On Wednesday, four panelists spoke at the The Eisner American Museum of Advertising & Design about the broad topics of Web, Interactive and Motion Graphics. I was lucky enough to be one of the participating panelists and it was an exciting opportunity to talk with people in the community about the options, future, and general information concerning these areas of the creative world.
We had a good turnout of about 50 people. Most of the attendees were students at MIAD and MATC, not surprising since the event was part of the College Lecture Series, but there were also some professionals from the community there.
It was an interesting time as the four panelists had a great variety of experiences and focus that they brought to the discussion. The panelists were Micah Eberman of Fullhouse Interactive, Jason Evans of GS Design, Nick Waraska of Blend Studios, and me (Alexander Lucas of C2 Graphics and Stamm Media). The experiences touted included: high-end broadcast motion graphics, interactive websites, iPhone apps, trade show displays, and flash applications.
The panel agreed for the most part on the prepared questions concerning whether you need to continue to educate yourself, where to find the sites, and the importance of knowing broad skills but also specializing in a specific skill.
One topic brought up at the panel, of no great surprise, was the question of the future with the iPad and other tablet computers. There was again mostly consensus on this issue that while the iPad does not support Flash that it would not be an instant Flash killer and that it will take a long lumbering time for the internet to fully embrace HTML 5.
The two biggest questions which split the panel, however, concerned the role of social media and the future of the web/interactive/motion graphics space. Some of the panelists saw social media as being of the most importance and something that is the wave of future revenue and expression, while others admitting not really having a firm grip on where to proceed in this realm and what to do with it.
The only main consensus in the future debate: a sense of uncertainty of exactly what will happen. But that is what makes the future so interesting. We can still be surprised and be creative with emerging technologies.
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Ok I’m not one to geek out, but Fritz brought this to my attention a while ago and I just saw a live demo of this and it blew my freakin mind…
Check out a demonstration by the folks at 
Find out more 
Oh come on, like you are surprised. Steve Jobs has done it again. This time in two big tech announcements at MacWorld. (Ok there were several, but these are the two that got me tweaked). The first is, the new Apple Mac Air (not to be confused with Adobe Air). This has taken the laptop and really pushed the envelope. Speaking of envelope, lets start with that. This thing is so small (0.75″ x 14″) that it can fit inside an envelope. It weighs 3 lbs. and has the latest in wireless tech. It has a battery with 5 hours of life. The processor is as thin as a dime and as big as a nickel, but it runs at 1.8 ghz! The display is a 13.3″ LCD which means less power and instant on. The ports are retractable on the side which is a great space saver and makes this look really sleek. Heres the best part – it starts at only $1800.00.
So you have opened up your new Final Cut Studio 2 Box and you have been playing with Final Cut. Sure, the open format timeline and the motion templates are really cool. But what the heck is ProRes 422, and why is it a big deal?
You know how useful markers are in the timeline – giving you the ability to jump between areas of a sequence like chapters in a DVD (and also useful for making those DVD chapters)? This is only one application of the marker.
You can use the markers in the browser just like subclips, moving them directly down into the timeline as a pretrimmed clip. Each marker’s length is equal to the input of that marker to the in point of the next marker.
