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)

Typography

Typography is the technique of arranging and designing written language/word to make appealing when displayed. It is its own art form. Especially as seen in this video it’s incredible how you can animate words to create a story. I thoroughly enjoyed watching this video, seeing where each word would lead me. I loved the little details at the parts of the “chemicals being breathed in” and “I feel it in my bones.”  It's incredible how much time goes into such little detail that people tend to leave unnoticed. I now have a new appreciation for title sequences in TV shows and films, and how much thought goes into the process of deciding the font, coloring, and movement. Next time you are watching something on TV, make sure to notice the title sequence, because it tends to reveal a lot about the program.

Rotoscoping

This video is a short overview of how to make a rotoscope animation in after effects. Rotoscoping is when animators trace over footage, frame by frame. It turns live-action into animation. Rotoscoping is something that I find very interesting because of how realistic it can look. It also fascinates me how much work the animators have to put into drawing each frame to create a smooth animation. I find this video entertaining due to the fact that he shows us the live footage first and then reveals how he slowly turns it into an animation. He doesn’t go too into detail, but he highlights the general steps that are needed to accomplish rotoscoping. 

Particle Fire

Last class, with the introduction to particles, inspired me to use this method to try and create a fire effect. I ended up having a decent amount of success but wasn't quite happy with he product so I searched the internet for a good tutorial on how to do it. Although this tutorial doesn't have great structure and is kind of long it did help me to create a good fire effect in the end. If you're at all interested in creating some particle fire I would recommend checking this one out.

Help with Expressions

So while I've been becoming more comfortable with After Effects, one aspect that just doesn't seem to come easy to me is the adding of expressions and their outcomes. Maybe because I have no experience with coding or I'm just not familiar with them yet setting a "wiggle" expression is about all I can do. So after watching some youtube videos and searching out links, the adobe site helped me the most. I will definitely be bookmarking that site for later use.

Adobe has many other pages that will not doubt help as our projects become more and more complex, including pages about techniques and new features, just to name a few.

One video I enjoyed watching is about the wiggle expression and a lot of fine details about what it can do.

White Winter Hymnal, Beautiful Clay Animation

I stumbled across this animated music video a few years ago simply because I liked the song White Winter Hymnal by Fleet Foxes, however I couldn't be happier that I did. Every time I hear the song I think about this "simple" and beautiful animation, directed by Sean Pecknold. It is a claymation that was carefully constructed with gorgeous textures in the materials and also fittingly uses and animates all organic materials. The palette of the film adds to the atmospheric feeling that the animation and diffused sense of lighting provide, only to be complimented by the music.

There are great moments that have stayed with me, like the animated snow melting into puddles of water with the play of light reflecting as clay flowers sprout from the ground (starts at 1:19). The video tells a simple story about time that is whimsical, beautiful, saddening, and overall very cinematic.

Knox's Korner Klaymation

Even though since I last watched this series on YouTube, the creator, Knox aka Robert Benfer, has gotten into a little bit of trouble with fans, I think that Knox's Korner is a pretty hilarious claymation (klaymation to go with Knox's 'k' theme). It features human-like blobs, which started out as just practice for the 'klaymator,' who go through pretty extenuating circumstances, like getting stuck in the VCR,  or drowning in a glass of water. I've read that most of what we see is improvised as well, so the comedic tint to it is funnier and more clever (is clever the word? it's sort of childish, but fun to watch) because of that. He won 35 awards from Newgrounds from this series of shorts. 

Henry

Virtual reality has been a technology that I feel like I've heard a lot about over the years, but I didn't know what it would be used for other than sci-fi or fantasy video games. Obviously this new tech would make games cooler, more realistic, and maybe more fun (I wouldn't know; I've never tested out the Oculus). However, I didn't know until recently that Oculus VR has a film company called Oculus Story Studio.

Oculus Story Studio made a short film called Henry about a little hedgehog who wants to make some friends. (Adorable, right?) Henry is super cute and looks very much like a Disney Animation Studio or Pixar character.

In this video Saschka Unseld, the creative director, says, "We grow up, we kind of forget that as kids these characters in the films we watch, they're alive. And with VR, it makes me feel again like I'm a kid because I can see this character is real." This is one of the reasons I like animated films so much in the first place--they make me feel like I'm a kid again. I always go see animated movies with one of my sisters, Jess, who is six years younger than me. Now Jess is at the age where it's starting to be "uncool" for her to go see the newest animated feature with her friends, but I know she'll always see them with me.

