The relaunch of ACHT FRANKFURT´s award winning website. The next generation of the dynamic showreel concept. In todays high definition quality. Supplemented by a slim, easy-to-use CMS backend, the system automatically adds each newly uploaded spot to the showreel published online. Check out the different PLAYLISTS with high quality works of ACHT FRANKFURT and the section ABOUT with the same interface logic. Thanks to the great team in Berlin: Jenny Fitz and Duc-Thien Bui.

Full HD motion production for an interactive terminal installation displayed on a huge 65" plasma screen. When you work in these dimensions, there is no excuse for cutting corners such as “nobody will notice this tiny fleck anyway.” My contribution to the project involved devising the visual multi-frame concept, After Effects compositing, final merging of the individual audio and video assets as well as supervision of the 3D operators to bring the information graphics to life. For a closer peek at this large-scale project, check out the online version.

A compilation of several interactive flash animations for the Mercedes-Benz GLK- and B-Class advertising campaigns. Limited to exactly 30 kilobytes per file, the Flash ad format calls for a very precise approach. Each fraction counts and requires a tightrope walk between great design and tweaking keyframes to save yet another kilobyte. The true mystery: Why are the resulting ads always exactly 29.9 kilobytes?

The task: To create an invitation concept for Shanghai DGM’s annual Christmas bash that would not only demonstrate the agency’s knack for integrated campaigns but also introduce clients to their new interactive department.

Based on the event’s overall theme – baking cookies for charity – and bridging the gap between print and online, the resulting invitation emphasises the event’s hands-on and interactive focus. Printed on parchment and rolled up to resemble store-bought baking paper, the physical invite only serves as a teaser, revealing just a few letters of the entire message.

To find out more, guests were encouraged to visit a dedicated website, then line up their transparent clue with the onscreen equivalent. By superimposing the material and the digital realm, they would unlock the true message and receive their password for the actual event (see video). The biggest challenge? Devising a calibration method suitable for all screen sizes and solutions. Check out the website for a closer look.

Motion Design for Audi’s new design study ‘metroproject quattro’. This trailer was released parallel to the launch of Audi's new concept car at the 2007 Tokyo Motor Show. For a closer look at the car, check out the website.

A small contribution to the Audi A4 website. This movie introduces the Audi A4 drive assistance systems. The development of the motor industry is going at hyper speed. Don't you associate terms like ‘adaptive cruise control’, ‘automatic distance’, ‘lane assist’ to spaceships?

A follow-up to their wildly successful ‘them 5’ website, featuring bottle designs by MK12, LOBO and The Designer’s Republic, among others, Coca-Cola decided to give its special edition aluminium bottle campaign a new lease of life. A collaboration between Paranoid (design) and Faithless (music), the resulting short movie introduced us to ‘Mr. Néant’, an ambassador for the ‘Coke side of life’ who infuses everything he touches with a positive twist.

Truly interactive, our playful website encourages users to make the most of their input devices (keyboard, mouse, microphone and webcam) to create their very own bottle design – under the able guidance of Mr. Néant.

My contribution to the project: all motion direction, flash compositing, merging of assets and supervision of two 3D operators as well as the seamless and invisible mix of PNG frame-by-frame animations, FLV clips, vector frame-by-frames and Flash tweens.

Sounds familiar? Asked to present your work, you find yourself stuck with a string of Powerpoint charts guaranteed to make everyone’s eyes glaze over. Surely, there must be a better way to showcase your stuff than this tried, tested and extremely dull means of head-on presentation?

I-D Media commissioned me to create an imagetrailer that would highlight and explain the agency’s philosophy in a more emotional and engaging way. To this end, I focussed on the visual concept, storyboarding and production in After Effects.

Best known for heading a string of successful music labels in Germany, Tim Renner’s latest endeavour and label spin-off, Motor FM, has already left its mark on the capital’s musical landscape. All set to conquer the visual realm, Motor recently entered into collaboration with IPTV experts I-D Media to launch their very own TV station. Entirely ad (and ring tone) free, this revolutionary concept features nothing but unadulterated music and user-generated content.

