Freelance work

During last 2 months I've been working on a freelance project,
with one of my classmate Bee, a copywriter.
Together we've helped our client, a real estate agent,
to brand her in a way that's different than any other traditional agents. (Read on...)

Give it all

16 weeks flew pass just like that.
Woosh. That was it.
All the hard work was amplified in the final few days.
36hrs of non-sleeping-ultimate-charge towards the finishing line was expected.
It was stressful and tiring but I loved it. (Read on...)

3-months-flashbacks

A seriously overdue update of what happened.
Super roller-coaster ride it has been.
To keep it simple. This is how it went.
AWARD School kicked off.
Awesome lectures, wonderful lecturers.
Especially Paul Nagy, Duster, Jamie Hitchcock, & Toby Talbot.
Along the way some very tough & done-to-death briefs.
Somewhere in between those briefs,
I've got some good and some terribly shit ideas...(Read on...)

My first ever animation clip

I did this clip before AWARD School started 

and sent it to a few CDs on the course.

It was a really fun process 

and learnt a lot while I taught myself how to do it.

I'll definitely do more in the future!

Hope you enjoy it!

New post on Michael's blog

Just a quick update for my ad friends.

I've written a new blog post on Infinideas.

Advertising-unrelated but hope you still check it out!

Award School kickoff

The prestigious and world-famous Award School
started on Wednesday night at The Intercontinental in Wellington.

For its 26yrs history of hosting the idea-based course in Australia, Malaysia, Singapore & Thailand,
this is the first time ever it’s being host in NZ.

To be considered as great a course as the Miami Adschool,
I felt proud, nervous, and excited to be part of it.

Knowing that all of Australasia will be looking at the result of this class,
first lecturer (and course leader) Paul Nagy said he’d make sure to be super-tough on our work
and pushing us to be the best we could so that we won’t be the bad exception to NZ’s great creative reputation.
What a nice challenge to be given on our first day!

(Dan Moth, Paul Nagy, Duster & Anton Hart)

We had 3 speakers on our first lecture. After Paul, we had Clemenger’s writer Dan Moth who’s an ex-Award grad.
Both Dan and Paul gave us great advices on how to do well in the course,
while our final speaker, Duster the ECD of Clems,
was funny as hell when he inspired us with his own wits and references from Paul Arden.

The roughly-1-and-a-half-hour lecture flew past and I was so psyched up that I felt I wanted more!
You know, it’s just such rare chance you’d get to listen to three brilliant creatives on one single night!

After the lecture was the opening night’s welcome drinks at the Motel Bar.
It was a nice and cozy bar to chat with my fellow classmates
and it was very interesting to know that everyone is from different background.

(My classmate Antonia & me)

There are three actresses, two interactive geeks I had so much fun chatting with (consider I’m a bit of a geek as well), some are from marketing / media background plus some are currently doing a placement with Clems.

(tutor Duncan Munro, my classmates Nicola & Tom, tutor Claire Stapleton of Y&R)

Haven’t had a chance to chat with all,
but I was glad that I also get to meet my tutors from Y&R – Anton Hart & Duncan Munro.
Before the night ended I chatted up Dan & Duster,
and enjoyed their openness and down-to-earth attitude.

So this is the beginning of something that’s gonna be very interesting and without a doubt, competitive.
Most went home reasonable early and eagerly await the tutorials on the next day when we’ll be given our first brief.

A new chapter.

Recently I've relaunched my old personal blog
after leaving it untouched for quite a good while.
Ever since Anna & I have started IAMCREATIVE2,
I've always felt the need for another space
to express my other interests and opinions other than just ads.

The re-design of that site has been long coming but I've done it now
because I thought a big news would be quite fitting for a re-opening:
-my career has just received a new and exciting opportunity.
I've been accepted into the first ever AWARD adschool in New Zealand!

After finishing a placement with Blackwood, this course is a great chance for me
to up-skill during a very tough economic environment.
And need not to say, there's no better chance than to learn directly from some of the very best.
The likes of Paul Nagy, Tim Hall, Chrissie Lahood, etc.
I'm already shivering in excitement!

This also marked a huge change in my creative partnership with Anna.
We've been enjoying a wonderful partnership for the last 9 months,
and more than that, we've forged a great friendship.
We've done some great work together,
not just on the drawing pad, but on the football field as well!
And we even have a song together.


