ParaNorman: The First Animated Zombie Comedy Created through 3D Printing

If your town is attacked by zombies and ghosts, who do you call? Norman Babcock. He is a misunderstood boy from a small New England town who is the main protagonist of the 2012 American 3D stop-motion animated comedy horror film ParaNorman. This is his heroic story of saving his hometown from a century-old curse.

Norman is an 11-year-old psychic who is out to save his hometown from a 300-year-old curse

Sounds like an ordinary animated movie, right? Not really. ParaNorman is actually the first stop-motion movie to use a rapid prototyping machine, a 3-D color printer that creates objects instead of paper, to produce more expressive puppets. This allowed the animators to create large numbers of puppets rapidly and easily. The result is a movie that looks more like an animation than a stop-motion.

Produced by Laika Entertainment, the production team used hundreds of layers of fine white plaster-vinyl powder sprayed with ink to create the 1.5 million expressions of Norman and the rest of the 27 characters. Norman’s eye rig alone is composed of 40 3D printed parts, which allows the character to look up, down, right, and left.

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The studio used Canon EOS 5D Mark II DSLR to film the movie instead of using the traditional 3D format cameras. Each frame is shot twice; the second shot is taken from a different viewpoint so when knitted together the result is a seamless animated film.

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The production stage lasted three years, with the two years spent for the animation stage of production. Watch the official trailer of the movie here.      

The Environmental Impact of Print Media

For the longest time, print media has been the marketing strategy of choice of many businesses. However, as technology improves and the business industry progresses, a lot of changes and worries on the use of print and paper have popped up. Foremost among them is the question on environmental impact.

While public opinion surveys show the rise and fall of people’s concern for the environment, a sustained increase on the concern for the negative impact of paper and printing on the environment is surprisingly prevalent. Print has somehow invoked several presumptions on users particularly in the use of paper in advertising. This has placed great pressure on business owners to ensure that their printed materials follow the environmental and sustainability rules and regulations to somehow reduce their impact on the environment.

According to Print Power, print media creation basically goes through three stages. In all these stages the issue of sustainability is immense. A company that desires to produce print media has to ensure that everything is done as efficiently and environment-friendly as possible.

The first stage, which involves production, is perhaps the most controversial stage since a lot of people assume that making paper destroys forests. However, websites such as Paper Because believe that paper does not destroy forests. They have generated reports that reveal the real environmental impact of paper. An article from Greenbiz.com entitled “Going Paperless: Not as Green and Tree Friendly as you may Think” revealed that digital media contributes more to global warming than print media due to its use of coal-fired power as coal mining contributes a lot to deforestation and biodiversity loss. Paper production these days makes use of biomass energy instead of fossil fuels which makes the entire production process much efficient and environment-friendly.

The second stage involves printing. More and more printers these days are using soy-based and vegetable-based inks, recycled paper, and recycling cleaning solvents to reduce their carbon footprint. They are committed to reducing their carbon emissions, and that’s why they make sure to use eco-friendly printers and print materials.

The final stage involves consumption. With more and more consumers concerned on paper waste these days, using recycled paper will help reduce the environmental impact of the printing industry.

The introduction of paper and printing has indeed changed the world for the better, but not without consequences. Even so, while these advancements have somehow negatively affected the environment the adoption of sustainable print strategies can help restore our environment. In time, we’ll have a thriving print industry that doesn’t negatively affect the environment.           

Good Old Print Remains Effective in Creating Successful Cross-Media Campaigns

According to an article by PrintWeek, despite the interactive and personalized touch that online and mobile marketing provide, entrepreneurs still find print marketing as the most reliable way of getting in touch with prospects. Though the Internet is the name of the marketing game nowadays, print remains the best way to break the ice; it’s still the cleverest approach to engage customers and generate sales, especially in cross-media campaigns.

However, creating the right marketing mix is a bit difficult to achieve. Companies have to find the best medium that will engage their prospects and encourage them to act at once. PrintWeek spoke to three business giants—BP, Lakeland, and Rank Group—about their experiences in cross-media and print marketing.

