David Schonauer
By David Schonauer Friday January 17, 2014
Georgia, Alabama and Florida are locked in an epic battle over the fresh water from their once bountiful rivers, including the Chattahoochee--the waterway that photographers and filmmakers David and
Michael Hanson remember from growing up in Atlanta. Now based in Seattle, the brothers returned for a 30-day canoe trip down the Chattahoochee to create a documentary film exploring the issues
surrounding the South's so-called … Read the full Story >>
By David Schonauer Friday June 7, 2013
"I believe tablet displays such as the iPad should not be considered a threat for other media--books, comics, movies--let alone a substitute," says Rafa Alvarez, who completed his MFA in illustration
at New York's School of Visual Arts last year. For his thesis project, Alvarez created an interactive e-book for the iPad that takes viewers inside a story by allowing them to interact with … Read the full Story >>
By David Schonauer Thursday February 14, 2013
Continuing with our series featuring winners of the first annual International Motion Art Awards, we spotlight an astonishing animated cri de coeur from illustrator Louisa Bertman. Her 31-second piece
graphically immortalizes the real-life moment from March 26, 2011, when a Libyan woman, Iman al-Obeidi, burst into the Rixos Hotel in Tripoli to tell members of the foreign press that she had been
raped and … Read the full Story >>
By David Schonauer Thursday March 19, 2015
As an illustrator, Toronto-based Balvis Rubess has vivid way of explaining things. Among his most memorable works are three masterpieces created for Melcher Media publishing in New York--"The Pop-up
Book of Phobias," "The Pop-up Book of Nightmares" and "The Pop-up Book of Sex." (Open that last one and see what pops up under headings like "Missionary Position" and "Mile-High Club.") As an
animator, he … Read the full Story >>
By David Schonauer Friday December 20, 2013
Eric Daigh is a Michigan-based technology artist--or, as he is also known, a pushpin artist--who has re-interpreted the art of photographic portraiture by altering what he calls "the delivery method."
In essence, Daigh "prints" his photographs using thousands of colored pushpins in place of pixels. You can see him at work in his International Motion Art Award-winning stop-motion video, which shows
Daigh creating a … Read the full Story >>
By David Schonauer Wednesday April 1, 2015
We recently featured Toronto-based illustrator and animator Balvis Rubess's International Motion Art Award 3-winning surrealist homage to Salvador Dali and Man Ray. Today we spotlight another of his
IMAA 3-winning animations, this one the opening title sequence for an imaginary sci-fi TV show called "Universe Man and His Dog Proton." The idea for the 21-second rocket blast of color and sound was
an illustration … Read the full Story >>
By David Schonauer Friday April 17, 2015
The final season of AMC's "Mad Men" series is now underway, and its fans will be waiting to see the fate of Don Draper, the complex '60s-era ad man who wants everything and finds anguish because he
gets it. One avid viewer of the show is Max Friedman, a senior at Kean University in Union, NJ. Friedman, a graphic design major, was inspired to … Read the full Story >>
By David Schonauer Friday July 26, 2013
"I usually describe myself as suffering from creative A.D.D.," says Toronto-based illustrator and animator Balvis Rubess. "I'm interested in most things creative, and, once I get interested, I dive
headlong into that endeavor." Rubess, who once worked as a junior designer in the R&D department of Porsch AG, in Weissach, Germany, and created a series of popular pop-up books for Melcher Media in
New … Read the full Story >>
By David Schonauer Friday June 28, 2013
When she was attending the Rhode Island School of Design in the 1980s, photographer and filmmaker Jill Greenberg created a body of work she describes "drawings, paintings, and sculptures of little
disgusting men in suits." In 2012 she returned to the theme, creating a 6:30 slow-motion video that comments witheringly on the culture of power and entitlement. The work was inspired by a dinner … Read the full Story >>
By David Schonauer Tuesday October 11, 2016
It's now mid-October, just a few weeks from election day ... and AI-AP's Big Talk event, which takes place on Wednesday, November 2, from 7PM to 9PM at the SVA Theater in Manhattan. This year's Big
Talk will present the winners of the International Motion Art Awards 5 competition in a screening and panel discussion. The following night brings The Party, celebrating the winners … Read the full Story >>
By David Schonauer Friday May 10, 2013
