Whoa check this video out by Anders Hatte. Everything in this video was done in After Effects apparently even the music which was made using audio effects such as tone and modulation, key framed to create the drums and melody. No plugs-ins or 3rd party apps were used either. Thats pretty dope, considering the beat isn’t actually bad, and After Effects is not made for audio creation or sequencing. He even kindly put up his After Effects project file to be picked apart and figured out. ardillamedia.com/storage/music-made-in-after-effects.aep On the visual side, the faux 3D cubes, cylinders and spheres were nicely animated, and the fragment mirrors were a nice touch. There’s a lively bounce to the animation thats complex and clearly more than just an expression script. Nice one.
Crazy kids in Germany bombing a train. The teamwork on this boggles my mind, I didn’t even see a sketch, or line work. I gotta say I admire the way they attacked that train in such a procedural manner like a printer spitting out a document. Not a big fan or the overall design or look, but the method is something to be marveled.
Some next level masking, and digital glitch abstraction from field. I copped this on CPLUV the other day.
Official music video for Stateless’ new single “Ariel”
A digital dance performance exploring the eternal struggle of good and evil, for Stateless‘ latest single Ariel soon to be released on Ninja Tune.
FIELD animated the two opponent characters of the song as surreal human figures, drawing dynamic sculptures into space. We collaborated with professional dancer Dominic North to record an impromptu interpretation of the song in a motion capture studio.
Created in the procedural 3D environment Houdini.
I guess they used some cloth and skin techniques in Houdini for the sculptural trails which acted as kind of matte for the glitched-out auxillary particles. I thought about how you do this on the the cheap in a 2D environment using a green screen or stop motion, with out have a massive match-moved and motion tracked rig. I’ll post more later if I have time to experiment but the essential idea is that you shoot it at 60 or 120 p on a greenscreen. Key that, and use a basic frame freeze as a matte for the sculptural trails. You can then deform the matte, using the mesh tool, with some inertial bounce, to get a kind of wobbly organic feel. Then create a glitch animation that would occur on the matte. It would feel very flat, and kind of different from what is done here, but I think it could be pretty sick.
An interesting letter from Walt
I got this quote from Letters of Note Blog written by Walt Disney in December of 1935 to Don Graham and first stumbled upon it via Drawn blog. I found it enlightening because I just finished reading Force by Mike Mattesi to help put some much needed dynamic life into my drawings. He really emphasized exaggeration as way to voice your opinion in your art, which is similar to what Walt says here:
“The first duty of the cartoon is not to picture or duplicate real action or things as they actually happen - but to give a caricature of life and action - to picture on the screen things that have run thru the imagination of the audience to bring to life dream fantasies and imaginative fancies that we have all thought of during our lives or have had pictured to us in various forms during our lives. Also to caricature things of life as it is today - or make fantasies of things we think of today.
The point must be made clear to the men that our study of the actual is not so that we may be able to accomplish the actual, but so that we may have a basis upon which to go into the fantastic, the unreal, the imaginative - and yet to let it have a foundation of fact, in order that it may more richly possess sincerity and contact with the public.
A good many of the men misinterpret the idea of studying the actual motion. They think it is our purpose merely to duplicate these things. This misconception should be cleared up for all. I definitely feel that we cannot do the fantastic things, based on the real, unless we first know the real. This point should be brought out very clearly to all new men, and even the older men.”
Sense vs. Nonsense
This little strip by Frank Chimero is really funny, and hits on a lot of truths in the concepting side of design and pre-production. Check it out for a good read, and don’t forget to visit his site: http://work.frankchimero.com/ for some 60’s inspired design.
Guys from Daily Planet spittin’ some serious bars about motion graphics. Pretty funny stuff and a well done video to boot. “You’re rotoscoping my style, I’m bezier the game.”
CTHULU TYPOGRAPHY
Decided to do a CTHULU Helvetica pisstake shirt.
