I think I’ll just keep watching this amazing exclusive preview of Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen over and over again for hours instead of actually spending money on your film! Sorry! I bet it’s great and all but this video is like whoa, blowing my mind! I don’t see how the robot punching could get better than this. All it’s missing is petulant Wii-hater Shia LaBeouf screaming ‘Optimus!’
Sadly, I can’t get into franchise. I narrowly avoided getting entangled in the merchandise as a kid, never watched the cartoon, and left the first Transformers movie with a blinding headache. Plus, I have an irrational (… or perhaps not?) dislike/hatred of Shia LaBeouf which prevents me from seeing this, along with my irrational (… or perhaps not?) dislike/hatred of racism? Which means that as much as I love completely irrational, hyperkinetic violence taken to simply surreal levels, and I mean really, I love Crank 2, I will fight for your right to see it at the dollar theater, please know that, I just cannot get behind the ostensibly amazing concept of robots punching each other.
I wish I could be so excited. Can I still be a real American if I don’t like a Michael Bay movie? Maybe something is broken in me.
Before the Lonely Island covered it, cool people already knew: Cool Guys Don’t Look At Explosions. But that’s not my point. My point is that I have this link for you, which I will drop on you, and then I will walk away while it EXPLODES all in your face. This is safe for work, incidentally, in case that last sentence left you feeling hesitant. Behold:
[Cyber Lions! Rawr! Hire Me!] As fun as exploring this was, it was more fun to send the link to people in my office and watch them go through it. Half of them stopped in the middle! One of them clicked non-stop just to get to the end and missed all of the jokes! It was a little disappointing! But thanks anyway, Bridge Worldwide, for understanding the complicated nature of my relationship with banner ads.
We need more banner ads that can engage and keep you on the page if we’re going to redefine the contract advertisers and viewers have implicitly agreed to. I think the contract currently goes like this: “we’ll make the ads, and you guys ignore them. cool? cool.” Advertising like this can change that into: “Look, Internet Friend, you’re bored. We were bored too. So we made this for you. We hope you like it. There’s a product we’re selling here too but it’s not so important. We just hope you like this thing we made. You do? Thanks :) Brand X was cool enough to let us do this, so maybe you should check them out.”
What other great interactive have you seen recently? Post about it in the comments! If we get enough submissions we can have our own, incredibly pathetic award show!
I found this to be an excellent and enlightening summary. Only, what do I know, I’m just some dummy. Perhaps someone more involved in finance could tell if this truly represents reality? Only, I’m not quite convinced they know what’s going on, either:
Makes me want to dig up After Effects and get to work. This sort of type-heavy visualization is always a treat to watch, but I wonder if it’s already jumped the shark. After the intro to the 2007 film The Kingdom (apologies for the crappy cam video, youtube was mostly turning up Kingdom Hearts 2 cinematics), how much longer until this is as big a cliche as the fully justified, multiple-weight all-caps Gotham type made famous in Obama campaign pronouncements?
But we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, and before we burn it I know I’d like to dance a few jigs – because it does look like an awful lot of fun. Anyway, design nerd-ism aside, what are some other topics that could be more fully brought to life or better explained with animation like this? Maybe, I don’t know, dating? I know there are a lot of people out there that could use some pointers…
[We could get really down into detail there, including topics to avoid in conversation (star wars), tips for initiating and sustaining conversation (not beginning with star wars), physical intimacy tutorials (kind of like that part when Luke shot the photon torpedo down the ventilation shaft...), et cetera. Then we could really start making money hand over fist when we released another illustrated tutorial explaining the phenomenon of Star Wars to the uninitiated. Excellent.]
Walking to the gym monday, I noticed that someone had carved into the sidewalk along 14th street the following message: “THEY HAVE YOU ENSLAVED.” For sidewalk graffiti, I thought, that’s pretty awesome, and bonus points for the weighty medium. I laughed out loud, shook my head, and then worried for a moment that someone might be watching and would think I was crazy.
The sad thing is, if they knew what I had read and understood my reaction, they probably still would have concluded that I was crazy. I’ll try to take a picture, but, you know, I hope I don’t look too crazy taking pictures of the ground.
