I ended up going to Cut & Paste last night which is an annual design competition where 2D, 3D and motion designers compete in 20 minute rounds to come up with the best design based on a given topic/theme.

The night started off perfectly with great street parking just minutes from the venue (The Metro), which is very impressive because parking in the city on a Saturday night is a huge pain in the butt. Next up, we got to jump the queue because we already had our tickets and to top it all over the night’s sponsors Becks had free beer for the first hour. So far the night was looking awesome.

There were some very impressive designs from the night. But the thing that I was most impressed by was their lightning speed. They’ve only got 20 minutes to come up with a completed design, and in 3D that’s crazy. This one time I helping g with her 3D work and it took me nearly 3 hrs just to put a couple of sticks on a building.

For full coverage of the night have a look at Charles’ blog – Empty Wrapper. He’s done an awesome job of covering the night’s proceeding.

Below are some of the designs from the night.

3D design
The guy that did this design had to leave his sister’s wedding to attend the competition. I was hoping he’d win so it would make missing the wedding worth while.

Ray Kristianto took out first place with this 3D design below. It was so crazy, there was so much detail and precision with this design. Sorry it’s not the best of photos, my hands were a bit shaky from all the free Becks beer.

2D design
We all thought Adam Paquette’s design below should have won. I mean seriously how in the world can you do that in 15 minutes! There’s so much detail in the shading.

This is the design that won. The judges kept saying that they were really impressed by the ideas and concept, so I guess it’s fair enough that Lev Berry won. I didn’t get a great photo of this one because I really didn’t think it would have won.

The winner’s get a trip to New York to compete in the global Cut & Paste comp. Hope they do well!