Israel Pastrana

I'm a spanish Creative Technologist at B-Reel Digital in New York City.

10 questions for Israel Pastrana:

• What did you do before becoming a designer/developer?

  While I was in college I worked building wood furniture, assembling and decorating. I guess I've always been a craftsman!

• Where do you turn for inspiration?

  I'm trying to escape from the laptop for inspiration, so: Nature, people and literature. Nature is the most beautiful mathematics possible. I'm very interested in the people behind the work, that gives an extra dimension to my research. I try to read a lot, I enjoy it and love finding unexpected connections between apparently unrelated subjects, I see data visualizations all around!

• Which are your favorite studios, designers or agencies?

  I'm lucky to work in one of them, B-Reel. And I love all the work that comes from Tha ltd. ( I've been a fan for years ), also the productions that Unit9 and Google Creative Lab share with the world, I particularly like how the work with different directors, studios, etc… it's fresh!

• Who do you side with: Team Mac or Team PC?

  Team Mac, but I'm really thinking about combining Ubuntu with a Chromebook Pixel for a change, waiting for Ubuntu to support high dpi displays.

• Is your city a good place for designers?

  New York is a good place for almost every profession, and even more for Design & Development, it has high vibrant creative feeling. Lots of amazing studios are around the block and there is a huge amount of meet-ups and conferences. Perfect.

• Which technologies are you excited about?

  I've been excited by JavaScript my whole career, and I'm still the same, there are so many new features or APIs all the time.

  Right now for me it's all about Data Channels in WebRTC, the new features of WebGL 2.0, having WebGL on devices and all that cheap hardware where you can code in JavaScript. Oh... and Oculus Rift, of course!

• How many hours do you work each week?

  A lot. Mostly because I always find something interesting to add to the current project, and that takes research and prototyping, but it's the best part of my job, I can't help it.

• Do you listen to music while you work? Describe your playlist.

  Yes, I always have music while working, although sometimes I can't remember what did I play through the whole day... But that is a good sign, I was in the zone! My playlist is mostly Jazz, with some Jazz-Funk and 90's Hip Hop, there is also some electronic music in the mix.

• What is your favorite book?

  Only one? That's too hard, but I choose "Demian" by Hermann Hesse.

• What is your favorite sport?

  I love swimming, but I think I enjoy more playing Padel Tennis. My wife and I used to have very long and not healthy competitions.

• Tell us your funniest anecdote related to your work

  At the end of the 90s, back in the DHTML era, Adobe wrote a letter to our company because we were publishing flash sites without legal licenses of the software. But the truth is that the sites were built in plain JavaScript, we felt like real winners answering that letter!