As I'm sure everyone knows, there will be a new Star Wars movie, to be released in 2015. I am cautiously optimistic about it- they can't do any worse than the three Star Wars prequels:

"Hold me, like you did by the lake on Naboo; so long ago when there was nothing but our love."

Anyway, JJ Abrams is an interesting choice of director, and I saw today that Darren Gilford has been listed on IMDB as the Production Designer, along with Rick Carter. I think this is a very good thing. I've mentioned Darren Gilford here before, in relation to his design work for Tron Legacy and Oblivion.

Rick Carter's previous work is stellar and Oscar-winning, whereas Darren Gilford's previous work is, so far, limited to his work on Tron Legacy and Oblivion. However, I think it's obvious that he has a serious talent at designing a very futuristic look and feel, which is also quite practical and functional. More importantly, his work is believable, regardless of the context. I have likened him to designers like Ron Cobb and Syd Mead.

The original Star Wars trilogy had a very tangible feel to it- it was futuristic, but believable. I think Rick Carter and Darren Gilford will do a great job, I think it's going to be a fantastic looking movie. I may even be getting a little excited about the movie.

Sidenote- I find it interesting, the number of items in Oblivion, that are contemporary items, that you can get today. The first of the two images above is quite obviously a Leatherman Skeletool, in custom white, and in the second image, there is a white Bieffe Boby Taboret. Good design is timeless.

It's hard to believe that we are into October already. I haven't posted since the end of June. There was one reason- the greatest reason- my son was born on August 8th 2013, and he has been keeping me busy in the evening times.

I'm also working on a few freelance gigs, as well as a new project that is nearly ready to go. It involves t-shirts and stickers and all sorts of other great merchandise. I'll be posting more shortly. 

Around this time of the year, my spare time (that which I use to update things, like this blog) becomes non-existant. This summer, aside from working freelance and setting up another business, my time has been taken up doing fun stuff.

So, as fodder for this blog, I'll be posting a couple of posts over the next week, regarding different things I am getting up to, in photo-form.

First off, I'm chairperson of the local art group and we are currently running our 35th annual art exhibition. The exhibition is six years older than I am. I have two pieces exhibited in it, as seen below. There is a lot of work put into running the exhibition for the week, we're a group of over 60 local artists and there was 220 pieces of art exhibited this year.

I saw Oblivion a couple of weeks ago, and I really liked it. I had blogged before about Tron: Legacy and how I loved the production design by Darren Gilford, and I also noted how he was the production designer for the, then, unreleased Oblivion as well. I'm pleased to report that it is another beautiful piece of work.

The production design reminds me of the work of Ron Cobb or Syd Mead- futuristic but believable, with the form of everything, following its function.

Another element that was particularly impressive was the user interfaces that the characters in the film interacted with. This was done by another past Tron: Legacy crew member, Bradley G Munkowitz, who was the Design Director for most of the holographic/UI elements used in Tron. On his website, he has described the production process for the Oblivion UI, and you should really take a moment to read it and check out the rest of his work.

Link originally seen on gedblog.com.

I have updated my design portfolio with a few recent pieces of work. Two of them relate to a little collective that my brother and I have set up, the Rainsford Creative Collective (it was a difficult naming process.)

The RCC is one of two separate ventures we are working on, but the RCC is the place where we will be able to work on projects that are at the point where the line between art and design starts to blur. We hope to create and work on projects that combine aspects of design, illustration, video, audio and photography.

I had already redrawn our the Rainsford family crest, so I plucked aspects of the crest out, namely the shield, helmet and deer head, simplified them and have incorporated them into a simple branding scheme to use while we get set up.

Also, I was able to register rainsford.ie which I had been meaning to do for a long time. I won't be squatting on it though, I'll be using it thoroughly.