For Disney’s “TRON: Legacy,” Bradley Munkowitz, better known as GMUNK, was the lead animated graphics artist. He assembled and led a team of GFX all-stars who conceived, designed and animated approximately 10 minutes of UI sequences and holograms at Digital Domain for director Joseph Kosinski and visual effects supervisor Eric Barba. I was so happy that he agreed to do this interview about his involvement in that film. Q: Can you talk a little about…
 
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Over the weekend I finally got around to renting “Catfish.” I liked the movie a lot, despite the controversy about whether or not it’s a really documentary. As I watched it, I was especially fascinated by the way the filmmakers used interactive technologies to advance the narrative — and the degree to which audiences can accept these new references. For example, rather than showing an airplane flying over a map, an old-fashioned film technique (lovingly…
 
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Iron Man 2 opens today! And Engadget has posted a great collection of pictures and videos of interfaces that are used the film. Sure, we’ve seen a lot of this before — multi-touch Surface-like tables, Star Trek transparent screens, complex layered windows (any standard windowing os — mixed with a bit of old-school Unix), micro-projectors, and even a little magic — but who’s to say it’s not fun? The NYTimes review of the film describes…
 
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After seeing this fantastic fan-created re-imagined trailer for Tron (source: Gizmodo), along with being excited about the upcoming Tron Legacy, I thought it could be interesting to take a look at the interfaces in Tron (1982) — a film I have a crazy nostalgic love for. The world envisioned in Tron is distinctive and stylized — unlike anything seen before. And although they don’t exhibit much complexity, or push any boundaries of interaction design, the interfaces…
 
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After posting about the UI in Avatar, I was so happy that Neil Huxley agreed to an interview about his work on that film. Neil was art director and motion graphics supervisor for Avatar‘s UI at Prime Focus VFX LA. Q: Can you talk a little about your background and how you got started. I was born in London, and lived there for 26 years then moved to Australia and now I’m based in LA….
 
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In What Movie UIs Say About the Future, Tony Walt reviews a variety of interface types featured in some recent movies. His discussion on Complexity was particularly interesting — especially in the context of the iPad and its move towards simplicity: I’ve noticed that UIs in feature films are continually getting more elaborate and complex. Meanwhile, though, real-world interfaces are getting more simple and intuitive. It seems an odd contradiction that the futuristic UIs we…
 
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It’s safe to bet that interface design in movies will be a recurring theme here. They give us a glimpse of the future, but from a design perspective of when the film was made. They take current ideas of where technology is heading, and project it forward to a point beyond what is currently possible. They’re full of imagination and fantasy — but still trying to make sense in that future context, and seem, hopefully,…
 
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