What a job! 5 videos for the Canadian Government done! (plus doing them again in French…) I worked with Tad from StoryStream in Toronto on them. My wife Rebecca Zak drew the illustrations, I coloured and animated them, and my brother Ryan did the sound. done done done Here is the YOUTUBE CHANNEL The video were made to show Canadians 5 ways they can save on their taxes. I made…
Ryan has had these words in his head for three days: ‘narrowly nebustive’ This word has NO Google results in any category! Image search: The poor guy can’t get them out of his head. He emailed me wanting to know what it meant. We agreed on a definition. Narrowly Nebustive: A coincidence canceling another coincidence… by coincidence ex: If the big bang didn’t happen because someone sneezed right before it was all set…
2011 is off and running – and fast! With the new year came a new clear understanding about how nothing is really that important. Don’t misinterpret what that means… Looking at situations and being aware that ‘THERE ARE NO EMERGENCIES’ really puts the fun back into make art for advertising. This understanding of nothing being really that important allows you to do your best, and do what you can within…
There are so many books that have shaped the way I live, think and relate with the world. This blog will be a place where I can track books that I have found significant in my journey. Almost all of these books were recommendations from other people… Pick them up and pass them on! null Philosophical or Historical Fiction: null Business, Thinking and LifeStyle: null KURT VONNEGUT!: null
“In the Fall of 2008, Epipheo Studios created a short epipheo describing the vision of the movement called Advent Conspiracy. By Christmas of 2008 that video was viewed over 3/4 of a million times on YouTube. During December, it one of the top three most Viral Videos as charted by www.viralvideocharts.com. This epipheo brought mainstream attention to this small grassroots movement.” Ben Crawford and the guys of Epiphoe said ‘hey we have something here’, and…
Ryan has a new album “Sounds Fun” finally FINISHED and available to YOU as physical album or digital download. Sounds Fun explores the world of vinyl sampling, funky drums, jazz, opera, and whatever other sounds I could get my hands on. I guess a fitting description of the album would be an upbeat collection of unpredictable songs composed of a variety of musical styles and sounds, perfect to play at your Grandmother’s…
BEAUTIFUL MATH: One loan Multiplies Opportunity After trips to Central America and Africa, contracts with the biggest charities in the world, my experiences with child sponsors and endless books and conversations I have fallen in love with Microfinance. Microfinance is my cause of choice for fighting poverty issues and injustice. –> click to enlarge art for Opportunity International: Microfinance is a solution that really gives me hope and fits with…
I need a good quote for this stage of my life. I feel like I can redo my resume so that instead of having a bunch of advertising clients listed in order, I can chunk them all together and call it just ‘advertising’… and RETIRE that sweater… soon, but not yet. We all need cashflow to fund our dreams! and dream we do. Here is the Quote I have been…
it has been very busy in the new-media-advertising world! NEW CLIENTS BLOG (to name a view of the biggies): VISA and Scotiabank – quick sketchy video to VO showing the new payWave VISA system. Epipheo inspired! Rubbermaid – 10 series on Organizing 101! tons of timelapse sequences, pop ups and edits. what a job! good team on this at VMG. Samsung – 5 (10 including FRENCH…) videos for Samsung that…
Married?! Check! We had the best day… Wouldn’t change a thing. This blog is to highlight all the art we put into our wedding. Rebecca is a wonderful wife Learn about her at www.lifeinpaint.com or invite us over for dinner! Below are a list of details from the big day that made it special and ‘Us’. I hope that this post can act as both a memory bank for Rebecca,…
Lost Wax Casting! . . . . Guess what!? Rebecca and I made our wedding rings. Like, carved them out of wax and melted gold into our mold. It was tons of fun. It took 7 weeks. 7 Thursday night classes at ‘the Devils Workshop’ on Queen St West in Toronto. We had great help from Sara, the owner, and Danielle, a local goldsmith and cute little designer. Great folk!…
Finally finished a fine arts degree at York! So happy I just went for it. I took classes while working over the past handful of years. This is how I feel: (I took this picture in Cuba last year – I walked into the ocean in dress pants and shirt and laptop bag. FREE!) “If I hadn’t made me, I would’ve been made somehow.. If I hadn’t assembled myself, Id’ve…
I figure as long as I am participating in this game of capitalism, I should post all of the press that mentions me so that you can gawk in the hype of my pseudo success. look at me! “I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you different.” Kurt Vonnegut News Advertiser. Article by Allan O’ Marra (thanks Allan!) http://www.newsdurhamregion.com/article/157879 . ….
