Fresh Grass

Fresh Grass is an animated short film written and directed by Irish filmmaker Robert Cullen. Released in 2014, Fresh Grass follows the story of a little dog who leaves his small town home to journey to the big city to visit his sister. A seemingly simple and innocent story, this short film quickly pulls a 180 and throws the audience into a bizarre setting that leads to a bitter twist.

   
This 10-minute short does a great job of deceiving its audience of where it is headed and it definitely catches you off guard when things start to get weird but this is exactly what the director intended. In an interview with Robert Cullen, he explained how he has had this story idea for years and had every shot and composition thought out already when he was finally given the opportunity to make it. The short was put together using elements from Flash, Photoshop, and After Effects and it took about eight weeks to complete with a crew of 25.    

   
Overall, Fresh Grass is a fresh twist on an innocent tale that is definitely worth checking out. You can view the entire short by using the link below.

                                                          https://vimeo.com/148380343

Cute animated short done in Maya

This is an adorable and funny animated short using Maya and photoshop, mixed with premiere. I would not have guessed that this was made in Maya, although it is in 3D I thought it would have been done, at least in part in After Effects. It was made by 3 college students and it was well edited. I wouldn't be surprised to see someone at our school something like this.

Live Visuals and Color.

I've recently been experimenting on syncing sounds and music with objects and shapes in After Effects. While I was looking on Vimeo for my daily inspiration I ran across these Live Tour Visuals and decided to share it with you all! I think the color choices and the silhouettes of people are amazing. I was wondering if these images were just sketched and then recorded into After Effects or Photoshop or just transferred in as .png files or something similar. What do you think?
 

                     

Nervo Style 1 / Live Tour Visuals from FutureDeluxe on Vimeo.

VFX Show Reel Summer 2013 Breakdown

        This video created by Stian Halvorsen is a great example of compositing and a few other really cool effects. To create the avalanche the artist imported the 3D solving and tracking points into Houdini to create the geometry of the mountain. Stian then added a birth particle simulation to give the avalanche the moving effect. Additional layers of particles were then added to give the avalanche detail, the final rendering was done in Mantra. Nuke was used for the compositing and after all said and done it took a total of 8 weeks to complete the final project. The second project featured was the Oscar which  has an intricate feather explosion produced by using Houdini to create the feathers. After this the artist used a particle system to simulate the feathers to fly and roto shaped the person in Nuke and then projected it in Houdini. This project was also not a small feat and thus took a total of 7 weeks to complete. The second to last project was composited in Nuke, altered in Photoshop and also was created in Realflow and Maya. Although thats all the information that I could gather about this specific grouping of projects I am owerwhelmed with attention to detail and the overall appearance of the artists work. Additionally it is inspiring to see an artist use so many different applications and programs in sync to get one final product.

Stian Halvorsen - VFX Show Reel Summer 2013 from Stian Halvorsen on Vimeo.

EXIT 73 Studios: Coin

     Recently I was scrolling along our blog page and stumbled upon the link to the site Motionographer. I found a short little animation called "Coin" created by a small animation and motion graphics company in James-port, NY that specializes in animation production and graphic design. "Coin" was directed and animated by Chris Burns with music, sound design and composition by Bob Fox. "Coin" is a 2D 8-bit animation that plays homage to games from the past. The animation takes the viewer on  a nostalgic journey through many environments such as underwater and outer space that include references to many of the games in our early childhood which inevitably faded out due to better technology. While only a team of two EXIT 73 Studios stands tall among its peers with its precise animation, overwhelming creativity and lastly experience to keep the company moving in the right direction. Chris Burns has been an animator for over 10 years working for prestigious clients such as Disney, Fox, Adult Swim, Comedy Central, MTV and Nickelodeon. Additionally Bob Fox partner of Burns has worked for such clients as Disney, Nickelodeon, MTV and IFC. Enjoy as "Coin" takes you through some of the most memorable video games of all time.

Exit 73 Studios

                 


A few other examples of EXIT 73 Studios notable works:

                  

                    

Steve Viola and Captain America: The First Avenger title sequence

       
            Steve Viola is a creative director, title designer and head of Method Design (formerly Rok!t Studio), located in Santa Monica, California. Viola has some elite title sequences working as both creative director and or title designer including The Avengers, Captain America: The First Avenger, Madea's Big Happy Family, and X-Men Origins: Wolverine. One of his latest title sequences Captain America: The First Avenger began when Rok!t's EP David Garber collaborated with the director of The Wolfman, Joe Johnston, to generate ideas and eventually pitch the idea to Marvel. The idea behind the title sequence is a spin on the black and white Nazi propaganda films. The really cool part about this sequence is how the production team of Rok!t Studio's took existing Nazi propaganda to create the stereoscopic effect. While this might be a little advanced for our class an animation with depth like this one should be something to strive for in the future. The team created the title sequence by using Adobe Photoshop, After effects,  Illustrator, 3D was done in Autodesk Maya and all 2D /3D composting was done in Nuke. Viola stated, "As a team we took a lot from Joe himself. From a concept perspective we tried to take inspiration from the WWII period and abstract/environment-based titles like the Bond title sequences and Thank You for Smoking." Here is the Captain America: The First Avenger title sequence, Enjoy!

                     

  Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) — Art of the Title

Here is The Wolfman intro title sequence created in Adobe After Effects by Joe Johnston and his team, Johnston again was the director of the title sequence for Captain America: The First Avenger.