They were not composed altogether of flesh and blood. They had shape…but that shape was not made of matter. When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, They could not live. But although They no longer lived, They would never really die. They all lay in stone houses in Their great city of R’lyeh, preserved by the spells of mighty Cthulhu for a glorious resurrection when the stars and the earth might once more be ready for Them.
Live Fast Die Reatard
This is a print I’m selling through MySoti which is a pretty cool print on demand site that I recently stumbled across. This is just a test to kind of see how things work with the site to see if it’s worth expanding and sell shirts, posters, and lampshades(!?!?!).
Some serious moves here by BishoP. Towards the end, he pull some Matrix-style moves that look like time-remapping, glitched-out, and slow-motion. Sick moves!
Case Study Guidelines
This post makes me a little sad to be truthful. It’s that time of the year again for case studies, sizzle videos, fly-throughs and other award submissions. Here some guidelines we worked out at work to help creatives that are new to the process or need help in refining their visions. Behold the glory of CASE STUDY GUIDELINES!
General:
Your script should have the arc of problem, solution and result.
The focus of the video should be on the creative showcase, not the set-up/ results. Think of it as a portfolio review.
People want to watch video not read it. Keep titles short, simple, and sweet. Three lines of text max. Use voice over when approriate. Time is a big factor in these videos, so voice over should be as short and sweet as the titles. Less is more is the mantra.
Don’t over script your work. By doing so you risk drawing attention away from the creative and towards the writing that presents your creative instead. Edit every sentence down to the essence of each thought. Avoid superfluous language. All your ideas can be boiled down to one or two potent sentences.
Complete re-writes can be the most devastating thing to consume the deadline. Animations can be very complex to prep, plan, animate, render and edit. Long/intricate scenes should be planned out well ahead of time, proof-read, and approved (by client). Revisions and tweaks along the way are expected. However, complete re-writes cost time and money. A significant change order can cause for a re-estimation of the project.
Storyboards:
Create a clear and linear walkthrough that integrates design, copy, imagery of assets, and narrative. It helps to carefully visualize the video from start to finish. Consider pacing, transitions, and music. You’ll be able to identify the theme of the piece, which will help expedite the creation of your video.
Act I: Set-up/ Challenge
State what we are seeing, who the client is, what the challenges were. Why did they do this campaign?
Act II: Creative Showcase/ Solution
Start with strongest creative.
Just as in design, video is best presented with a hierarchy and grouping of scenes. Lump similar creative in sections. An outline can be helpful to navigate the flow of the campaign. (i.e. Banner, Email, Web, Print, POS). Small one line titles for categories are often used.
Web fly-thrus should be scripted in order of navigation that makes sense. Please focus on only your most creative and entertaining easter eggs.
There should be a minimal explanation of the creative. Let the work speak for itself.
Should answer the questions : why is this interesting? why is it award-worthy?
Act III: Results/ Summary
What happened as a result of the campaign/creative. This can be as brief as a 2 or 3 title cards and an end logo.
File Preparation:
Files should be a minimum 720x540 pixels (square) for a 4:3 video, and 864x486 for 16:9 video. Ideal for a 16:9 is 1280x720 or 1920x1080. If they are to be zoomed into they need to be bigger and usually double resolution or more.
No Power Point files please. They are really hard to extract useable sources from and are often a lower resolution than required. Those sources files used in the power point exist somewhere, please use those instead.
Layered RGB 72 DPI .PSD files are preferred. If an object is to have a drop shadow, glow or reflection, it’s best if it exist on it’s own layer. Sometimes we recreate it in After Effects and sometimes we don’t. Full cut-out objects are preferred. Please apply all layer masks. Keep layers/ layer folders to a minimum and only break out the objects that are going to be animated. All type should be live, and fonts should be enclosed with the files you send.
Video assets ideally should be Quicktime Files 720x540 or 864x486, 1280x720,1920x1080 animation codec, or uncompressed 10-bit codec or none. Mpegs are garbage to work with, and will look bad because of compression artifacts. WMV’s and AVI’s are usually really poor to work with as well.
PDF files are not ideal for image sources.
.AI files are preferred for logos.