Another part of this video I found interesting was when Ramiro Lopez Dau, the director and animation supervisor says, "Empathy, in VR, is the most important field that we need to explore." I had never really thought about this because I was so stuck in the mindset that VR would be used mostly for sci-fi video game users to see more of the game world. Perhaps the way VR films and VR games are created are not similar at all. I'll have to do more research to figure that out. After watching this short trailer, I'm more excited about VR technology and, of course, I really want to see Henry. 

The Nightmare Before Christmas

One of my favorite animated movies has always been The Nightmare Before Christmas which is a stop motion Disney film. In typical Tim Burton fashion, it is a creepy, cynical, and humorous film that has it's quirky songs and lines throughout the film. The film is extremely impressive because it was filmed in 24 frames per second which means every character was moved 24 times per second in every scene, which made just one minute of the film take a whole week to make. The three years that went into creating The Nightmare Before Christmas was well worth it. The beautiful animation has created for some iconic still photos and characters that people still rave about to this day.

There are probably over 60 characters in this movie, which makes it more impressive that the animators had to use the technique of stop motion with them for three years straight (and there was only 4 of them!!! what!!!!!) Overall, this movie is amazing watch, but even more fun to research and look into. Stop motion is something that has always intrigued me, and I believe that this movie might be what started that interest.

Is Animation a Driving Force Behind Americas Sequel Craze?

With the upcoming release of the third installment of the Kung Fu Panda series, I can only shake my head at the direction that modern day audience attention spans are heading. This, in combination with the fact that a sequel is almost guaranteed profit for the distribution company, is driving studios to play it safe and stick with tried and true stories over taking risks on other ventures.

The other genre I see pushing the limits of American wallets is Action / Superhero, with billions being raked in on sequel after sequel. This largely has to do with its international profit margin (another large category for Animated films as they are easily dub - able) and in the end the movies that get made are the ones that are going to make the money.

Pixar and Dreamworks seem to be the two worst at this, and the first sequence I can remember takes me back to Shrek. There are now four movies in this series and has thus been played out, but who knows where something as big as Frozen could go - could it get an elusive fifth movie in addition to its millions of dollars in other branding enterprises?

Kung Fu Panda seems to be its counterpart for the young males of our this sequel crazed generation, and with its box office numbers it seems to be headed toward many more to come. Especially with multiple new platforms for distribution I think we could see many more of these series make it further than any of the past ones have been able to.

The Pixel Art Path

Recently I have become really fascinated with pixel art, and how people animate it this unique style.  For my name project in class, I wanted to go in a more retro direction, and make something that looks like a classic NES game, such as The Legend of Zelda, or Metroid.  While searching for tutorials, I found that making pixel art is a relatively simple process, yet it could end up taking a long time to master.  It requires quite a bit of patience, and a lot of creativity.
One video that really struck me was a speed-art video done by a youtuber by the name of, "Binof trash."  In the video, she draws a cute rpg style girl, and shows her animation process, resulting in the adorable short clip below:

This artist has a number of videos showing her skills in animating pixel art, and they're all very fun to watch.  I hope that one day I could end up making animations as beautiful as hers!

More Helpful Tutorial Sites

As Arturo mentioned in class, Video Copilot and Lynda.com are great sites to help you get more comfortable in After Effects. I'd like to add on to that and give you all links to the YouTubers that I learned from. Go check them out and follow the tutorials that interest you.

Mt. Mograph - Creates really neat and minimalistic After Effects projects. Really simple and quick to follow, plus you'll have something at the end to show for your hard work.

Ch-Ch-Check It - These guys stopped uploading in the last few months, but they've uploaded tutorials regarding After Effects and Photoshop in the past. They have similar attitudes to Andrew Kramer of Video Copilot and they're just really cool guys.

VinhSon Nguyen - This guy is one of the harder YouTubers to follow, especially recently, but I'm sure you can find some tutorials to either follow along to or get inspiration from.

VFX Bro - The VFX Bro is the other half of FinalCutKing (if you've ever seen his vines). VFX Bro goes more into the behind the scenes of the effects.

Howard Pinsky - Howard Pinsky, maybe better known as Ice Flow Studios in years past, has a bunch of Photoshop tutorials, which can really help you out in After Effects.

Sam and Niko - Sam and Niko are best known online as CorridorDigital, an entrepreneurial filmmaking studio out in LA. These guys have been making videos forever and this is their behind the scenes channel. You'll find so many tutorials on how they do their effects, plus they're really chill.

