A Cool Tutorial and A Cool Website

I might be catching you off guard with this one, but - I found something cool on reddit! This week it was a tutorial I found on /r/VFX on how to create the HUD (heads-up display) from Iron man, aka the cool hologram stuff you see when Tony Stark puts his helmet on. While the tutorial was pretty fast moving and involved a lot of things I had never seen before, I liked the light humor throughout it and it kept me engaged. Engaged enough to make it to the 5:45 mark that is, when the maker of the tutorial shows off his website. I went over to productioncrate.com to check it out and I found some pretty cool stuff there. They have lots of cool video FX and royalty free audio you can download, as well as some tutorials (although I haven’t yet looked at any of the tutorials besides this one). To download things you need to make an account, but a free account can still give you access to download some pretty cool stuff. I’ll definitely come back soon to check out exactly what I can get with a free account and see whether a pro account is worth it. Because in the grand scheme of things, $40 per year for a full-access account can save me a lot of time and help make some things a lot cooler.

The Recipe - Kendrick Lamar - Lyric Video

Lyric videos are interesting to me because there are so many different ways that you can connect the typography to the theme of the music. In Kendrick Lamar’s lyric video for “The Recipe”, the typography is very simple but it works perfectly with the song. The lyrics are also easy to read, which is nice because many lyric videos today get so carried away with the animation that you can barely see the lyrics. This inspires me to do more with typography in the future because I have yet to really work with it in my projects. It’s nice to have these lyric videos for inspiration. 

New ideas...

I think it's pretty clear right now that I am very into pixel art, and the lengths that people can take with it.  I've seen some beautiful pixel animations, and they have been enough to convince me to make another one for my second motion graphic project.  This time, I want to use an isometric grid, and create a world with plenty of activity that plays on a loop.
If you know me as an individual, you most likely know that I am also a lover of all types of music.  Like pretty much the rest of the world, I love the Beatles, and one of my favorite movies that I grew up with is "The Yellow Submarine."  Combining the four lads with animation created an adorable, yet odd story about their journey to the magical Pepperland to save the townspeople from the music-hating blue meanies.  The film combines beautiful hand drawn animation with pops of bright colors, and it makes the whole experience seem like a fairy tail.  Below is a small fan made trailer showing some of the gorgeous visuals of the 1968 film.

For my second project, I want to pay homage to this movie, and create and isometric world that includes many of the film's references.  I'll definitely be including music as well!  It will be tough, but it is a challenge that I am willing to take on.

Animation On Tour : Yeezus Tour

I thought it would be interesting to see how animation can be incorporated in the set design and graphics of musical performances. For example, Kanye West’s tour “Yeezus” displays animations that were designed by a whole crew of designers and animators. Kanye worked with international stage designer Es Devlin to create psychedelic visions throughout his performances. Check out these pictures from the show!

  

A$AP Rocky - JD Music Video

About 8 months after the release of his May 2015 album At.Long.Last.A$AP, rapper A$AP Rocky recently released the music video to his song "JD". I watched this video when it first came out last week and was captivated by the way that the animation it used was blended with real video footage. It was a style that I haven’t seen very much at all before (although I’m sure it has been done), and I really enjoyed it. This is something that I would like to eventually learn how to do, and it could possibly the topic of one of my future animations of the week. I like the style of the flickering paintbrush strokes that the animation was drawn in, and I found it a lot more engaging than just plain old video. My favorite part of the video however came at about 0:48. The beat drops and makes three distinct thumping sounds, which the video parallels by switching back and forth from animation to video in time with each thump. It matched excellently. and I immediately was drawn in even more for the remainder of the video. Videos like JD are part of what initially got me interested in motion graphics - it’s a way to make the work I’m already doing look significantly more visually appealing. This video was very well done, and I’m definitely going to look into tutorials on the paintbrush animation style that it used.

Chemical Brothers Video

Electronic music artists, The Chemical Brothers, recently released a music video for one of the songs off their new album Born in the Echoes.  The video makes impressive use of 3-D visual effects and motion capture technology by replacing the main actors body with 3-D printed constructions while she dances. The video was also taken in a single take and lasts just over four minutes.

There's an (article) that breaks down how they did it, as well as a (Making of Video)

Animating to Music

After using sound in collaboration with visuals on Wednesday, I was reminded of one of my favourite animated sequences from my childhood. The opening to Pixar's 2001 animated comedy, Monsters, Inc.

The opening cleverly features several animated doors (which play a prominent role in the film) dancing around, revealing title credits. All to one of Randy Newman's chirpy tunes from the soundtrack. The upbeat jazz instrumental provides a fun way of opening the film.

I really like how there's a nice balance between doors that move to the music, and ones that move independently. It can be dangerously easy to create a null which holds audio information, then go ahead and parent the hell out of every on screen object to the null. Sure, you'll have lots of moving pieces, but things can start to feel to mechanical and automated. The Monsters, Inc. opening has fluidity, while maintaining chirpiness and overall feeling in time with the music.

