film resolution.

Download the thesis as a high quality PDF
View the pieces in 2k at Youtube
View the stereo piece in 2k
View the mono piece in 2k

Time to celebrate February 8, 2010
After 7 semesters at Fachhochschule Schwäbisch Hall (FHSH), me and about 20 other fellow students were awarded the internationally recognized
academic title "Bachelor of Arts" on February 6, 2010.
I'm incredibly proud of having achieved an A for my "Digital Environments for
Time Based Media" Bachelor project. To contrast my university's web design, editorial and typography courses I decided to dive deep into the world of visual effects with this first of its kind Bachelor project at FHSH. In addition to my hard work at FHSH I started tapping into matte painting, compositing or projection mapping pretty much in secrecy. When the time for the Bachelor project came, I brought everything I had taught myself to the table, surprising my fellow students and counselors. In order to reach a large audience and because of the big amount of English technical language I decided to do the thesis in English. The detailed artwork can be watched on my art page. I'd like to thank my counselors Prof. Fried Dähn, Prof. Beate Ehrmann and Thilo Schnell, my mother, my friends and all my fellow students, especially Eduard Wolfram for their support.

Download the thesis as a high quality PDF
View the pieces in 2k at Youtube