April 2012 > Gideon’s Tale project will be present at the DMY Design Festival on the 9 and 10 June in Betahaus, Berlin. Stay tuned for more details.

February 2012 > Stopmotion video for italian organization SPI to promote its activities among the people who enter retirement time.
Shot in Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, features paper characters, magic boxes, and colored butterflies.

English Subtitled version HERE

Credits
Production: Astra-Design
Concept: Chiara Pagano
Cut-out and animation: Alessandro Maggioni
Music: Pier Panzeri

Thanks to Lioba and Sandra at Medienwerkstatt – Bethanien.

2011 > Astra-Design in collaboration with Stefano Mandato has created the 2011 advertising campaign for Colliers International Italia on economics magazine ‘Il Sole 24 Ore’. The surreal illustrations portrait the Colliers italian group as acrobatic and scareless stunts ready to fasten up situations, with great team spirit and elegance.

January 2012 > News. Gideon is a peacock that lives in the king’s garden. One day he steps out of the castle and begins his strange journey.

written by Chiara Pagano, illustrated by Alessandro Maggioni

Gideon’s Tale is a coming-of-age story of a peacock that loses his beautiful tail, a source and symbol of his self-confidence and identity. Gideon lives a sheltered life in the King’s court all his life. When he is forced to leave court because of a recently acquired physical imperfection, he starts on a journey of growth, a discovery of self and his true identity, one that is not just based on looks.

Based upon the real story of a peocock in love with a hen, Chiara has written an inspiring story of loss and growth, a tale beautifully illustrated by Alessandro. The simple, white visual style is choosen to emphasize the important of the essence of the story instead of colorful, vibrant illustration, typical of children’s book. From then much paper and many ideas have come together. The book has been crafted, portraying the story just with the use of white papercuts being manually photographed in high contrast lighting.

The potential for this story to grow into more series and using different medias are limitless. We’ve created wooden prototypes to be used as puppets in children’s shadow theater. We also believed that there is a real growth potential in the world of feature animation series and interactive apps as well as interactive educational and art materials.

In these days and age, when the world is rapidly evolving, Gideon’s Tale is a story about the true value of humanity, growth, identity, friendship, and bravery. It is also an experiment in story-telling through many different medias and channel.

And obviously, it’s a lot of fun.

2011 > Visual identity for the audiovideo project The Frrail.

Since 2005 we provide visual consultancy for architecture communication.3D modeling, rendering, video, websites, our approach is to deal with architecture visualization as a corporate identity, in order to find and develop the unique combination that best fits the designer profile.