A good friend, David Peck, rented a studio space one weekend and we shot these 5 videos. Some fast edits, a few emails and bam: here are 5 videos for his ‘creative capitalism’ business: ‘SoChange’ – www.sochange.ca David works out of Oakville and also teaches philosophy and film and travels the world. what a guy. “David Peck is a professional public speaker, university lecturer, and social entrepreneur.” 1 SoChange It…
Inspired by the great work of Epipheo studios, Storysteam and I went out and created a cool video for Brainpark. This was a really fun project. It was a challenge to illustrate purposefully-crappy, but was a good experiment in being spontaneous and going with the flow of my hand… disconnecting the brain from my movements and just trusting the direction. It a way, like the philosophy behind chinese calligraphy, except much…
After a year of painting, writing, designing and hustling… Rebecca and I have successfully self published our first book! A very exciting and rewarding journey. We learned a lot and know this is just the beginning of our book-making-lives. To get catalogued and recieve an ISBN# as self publishers, we had to start www.zakbooks.com, our publishing company. This book is being sold online at www.cutestfacebook.com, hardcover for $15 CAD. We…
The emotion reaction that art creates is stronger than reactions to simply logical or rational philosophical arguments. YES! Watch this video and then we can chat more. These thoughts begin from ‘Radiohead and Philosophy’, a book of essays edited by Brandon W. Forbes and George A. Reisch. The Essay that spoke to my soul was ‘All the Argument We Need’ by John Sylvia. As an artist living to make art…
I first heard this word when working on ‘Faces of Opportunity’. Tara Joyce, who has a blog and business at www.elasticmind.ca, volunteered to help sell the book. This post will cover content taken from her blog, mixed in with my thoughts. Innerpreneurship is the practice of starting a new business in response to identified opportunities, personal growth needs and a desire to create social change. (wikipedia) Basically, an innerpreneur is…
3 fun new projects from Cineplex for ‘Cloud Advertising Agents’, Canadian Tire for ‘StoryStream’ and for RIM, AT&T and the WES Conference via ‘VMGCinematic’. It has been fun working on some great projects over the past while. I like to post work to keep an archive for myself, and share and inspire other artists. I love feedback and questions about my stuff, or seeing what you are doing. First, this…
Below are my notes from a talk at Durham College’s School of Art and Design on the alternatives to ‘getting a real job’. ______ Thanks for having me here. I am going to try and confuse you about the path that you think you are on at this school. – Or give you hope. Feel free to interrupt anytime if you have a question about something I will show you. A -…
Took an inventory today of most of the ‘works in progress’ in our studio. Some of the pieces are Rebeccas, some are mine. All fairly big pieces. Was helpful to take inventory and thought I would share. Can’t wait to get a bigger studio space. Big thanks to David Rusbatch on the other side of the world for asking what I have been painting. See his work: http://www.davidrusbatch.com/ I had…
This has been very interesting. Rebecca and I were both born with very bad eyes. Rebecca can only see out of one eye because of cataracts at birth and glaucoma. I have poor vision that is off the charts (-16). For some reason we both have careers totally dependent on our visual skills. This seems strange. We hung out with the ‘Brock University Cognitive and Affective Neuropsychology Lab’ staff and…
Not sure how this happened, but had fun making a music video for a new song: “Moment – The Concept of Love”. This Elephant has not made too many appearances since www.awkwardelephant.com. When we were young, we paid Ryan a dollar to walk across the road in the Elephant mask while a car was stopped at a stop sign. He carried a basket of potatoes. Right in front of the…
. . . . . . . . I had the exciting opportunity to work on videos featuring Olympians from the Canadian hockey teams for Nike Canada. It was a little goal of mine to work for Nike when I started working in advertising. Short intro/outro animations in AfterEfects with edits in FCP for Jarome Iginla, Jennifer Boterill, Gillian Apps and Jayna Hefford. Nothing to technically difficult as far as…
Below are two projects I worked on simultaneously for two financial institutes, Bank of America, and Sprott Asset Management. Both projects required greenscreen footage with final outputs for the web. Below are some screenshots from the projects! . 1) Sprott, created a series of information videos and a host site at MarketOutperformance.com. These video had simple motion graphics in the background and covered topics from ‘why you should buy gold’,…
Worked on 5 recipies using Knorr products with good old VMG. Played with Final Cut Pro, Photoshop and After Effects. The Motion Tracking of ingredients turned out well. Adding a shadow really put the 3d elements in real space. Again, 2010 has been a wild year so far. Will be posting some Sprott/RBC clips via storysteam soon, urging you to BUY GOLD NOW! Here is one of the 5 Knorr…
I had the chance to work on a Jeep add with Organic. It was an intensive weekend-job in Photoshop and AfterEffects. Jeep purchased the chance to have a video play for 15 seconds when a user visited foxsports.com… Fun, fast job. Below is a screen recording of the video in action!