What should a woman do if she finds out her boyfriend has a penchant for taking photos of neighbors "focusing on breasts and butts?" That was the question put to the popular "Dear Prudence"
personal-advice column of Slate magazine. And how should such a topic of discussion be illustrated? Animator Rob Donnelly chose to reference the greatest of all cinematic voyeurs, L.B. Jefferies, the … Read the full Story >>
By David Schonauer Friday July 19, 2013
In 2012, PBS's Independent Lens series aired a two-part documentary called "Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide," which spotlighted a number of people doing
extraordinary things to empower women around the world. The job of creating a main title sequence for the documentary fell to US design and production company Thornberg & Forester, which created a
remarkable 75-second piece mixing … Read the full Story >>
By Peggy Roalf Wednesday October 26, 2022
Since DART: Design Arts Daily launched in September 2006, artist/illustrators and their sketchbooks have been a constant presence, starting with Peter Kuper’s Oaxaca Journal on November 10, 2006. The series continued with another 15 installments, which resulted in the publication of Diario de Oaxaca (Bilingual, PM Press, 2009)—a beautifully produced volume with a linen cover. The book saw some high visibility, and … Read the full Story >>
By David Schonauer Friday June 14, 2013
What does it take to overcome difficult, even frightening circumstances? Courage, and some luck, says Alejandro G. Antonio, a recent graduate of New York's Fashion Institute of Technology whose
two-minute animated short "Going Home" was selected as a winner of the first annual International Motion Art Awards competition. "The idea behind my animation came from my own experiences as an
immigrant and the difficulties … Read the full Story >>
By David Schonauer Friday October 18, 2013
How do you visualize the economic impact that a major public university has on a state? That was the mission facing Santiago Uceda, an art director at Oregon State University, when he was given the
job of creating a 30-second commercial for OSU. Uceda co-directed and animated the International Motion Art Awards-winning spot, which broke down a staggeringly abstract number--$2 billion--into
real-world concepts like … Read the full Story >>
By David Schonauer Thursday March 20, 2014
Australian filmmaker David Maurice Smith's documentary "Living in the Shadows" is look at the Barkindji, an aboriginal people living in a community called Wilcannia in New South Wales. "Like many
other Aboriginal Australians, the Barkindji people live in the deep shadows of the stereotypes attached to being indigenous in this country. Despite being the traditional keepers of one of the most
prosperous countries on … Read the full Story >>
By David Schonauer Friday January 25, 2013
Our series featuring winners of the first annual International Motion Awards continues with a 44-second stop-motion illustration titled Skyscraper, created for the digital version of Wired magazine.
"The magazine's 'Play' section was featuring daredevils. There were many kinds of adrenaline junkies being featured, but the opening motion illustration needed to be about one daredevil genre: the
human cannonball," says photographer and transitioning filmmaker Hugh … Read the full Story >>
By David Schonauer Friday May 31, 2013
One of the leading young fine-art photographers in the world, Julia Fullerton-Batten is best known for projects tracing the transition of adolescent girls into womanhood. More recently she herself has
transitioned into filmmaking. "It was a huge learning curve," she says of the switch from still to motion. Among her early filmmaking efforts is an advertising spot created for Breast Cancer Care, the
UK's … Read the full Story >>
By David Schonauer Thursday August 21, 2014
Launched in 2000, the New York City-based Vilcek Foundation raises public awareness of the contributions of immigrants to science, art, and culture in the United States through grants and other
programs. In 2013, the foundation decided to create a branding identity for a series of films it produces, and it turned to the Thornberg & Forester production company. The result was 30 seconds of … Read the full Story >>
By David Schonauer Thursday July 17, 2014
Ampersands are everywhere, but have you ever thought about how important they are? They bind together names and ideas with graphic sturdiness and style. And throughout history they have relieved
mankind from the tiresome task of writing the word "and." When the New Republic asked New York City design duo Sagmeister & Walsh to create an ampersand illustration for the opening page of the … Read the full Story >>
