Indigo Studios News

I worked with a awesome new client Kilgannon and some kick ass ferret renderings to create this cool web animation for OVE.com.  Check it out.

I work at Indigo Studios which is located at 660 11th Street Atlanta Georgia 30318.  11th Street is located in between Howell Mill Road and Northside Drive in Midtown Atlanta.  Northside drive is a very unique place to work and is shared by a number of different kinds of people that makes Northside such a wonderful place.  There is always something different, something new.  There honestly could be a reality show purely based on the trials and tribulations of the characters that reside on the street they call Northside.

Northside actually runs from my condo in Vinings then through the edge of Buckhead and then all the way to my office in Midtown.  Its about a ten mile ride with numerous lights along the way which is why I bypass most of it with a quick jump on the freeway.  It’s kinda funny to think of the type of people that litter the streets only ten miles apart from each other.  You see, up by my house Northside is a forested community with rich mansions and preppy neighborhoods that include some of the riches people in Atlanta.  Celebrities such as Jermain Dupree, Oprah,  and Elton John  also have been known to live up in the north end of Northside.

But that’s not the Northside I work in.  The Northside I work in is the south end.  Almost everyday I have been driving the stretch of Northside that starts at Interstate 75 and ends at Georgia Tech.  Lets just say that it is the ghetto part.  Yeah it’s ghetto, but it’s also an artsy, cool kinda ghetto.  It is beginning to be an art deco neighborhood with a ton of digital art shops like Indigo itself.  We have several competitors right down the street from us.  It also is on the up and up with a couple giant new developments including the wonderful Atlantic Station that is right down the way on 17th Street.

Northside also has a large community of music recording studios that almost completely make up the local Atlanta Rap scene.  Actually Indigo shares a building with Solar Sound Studio that pumps out mad beats that we can hear all day through the wall we share.  The vibrations are accompanied with a heavy stench of marijuana which is something our clients just love.  Also, 5 years ago Indigo was located just a mile down Northside and we were neighbors to the infamous Atlanta rap duo Outkast.  It was pretty cool to see them and there hallowed out cigar remains in our parking lot.

Northside Drive also ends directly at the inner city college Georgia Tech.  It is a beautiful campus with a extremely diverse demograph of people.  Mostly those include nerdy Asian kids and 24 year old women that have never been laid, but overall I’m glad the campus is close.  It is still a college.  It brings a whole other element to Northside and is the main reason it has begun to grow with all the new developments.  College kids need apartments to live in and they are going up everywhere.  Even with such a shitty housing market, there is a massive complex being built right next to Indigo that now dwarfs our building.  I’m just excited cause we are getting a Smoothie King and a Jersey Mikes right next door.  Holler!

But all this is not the true deep down entity of Northside Drive.  Northside itself has its own residence.  It is littered with a large amount of homeless that can be seen daily walking up and down the street.  There has been copper stolen from our neighbours and Indigo itself has been broken into.  There is a metal scrap shop at the end of 11th Street along with three abandoned homes that look as if they were built in the fifties and left to rout in the seventies when cinder block homes went out of style.

We also have grown to get to know our homeless friends.  At Indigo, we constantly get a knock on the door from the same 2 homeless men asking for our collection of coke cans.  We also have one guy that drives around on his tricycle talking to himself and dancing through traffic. We lock our doors when we see him.   There is actually an abandoned bank where homeless people live, but not in the building just under the covering for the once active drive through ATM.  We often see a skinny black woman sitting in the parking lot of the bank  holding her knees rocking back and forth whispering to herself.  We also see our old friend that used to live in the parking lot of building next door in an abandoned house before they tore it down to build the new apartments.  He calls himself the Sheriff because he watches the neighborhood.  We found out later we was a regular at the local bar Northside Tavern.

Northside Tavern actually is on Howell Mill which is one street over but it is worth mentioning because it is so famous for its live Blues music ever night.  Northside Tavern is one of many wonderful bars and restaurant that are found all over the Northside area including Taco Rio Del Sol, Flip Burger and Six Feet Under.  Unfortunately they are also accompanied by a number of trashy strip clubs and novelty shops.

I once saw a movie named “Crackheads gone wild” that has a wonderful quote from an Atlanta crackhead that said, “I buy my shit on Northside drive!”  I thought it summed up the neighborhood pretty well.

