Avatar Interface Design—Neil Huxley

Inventing Interactive has an incredible interview with interactive art director Neil Huxley who was hired by VFX house Prime Focus to design all the interface elements for the futuristic displays.  Avatar was Neil’s second movie to work on VFX after Gamer in 2009, and prior to that he had primarily art directed movie title screens and created educational interactive work for museums and galleries.

All of the scenes were created using Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and After Effects and then incorporated into 3ds Max and Maya.  In all he had 7 months to create the visuals for the movie along with a team six After Effects animators and a few cg artists.

After Avatar picked up an Academy Award for visual effects I’m certain Neil Huxely’s work will be in high demand.

Read the interview with Neil Huxley |  Inventing Interactive on the movie Avatar | Prime Focus’ press release on the interface graphics

Via Ideas Are Awesome

Newcastle Brown Ale

Interactive agency Struck/Axiom with offices in Salt Lake City, UT and Portland, OR recently relaunched the brand focused site for Newcastle Brown Ale (with the help of agencies Vitro Robertson and TWC).  Their new approach uses almost nothing but beautifully shot video scenes and minimal text overlays.  Impressive work!

Explore the Newcastle site

Bank Run - Interactive Action Movie

Remember the Choose Your Own Adventure books as a kid?  Bank Run is like combining one of those book, with the production quality of an action movie, and an interactive game.  Interactive shop SilkTricky run by Chris Lund recently launched this site along with part II that’s playable as an iPhone game.

Go ahead.  Kill some time on this site.  It’s worth it.

Playstation Refresh From Odopod

San Francisco based digital agency Odopod refreshes Sony Playstation’s site with a well organized, clean, and fresh design.  I’m a big fan of the straight forward design of the content, but still allowing the featured imagery to be displayed larger than life.

Wranglers Blue Bell

Great mixture of product, video and audio in this interactive site for Wrangers europe by Kokokaka.

Myspace Fan Video

In an attempt to help revitalize the struggling Myspace brand, BBH London and interactive shop Domani Studios launched a site that adds your pictures into various popular music videos.  It certainly is not a new interactive gimmick, but it was executed very well.

One unexpected feature is it allows you to sign in with Facebook connect to import your photos.  Maybe it is a sign that they’re going to begin focusing on their strength in music.

MUJI rhythm

Tokyo based interactive studio tha ltd. recently launched a site for Japanese retailer MUJI. The site combines products and video all to a catch rhythm.  tha ltd. was also behind a lot of the UNIQLO sites and the architecture firm Wonderwall.

UNIQLO Interactive Projects Archive

Over the past several years the Japanese retail chain has come up with some of the most innovative interactive projects, many with the help of the interactive agencies tha ltd. and Bascule Inc. Some of the most interesting campaigns have bridged online interaction with real-time in store or ‘on the street’ content - UNIQLO Grid and Tokyo Fashion Map

via Jarred Bishop and Daniel Howells

I Make My Case

Case-Mate launches I Make My Case that allows you to create your own iPhone case using design elements from popular artists Matt W. Moore, Chuck Anderson, Joshua Davis, Nigel Dennis, Anthony Yankovic, Ray Frenden, and others.  Even if you’re not in the market to buy a new iPhone case checkout the site for it’s design and animation.

Site by Proto HQ, Edwin Tofslie, and Chuck Anderson.