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Windows 10 wallpaper was physically built and photographed (2015)

gmunk.com

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Re: Windows 10 wallpaper was physically built and photographed (2015)

#61

I hate myself for saying it, but this feels like an artistic variation on "we spent 500 hours manually perfecting React button animations" or "I built a Lisp so we can have more interesting configuration files for our ... todo list app". I guess I'm jaded. > Creative Director: GMUNK > Managing Director, Live Action: Oliver Fuselier > Managing Partner, Digital: Dustin Callif > Executive Producer: Robert Helphand > Hea…

Two main reasons to make it this way is to also generate movies for possible ads etc. And creative process - you get a lot more happy accidents and variety doing it this way over “draw anything” in photoshop which can be pretty daunting.

Re: Windows 10 wallpaper was physically built and photographed (2015)

#62
post #55

To me as a photographer and as computer vision expert, this sounds wayyyyyy over-engineered and -produced. I get that there's a big vision (and budget) involved, but c'mon!

You have to take into consideration that the default wallpaper is arguably the most seen picture in the entire world.

Yup... but, if everyone thinks it's a rendering, and you could have saved tons of money by actually rendering it instead of doing what these guys did, it's still a waste of money if you ask me...

Re: Windows 10 wallpaper was physically built and photographed (2015)

#63

To me as a photographer and as computer vision expert, this sounds wayyyyyy over-engineered and -produced. I get that there's a big vision (and budget) involved, but c'mon!

Sometimes these things land and sometimes they don’t. XP’s grassy hill seems to have been universally loved but could easily have been seen as lazy.

Granted, MS used to actually take theming seriously. XP had an excellent marketing campaign that tied in with the visual scheme of the product. Even the OS sounds tied in with the choice of music for their commercials, “Ray of Light” by Madonna.

Now we just get the wallpaper and there’s no concerted effort to make a theme of joy or accessibility or creativity or anything.

Re: Windows 10 wallpaper was physically built and photographed (2015)

#64

As impressive as this looks (and is), the effort strikes me as monumentally oversized. This particular picture, with its straight lines and everything artificial, could have just as well come out of a renderer. For substantially less cost, the result would have been the same. Doesn't mean you don't need to have the creative vision first. But executing it with a camera and a light/laser/fog set and all the effort that…

I'm reminded of the recent Steam Deck OLED video. It's obviously something that could be done with VFX, but I thought it was really cool.

I think this is similar. Just like in movies, there are directors who don't use VFX as much as they could...

Re: Windows 10 wallpaper was physically built and photographed (2015)

#65
post #14
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it was aimed at making the OS look less threatening and complicated to a new user. Then again, people did complain about it being a "Fisher-Price UI", so maybe this overwhelmingly positive perception is a result of people spending so much time with the OS and getting used to the way things were.

I do recall the Fisher-Price complaints. As I recall it mostly came from the Linux (or Linux-inclined) crowd. I never really understood the complaints, though it was common enough that I must have just been missing something. But really, I don't get whats wrong with a functional UI that's also friendly and inviting.

Just today I was thinking about XP and the phrase "Fisher-Price" came to mind. I liked XP's UI, even as whimsical and toy-like (and easy to make fun of) as it was. I'd prefer if computers and OSes retained the whimsy and character of that late-90's-early-2000's era of Win XP and the colourful iMacs, etc.

Re: Windows 10 wallpaper was physically built and photographed (2015)

#66
post #62
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to take into consideration that the default wallpaper is arguably the most seen picture in the entire world.

Yup... but, if everyone thinks it's a rendering, and you could have saved tons of money by actually rendering it instead of doing what these guys did, it's still a waste of money if you ask me...

That can be said for many other artistic creations. But if you ask me, the fact that it was so elaborate adds something to it. The end result might be the same but the intentions and the process to get there matter.

Also, waste of money. We’re talking Microsoft. It’s not like those money we’re going to be spent on charity. They paid some creative people to do creative work. We should appreciate that.

Re: Windows 10 wallpaper was physically built and photographed (2015)

#67
post #16

I don’t want to be a fanboy but the wallpaper is so soulless and industrial. I like how Apple always tries to bring nature to computing with wallpapers and screensavers. For example https://iso.500px.com/iphone-6-milky-way-wallpaper-interview... Also the Ariel videos of nature and cities for Apple TV and Mac is another example. Windows feels so corporate and boring tbh

Nice, so many good photos in that post! Thanks for sharing :D

Re: Windows 10 wallpaper was physically built and photographed (2015)

#68

I remember the good old days when I would spend so much time choosing the right wallpapers for my PC and phone. Nowadays, the wallpaper is completely hidden from me because I am constantly switching between apps on macOS thanks to my Raycast custom keyboard shortcuts and I never see whatever picture I set... It's a weird feeling. Kinda like letting go of the desktop-oriented computer in favor of window-manager-orient…

I used (like many many many) to do this. And one day I thought to myself.. hey.. that greenish background color of Win NT was cool (R0, G128, B128), wasn't it? And then the Windows 2000 blue.. oh how beautiful.. (R60, G110, B166).

And later in life i switched to total black with dark mode for all my devices (and my eyes thanked me for it :)

Re: Windows 10 wallpaper was physically built and photographed (2015)

#69
post #62
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to take into consideration that the default wallpaper is arguably the most seen picture in the entire world.

Yup... but, if everyone thinks it's a rendering, and you could have saved tons of money by actually rendering it instead of doing what these guys did, it's still a waste of money if you ask me...

I think it's a little bit comfortable to think of a tech company as putting money into the arts.

Re: Windows 10 wallpaper was physically built and photographed (2015)

#70

Although this is great somehow in my opinion this was the best windoze wallpaper It somehow captures my soul, perhaps because i was very young when i saw it https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd....

As already mentioned it was the install setup, and it's my favorite Windows background to date as well. It's actually a 2 bit image with all blue and black, with dithering. It's very comforting in my opinion.
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