pushing-pixels.org

What is Pushing Pixels?

Pushing Pixels is the personal website of Kirill Grouchnikov, a Google Play team member who writes about the craft behind visual storytelling. It is not a news site or a tutorial hub; it is a collection of long-form interviews and essays, organized around three main strands.

What you will find

• Interviews on the art and craft of visual storytelling. Conversations with costume designers, cinematographers and production designers about how specific films and shows were visually built. Examples include the costume design of "Verity" and the production design of "Insidious: Out Of The Further."
• Interviews on screen graphics in film and TV. A more specialized strand on the fictional interfaces, displays and on-screen technology created for film and television. Subjects include the screens of "Alien: Earth" and "Demolition Man," plus interviews with screen-graphics artists such as Danny Ho and Clark Stanton.
• General thoughts, musings, and deliberations. Shorter posts on topics like software releases (Aurora, Radiance) and convention notes, reflecting the author's other interests in design and development.

Who it is for

The site suits designers, visual-effects and interface artists, film students, and anyone curious about how fictional worlds are assembled. The screen-graphics interviews are especially relevant to UI and motion designers, because they cover the practical work of making believable interfaces for camera.

How to use it

Start with the interview strand closest to your interest, then browse the full archive for related roles. If you care about production roles, begin with the visual-storytelling interviews; if you care about interface design, begin with the screen-graphics interviews. The site is a reading archive rather than a service, so treat it as a reference library to dip into when a specific film, show or design discipline is relevant to your work.

How can I find interviews about screen graphics in specific films or TV shows?

Start with Pushing Pixels' dedicated screen-graphics section: Pushing Pixels groups its interviews under "Interviews on screen graphics in film and TV," separate from its visual-storytelling and general posts. That is the fastest route when you want to hear from the people who designed the fictional interfaces, control panels and on-screen displays in a specific production.

How to search a site like this

• Use the section index first. The screen-graphics category lists interviews by title, and each title usually names the film or show plus the interviewee, so scanning it beats a generic search.
• Combine a title with a role term. Searching for a show name alongside "screen graphics," "UI" or "interface" narrows results, because the same production may also have interviews about costume, production design or cinematography.
• Try the interviewee. If you liked one designer's answers, searching their name often surfaces other productions they worked on.
• Fall back to a general search engine with site: plus the show name when the site's own search is thin.

What to expect from these interviews

The format is a conversation with a practitioner, not a review or a making-of summary. Expect discussion of how a fictional interface was conceived, what the brief from the production was, and how the work was executed. The site's own examples include interviews about the screens of Alien: Earth and Demolition Man, and broader conversations about the art and craft of screen graphics with individual designers.

For a concrete scenario: if you are building a believable interface for a short film and want to know how much detail survives on camera, read an interview tied to a production whose visual style resembles yours, then note the specific decisions the designer describes. Those decisions transfer better than any general tutorial.

Where else to look

• Mark Coleran is a screen-graphics designer whose site documents his own film work, useful when you want a portfolio view rather than an interview.
• Art of the Title covers title sequences and the designers behind them, which overlaps with screen graphics but focuses on opening credits.
• Adobe and similar vendor sites occasionally publish designer interviews, though these tend to be promotional in tone.

A practical decision criterion: go to Pushing Pixels when you want a working designer's account of a specific production; go to a portfolio site when you want to see the finished work in context; go to a trade publication when you need production credits and dates rather than craft detail.

What insights do the interviews provide about the role of screen graphics in visual storytelling?

The interviews treat screen graphics as narrative infrastructure rather than decoration. Rather than asking whether a fictional interface looks plausible, the recurring question is what a screen must communicate to the audience at a specific moment: a character's competence, a system's failure, a deadline, a hidden motive. That reframing is the collection's most useful contribution.

What the interviews tend to surface

• Story-first design. Graphics are discussed as part of a scene's dramatic problem — what the viewer must notice, and when — not as a standalone visual asset.
• Craft under constraint. Interviewees describe balancing legibility on camera, shooting schedules and revisions, which pushes designers toward clarity and restraint.
• World-building through detail. Interfaces carry era, budget and institutional culture, so texture and typography do narrative work that dialogue often cannot.
• Collaboration. The interviews emphasise negotiation with directors, cinematographers and production designers, since a screen only reads correctly once it is lit, framed and cut.

Who gets the most from these

Production designers, motion and UI designers moving into film work, and students building a reel will find the craft discussion directly applicable. Writers and directors get a vocabulary for briefing screen content early instead of treating it as post-production cleanup. General readers who simply enjoy how fictional technology is made will still find the specifics engaging.