BP is a British oil and gas company that is the official partner of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games and London’s 2012 Sustainability Partner and Official Carbon Offset Partner. Its Target Neutral scheme helped “ticked spectators offset their carbon footprint as they travel to the Games.”

For the London 2012 campaign, BP worked with Ogilvy for their ‘Here’s to the home team’ ads, both in print and on TV. Sheila Richardson, spokeswoman of BP said that the company is not trying to sell anything on their campaign, but rather trying to “raise awareness of the Games and to celebrate the athletes and those who support them and others.”

Lakeland is a creative kitchenware store which started from selling plastic bags to home freezing to more than 4,000 kitchen and home solutions today. According to Tony Preedy, marketing director of Lakeland, they use a variety of marketing techniques. They experiment with different printed publications; they have their own catalogue, website, and email marketing programs; and they recently created their own digital magazine for tablets.

Rank Group is a European gaming and betting company whose established brands include Grosvenor Casinos and Mecca Bingo. David Bealing, Head of customer communications, said that "Across both Mecca and Grosvenor Casinos brands we have created customized, trigger-based CRM campaigns, utilizing all forms of cross-media through our best-in-class Web2Media platform." He added that direct mail continues to be effective for their marketing campaign, and so are email and SMS for some customer segments.   

It’s clear that good old-fashioned print marketing remains effective amid the blizzard of modern techniques these days. It will strongly hold its place as an effective driver of customers.  

SunLit Crystal: The All-In-One Ink Solution

Need better quality and more vibrant printed materials? You’re in luck as Sun Chemical, a UK-based ink manufacturer, just launched its SunLit Crystal ink, which is a sheetfed offset process ink set. It’s a vegetable oil-based ink that will produce vivid materials (calendars, magazine covers, flyers, greeting cards, and others) in various substrates such as uncoated paper, paperboard, or matte and gloss coated paper. According to the company, the SunLit Crystal ink contains organic vegetable-based renewable raw materials ranging between 75% and 82%.

The ink is currently available in UK and has been receiving great feedback from Beta testers particularly in its lithographic performance and optical properties. The ink’s composition and its environmental credentials make it an ideal ink for print buyers and users. Among the great benefits of SunLit Crystal are better print gloss and contrast as well as better drying. 

With the escalating use of electronic media these days, it also becomes more important to place higher value on the vividness of printed materials. SunLit Crystal will allow printers to create high quality and vivid prints while sustaining the effectiveness of the printing process.

If you require print work where strong visual impression is important, the SunLit Crystal ink is worth looking into. It’s an all-in-one ink solution that will help you achieve excellent visual results.          

Printed Electronics can Revolutionize Print Media

Digital and electronic technologies have brought a profound effect to the business industry. What used to be a long communication process can now be done in just a matter of seconds. Smartphones, social media, and the Internet have all made the exchange of information as quick and affordable as possible.

 At the same time, though, these modern advancements have brought extensive challenges to the print industry. A lot of printers have gone out of business as more and more consumers choose to patronize modern media. And yet, amid these challenges, the print industry continuously explores new opportunities to create high-value print products. One such opportunity comes in the form of printed electronics.

Several companies are now incorporating electronic functionality directly to printed media as reported in an article from What They Think. Some of these companies are the following.

·         US Home Depot stores introduced this year a smart packaging application from MeadWestvaco with integrated security tags.

·         PragmatIC Printing has included security in its print products which allows consumers to verify a product through visual images that will be displayed when the product is touched or placed near an RF source. This RF-activated security labels makes use of a printed antenna and printed logic.

·         Novalia makes use of design-led approach to create interactive print materials. They have put circuits on several educational books which when touched will provide additional audio files to the material.

Aside from these companies, some of the notable print products that have incorporated printed electronics these days include interactive birthday cards, posters that portray a drum kit, children’s books that have sounds, and an interactive display for the ingredients of a cocktail.

The goal of all these innovations is to make print media more engaging and interactive. After all, printed materials are still worthwhile investments today and they shouldn’t be the backburner of digital alternatives. Companies who can bring new life to print media may find that there’s a lot of potential to print marketing, and printed electronics has the potential to change the way they interact with consumers.