Check it out here, I think it's really fun.

Stromae's New music video

I honestly have never heard of this artist before and in reality have never been to passionate about French rap but this video came up on my newsfeed and it is pretty amazing. I'm in love with the style and the message is loud and clear. I'm not too deep into the twitter-sphere but I feel like this applies to most social media platforms. People can get easily wrapped up into social media to the point where it's comical that that it's called "social" media when in reality it makes us more inclusive in the real world.

The story is very clear too the point where it doesn't even need the subtitles. Definitely worth checking out.

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.

Conte

The other day a friend of mine showed me a video on YouTube of an electronic music artist named Conte. I was immediately taken aback by the creativity and innovation that I experienced while watching the video and I knew I had to share it with you guys.

This video was created by David Conte, who is also the musician. I don't think that I have ever seen something like this before. It combines the music to the visual lights in a way that makes them feel like they are one of the same. The the lights change colors and move to the beat of the music in a mesmerizing way and every mark is hit in the video. The other impressive thing about this video is that it is all done live. David Conte has the routine down perfectly so that the placement of the objects and lights is not messed up. There really is no room for error in this endeavor. This video makes the music come to life through lights animation and video. I think this is really something special. Check out his videos at http://www.jackconte.com/ -- they are all awesome!

Do You Believe In Life After After Effects?

So I went to see Cher this past week and as I imagined, it was the greatest night of my life and I cried much more than I had intended. Especially for being 67, she really put on a great show for over two hours. One of the things that really grabbed my attention throughout the entire show was the intricate animations being shown on the huge screen at the back of the stage throughout each song.

If you were to watch the animation by itself on your computer, it may not appear to be much more than a fancy screensaver. But paired up with the loud music, thumping bass, backup dancers and everything else going on on the stage, I can say from first-hand experience that the animations at the back tied everything together and truly made me get up on my feet and mom-dance from If I Could Turn Back Time all the way to Believe.

I guess the point I'm trying to get across is that it's not just how an animation looks that makes it special, it's how it's used. The video below, to my knowledge, is fan made but I can attest it's identical to the backdrop during her opening number. Maybe to you, watching it won't invoke much emotion. But for me, thinking about her performance and knowing how the video was used during it, it gives me goosebumps every time.

Animusic

This video has always been my favorite song and one of my favorite visuals out of all of Animusic's works,

"Animusic, LLC is a computer animation company with the singular focus of animating music. Both music and visuals are entirely digitally synthesized. We "invent" imaginary Virtual Instruments by building computer graphics models of objects that appear to create the sound of the corresponding synthesized music track." (source)

I saw Animusic at a friend's house in high school and was immediately enthralled by it. The visuals alone are so interesting and fun to watch, then once coupled with the music I was really hooked. The combination was so real and fascinating. Now I am able to enjoy the various songs with my nephews who are young. I think when a movie, animation, or TV has really succeeded when they are able to entertain someone young, like my nephew who is four and also older people, like my dad who is in his sixties.

Here's always a good one to watch too!


Here's Part 1 to how they go in and make all their animations. 

Having some fun

So over the weekend I decided to experiment a little bit by creating my own moving shapes that "bounce" with the music. I'm not exactly sure how much I can write about this, but I'll definitely give it a try.

Making this did take me a little while because I had to try and remember all of the different elements that we used in it. In order to try and make it come out good, I wanted to make two different sets of Treble and Bass. However, I made each respective pair have the same settings for Treble and Bass. I didn't try and make one higher than the other so the bouncing ratio was different. If I wanted to redo it, that's one thing I would change. But anyway. I wanted to try and make each shape be seen by rotating the rectangles as they get larger. So in order to do that I created the 4 rectangles - actually two and then just duplicate that specific layer - and rotated two of them in order to give it that look of more than there actually are. This was done for both Bass and Treble. Once that was done I added a circle to cover up the middle parts so it looked as though the rectangles were coming out of the circle. Once the whole piece was done I had to make some minor changes to the background and the color of the shapes so it was colorful and bright, but that was nothing too major.

Anyway, all in all, I really like doing this specific project. It is always so much fun and I always smile ear to ear when it is all said and done.

This Is Hard But Maybe One Day I Won't Suck

I saw this trailer for the movie Malificent premiere at the Grammys and I immediately fell in love with it. The selling point was the haunting cover of Once Upon A Dream by Lana Del Rey. I firmly believe music can be the most important factor in a video and, after watching it with and without the sound turned on, it's easy to tell how much of a difference the audio makes.

I came back to the video after our last class and watched through it once more, and I had an anxiety attack after seeing how complicated and brilliant the special effects are, and realizing how much difficulty I had even adding a sparkler to a terrible animation of my 4-letter name. It's extremely intimidating. I wanted to make my post about this subject because at the same time, it's a motivation to one day be able to create amazing special effects like these.

And maybe animate my name.

It Just Feels Good At First

Train came out with their new music video for their song "Feels Good At First".  This music video features a very cool effect where you watch the video in a silhouette of Pat's head.  As well as this, the music video plays a lot with transparency to help create the idea of reminiscing on memories.