I work with my brother, Ryan Zak, a lot. He is always providing music for commercial and personal projects (www.facelessbook.com www.artresin.com www.lifeinpaint.com www.gogoeco.com etc) … OR Rebecca really enjoys painting to his tunes in our studio. His site is www.ryanzak.com, which we just overhauled… Lot’s to do. Happy 2010! onward! New 2010 Songs . Tracks from “Music To Make You Feel Something” (2009) The Audio Documentary on Homelessness in Toronto…
note: Thanks to friends and strangers who have emailed me pictures of McDonalds garbage please do more! contact@davezak.com It has been about 2 years of collecting now.. McGarbage! There are two rules: 1) you can only take 1 photo of each piece of garbage you find. 2) you MUST pick it up. Picking up the garbage really made this project feel important. Important in a small ‘make art and make…
Two new fun jobs for Alberto EUROPEAN ‘Climate Control’ and The Dodge RAM 2500-3500 Pickup! Just what the world needs. Worked with my two favorite Toronto Agencies: The wonderful people at ORGANIC and my buddies at VMG Cinematic (VIral Media Group). See links below. They are both well positioned in the growing markets of interactive media and online video production. . These jobs just missed my 2009 Demo Reel. Thanks…
This was a great project. I worked on it with the guys at VMGCinematic (VIRAL MEDIA GROUP) in Toronto. The phone was the BlackBerry Boll 9700 – high-end trackpad gizmo. They gave me brand guidelines, and let me play. Used lots of pink. Also had a wicked 3d modeler out of Arkansas named Zach Cheattam (Zak and Zack!). Good team, good times, good project. We have just started a second…
Another crazy-fun year! Added BlackBerry, AT&T, Bank of America, Alberto and more. What a fun bunch of work. It is so exciting to look back and see all that has happened. Where will you be in a year from now? “If I told you.. you wouldn’t believe it!” Anyways, Here is the reel on youtube! please comment and share your reels: onward!
We have probably produced about 20 green themed videos over the past year and a half. our latest is a video for Steamwhistle Brewery, a beer company who takes being environmentally responsible very seriously. Here’s another fun green video. (two big markets.. online video, and the green movement) “Dave and Rebecca experience first hand just how the geothermal energy process is utilized in Iceland. It turns out that almost all…
This is very exciting. I had a book launch at the Westin Place in Toronto! Included: piano player, small pieces of chicken on skewers, name tags, speeches, wine… I even signed a book! strange. I had the honour of working with these great people: Making the Book It took about a year and a half, but we finally compiled a bunch of stories about microfinance clients into an 80 page…
I did not intend to comment on other videos on my portfolio site, BUT… This video on “Is Social Media a Fad?” is worth watching. We are on the right track! Who will be the leaders in this emerging medium? Second, Epiphoe is also on track with “how the internet is changing advertising”: Now, here is some research i quickly threw together for a client on the ROI of online…
Not hard to get good shots in Africa. Took this trip with Chris Wiersma to make some videos for Hands at Work and gather content for the facelessbook.com concept. There’s just no chance. You see, deep down, if we really accepted that Africans were equal to us, we would all do more to put the fire out. ~Bono OUCH Here are my top ten photos: thumbs up in Congo. (happiness is relative)
with www.artresin.com, I have found that I get most of my traffic, and sales through YouTube videos. If you provide useful, free information, ending with a link to your sales page, you get happy customers who BUY. Here are some of these videos I use to sell Epoxy Resin to artists around North America: ________ ArtResin.com – Thick, Glossy, Clear Coat on your Paintings (Epoxy Resin) LESSON: Finish the Edges…
. . ——— TIP 1 Cheap and easy palettes for oil painting TIP 2 Creating creative environments for kids TIP 3 The process of painting a mural for a client TIP 4 Art shows: More than money TIP 5 Painting a Childrens Mural in a School Continuing our ‘art tips’ marketing idea, Rebecca from www.lifeinpaint.com shares some practices…
www.facelessbook.com This domain has some power. The last Analytics report was 14 000 unique visitors from 85 countries! Now we are well over 90 countries… but waiting on our next smartest move because of trademark infringement scares. MISSION – filmed with CSW of Westside Kings. Life changing trip. One of many. I love the idea of non-rational strategies, I think this quote from someone my brother knows makes perfect sense…
So, after watching the film ‘Heima’ by ‘Sigur Ros’, Bex and I decided to book flights to Iceland. You should go. We came back inspired and ready to work hard on all our creative projects.