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craigwinslow · 4 years ago

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2020: 🌘 Perpetual Pause

Every year, I enjoy making this animated map portraying my movement as a display of energy and progress through the year. Compared to a wildly active 2019, this year strikes a much heavier tone.

Ironically, the mantra I set for 2020 focused on slowing down, but this wasn’t exactly what I had in mind. Cancelled, postponed, delayed. Like many other people, the majority of my work for 2020 was filed into one of these categories.

That said, I’ve been fortunate to continue work remotely, having spent most of the year getting frugal, and looking forward to whenever this ends. Aside from two camping trips, and one trip to the coast, I’ve been in Portland ever since May.

Everything considered, I strangely accomplished what I meant to do in 2020. Hunkering down led to developing a solid daily routine— a far cry from my typical pace the past few years, but one that has helped manifest normalcy and structure. It became a year to truly slow down, realign, unlearn, and reassess. The best way I can describe this year is a 9-month weird dreamscape living in perpetual pause.

Here’s what I ended up doing in 2020:

Brilliant! Jackpot (Postponed)

Right after the Tim Burton exhibit launched, The Neon Museum and I knew we wanted to follow up with a brand new, drastically bigger, better version of Brilliant! called Jackpot. The plan was to install in April, so I was fully immersed in Brilliant! Jackpot the first three months of 2020—creating the most exciting, diverse, and nostalgic version of this exhibit. Everything was ready to install in March, and then the COVID-19 shutdowns began. We remotely installed the original version of Brilliant! while we put an indefinite hold on Jackpot.

This is when everything flipped sideways.

Lockdown in Los Angeles

The biggest positive of this year? It brought my partner and I much closer together. Looking back, I can’t believe we flew to Hawaii in February, but I’m so glad we did. Early March I flew down to LA, and cancelled my return flight. Jessica and I had only been dating for a few months, and suddenly found ourselves moved in together, during the start of a pandemic. It was either going to work out, or it wasn’t.

Fortunately for us, it really worked. I lived down in LA for two months, during which Jessica lost her job due to the pandemic, and we ended up advancing rough plans for her to move up to Portland. On May 1st, we made the 15-hr drive from Los Angeles to Portland, and only stopped 3 times for gas (and one time for In-N-Out).

XR Talk Interview

I was very thankful to join Paul and Spencer on this podcast shortly after the world drastically changed due to COVID-19 shutdowns. This conversation happened as my focus turned from in-person projections to safe and distanced artwork and the ways I could take advantage of virtual mediums to bring people together. Watch here

Lockdown Letterheads

The first-ever virtual Letterheads! I previously attended Letterheads in Tokyo and London, which were wonderful experiences in their own right, but Lockdown Letterheads was special. A virtual meet-up with 24 hours of programming that any sign painter and guilder from around the world could attend! Sam Roberts, who has organized Letterheads in the past, asked me to co-host with several other Letterheads Alumni. I also led a presentation about Light Capsules, ghost signs, and shared some of Dr. Ken Jones' work.

The Wild VR Interview

I had a fantastic conversation with the team behind The Wild, a product instrumental in creating the Tim Burton exhibition at The Neon Museum in late 2019. This case study focused on my process of implementing immersive team collaboration in VR to build the exhibit from across the world before installation—an ideal tool for 2020. Read it here.

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The Neon Museum 360 Virtual Tour

We had an opportunity to create a virtual tour of the boneyard thanks to global virtualization due to the pandemic. For the first time, the museum could give anyone across the world access to experience the museum. I built and shipped a Matterport kit, then worked remotely with Steve Siwinski of The Neon Museum to execute a full scan of the main boneyard. Working with their archival team, we created over 120 informational hot spots so virtual visitors could view historical photos and information about each sign along the way.

Pre-Visualization in Ventuz - under NDA

A continuation of a secret ongoing client project, due to launch to the public next year. I've been part of a team working on real time graphics and a new playback platform for a large scale integration. The creation of a custom pre-visualization environment led into the production phase of this long-term project.

Rise Up, Show Up, Unite

A call to action in support of the Biden/Harris campaign, started by Jessica Hiche and Adé Hogue. I created this 3-dimensional looping graphic in a day, first designing in illustrator, animating and modeling in Blender 3D, then exporting from Premiere. It was inspiring to see so many other creatives using different mediums come together and express their support using the same prompt. You can see more at riseupshowupunite.vote.

Intel Creator Spotlight

It's always exciting to dive back into a previous project with newfound hindsight and experience. For this artist spotlight with Intel, I discussed my concept design and creative direction for the pre-game intro with the Trail Blazers for NBA Playoffs 2018.

