The MGM website was a true labor of love. After several years of honing our skill and feature sets on other MGM sites like Stargate, American Gladiators and MGM HD, it was finally time for the MGM dev team to dive into a complete overhaul of both the back-end and front-end of the legendary studio’s official website.

The main problem to be solved here was how to keep users on the site for as long as possible in order to connect with the deep library titles of MGM’s over 4100 movies. Thanks to our friends at Hulu, and the amazing dev team at MGM, we were able to come up with an incredibly compelling site with an infinite amount of info and media for visitors to soak in and enjoy.

A dedicated “Watch Now” section allows users to watch close to 200 titles instantly, right on the site. This was accomplished with an integrated Hulu player and AJAX to allow users to browse, click and watch without having to reload the page.

The “Movies” section features infinite scrolling that continuously loads more movies once the bottom of the page is reached. This allows the user to view all the movies on the site and click through to their title pages.

Title pages allow users to view stills, clips, synopsis, cast & crew lists and awards for each title. Buying and viewing options are also available whether it’s on DVD, Blu-Ray, digital download or free-on-demand, such as Hulu or YouTube (both which play directly on the title page). Users can also share the title on their Facebook profile.

With all this in mind, I invite you to go get lost in the movies. Go have fun at the new MGM.com!

Any creative restraints that I find being put on me at work are usually made up for whenever my band has a gig. This always comes in the form of playing the actual music, but also in the form of gig fliers. I have absolute creative freedom with these mini works of art and it’s something I am completely passionate about.

Here are some of my favorites for local LA shows and beyond. Enjoy!

Print design has never had a very strong presence at my current day job. I usually only get to work on it at home for a freelance client or for friends.

Needless to say, I was like a pig in shit when I was asked to create a print ad to promote the Stargate Website.

The ad needed to communicate to all fans of all three Stargate series — SG-1, Atlantis and the new Stargate Universe. It also needed to hard sell all of the great features the site has to offer fans on all levels, however deep or not-so-deep their fanaticism may be.

When asked to create the landing page for our new iPhone apps, we were given screenshots of the apps that were in development at the time. Being the design snob that I am, I was taken aback by their seemingly arbitrary and non-standard construction. Not to mention its overall sloppiness (hard to read colored text, stretched or squashed button labels, poorly resized and uncorrected imagery, etc.).

I just needed to make a stink about it, but instead of just complaining about the design, I ended up taking on the job myself over the weekends and evenings that followed.

The options and soundboard screen’s orientation were turned to portrait view for better one-handed usability and to avoid the iPhone’s speaker from being covered by the user’s hand during playback of the sound. Overall design was completely re-thoughtout for a more standard experience. The images for the slideshows were retouched for best possible color representation, taking into consideration the age of the assets.

Once the app was redesigned it was a matter of creating assets for the 5 features that were getting companion apps: Rocky, Fargo, Robocop, Silence of the Lambs and Army of Darkness. Included in those assets were the icons that appear in the app. Those I took creative license, creating Ash’s chainsaw from Army, Hannibal’s mask from Lambs, Rocky’s hero pose, Robocop’s mechanical head, and of course, the woodchipper from Fargo:

The apps went on to be downloaded more than 100,000 within a relatively short period of time, and are still going strong. So far, the most popular app has been the Army of Darkness, based on the last of the Evil Dead trilogy films. It’s such a classic flick with some great quotes.

Check out the apps in iTunes: Army, Rocky, Lambs, Fargo, Robocop

Below are before and after shots of the original app design, the icons, and samples of the finished app.

For the Diskeeper 2010 packaging, Diskeeper Corporation wanted to go with something simpler that what they have done in the past. I couldn’t have agreed with them more. Although previous images had communicated very well, they were starting to get a bit too complex. The challenge was how to simplify but also still convey  what needed to communicated… a clean and fast hard drive.

Starting from the ground up (rather than using assets I had created in the past), I remodeled the Disk image in Cinema 4D and added my finishing touches in Photoshop.

The result was a very sleek and clean disk, that I think looks beautiful. Thankfully the client (and their public) agreed :)

Karla Kelly was referred to me by fellow drummer Tom Mendola, a friend from my days at Diskeeper.

Karla has what one would call, the voice of an angel. I was happy to oblige when asked to design her album art.

Using existing photography I was able to whip up a design that fit perfectly with her musical style. Design included Ecowallet, 9-page insert and the CD itself.

Maybe I can hook her up with a website in the near future. We’ll see :)

The MGM logo is one of the most recognized brands in the world and is synonymous with Hollywood.

With the release of the films Valkyrie and Quantum of Solace, the new motion version of the MGM logo was issued for use before feature films. Although not much different from its predecessor, the new logo was considerably cleaned up, using original elements from decades ago.

The same original elements were used here in the revision to the static logo. Using ultra-high resolution scans of the film ribbon and Leo, I ended up with a massive working file measuring 20,000 pixels wide and weighing in at over 3GB in size once all of my retouching was done. Pretty friggin’ big for a guy who’s used to working with web graphics.

Special attention was payed to the texture of Leo’s hair which in the original painting, did not exist. Purists may call me crazy for adding it in, but they were subtle enough and added much more texture and depth that I decided it was for the better. I also needed a good alpha channel for blending purposes. This meant hand painting in all of the hair at the edges of Leo’s mane. Fun!

Overall color was graded to a more natural golden tone, away from the yellow and orange of the preceding logo.

The end result is one of subtle but much needed enhancements.

My Nephew Andrew taking flight thanks to his dad Mike

CD Packaging for my band Lost Marauders. This was our first 4-song demo release. The concept behind the packaging was simplicity with a shout out to the classic high-energy album art from Sub-Pop in the late 80’s and early 90’s. Add an outlaw western flair and there you have it.

The final packaging was die-cut by hand out of recycled grocery bags. The front and back covers were printed on label paper and held the whole thing together.

You can find out more about the band at: www.lostmarauders.com

You can purchase the demo from iTunes: www.lostmarauders.com/itunes

In 2010 MGM is set to release the remake of Robocop. For fun I created this spec teaser one-sheet using Cinema 4D for the 3D logo and Photoshop for the rest of the typesetting and finishing.

I should probably do a few hundred more since that’s usually how many comps a studio would get for a movie poster before deciding on a final version. I sure wish I had that kind of time.

Until then…