BrandonJLa - Brandon Laatsch, the other half of FreddieW before they disbanded last year, posted all the behind the scenes videos for them including the After Effects tutorials that got me into it.

TrooperFX - Ok so this guy doesn't post tutorials, but his motion graphics are incredibly inspirational.

AcrezHD - Acrez used to post videos, I don't think he has in a while, but he's a great tutorial channel that you should definitely check out.

Hexjibber - Hexjibber is a bridge between After Effects and Flash and if you're really into Flash animation or just Anime style animation, this is the guy to check out.

My First Day of After Effects

Before this week, I’ve had almost no experience with After Effects and this is something that I would really like to change. I’ve been messing around with a few fun projects as well as watching lots of Video Copilot tutorials this week, and I’m only just starting to get a taste of the really cool things After Effects can do. While watching one of these tutorials, an idea came to me - I should spend a little bit of time each week working on a small, fun side project as a way to track my experience with After Effects. By the end of the semester, I’ll be able to look back and see how my skills have progressed (and probably laugh at how poor my work was at the start). For that reason I’ve uploaded my first animation of this series to Youtube.

My project this week was made on the night of our first class session. It’s simply a solid blue cube changing position, size, and rotation using keyframes. I used the “Easy Ease” option in the Keyframe Assistant to give the the cube more realistic physics, i.e. nonlinear speed (picks up speed gradually and slows down as it approaches the next point). Easy Ease is something that I picked up from Video Copilot, and it was very easy to understand and to use. I think that if I stick with those tutorials, I will be able to learn a lot of useful tips and tricks fairly quickly.

Coldplay Ink Interactive Animation

Coldplay Ink Interactive Animation

                                    

http://www.blind.com/work/project/coldplay-ink/

This interactive animation was made by Blind as a music video for Coldplay's song Ink. When I first came across it, I had no idea that it was interactive. The viewer gets to make several choices throughout the video that effect the outcome of the story. If you follow the link below the YouTube video (posted here) it will take you to Blind's site, and you can try it for yourself. 

Some notes about the art work: 

This animation is so beautiful. 

While the story seems to be about the characters, the two things that really stand out to me are the backgrounds and the lighting. 

Backgrounds:

• I really enjoy the painted style the art was done in. It gives off a look that's a mix between physical and digital media. 
• One of my favorite backgrounds is of the ocean at the very beginning. The motion of the waves along with the way the figure is framed by the rocks makes it perfect. 
• There's a lot of blue and yellow/orange colors being used. These work really well because they're complementary colors.

Lighting:

• At 0:57 the warm light striking the glasses on the bar and the back of the stool looks awesome. It contrasts really well with the cool blue upper right corner. Also, it looks like the bartender only has one eye (which is one more than most of the other characters have).
• I love the way the light is shown hitting the trees and the side of the mountain (on the right) at 1:14. It's done in a really simple way by using a few different colors, but it's really effective. 
• For most of the video we see really warm light areas, with small sections of cool dark. 2:55 is great because it contrasts so much with what we've seen, and gives us mostly cool dark colors, with only a slight glow of warm from the sun setting behind the mountains and the stars. 

The Making of "Pacific Rim" Motion Graphics

One thing about motion graphics that is fascinating to me is how the initial drawings and ideas become the end product. After surfing the internet on things related to our class I stumbled upon this one which I found to be pretty interesting, although it is short I do think it's helpful for someone like me, with little experience in graphics, to see a general work flow from ideas to the final product. In this video the audience is shown in a non specific way how the artists idea's translate to the screen in the movie "Pacific Rim". Although this is not a tutorial or a breakdown of how the graphics were created, I think it gives good incite into how the artist has to prepare to combine what they are planning to create with what the director has envisioned and shot.

The Chickening.

I would like to share a video I found by a motion graphics artist named Nick DenBoer. He has done graphics professionally for a variety of known companies such as Conan, DC, and more. As far as I'm aware, he does much of his stuff in After Effects. As you will see a lot of it is very strange but extremely impressive in my opinion. The video below is a short film/trailer that is going to Sundance and several other festivals. It is called The Chickening. It uses clips entirely from the movie The Shining, but with many, many things added, from face replacements to all kinds of background objects. In this class, I hope to be able to enhance my abilities to anything near this level, and probably to a less disturbing degree. Without further a'do, The Chickening. I'm sorry.