But for the next 3 and a half months, we'll have to be fighting on different fronts.
Anna will be looking for some graphic design gigs while pondering what's her next step.
While I'll be the sponge and try to absorb as much learnings as possible.
Hopefully with lots of hard work and many great ideas I'll come out on top at school.

But IAMCREATIVE2 will keep on going.
We'll be trying to find freelance gigs and work on them as remote teammates.
The blog will be kept updated with what's going on around us.
And surely, industry events will still be reported on, from our junior's perspective.
So keep your eyes out for our next post!

The Grand Finale

The last project we worked on at Blackwood was a direct mail piece for Audi's RS6. We have only just recently seen the finished product and we are really happy with how it turned out. Take a look below.

The Orca Awards 09

This week Michael and I attended the Orca award ceremony at Pasha on the Viaduct Harbour in Auckland. We managed to get ourselves an invite because of our NZ Bus radio entry in the October Orca awards last year. 

While there we met some very friendly people from The Radio Bureau including Jenny Craig (Account director) & Fleur Herscott (Communications Manager). We were made welcome right from the first moment as Jenny came over to chat with us which made us two small-potato-job-hunting-juniors feel more comfortable and warmed us up for more mingling.

We caught up with Tim and Ashwin and also Karl Fleet (who happened to be the Grande Orca winners!) Well done Tim and Ash! It's awesome that they won such a big award when they are only just starting out, and they managed to come out on top of some really big talents in the industry. 

For some more name dropping - we also caught up briefly with Jeneal Rohrback (Marsden Inch) and Kate Humphries (new head of Axis Adschool). Both were Michael's Adschool tutors, and it was great to catch up with them both, especially Kate, who Michael hadn't seen in quite a while.

The free booze and food was good too! Although not so good for my samosa/spring roll addiction...YUM!

*Click here to see the official photos.

This boggles the mind!

This is a clip taken from space of the worlds aircraft movements over a 24 hour period. It is almost hypnotic as the little bug like lights crawl over the world...makes you feel small and big at the same time.

Oh and a little update from the work front - There is so much to do and so little time! But we are working on putting together our new book which is coming along nicely. 

A look back

Here are a few examples of some of the work we did while at Blackwood.

The first thing we worked on was a pitch for Waikato University. Having just come out of uni ourselves - we were able to understand the target audience well and I think a few of our insights were quite helpful in the process. While Blackwood made it to the final two agencies in competition for the business, we didn't win the pitch in the end but it was still a massive learning curve and it was great to have the opportunity to work on such a huge campaign.

Based on the premise of "whatever you're looking for - you'll find it at Waikato", these are three kind of 'big picture' billboard executions that were also expanded into more specific concepts that worked around some of the interesting things that you will find at Waikato university.

We also designed a microsite as part of a promotion aiming to get students to enrol at Waikato.

We became a sort of christmas card production company for a while and ended up designing three cards for DHL (Tasman Cargo Airlines), Audi and British American Tobacco NZ.

Michael had a fun photo shoot with Bevan Docherty for Heart Children. Art directing a shoot was a very interesting experience!

These are the Alfa One print executions as part of the same campaign as the TVC. The soundtrack from the TVC was also used in the radio ad.

Validation

Wow! This is a fantastic short film that has been winning awards all over the place. Its about 10 minutes long but well worth it! It'll make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside!

Happy New Year!

Well we have just had a fantastic couple of weeks holiday and are back, rested and ready to continue our job search in the year 2009. Our internship at Blackwood finished at the end of last year and I would have to say that we learnt a whole lot more about the industry and ourselves! The last four months had both good and bad experiences but I feel like it has all been a part of learning the business. Hindsight is an very interesting thing because I probably wouldn't have been quite so positive a couple of weeks ago! Learning is messy, stressful and uncomfortable... I suppose that's nothing new but there's nothing like a challenge the size of the grand canyon to make you realise it! So on with the job hunt. Next up we are planning on having a quick stocktake of the work that we did at Blackwood and will hopefully inject some new work into our portfolio before getting out and about and seeing some more CD's. If you happen to be looking for a creative team that is ready for anything, or know someone who is, give us a call, email, letter, message in a bottle, pigeon, angel, toothfairy, paper plane, blimp, telepathic sign, a lightning-burnt note in the side of a nearby mountain... just make contact in other words!

Bruce Lee - an inspiration to us all.

