Resources for Students
Fascinating set of sketches over at Deeplinking. Above is the original concept for what became Twitter. You can see the wireframe sketches for Vimeo and Flickr, and several others as well. See, we aren’t teaching you this process just to be mean- this is what people do! Plan first, execute later.
I’ve been a fan of the Moo mini cards for a long while, and they’ve taken their amazing customer service and nifty “put as many different images as you want” technology into the standard-size business card. As you can see above, these are an AMAZING way to show off your work, especially as a visual artist. Plus, you can get them in short runs instead of having 2000 cards left over with the wrong phone number on them.
1. Thou shalt not abuse Flash.
2. Thou shalt not hide content.
3. Thou shalt not clutter.
4. Thou shalt not overuse glassy reflections.
5. Thou shalt not name your Web 2.0 company with an unnecessary surplus or dearth of vowels.
6. Thou shalt worship at the altar of typography.
7. Thou shalt create immersive experiences.
8. Thou shalt be social.
9. Thou shalt embrace proven technologies.
10. Thou shalt make content king.
Frederic Terral’s Right Brain Terrain is chock full of interesting and beautifully-designed ephemera. My favourite part, however, is his Notebook, especially the visual representation of the evolution of his logo.
The Nicktoons Network Animation Festival is on the hunt for a selection of original short films created in any style of animation that do not exceed 10 minutes in length. Submitted shorts will be chosen by a pre-selection jury and will be showcased on-air, online and during the network’s exclusive live event in October. Prizes will be allotted for five awards: Grand Jury Award; Student Award; Producer’s Choice, Viewer’s Choice Award; and the festival’s Grand Prize, the Nick Development Award.
The winner of the Nick Development Award will receive $30,000 towards the development of a show bible, pilot script and storyboard along with the guidance of the Nick development team. Additionally, Nicktoons Network has partnered with mtvU, MTV’s college network reaching over 750 campuses nationwide, to tap into their acclaimed Best Film On Campus student filmmaker community. The festival will be featured on Bestfilmoncampus.com throughout the summer, and the winner of the Student Award will also have the opportunity to see their work featured nationally as the “mtvU Film of the Week.”
Here’s some info you might not know! When you apply for a student loan, you are also applying for a Canada Millennium Scholarship Bursary (CMS). It’s available for full-time students who have the highest assessed need and who meet all the program’s eligibility requirements.
If you’re enrolled in an eligible undergraduate program at a post-secondary institution in Canada and are at least 60% of the way through the year, you could earn a Millennium Award that will reduce your student loan debt. All you have to do is make sure your Pre-Study Report is completed and that you’re working hard in school!
The bursary amount varies by province. For instance, every year in Nova Scotia $8,600,000 is invested in this program, with approximately 3700 award recipients. I did some math, and that equals an average of $2,324 per recipient!
The awards are distributed according to the level of assessed need. So don’t be surprised if you are happily nearing graduation only to be told that as much as $2300 of your student loan doesn’t need to be paid back!
More information at: https://studentloands.ednet.ns.ca/cms01.shtml
Oh man. I’ve run out of time to show you the rest of the posts I’ve got lined up for this week, but these SCAD shorts are just killing me. Short, monthly videos by the Savannah College of Art and Design, these videos comprise film, special effects, animation, acting, sculpting (see the pencil face above!), and so much more.
Each month there’s a naming contest for the newest short.
To top it all off, each video has a behind-the-scenes section as well where you can see them setting up the shots. I just love behind the scenes 
Images can be found just about everywhere on the mighty internet. Below you’ll find some interesting gateways to larger image collections. Some are for free, some ask for hard bucks. Some are copyrighted, others are not or even others have a Creative Commons license. If you have located an image somewhere in the digital chaos of the world wide web, always check the conditions of use.
LiveSurface is a resource for ad/packaging/product designers. Each high-quality photo comes with pre-built layer masks, vanishing-point planes, shadows, highlights… all organized layer-by-layer. They are expensive singly but if you did a lot of product design you would do well to buy some of their packages.