Thanks to Intel for the opportunity and the editors at Art of Visuals for making magic out of the interview, b-roll, and behind-the-scenes footage we provided. Filming this in the middle of a pandemic was an interesting— but not impossible—challenge! Intel dropped off a lighting kit, and my partner, Jessica, filmed everything in 4K using her commercial photography gear.

This home studio structure ended up being advantageous for the next project...

Adobe MAX 2020 - Behind the Light, with Takuma Nakata, Sponsored by Intel

Dare I say... the most exciting thing that happened this year?! The opportunity to have a keynote spot at Adobe MAX, a conference I attended many times over the years, was quite an honor. I got to have a conversion with fellow Adobe Residency Alumni, Takuma Nakata, about where our work intersects and how light, design, and art inspire us. We wanted to push the limits of a typical virtual video interview by recording 3D point clouds simultaneously that Takuma combined together in a nature-driven point cloud backdrop. It created a very interesting and exciting way to bring us together from Portland and Kyoto in a virtual space.

ATypI 2020 All Over Conference - Light Capsules and Lettering, Projection Mapping with Craig Winslow

Another virtual conference I spoke at this summer. I dove deep into the process behind Light Capsules with a live demonstration and discussed the next iteration of the project.

Concept: Beacon

As a result of my interview with XR Talk, HELO, a global talent agency, reached out with an opportunity to pitch a project bid. This led to some exciting creative conceptual design work for a potential client.

Concept: Telescope Tree

Another conceptual design worth sharing for a project bid that was brought to me through HELO. Sketches and 3D modeling came together quickly for this concept, which was pitched as "an artistic interpretation of a holiday display."

Vivid Coffee

For the past 5 years, I have led design at Vivid Coffee, creating everything from branding and packaging to merchandise.

Vivid recently moved into a gorgeous cafe space in downtown Burlington, Vermont. We’ve been busy creating menu boards, exterior signage, neon art, as well as dozens of new roast labels, and a expansion into Snapchilled Coffee. I also helped design a mug with art by Keenan Bouchard to benefit Honduras after the Santa Barbara region was devastated by multiple hurricanes.

The list of exciting things to come in 2021 is long, as I continue to help with creative aspects to building out the new cafe.

‘Glow’ with Hueman

Dr. Mabrie and his team reached out after seeing the Lightform AR Mural I created with Gemma O'Brien for Lightform. They proposed a collaboration with Oakland-based artist Allison "Hueman" Torneros on a brand new mural for their Union Square office in San Francisco.

Hueman painted this entirely in B&W and the rest of the color was added with light. I worked closely with Hueman to brainstorm and define direction, responding to her vision as the artist to create all custom content to augment her work as a living, projection artwork.

Perhaps the most '2020' feat was creating this work entirely remotely. With help from Dr. Mabrie's team to get measurements, I built the office in 3D, and used Disguise One to show an example of the final installation. After printing a scaled-down version of the mural, I built a mirrored set-up in my home studio in Portland, for testing and perfecting the animations in person. Once the mural was painted and placed, a local installer mounted the projector, and I utilized beta cloud tools in Lightform Creator to scan, deploy content, and publish updates remotely.

Representation with HELO

After a few conceptual design bids for projects, HELO and I started to discuss what official representation would look like. They were excited about my approach, and the cleverness of my previous projects. I’m pleased to share that I officially signed on with them as my EU and US representation! Excited to see what projects we collaborate on together next year, as I set goals for dream clients and projects.

2021

I’m proud to have done so well this year, despite... 2020. My growing focus on 3D pre-visualization really thrived in this new virtual world.

I’ll admit, it’s hard to look forward to 2021. It’s going to begin the same way 2020 ended, but I remain hopeful that by summer or fall things will get moving again. Until then, I’ll continue to focus on working remotely, finding new projects, and expanding creative outputs.

An ideal 2021 for me is one where I get to see family and friends. I’m also turning my attention to my dear project Light Capsules in multiple ways: the first permanent Light Capsule installation, an augmented reality iOS app as an extension of the project and a platform for future AR capsules, alongside new projection installations.

It’s also safe to say we’ll finally see the new Brilliant! Jackpot in 2021, whenever it’s safe to bring our talented team from around the country to beautiful Las Vegas.

My mantra for 2021: Be healthy, stay inspired.

It’s a hope I share not only for myself, but for everyone else. It’s been one brutal hell of a year. —Craig

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