Okay so Bruce Lee is actually a total freak - but we love freaks so thats all good. Just watch the clip and be inspired to greatness.

The creative devil wears Prada

Last Friday was a rather sad day for us. Our favorite senior freelancing creative Adey Richards finished his stint at Blackwood. The creative department has been a bit light, with only one intermediate team plus us as interns. Luckily Adey was freelancing almost the whole time we have been here. The Pond's senior copywriter, Phil Parsonage also worked for a couple of weeks, but these two were the only senior creatives we have been able to learn a few pearls of wisdom from (and not nearly enough!)

Adey walks in the office with his Prada shades every morning,
so we did this poster and stuck it up on the wall behind him. He loves it! (Adey is faking 'angry'!)

Both Adey and Phil were awesome guys. Phil loves making wicked comments about everything while Adey would sing to any and every tune on the radio. I still remember one afternoon Adey, Anna and I launched into an impromptu singing trio, singing along to an old cheesy BSB's classic! Although the two seniors were often stretched by the crazy amount of work they needed to handle, they were always nice enough to give us help even when they were totally exhausted near the end of the day. In particular Adey, who sat right next to us, gave me some very useful art direction advice. To have the chance to learn from a senior art director who has worked with the legendary Paul Arden and David Trott was just unbelivable.

Well Adey, we'll miss your singing and the Pad Thai lunches we had. Most of all we'll miss you as our mentor and my morning Man Utd scores update with you. Hope to see you again in our next agency!

TVC!

Recently we have been working on a brief for Alfa One Rice Bran Oil which ended up in a TVC and series of print ads! It was a real bonus being able to go on our first TVC shoot and we learnt a lot about the process - and how painstakingly long even the simplest things can take! While we think that the idea is perhaps better in print... it was cool to make a TVC too. After coming up with the initial idea, our creative director took the lead on most of the decisions about the details voice over and music - so some things we would have done differently, but all and all we are stoked to have had the opportunity to get a good idea of what a TVC involves.

AdMedia 'Make An Ad' Competition

We've just received the latest issue of AdMedia and found out that we won ourselves a 2 year subscription with one of our entries in the 'Make An Ad' Competition. Yeah~! So thrilled!

We had a fun time making the entries, and to win a subscription to our favorite magazine is really awesome. The mag keeps us up to date with the latest ads & local industry trends and the weekly Fastline is great for job hunters like us. Thanks for choosing our work, AdMedia's judges & Dave Gapes!

DIY DNA

You've probably seen these new ads for Mitre 10 made by DraftFCB but they are fantastic so we thought we'd put them on the blog! Such a cool insight, and just so darn cute.

[Updated] Just found out from AdMedia that Michael's AXIS classmate Iain MacMillan & Antony Wilson are part of the creative team who did this Mitre 10 campaign. Well done Iain & Ant~! :)

Out of tune radio

Our first brief at Blackwood was for the NZBus iPod promotion. Luckily we came up with the goods on our second day and got to make a radio ad! It was really interesting going to the recording, choosing the talent and stressing about getting the rights to the song (which changed about 5 times!). Our idea was also expanded into an ambient stunt with singers giving out flyers on buses. Enjoy :D

Click below to listen to the radio ad.

Our first team placement - Blackwood!

Hi everyone, we'd like to share some job hunting news. For the last 4 weeks we've been doing our first placement at Blackwood Communication Group (BCG)!

We've been thrown into the deep end from day one and are glad that we cracked a radio brief in our first week, which eventually expanded into an ambient idea as well. It was really cool when the ad was aired 3 weeks ago (we'll post it on the blog here soon).

Not wanting to be a one-trick-pony, we have pressed on to have more ideas through in the last few weeks. Contributing to a big pitch was stressful but we really enjoyed it. Overall we think we've learnt a lot and are glad about how well we work together in a real agency environment, considering we're a newly formed team. In fact, we feel like we've been here a whole lot longer than 4 weeks! 

Anyway, before we end this post and get back to work, we'd like to say a big thank you to all the CDs and lovely people we've met in the last few months who have been helping us and offering us advice & encouraging words. In particularly, a big big big cheers to Paul Catmur, Paul Nagy, Tim Hall & Scott Henderson, David Gapes, Jeremy Southern, Vaughn Davis  & David Bell and last but not least our ECD James Blackwood. Thanks guys~!