Pre-launch, I-D Media asked me to come up with a fresh on-air design, a number of station IDs as well as two imagetrailers. Building on the station’s premise of straightforward, gritty purity that sets it apart from contemporary rivals like VIVA or MTV, I ditched sketchpad and mouse for hands-on, old school DIY – no key frames, no polish and straight from the garage with love.

A new take on basic model building, our small team experimented with chopped-up paper printouts and filmed our makeshift masterpieces with the cheapest of camera’s in the agency’s basement. The resulting low-key stop-motion animation swaps sophisticated plug-ins for scissor, glue, cardboard, oil, air spray, pins and fishing line – and looks all the better for it.

Some of you might already know sehsucht’s stunning - and award-winning - ‘Sound of Summer’ spot for Mercedes-Benz. Our micro site took this linear ad to the interactive realm. Commissioned by Wiesbaden-based agency Scholz & Volkmer and a collaboration with Jenny Fitz, who designed the beautiful environments, I was responsible for the site’s project management, concept, client presentation and Flash production. As it was part of a seasonal campaign, the website is currently offline, but please feel free to check out the video capture for a general impression.

At their very first self-initiated conference, Scholz & Volkmer impressed with a carefully selected roster of renowned guest speakers, including Joachim Sauter from ART+COM, audiovisual artist and musician Carsten Nicolai, architect Holger Hoffmann of UN Studio van Berkel & Bos and Casey Reas, software artist and initiator of ,Processing’. (http://www.see-conference.org).

Against this illustrious setting, Jenny Fitz and I were asked to provide the backdrop visuals displayed behind the speakers. To this end, we built a dedicated, interactive Flash application that would give its operator subtle and invisible switching capabilities to control the timetable agenda. Check out the captured video for a few extracts. Incidentally, Jenny Fitz also designed the conference’s flyer, posters and print materials. The entire project won the Corporate Design Award 2007.

Back in the days, working for MTV seemed like a dream come true. After relocating to Berlin, I found myself a lot closer to this childhood aspiration. My first point of call: a concept for the launch of kid’s channel NICK Germany, in collaboration with designer Jenny Fitz and Berlin-based agency gosub. And as one job leads to another, we soon moved on to the packaging design for Nick On Air. Although our input encompassed the entire package of on-air visuals (opener, closer, wipes, channel ident), all animation and compositing took place in Flash, requiring only a final export to a TV-friendly PNG sequence.

For a closer look, take a look at this short compilation or turn to the next project featuring five different packaging designs.

A range of five distinct packaging designs for the placement of music ads, games, movie trailers and books. For more background information on this project, please read the description of the project above.

This is one of my all-time favourites – for one of Germany’s most creative talent forges, Less Rain. Together with the agency’s own Lars Eberle I devised a creative web special for famous stock image heavyweights Getty Images. A particular honour, they commissioned only a select few web-savvy creatives like Tomato or The Barbarian Group to create 10 interactive works of art in 10 image-related categories ranging from ‘light’ and ‘information’ to ‘emotion’ and ‘space’, with full access to the huge wealth of exceptional pictures dormant in the vaults of Getty Images.

Assigned the sections ‘colour’ and ‘truth’, we decided to bring those still images back to life. For ‘colour’, I explored the effects of animating just the tiniest of details, a few pixels at most. To this end, users can pick a colour from the image and feed it to the hungry pixels where every shade triggers a different movement, lively or plodding, alert or subdued. For a sporting touch, some images require just the right colour to carry on. Enjoy this pixel-soaked adventure - and expect a rewarding surprise!

Motion Design for the SEGA Japan Playstation 2 game ‘Ryu ga Gotoku’. This was my very first job for Less Rain, in collaboration with Flash Programmer André Michelle.

The dark, visually stylish game is a more mature, adult-oriented adventure set in modern day Tokyo´s Yakuza scene. The website complements the game by letting the user examine a naked body covered in full by Japanese Yakuza tattoos. Parts of the tattoos link to game specific content such as screenshots, stories, and ‘making of’ movies.

My first fully-fledged freelance job after an extended stint at Scholz & Volkmer, the interface for GREY’s corporate website plays on their claim to "create value". In this vein, visitors may create or assign value to any section of the website. By dragging the centre they can pick and adjust the content according to preference without loading or switching between sections or sub-segments.

