Compositors gone wild! Very moody layer-heavy design from Cape Town, with rudimentary but ambitious animation. It’s good to see people pushing themselves.

“The Tale of How” by the Blackheart Gang:

High-quality and making-of at theblackheartgang.com.

According to this AnimWatch interview it’s mostly pen and ink, scanned in and colored in Photoshop, with some 3D and live action effects like splashing water and fog — up to 300 animated layers per shot. Having access to studio-grade equipment helps with such top-heavy data-munging; one of the artists works at South African studio Blackginger.

(via Motionographer.)

Valve has a geeky rundown of the design theory and rendering techniques in their recent game Team Fortress 2:

(High-res at Stage6)

The above video is an accompaniment to a white paper, “Illustrative Rendering in Team Fortress 2″.

It’s clear from this paper that the successful visual design in this game is not the result of precocious or ineffable artistic ability. It’s all intentional and well-reasoned.

Of note is their attention to the silhouette. Not only was each character designed to have a distinct and immediately-recognizable silhouette, but the colors and shapes of their costumes were designed to reinforce that silhouette. The characters also enjoy perpetual rim lighting, to that same end.

SillyPinkBunnies.com is Jeremy Fish, whose work features prominently on t-shirts at Upper Playground.

“sanfranfishco”

Mr. Fish has a solo show up at San Francisco gallery White Walls called “Sink or Swim.”

According to the Flickr set:

The show entitled “TROPSIM” is inspired by the 1908 Oxford published book “Types of Floral Mechanics”. These images feature floral dissections in dynamically generated systems.

Emergent math-art à la Tufte and Presstube — my favorite.

And here’s another set of Davis’ design work interpreted by Brooklyn sculpture studio Commonwealth.