How to Light Wrap [now @PVC]

This page has been updated and moved to Pro Video Coalition, How to Light Wrap.

Mountains Out of Molehills: Patterns in the Group Mind

Information Is Beautiful graphed out a timeline of global media scare stories in Mountains Out of Molehills, and fleshed out other comparisons of issue attention in Patterns in the Group Mind -- here 'violent video games' are pondered regularly near Christmas and the Columbine anniversary.

[update: Apparently Y2K, SARS, Violent video games, bird flu, vaccines and swine flu have dwarfed other search terms -- but the comparison doesn't use "September 11" or other popular terms, so it's a McChart.]

Related AEP posts include Meme tracking and the News Cycle and The "Issue-Attention Cycle".

The PEN story: another YouTube Dilemma

A Filmbot RT Twitter notes The PEN story controversy, which was discussed by PDN in Did Olympus Steal Idea for Viral Ad About EP-1 Camera? (UPDATED) and Gizmodo in Olympus Stop Motion E-P1 Ad Concept Is Clever (Also, Stolen).

This topic ("great artists steal") was discussed with many examples at Creative Review in May; see The YouTube Dilemma for creatives.

Also of note is an open blog ‘you thought we wouldn’t notice’ that's dedicated to pointing out these things (via El Gordo).

Free custom Particle World-based project

Even if you know that the built-in CC Particle World filter allows you to use images as a custom or "Textured" particles, you may want to look at Video Copilot's latest free After Effects project.

To see a fuller scope of what Particle World can do, download the CycoreFX Particle World Demo. It's a poor man's version of Brian Maffitt's old demo in that you have to render each Comp separately and read along with the PDF.

3dfilter: new 3D model search engine

VizWorld notes a new Online 3D Model Search Engine – 3dfilter. If you sort according to price you can see what's available for free in various categories.

Effects A to Z: Alpha Levels

Motionworks' sorta weekly tour of built-in AE filters continues with the Alpha Levels filter; see Effects A to Z – Alpha Levels with guest Topher Welsh.

Chris & Trish Meyer have a similar series on Lynda.com, except it is running though filters by Effect category (as in the Effect Menu).

Koblin & Lima on visualization

CaT: Creativity and Technology conferences are tightly-edited gatherings of creatives and marketeers for discussions of furthering creativity through technology. On Ad Age's Creativity/AdCritic, they've posted several movies from recent presentations, including one by Google Creative Labs' Aaron Koblin on "some of his most stunning projects," and another talk by Processing co-founder Ben Fry and Carlos Ulloa, creator of Papervision3D. (via Datavisualization.ch)

Also fun is the weekly Creativity Top 5 spots.

And while his talk at TEDGlobal 2009 isn't up yet, you can look at an illustrated video interview by Digup.tv of Manuel Lima of Visual Complexity.