The trade-off is focus. This is interview-driven material centred on individual projects, so it rewards readers willing to synthesise patterns themselves rather than those wanting a single how-to guide. For the screen-graphics thread, Pushing Pixels collects conversations with practitioners such as Dave Henri and Stefan Grimm on Alien: Earth and Paul Taglianetti on Demolition Man, alongside costume, cinematography and production design interviews that show the same storytelling logic applied to other departments.

A practical next step

Pick one interview from a production you have actually watched, then rewatch the relevant scene with the sound off. Note what the screens tell you without dialogue — then read the interview to see which of those choices were deliberate. That exercise converts the interviews from interesting reading into a working method you can apply to your own project.

Who are some of the professionals interviewed on Pushing Pixels?

Pushing Pixels interviews working film and TV professionals about how visual worlds get built, with two main strands: production craft (costume, cinematography and production design) and screen graphics (the interfaces and displays characters use on camera).

Production craft interviewees

• Jacqueline Demeterio – costume design for “Verity”
• Aron Meinhardt – cinematography for “I Live Here Now”
• Amy Williams – production design for “Verity”
• Nick Bassett – production design for “Insidious: Out Of The Further”
• Jacinta Leong – production design for “Fall 2: Deadpoint”

Screen graphics interviewees

• Dave Henri and Stefan Grimm – the screens of “Alien: Earth”
• Paul Taglianetti – the screens of “Demolition Man”
• Danny Ho – the art and craft of screen graphics
• Clark Stanton – the art and craft of screen graphics
• Noah Schloss – the art and craft of screen graphics

If you are a concept artist, UI designer or film student, the screen-graphics set is the more directly transferable read: it covers how fictional interfaces are designed to look believable on camera. The production-design and cinematography interviews suit readers interested in physical world-building and visual mood. A practical next step is to pick the interview matching the role you care about, then compare how different guests describe collaboration with directors and departments. For broader industry craft context, see IMDb.

What topics are covered in the general thoughts and musings section?

The "General thoughts, musings, and deliberations" section is a personal blog strand rather than a themed reference library. From the page evidence, it mixes two kinds of posts: release notes for the author's own projects — Aurora (appearing at versions 2.0.0 and 2.5.0) and Radiance (8.5.0 and 9.0.0) — and event write-ups such as a DragonCon 2025 parade highlights post. So expect project changelogs and version announcements alongside lighter, convention-related observations.

That makes it useful for two different readers. If you follow Kirill Grouchnikov's tooling work, this is where version updates surface before anywhere else. If you came for the site's core subject — interviews about visual storytelling and screen graphics in film and TV — this section is the least relevant part, and the interview indexes are the better starting point.

A practical way to decide: check the general section when you want to track Aurora or Radiance releases, and skip it when you are researching production design, cinematography or on-screen UI. The titles give the topic away quickly, so scanning the list costs little.

How can I stay updated with new content on Pushing Pixels?

Subscribe to the site's RSS feed, which is linked at the bottom of the homepage, and follow the site on any social channels it lists in its footer or "About" section.

What the site publishes

Pushing Pixels is Kirill Grouchnikov's personal site. Its homepage groups content into three streams:

• Interviews on the art and craft of visual storytelling — conversations with costume designers, cinematographers and production designers about specific films and shows.
• Interviews on screen graphics in film and TV — talks with the people who design the on-screen interfaces and displays seen in productions.
• General thoughts, musings, and deliberations — posts about the author's own projects and interests, alongside event write-ups such as a DragonCon parade highlight.

Because the site mixes long-form interviews with shorter personal posts, an RSS reader is the most reliable way to see everything in one place. A feed reader also keeps the interview series from getting buried under the general posts, and you can filter or tag the feed by section if your reader supports it.

Practical options

• Feed reader (best for completeness): Add the RSS URL to a reader such as Feedly, Inoreader or NetNewsWire. You'll get every new interview and general post without needing an account on the site itself.
• Email or social alerts: Check the footer and "About" page for any listed newsletter or social profiles, and follow those if you prefer notifications over a reader.
• Occasional browsing: If you only care about the interview series, bookmark the "Browse all interviews" index pages and revisit them every few weeks; new entries appear at the top of each list.

A concrete routine

If you're researching screen graphics for a project, subscribe to the RSS feed and set a weekly review slot. Skim only the "screen graphics" interviews first, saving the general posts for later. That keeps the signal high while still catching everything the site publishes.

For a broader diet of production design and visual effects writing, pair it with Art of the Title and Studio Daily.