Andrew Fox

Saturday night saw the London heat of the live design tournament Cut&Paste for the fifth year running and Rozzi and I were privileged enough to be there (although not privileged afterwards to be half stuck at Victoria station waiting for a rail replacement bus to take us back to Brighton at 2am!).

As the competitors graced the stage of the Coronet Theatre in Elephant & Castle, an eager crowd began to grow. The evening line up: 3 formats comprising 2d graphic design, 3d design and motion graphics, spread across two heats. Each heat would have a theme where competitors were allowed to prepare basic elements ready for battle – cheating a little I think! Clock set for 15 minutes and off they go!

It’s a fascinating thing to watch as the designers screens are projected live onstage so that the audience can see every move with a cameraman filming them from behind. With the DJ belting out tunes and the crowed going crazy, the designers worked their magic.

Fifteen minutes is not long but it’s surprising what you can get done in such a short space of time. What was more interesting I thought was how people applied their time and the tactics they used to try and win their battle.

3D Design Heat – “Evolution”

Interesting I thought, as I come from a 3d background I know what’s involved and there are more steps to 3d than just drawing shapes in Illustrator. First you have to start by building a wire mesh, then apply textures, lighting and finally render an image and when you think that each frame of Toy Story took over 3.5 days just to render, its no easy task!

Obviously there are different applications within 3d from architecture to art. One guy I thought pushed the boundaries though as he built a wire mesh of a barbeque in about one minute flat in Maya before rendering and bringing it into Photoshop where he imported a 2d image of a dinosaur. He then spent the next 10 minutes texturing the background. Others took a more obvious 3d approach although not surprisingly seemed to run out of time. Two of the final renders didn’t seem to have any lighting applied to them so you couldn’t actually see what they were!

2D Design Heat – “Design a CD cover with the theme of Tongue-in-cheek”

Another interesting heat with some varied responses with a few of the designers immediately taking pictures of themselves in “crazy” poses using Photobooth ready to cannibalise tongues and cheeks in Photoshop – its almost as if this is what they sit at home doing. After all, isn’t this what you do when you’re just learning Photoshop and you’re parents have given you a digital cameral for Xmas? The more original ideas I thought used more of a vector approach with some drawing characters. Strangely though, all seemed to revolve around sexual connotations. Interesting to watch again was how some designers built their designs with the “Photobooth” approaches taking a quick snapshot and then spending the next 14 minutes applying drop-shadows or selecting the correct font while their counterparts more evenly spreading out the time by building up their piece.

Taking Inspiration

It’s an unusual thing. Obviously design is a competitive industry but rarely do you see people go head to head in this way. In theory though maybe it has some value professionally. All too often I find myself procrastinating over a graphic – moving it one pixel to the left, one pixel down, changing it from blue to red and back to blue again etc etc – put under pressure and all of this ends up out the window and you may even end up with a better result anyway? Or at least a different one! Hmm, I’ll leave this for another post before I go to far.

Well done to all contestants, good luck to the winners for the global finals and roll on Cut&Paste London 2010! How about a digital / interactive design tournament?

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