Well the seasons seem to be getting stranger and stranger this year. I went to Philadelphia this past weekend and besides catching up with my old friends I also got to visit the Philadelphia Cherry Blossom Festival far to the north of the city where I’d never been. It’s quite a lovely area dominated by greenery, museums and the Philadelphia Zoo. We also tried to go to the Van Gogh exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, one of the most superb examples of museum architecture on the East Coast in my opinion, but it was sold out.
Of course all seasons and lovely weather depend largely on one thing: the sun. The sun inspires awe like nothing else around us. To civilizations of old it was life-giving force that was often worshiped, its death every night and rebirth every morning an apt metaphor for the cyclic nature of our world, life, and death. Today we know our sun is merely one of many, and relatively small at that, but more than ever we can appreciate how fortunate we are to have its warmth here on spaceship Earth.
The physical embodiment of the sun’s importance on Earth is plant life, the means by which all the energy that hits our planet gets converted into the resources we use. In fact, practically all the energy we consume comes from the sun indirectly excepting non-fossil fuels. Mathilde Roussel puts such greenery to work in her art as a series of sculptures invoking equal parts decomposition, growth and Pompeii.
Roussel’s work largely consists of abstract shapes, sometimes involving the human form in bits and pieces. This series, Life in Grass, seems to be a rare example of her use of a full human form using the novelty of the dynamic medium to great effect. Grass itself is the diet for many animals including cows who produce the milk we so love to drink (excepting my lactose intolerant self that is). The branding agency Milkable has fully embraced all that creamy deliciousness with a lovely one page site that possesses some real character.
There’s so much to love about this website. From its fresh color palette to the adorable hover states on the main navigation, it’s easy to see the love and attention that went into the site. It possesses just the right amount of animation such that everything flows smoothly while also adding a unique feel and not overwhelming the user. I only wish they used a true Google map on their contact page with a mask instead of a static image.
The day’s video is clearly related to the sun and needs no extenuated segue like today’s website. It is worth mentioning that this video was created with the help of an iPad and some drawing application in particular. However this aspect of the project seems to have shoehorned in due to a sponsorship deal since it was only used in story boarding. From the behind the scenes it would appear the video itself was made using 3D animation and some kind of post-production filter or rendering method. Regardless, please enjoy this impressionist painting come to life with its fun, though somewhat forgettable, musical accompaniment.
The Sketching Mechanism is a series of weekly posts, published on Mondays, containing the artistic musings of Mobile Designer/Developer Ben Chirlin during our Monday morning meeting at the NY Creative Bunker as well as his inspiring artistic finds of the week.
