Avatar,James Cameron and Web Design

Posted on Dec 15th 2009 | 5comments

Unless you’ve been living in a cave, I’m sure you have heard a lot about Avatar and James Cameron. Not only Hollywood, but the entire media and web community is buzzing with Avatar. This should not be much of a surprise if you know that Avatar could forever change the way we watch movies. Needless to say, I would be surely watching this movie on the big screen– not once, but at least thrice.

You might be thinking how this article is linked to web design? Well, I am getting there, but first you need to know a bit more about Avatar and James Cameron.

Avatar and James Cameron

Avatar is moviemaking on a colossal scale- it’s not just about a huge budget. It reflects the persistence, determination and obsession of a man who decided to give reel life to his thoughts by crossing every hurdle that came in his path.

James Cameron approached Digital Domain in 1995 with the concept of Avatar, but was told that it was impossible to make it with the current state of technology. It was considered impossible because Cameron wanted his aliens to be computer generated with realistic looks. However, there is no word like impossible in Cameron’s dictionary. He went on to create a special camera that would merge performance capture with live action in 3-D.

He even hired a linguistics expert to create an altogether new alien language. A botanist was also hired to write detailed scientific descriptions of dozens of plants on the alien planet. And if this was not enough, he even hired an expert in astrophysics, a music professor, and an archaeologist to calculate Pandora’s atmospheric density and to establish a tripartite scale structure for the alien music.

Following are some of the images from the book Art of Avatar which just show how much work has gone into making this movie. (Image courtesy – Parka)

Web Design

Web designing demands creativity. But truly speaking, how many creative designs do we actually come across? Most of them (including mine) are quite normal web designs which follow the standard trends. I agree that not every design can be exceptional due to time constraints and client requirements. Still, web designers can occasionally come up with exceptional designs to showcase their creativity. There are some design blogs which are now asking questions like:

1. Do you completely understand various design elements and design principles?

2. Do you understand what typography is all about? Have you read any books related to typography and have you ever tried creating a font?

3. Have you studied various art styles?

These questions are not meant to offend you. Rather, they reflect your passion/obsession with web designing.But, why I am even asking these questions?? Well, you will get the answer in the next paragraph.

Avatar, James Cameron and Web Design

Let me take a simple example here. Joe is a web designer and is leading a comfortable life as a freelancer. He is also running a design blog which features various web designs and logos of designers from all over the globe. However, he soon realizes that there are number of web designers like him and most of them are having design blogs which have similar content. So, Joe decides to come up with something unique. He surfs through a number of design blogs to get all the inspiration and finally comes up with a design within 2 days. He is pretty sure that he will make it big this time. But much to his dismay, nothing big happens. What did Joe miss here??

Let me get back to James Cameron before I answer that question. This guy gets an idea in 1995 and spends a long time of 14 years getting into every single detail so as to truly develop that idea. The result is Avatar. How much efforts were put in by Joe to create his unique design?? 2 days! That’s it?!

I am not asking to anybody to spend 10 0r 14 years on a single design as web designing and movie making are completely different things. But there is something common to both these fields, in fact, to every field. We call it passion. A web designer who is passionate about his new design just can’t come up with it in a day or two. He will surely want to look into the details of design and typography before he even comes up with a layout in Photoshop. You can certainly have a good earning and a nice design blog without getting into all these details and saving yourself from all that hard work. Do not feel alone if you don’t’ do all this because there are many designers out there who are having a happy designing life by just following the trend. I am not asking you to follow the trend; I am daring you to be the trend setter.

It’s easy to write list posts and come up with normal designs. But you need to be passionate to come up with a design which is totally unique and creative. You don’t hear these words every time – “OMG!!How the fuck he did that? That is fucking awesome!!” We all have said that for James Cameron and even Peter Jackson. But just imagine, how it would be if people say that about your work.

James Cameron has inspired me and I am all geared up for my next project. Are you in the same inspired league?

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