As I continue the purge of images, movies, and articles that I’ve set aside, two beautiful works of motion graphics. (Neither are related to visualization, but both are inspiring.)

First is James Jarvis’ running video for Nike — beautifully drawn and captures a wonderful collection of experiences I could identify with (bird attack, rainstorms, stairs…)

And the second is the “Big Ideas (Don’t Get Any)” video by James Houston.

Just incredible.

I wanted to post this last week in my excitement over week 1 of pro football season (that’s the 300 lbs. locomotives pounding into each other kind of football, not the game played with actual balls and feet), but ran out of time. So instead, in honor of football Sunday, week 2, my favorite advertisement of last year’s football season:

The ad is a phone conversation with Coca-Cola’s Katie Bayne, animated by Imaginary Forces. A couple things I like about this… First, that the attitude is so much less heavy-handed than, say, the IBM spots that seem to be based on the premise that if they jump cut quickly enough, they can cure cancer. The woman being interviewed actually laughs about “big data” truisms. Next is the fact that it’s actually a fairly smart question that’s asked:

How important is it that you get the right information rather than just a lot of information?

Well… you know you can roll around in facts all day long. It’s critical that we stay aware of that mountain of data that’s coming in and mine it for the most valuable nuggets. It helps keep us honest.

And third, the visual quality that reinforces the lighter attitude. Cleverly drawn without overdoing it. She talks about being honest and a hand comes flying in to push back a Pinnocchio nose. Nuggets of data are shown as… eh, nuggets.

And the interviewer is a dog.

A video depicting all the edits for the OpenStreetMap project for 2008.

OpenStreetMap is a wiki-style map of the world and this animation displays a white flash each time a way is entered or updated. Some edits are a result of a physical local survey by a contributor with a GPS unit and taking notes, other edits are done remotely using aerial photography or out-of-copyright maps, and some are bulk imports of official data.

Simple idea but really elegant execution. Created by ITO.

Radiohead’s new video for “House of Cards” built using a laser scanner and software:

Aaron Koblin, one of Casey’s former students was involved in the project and also made use of Processing for the video. He writes:

A couple of hours ago was the release of a project I’ve been working on with Radiohead and Google. Lots of laser scanner fun.

I released some Processing code along with the data we captured to make the video. Also tried to give a basic explanation of how to get started using Processing to play with all this stuff.

The project is hosted at code.google.com/radiohead, where you can also download all the data for the point clouds captured by the scanner, as well as Processing source code to render the points and rotate Thom’s head as much as you’d like. This is the download page for the data and source code.

They’ve also posted a “making of” video:

(Just cover your ears toward the end where the director starts going on about “everything is data…”)

Sort of wonderful and amazing that they’re releasing the data behind the project, opening up the possibility for a kind of software-based remixing of the video. I hope their leap of faith will be rewarded by individuals doing interesting and amazing things with the data. (Nudge, nudge.)

Aaron’s also behind the excellent Flight Patterns as well as The Sheep Market, both highly recommended.

Apropos of the recent film graphics post, Jessica Helfand at Design Observer writes about the recently released Iron Man:

Iron Man is the fulfillment of all the computer-integrated movies were ever meant to be, and by computer-integrated, I mean just that: beyond the technical wizardry of special effects, this is a film in which the computer is incorporated, like a cast member, into the development of the plot itself.

I’ve not seen the movie but the statement appears to be provocative enough to elicit cheers and venom from the scribes in the comments section. (This seems to be common at Design Observer, are designers really this angry and unhappy? How ’bout them antisocial personal attacks! I take back what I wrote in the last post about wanting to be a designer when I grow up. Some thick skin or self-fashioned military grade body armor over at DO.)

On the other hand, a more helpful post linked to the lovely closing title sequence, designed by Danny Yount of Prologue.

I wish they didn’t use Black Sabbath. Is that really the way it’s done in the film? Paranoid is a great album (even if Iron Man is my least favorite track) but the titles and the music couldn’t have less to do with each other. Enjoy the music or enjoy the video; just don’t do ’em together.

Elegantly done, and some of the driest humor in film titles you might ever see, the opening sequence from Death at a Funeral.

Excellent (and appropriate) music, color, and type; does a great job of setting up the film. IMDB description:

Chaos ensues when a man tries to expose a dark secret regarding a recently deceased patriarch of a dysfunctional British family

Or the tagline:

From director Frank Oz comes the story of a family that puts the F U in funeral.