As part of their tenth anniversary celebrations, Wiesbaden agency Scholz & Volkmer commissioned an interactive installation with web cams and position tracking. Trailing all party guests over four separate locations, the installation relies on split screen visuals and incorporates characteristics submitted by the guests at registration, e. g. ‘tea or coffee’, ’vegetarian’ or ‘age bracket’.

With plenty of leeway for unusual combinations, the resulting screens made for interesting viewing. All guys at the bar and ladies on the dancefloor? A carnivore surrounded by vegetarians? The position tracking technology was supplied by mika timing whose ChampionChip system usually helps to track runner times at marathons.

Due to other commitments, I had to abandon the project at the rough concept stage. Thanks to Samuel Ruckstuhl und Mario Dold for the finishing.

Visuals for ACHT FRANKFURT’s annual summer party. At the time, I was toying with the concept for a dedicated VJ tool, a flash based application that would react to the music and allow for additional live control. The combination of VLIGHT.CTRL and a KORG microKONTROL MIDI Controller provided me with plenty of options for parameters like colour, size and other visual aspects.

For a more personal touch, I created visuals of all the guests’ names, tracking their progress through flirting, drinking, chatting and dancing, then tweaking, scaling and shading these markers in time to the music. So, the busier the party, the more colourful and intricate the visuals became! Check out the embedded movie for some digicam clips of the party and a live video capture of the application’s output.

Now in its 18th (and last) instalment, the perennially popular Mercedes-Benz Mixed Tape compilation features a range of free downloads by international newcomers. My contribution to this web-based project: a music visualisation tool for the compilation’s online player. Besides a Fourier analysis of the song in play, the visualisation also reflects each track’s overall popularity (measured in no. of downloads). No frills and comparatively ancient (Flash 6), this simple, mock 3D exercise is still up and running.

My graduate project – and a secret favourite. Most post production portfolios come as DVD showreels of selected video clips. A tried and tested formula, but also a problem when new projects are added to the mix. To avoid the time and expense of constant re-editing, we developed a more interactive and readily updateable online medium – the dynamic showreel website.

Supplemented by a slim, easy-to-use CMS backend, the system automatically adds each newly uploaded spot to the showreel published online. For extra flexibility, the website’s ‘client login’ feature enables the lightning-speed creation of customised showreels. Once selected from the pool of clips in the CMS, the dynamic website creates a dedicated mirror featuring the new showreel tailored to a prospective client’s interests, and all this without any further editing or separate mailout.

Winner of 13 awards, including the Grand Prix at the Golden Awards of Montreux Swiss and a Bronze Cyber Lion at Cannes, this project would not have been possible without the kind support of Scholz & Volkmer CD Heike Brockmann, designer Jenny Fitz and CMS wizard Manfred Kraft.

Frequently compared to David Lynch’s mesmerising movies and storytelling techniques, this interactive online movie for Mercedes-Benz allows users to assemble their own timeline from a selection of single scenes. My input: joint concept development and prototype programming – unfortunately, prior commitments prevented me from seeing this project through beyond the concept stage.

Incidentally, it stayed in the family: my brother Duc-Thien Bui programmed the site and Jenny Fitz took care of all design-related issues. Rejoining the project in its final stages, I devised the banner ad and final sound design from mixed, cut-up and modified snippets of the original soundtrack.

Trust me to turn a lazy weekend into something far more productive: the brainchild of designer Martin Grothmaak (projekttriangle, Stuttgart), their photography website A4Avenger still needed an extra touch of life. Static by nature, we decided to turn the medium on its head and create a weird and wonderful piece of art . Mixing natural elements with original photography, the resulting interactive collages dare you to delve right in and explore to your heart’s content. A total of four separate levels beckons to lead and lure you through the site’s deceptive imagery – only one of ten makes it all the way through! Click "explore avenger" and enjoy the ride.

Back to the basics: An early exercise in Motion Design involving animation of the home page and development of the website’s intro (now replaced), product selector and interactive animation in the team section. Incidentally, I am a big fan of Ingo Maurer’s work, a paragon of passion and funny ideas, mixing techniques and technology with some very emotional approaches. My mission statement altogether!