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Design

Meet Dirk Rauscher: Designing Man-Made Shapes In Organic Settings

Dirk Rauscher, a self-taught animator/designer based out of Germany, creates work that juxtaposes the natural with the manmade, using geometric graphics combined with the organic movements of his animations and video projections. Having worked on...

Dirk Rauscher, a self-taught animator/designer based out of Germany, creates work that juxtaposes the natural with the manmade, using geometric graphics combined with the organic movements of his animations and video projections. Having worked on a variety of projects ranging from commercial work for Red Bull to music videos for his flatmate (and rather famous German singer/songwriter) Clueso, his work still manages to have a cohesive look. Below are a few selections from his portfolio:

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Digital Marrakech 3 Festival Trailer

This trailer, designed for the Digital Marrakech Festival, features a concept which was initially created as a series of still images, one of Rauscher's personal projects.

"My personal projects are often a kind of research, in style, but also in a technical way, testing new technologies or new features of the software. In this case I wanted to illustrate a different 'frame of mind,'" says Rauscher. By isolating the head, the dream-like sense of reality distortion is achieved.

The Digital Marrakech Festival, held in Marrakech, Morocco every year, aims to unite Moroccan new media artists with those who reside internationally. Making a promotional clip for this festival provided him with the opportunity to animate this concept.

Dominik Eulberg

: Sansula

Light projection and a large backyard make for quite a beautiful paring in this music video, which Rauscher directed. Rauscher says the inspiration for this marriage of technology and nature was inspired by the lifestyle of the musician.

"Dominik Eulberg is a well known DJ and producer, traveling around the globe to play music in clubs. On the other hand, he is an Ornithologist living in the woods closely with nature. I was very fascinated about that fact. So from the beginning I wanted to do something which reflected this diversity," Rauscher explains.

Some unanticipated performers made their spontaneous appearance on the set as well.

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"When I told my concept to Dominik, he came up with the idea to have some frogs in the scene," says Rauscher, "I told him that I have no idea where to get—or how to handle—frogs, so we canceled this idea. But, on the night of the shoot, magically, when we started to project the video, there were frogs coming from all directions, and they kind of looked [at us like] what the hell were we doing there. So, we decided spontaneously to integrate them."

Clueso

 Music video:

Dirk has worked on a variety of music-based projects, and cites music as one of his greatest influences. One of the artists he works with most frequently is Clueso, the German singer/songwriter in the video above, who he also shares an apartment with.

"I've always felt a bit jealous that musicians can be creative in 'realtime,'" says Rauscher, "They press keys, pick a string, and they can transform that directly into an emotion, something you can feel."

This jealousy of immediacy is what drove him to initially become a VJ (as well as a breakdancer in his younger years), and has fueled his friendship and working partnership with Clueso.

"I love rhythm. Any rhythm is like a philosophy for me," Rauscher explains.

Inside South Africa

In the production of this video, used as an intro for a program about the 2010 FIFA World Cup held in South Africa, Rauscher was in charge of direction and animation. As a collaborative work, he credits Arne Clasvogt and Alexander Hollmer with much of the design ideas. Their ultimate goal was to create a video with a pop-up book aesthetic, using the culture of South Africa as their inspiration. With this concept in mind, they began researching how to make make this look realistic, to create a paper-like aesthetic in Cinema 4D. The sound design, also an impressive element in the clip, was created by Clemens Haas.

As a self-taught artist, Dirk is a proponent of using the internet for design education, and an example of how this can lead to success. Although he has obviously triumphed at this, he says that he did in fact struggle with the self-discipline involved in this autodidactic method, but argues that participating in personal projects, and ones which you are interested in, make the work process feel less like work, and tend to lead to the most successful work in your portfolio.

"It is then more likely that people will love your style, and will pay you for things you like to do, which should be the goal," says Dirk, "One of my favorite quotes from Steve Jobs which always inspired me to push things forward is 'Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish.'"