If I had to guess how they created the effect of playing the music video in the silhouette of Pat's head, I would say that they masked his head and took out Pat's face.  They then inserted the music video into where Pat's head was.  But if you look closely, there is the rest of the image in Pat's head on the outside of the silhouette, just with a higher opacity.  This could be done through using Mocha to track and then mask Pat's head.  It's a simple technique with a creative and powerful image.

Stalley's "Go On"

   One of my favorite hip-hop artists is Kyle Myricks aka Stalley. His music videos often involve a story or some kind of animation. This music video is very creative and directed by Walu Mwalilino. I looked into Walu's past work and he directs videos for some of the biggest names in hip-hop. His videos are all very different from each other yet he has a unique style that captivates the audience and creates a story rather than highlight the typical girls, cars, money aspect. He highlights the rappers' lifestyles and brings out the substance in their lyrics. In the Stalley music video, I'm not sure how Walu created the effect of a past body behind Stalley. He may have tracked each movement and created layers so that it appears Stalley is still in one place when he is still moving. I understand how he did the effect when the camera was static but often times, the camera is panning or moving shakily and he still pulls off the effect. I want to look into Walu's work and see if there are any tutorials for the effects he uses because this is one of my favorite music videos.

Walu's Blog

Music Going Visual

After our latest class I got really excited about how to create compelling visual pieces that follow music. Music, as we know, is an experience made entirely for the ears. It's beautiful like that, because we can focus on just one of our senses. Music videos are nice, but much less of our attention is on the music. With motion graphics that follow the sounds of music, I believe it actually enhances our attention to it. Every beat, lick, and slide we can not only hear, but see. There was a TED Talk I saw recently (which I'm having trouble finding right now... I'll post it later if I can.) which explained how we experience thing better if it engages more of our senses. They used sex as an example, because it engages pretty much all of the senses. Now, I'm not going to compare these motion graphic videos to sex... but it's a very similar idea. These videos are engaging more of our senses!

What I really wanted to show you is this video I saw a while back. It was made to James Blake's song, "Limit to Your Love".
BEFORE YOU PALY IT, please be aware that the audio will not play properly if you listen to it right out of your laptop. The bass is at such a low frequency that most MacBooks can't handle it.  I highly recommend plugging in a sound system or some nice headphones to get the full experience. And without further adieu:

I thought this was a perfect example of how visuals can increase a song's experience. When I first watched this video I said "Wow... that's really cool." Now, I watch this video and say "HOW DID THEY DO THAT? I MUST KNOW." It seems very doable yet incredibly complex at the same time. I think I have a long way to go before I can do anything like this... but I'm excited for when I do get to that point.


EDIT:

I just learned that the original song was by Leslie Feist, and I'm a fan of giving credit where it's due so make sure you check out the original!
(Although, sorry Feist, I kind of like James Blake's version better. Maybe that's just my unnatural teenage mind.)

Music Video

This video features a bunch of green screening and modeling effects, I really enjoy how the effects are used to make an entire world for the band to be in. during the segments of him falling, clearly there was heavy green screening, but I still thought it was interesting how a simple shot can be turned into something amazing just by knocking out the background and adding some nice effects. Many music videos are actually simple shoots in front green screens, its only after that effects team takes the shots of a singer or guitar player and makes something cool out of it. While some of the effects do look dated, I still thought it was worthy to post on this blog.

As I was looking around for something to post this week I came across this music video. I finally decided on posting it for a few reasons. The first is the use of both 2D and 3D elements, which is something you don't see very often. I think that's a very powerful tool that was implemented well in this piece. Also, 2D elements like the ones used in this video are totally achievable using the techniques we've been learning in After Effects, they'd be a lot of work, but a lot of the same principals are there. The second reason I picked this is because of its aesthetics. This is something we haven't really hit on in class yet, but it's a very important part of creating anything, an animation in particular. this strange whimsical world the animator has created is pretty unique, which is not only tough to do, but it also generates a very specific response from the viewer. That response is hard for me to put into words but it does convey a sort of feeling or mood. That is also an important part of creating anything. You want to make your audience feel something, whether it's the theme of the movie following your opening sequence or the message of a song as a designer it's your job to do that.

Grizzly Bear Music Video

A couple years ago, one of my favorite bands Grizzly Bear came out with a music video to their song Ready, Able. I know I posted a claymation video last week, but this one is really amazing too. The main character in this is a weird creature whose body is always moving. This goes as well for the other animals in the music video. This must have taken so long to make since little corners on them are constantly going up and down. They also show the creatures melting and being created, or getting bigger and smaller. This tedious claymation has an eery effect when they show a row of faces melting in and out as well. The colors of the clay also stand out and blend together really beautifully. I really want to make a music video using claymation, not to this extent but something similar. The claymation in this doesn’t have anything to do with the song, but creates a compelling effect. You almost start to pity this creature, who looks so helpless and lonely.