The theme of this years FITC Amsterdam is ‘legend has it’ which introduces some of the most groundbreaking creatives perfectly. The first one who kicked off is no stranger to FITC and is almost a legend himself; senior designer by day, and unstoppable creative by night; Gavin Strange.
The realistic idealist
Gavin Strange is known for his inexhaustible creativity and his way to energize people during his talks. As a senior designer at Aardman, based in Bristol UK, the past years he has sharpened his tools of craftsmanship to make experiences that delight people and will blow your mind! Not only is his work truly inspiring, but he also has the ability to share a glimpse of his personal development and steps he needed to make in order to become what he’s today. An inexhaustible creative with a contagious spirit and believes that opportunities are born from passion. We at DotControl embrace this statement as well. When you do things that excite you, you will gain excitement in return. Sometimes it requires stepping out of your comfort zone and to “take the hits and get hench”. Let’s face it, the creative process is a never-ending process.
World War 1 to fast & furious live
Kate Dawkins owns a studio in creating bespoke content for live performances shows and brand events. In a career that spans more than 20 years, she was always trying to bridging the gap between two mediums that she cherishes dearly; analog and digital. During her journey in bridging the gap, she would always find achievable ways that work for a contemporary audience. To back this up, Kate presented two case studies which involved projection mapping on a huge scale; the Passchendaele (Belgium) experience and Fast & Furious Live show. Two projects that made a huge impact on us, thanks to the seamless connection between the physical space and the digital mapping that brings the total experience to life and sparks intrinsic emotions.
Path finding, memory and recursion
Joshua Davis might come across as a funny, quirky guy at first sight. But don’t let this first impression fool you! Joshua is known for his extremely creative coding skills which result in astonishing experiments which makes you feel like you’re on Acid (his own words ;)). His specialty lies in making algorithms in GLSL (OpenGL Shading Language) shaders based on solely PNG’s. These algorithms result in abstract, wild and quirky visuals. Thanks to Social, his experiments gained publicity by famous artists and musicians which he created custom algorithms for that were used in their live performances. To make the live performances interactive, Joshua has also built in a piece of code which makes the visuals to react real-time on for example the slaps of a drummer. Development is one of our core activities, so it’s a no-brainer we got totally hypnotized by Joshua’s presentation! We can’t wait to experiment with GLSL shaders ourselves which allow a lot of creative approaches in projects.
FITC Amsterdam photo gallery
Another day so another round of an all you can feast during FITC Amsterdam!
Why do we need to make new realities?
Partners in crime and Creative Directors from Wieden + Kennedy Department of New Realities, Geoffrey Lillemon and Anita Fontaine are both cult collaborators who are trying to re-define the internet with the unorthodox use of new technologies to evolve human perspective. Through all kinds of actual topics, they try to get people out of their seats by offering unpredictable experiences via AR/VR that provoke conversations. A very authentic philosophy that’s fueled by creating fantasies for other people which will be remembered.
The end is nigh! a playful dystopia
Creative director, Mate Steinforth from Sehsucht (based in Germany) captured in his talk the struggle of creatives in a fast forward moving era and how uniqueness should arise throughout this challenge. The following might sound familiar to you, every like or repost on social feels rewarding and satisfies your inner momentum of lacking internal confirmation. And that’s perfectly normal since these ‘random rewards’ gives our brains shots of dopamine in our pleasure center. So how can we use this psychological given as common behavior where we as creatives should tap in on with nowadays technological possibilities such as AI and ML? A question which is not easy to answer now (or even, ever), most definitely is food for thought and invites all creatives to start the conversation. So we know what we’ll be talking about during tomorrow’s lunch ;)
The distracthathon
Favorite by heart and no stranger to us, Carl Addy, Design Creative Director from Mill+ takes us into exploring the struggles of a world that are shifting faster than ever! Our generation of creatives has the indispensable ability to learn and adopt different skills, rapidly. A somewhat different ‘breed’ which Carl rather calls ‘The Mutating Creatives’ who need to redefine the rules of the industry in order to engage creativity in multi-shifting forms. In a hasty and rapidly changing world with an audience that’s shortly satisfied and focused, it screams for distraction. By offering unique, captivating and somewhat complex experiences that grab your audience’s attention span to distract them from the distraction.
Lessons from ten years, everyday
Beeple also known as, or probably not, Mike Winkelmann is a graphic and motion designer from Appleton, USA. For the past ten years he has devoted his daily 15 minutes to explore his creative talent or as he likes to put it: “getting better in crap”. Each and every single day, he spent a maximum of 15 minutes to finish and release tiny projects on social. Whether it is an illustration, animation or just a random doodle as long it’s something that thrives you to become better. Aside from a bunch of F&*^*# and S#&$* he also shared some tips based on his own best practices ;)
- Limit your time to 15 minutes, which helps you to move on from shitty ideas
- Work on small projects (or a big project broken down into smaller pieces)
- Don’t work on projects that rely on external factors (such as the weather e.g)
- Find a sustainable routine which makes you enjoying those 15 mins. Each and every day
- Make your finished work public, it will be the foot behind the door
- Most definitely read ‘The war of art’
the art of short
PES is a globally recognized as the creator of some of the most widely viewed stop-motion films of all time. His short films are known by PES’s uncanny knack for transforming familiar objects and people through stop-motion animation which has evolved to be his trademark. Along the story of his parents over appreciated ‘Golden Chair’, PES takes us into his source of inspiration and the ability to remove unordinary objects from their actual context and replacing them in daily, but still very recognizable, situations with a sense of unexpected humor. A very inspiring talk and an eyeopener when it comes down to pure craftsmanship and the origin of creative ideas.
At DotControl we believe that feeding creativity is vital. This way we not only become a better professional or an exciting colleague, but we also inspire, educate and advise our clients in making use of the latest technologies and serving their audience captivating experiences which speaks the same contemporary language.