Also, our How To Live film is showing at crunch09 (the art festival at hay) this weekend. We can’t be there due to other commitments and I’m not sure where or when it’s being shown (think it might be in the gallery), but if I find out I’ll post an update.

See more (and an interview with Jan) at The Design Inspiration, or click the images above.

(via @Vivekkay)

When using gradient opacity masks, the mask will not go fully opaque unless the black swatch of your gradient is in RGB mode.

Default for gradients is Grayscale mode:

Illustrator Opacity Mask Gradient Grayscale

To fix this, double-click on the black swatch, then click the dropdown in the top right of the box that pops up. Change the mode to RGB.

Illustrator Opacity Mask Gradient RGB

If you’re not sure where to start with opacity masks in Illustrator, Bittbox is a great place to learn the basics.

Anyway, Gridiron Software have just released Flow, their unique, ingenious workflow/assest-management software. The video below kinda explains why you need it (and if you work with computers, you probably do need it):

I was lucky enough to be able to Beta test Flow for the past six months and it’s transformed from a really great idea to a fully-featured, didn’t-know-you-needed-it-til-you-had-it, life-saving piece of the creative toolkit.

Gridiron also make Nucleo Pro, which is essential for anyone running After Effects on a multi-core machine. It’s help us meet tight deadlines on numerous occasions and is just damn useful.

So if you make stuff on computers, go take a look. If you don’t, maybe take a look to see some of what goes on behind the scenes at Super Mega Action Plus!

The Vimeo guys have also been hard at work upgrading the ‘Channels’ section of the site, which looks great! You can see our new Vimeo channel at http://www.vimeo.com/smaptv.

To celebrate, here is a few of our recent HD videos for your enjoyment and pleasure:

Above:
Max & Beth Trailer (2008) from Super Mega Action Plus on Vimeo.

Café of Ideas – Kate Banks Trailer (2008) from Super Mega Action Plus on Vimeo.

the egg (2008) from Super Mega Action Plus on Vimeo.

the egg – Urban Hype (Preview) (2008) from Super Mega Action Plus on Vimeo.

SEA – ROADflow (2008) from Super Mega Action Plus on Vimeo.

Debs and I decided to brave the blizzards on Sunday night to go see what Central London is like in deep snow, and to get some more stills photography practice. We’re quite please with what we got! I processed all the Canon 450D RAW shots using Photoshop Camera Raw, and did a quick pass over the Powershot photos using Curves and Hue/Saturation in Photoshop CS4. I’ve posted a couple of shots below, or click here to see the full set on Flickr.

Read on for the new video…

Learn more about Brian’s protest at http://www.parliament-square.org.uk/

Back in August 2007, we found out about the Friends of the Earth ‘Green Film’ Competition, and decided to have a go at making something for it. Competition rules stated the theme had to be ‘Saving The World’ and the video had to be no longer than 1 minute. We got a bit carried away with our ambition within the time we could make available to get it done, so it ended up being archived, unfinished, and never entered into the competition…

We dug it out again recently, and decided that it makes us laugh and Si and Mike’s performances are amazing, so we should just put it out there. So, here you go!

Above:
[SMAP Experiments] Friends of the Earth (2007) from Super Mega Action Plus on Vimeo.

This was the first time we’d experimented with full CGI backgrounds… We learned to always film the smoke afterwards. Ha! It was also really good to have the 1 minute time limit to learn how to be more ruthless in the edit.

Huge thanks to Invention Studios for letting us film there, and especially Jonathan Turton-Smith for being so lovely to us.

If you have a project you’d like to discuss with us over a cup of tea and a slice of cake, get in touch. You can check out our commercial work here.

Happy christmas! xx

UPDATE: If you wanna get a flavour of the delights you’re in for, Si’s made a handy promo video to give you a taste:

Happy Christmas, You Guys! (PROMO VIDEO) from Si on Vimeo.

(via Swiss Miss)