In 2008 Indigo Studios was hired to create artwork for a truck that will be used to promote ESPN and Nascar.  This was designed to educate the people about a new product that allows you to drink and watch the race at the same time.  It’s a simple concept that reshapes the cup itself and in doing so, allows you to see.

Originally we were provided basic sketches of the concept art along with vector logos of both ESPN and Nascar.  I have to admit that it is fun to see your artwork plastered all over a truck.  I’m not saying it’s my best work ever, but it’s still fun to see.

I use photoshop more than any other program.  I use it at work, I use it for freelance at home, and I use it for personal stuff like this blog.  I use it all the time and I have to say that I’m pretty damn good at using it.  I’m not saying I’m a pro or anything, as there are plenty of things I never use in photoshop that other people use all the time.  I use what I know and I get by with that.  But I know most of it.

So anyway, I always like to get my hands on the new releases of photoshop whenever they come out, which is about once a year nowadays.  This year we got Adobe Photoshop CS4.  I don’t really understand the CS nonsense, but whatever.  Photoshop “Creative Suite” 4 even though it is technically just Photoshop 11, but who’s counting?

I always like to upgrade as soon as I can because I figure I will have to anyway, so I might as well learn the new stuff now before CS 12 comes out and I have to take a class just to catch up.  Plus, I figure if there are new cool features in the new Photoshop, that might just help me in my everyday work flow.

 So I got CS4.  So far it’s not all that great.  I’m not completely downing it just yet, but from what I have seen so far, I’m not about to switch over completely.  The first thing I couldn’t stand was just pure performance.  Maybe I have a bum copy or maybe they just need to put out some updates, but whatever it is, it does not work as smoothly as CS3.  The only other thing I can say negative about the new program, is the new window “docking” aspect of the images.  The way the document you are working on is “docked” on the top of the screen.  Then you get a “tab” for each additional document open.  I theory this sounds great cause you can see all the images that are open all the time, but it makes it extremely difficult to have two documents open and drag one layer from one to the other.  I do this all the time.  Now I am forced to just copy and paste which is similar, but it does give the same freedoms.  OK, I am done giving the negative side.  Lets tackle all the new fun stuff.

First of all the interface got a remake.  It looks awesome.  I have always personally loved it when any programs mix up the their interface because it gives me something new to stare at all day and most of the time it just looks cooler.  Second, the inserted the ability to turn the document you are working on.  Now this doesn’t really effect me all that much, but if I was to draw a picture with my wacom freehand on the computer this feature would be extremely helpful.  Also, the new photoshop has new abilities to incorporate 3D (which I think is pointless, but cool) and it has new windows like the adjustment and mask windows.  Also, it can now zoom in to a ridiculous 3200% using OpenGL.  It’s cool, but most likely unnecessary.  

One giant thing CS4 brings is the ability to utilize 64-bit processing.  This means you can utilize 8 gigs of ram which will help with overall performance.  I have not tested this out, but I’m not gonna lie, I am pretty excited about it.

All in all CS4 is similar to CS3, but with a cooler look and feel. It needs work and needs updates, but maybe I just need a newer computer.  Only time will tell.

I recently finished a website for JWT Team Detroit. They are actually a branch of JWT here in Atlanta with an interesting name.  The website is for Georgia Saturdays which is a collaboration with the University of Georgia football head coach Mark Richt and Ford.  Anyway, I constructed all the flash and helped in the design. I did all the animations and coding throughout. I added a form on the back end and included simple downloads on the download page. Here is the link: http://www.indigostudios.com/georgiasaturdays

The thought since I have almost never added artwork to this blog, I should start.  I haven’t done anything that cool lately, so I will add this one.  I did this job for Indigo Studios and Function here in Altanta.  Just some of my retouching skills at work. 

This Summer Live it up! Only Your South Florida Ford Dealers will make your first Three Car Payments!

With a hip new look that mimics a full feature movie, JWT and Indigo Studios have created an exciting new promotional website for the South Florida Ford Dealerships. Indigo Studios integrated Flash animation and video with sensational graphics to compose something both interactive and informative to the consumer. This is the future of branding. This site is completely userfriendly with an animated map of all the South Florida Ford Dealerships and all their contact information. Also, it has a fully functional download section that has everything from Wallpapers to Ringtones available to anyone. Check out the new website here:

www.3MONTHSMOVIE.com

See websites like this and more at www.indigostudios.com