As you can see, his ability to motion track and pretty much seamlessly add objects to a previously shot 2D scene is extremely impressive. I have done work like this in the past but nowhere near as complex on shots that moved as much as these. I look forward to extending my knowledge of After Effects and Mocha motion tracking as well as other similar plugins and programs. Check out his reel if you wish, and here is his YouTube channel.

Walk Cycle Tutorial

As soon as I sat down at my computer and started to design characters that I would like to animate, a horrifying thought came to me. I have no idea how these characters move. I couldn't fathom how someone could animate a human--say--throwing a ball and making it look natural. Let alone a drawn character with different physical rules than a human. How would I make a cartoonish-looking figure walk and bend and express themselves?

I wasn't interested in making my characters too realistic, and wanted to pursue a more comical tone. After browsing through my hoard of favorite animation videos on Vimeo, I found that I was drawn back to an animator named Charles Huettner. I followed him a year or so ago and found that his style intrigued and inspired me. Digging through his videos, I found an excellent Photoshop animation tutorial that might prove useful for anyone wanting to animate a walk cycle of a character that isn't necessarily human. The first video features Charles Huettner and Caleb Wood animating in photoshop and the second is a finished animation by Charles Huettner. 

I hope this inspires people as it inspired me! Get animating! 

Photoshop Animation Tutorial from Charles Huettner on Vimeo.

The Jump from Charles Huettner on Vimeo.

Drawn to Animation

I, like many, have grown up watching some form of animation, from classic Disney and Pixar films to Spongebob. I’ve always thought about the difference in production time between two-dimensional animation and stop motion animation. The two offer completely different feels, especially two dimensional because of the vast amount of artist styles that can be employed. Well I guess the same can be said about stop motion and and three dimensional and just about any type of animation. The fact that animation can range in not only content but style as well is very interesting to me and a reason I chose to at least learn a a little about it.  

I’ve always felt more connected to stop motion animation, only because my skills with a pen and pad aren’t as great as skills with a camera and figure. Growing up the animation in Henry Selick’s “Coraline” or Tim Burton and Michael McDowell’s “A Nightmare Before Christmas" has always mesmerized me and on many occasions I have thought about making them myself. (I’ve realized I might not have the patients for it, although now I’m in an animation course that will be equally time demanding.) Watching these films now I think about the movement and precision and the dedication each person these sets must have. Recently I watch the film, Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson’s “Anomalisa" and was completely astounded. When I first viewed the trailer I was amazed to realize that it was stop motion animation and not a live action film. (The trailer also lead me to believe the film would be taking a completely different turn than it actually did, but that’s a topic for another time.) Clearly during the film you knew the character weren’t live action humans from the line that splits the face as well as the the way the characters walk. It was a stunning film as strange as it was.

All in all, even though I seem to be stuck on stop motion, I do enjoy many different animation styles and I am excited to be learning new skills throughout the next couple months that I will hopefully develop beyond this course. 

FEAST - Short Animation

I have always had a love for animation, and I think that's mainly responsible because I survived on Disney & Pixar films growing up. One of my favorite things about the Pixar films is the animated shorts that always premiere before the movie. Although there are several to choose from, my favorite short is FEAST. From first-time director Patrick Osborne and Walt Disney Animation Studios, it follows the story through the eyes of an adorable little Boston terrier, a man’s best friend as he watches his owner go on the journey of a relationship, and is able to witness, and potentially save, the man's love life. What I love about this short is there is little to no dialogue throughout it, and yet you completely understand what is going on the entire time. The short is just a charming story that will pull at your heart strings. After having my first After Effects lesson, I have a whole new appreciation for animators, and especially for FEAST. The amount of time and effort that went into every last detail of the short is impeccable. I highly recommend you check out this short, and the rest of the Pixar shorts if you have not because they are a real treat to watch. 

Giving Motion Graphics a Go

I am an Integrated Marketing Communications major and I have never used editing software before, but I thought learning motion graphics would be a great learning experience. I love strategic advertising, branding and have interest in films. In Wednesday's class I felt less intimidated because I actually understood the pen tool from Adobe Illustrator and got really excited about the endless possibilities there are within Adobe AfterEffects. When looking at aesthetics, a lot has to do with color and we briefly discussed the Interaction of Color by Josef Albers.

I have read this book to better understand color theory and it truly helps. The way that the eyes perceive color is very important especially with motion. It can change the effect and feeling of the picture. It will be interesting applying print and graphic design principles to motion graphics.