Tackling Animation with Infographics

As I start to tackle my infographic project I realized how much animation is required. It may not necessarily be the most complex animation but I looked into some tools that will help. I was told the puppet tool would be very helpful for this project so I found a great tutorial for it from lyndia.com on youtube. I also found a principles of animation video that brings some theory to animation movement. These elements have been very helpful when building this infographic project.
 

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.

Moving Forward - Awesome Things You Can Do

So after about three and a half months, I thin it's safe to say that we can all open After Effects and produce something. But there are countless tools out there to help us advance our skills and continue to grow in motion graphics and animation.

There are several websites, organizations, companies, VFX studios that recognize and appreciate the works of amateur or professional graphic designers, animators, and motion graphics artists.

One website that I found to be really cool was motiongraphics.nu. This website allows you to upload any work or project that you have created and either in your free time or as part of your job or other work.

One of the videos that I found fascinating was this one. Check it out.

It has some really, really cool videos on motion graphics.

Another really cool website is hitrecord.org. It is an online collaborative production company founded and owned by actor and director Joseph Gordon-Levitt. You basically create an account, and can start working on anyone's project or put something up of your own and make it a worldwide collaboration.

Just by searching 'animation' you can find 100s of projects or collaborations to work on.

Celebrating Toy Story

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Pixar classic, Toy Story, which shows what happens to a young boy's toys when no-one is watching. Besides being a classic, Toy Story is also duly noted for it's animation, being the first entirely computer-generated animated feature. The film-technique changed the face of animation and took off like wild-fire; since it's release, there have been more than 250 computer-animated features released since 1995.


It was an amazing feat to pull-off, and took a lot of time and hard work and effort. Catmull, the executive producer of Toy Story and the creator of the digital-animation program that made the film possible said "There was a deep understanding right to begin with this was not about technology." Catmull knew that the technology was important, but he wanted the main focus on the story, as he stated "We succeeded because we hadn't made it about technology. We made it about the story, which is what our goal had been."


Another reason for Toy Story's success was because of the producers' awareness and dedication to making the movie enjoyable for adults. They wanted both adults and kids to love the movie, so they decided to make the toys adults themselves. The plan worked perfectly, as it has captured both target audiences and has been loved by many people of all different ages.


To celebrate the big two-zero, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is having Oscar winners John Lassester (DInsey-Pixar CCO) and Ed Catmull (Disney-Pixar president) participate in a live panel discussion tonight at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. The creative duo will share behind-the-scenes stories about the challenges they faced when worked on Toy Story.

Batman or Gotham Titles?

Ok so for the next project (the title sequence project), the theme that I am thinking of is based on the Batman franchise, but I'm torn between 2 ideas.

The first idea is basically to recreate the Title sequence from Batman vs. Robin (aka the worst of the Batman movies). Now why would I want to recreate this? I grew up watching these movies and, while it is a bad movie, the title sequence was pretty good. Although not great. When I watched it back recently I was commenting on how static the camera movement was until the bat and robin symbols fly in. But otherwise, there isnt too much in terms of the motion. And I was thinking, may using sure target and some clever ideas, I can make a a much more dynamic title sequence. Also maybe change some of the color and style to make it feel less sci fi and more gritty like Batman should be (Schumachers Batman movies I always found looked too futuristic and sci-fi-ish for Batman). I'd also make this one a parody, using references to what fans hate about this movie, like Bat credit cards and the infamous batsuit nips. So thats one option.

But I had another idea. It still pertains to Batman, but its for a TV show: Gotham. Gotham just started its second season, and is actually a pretty good show that serves as a prequel to long before Batman started roaming the streets of Gotham, following the character of Jim Gordon and most of the popular villains before the Dark Knight showed up. Anyway, it is a good show, but there was one thing that always bothered me, and that was the opening graphic title. Its because its WAY TOO Simple, its literally text moving pass the camera in Z space on a background of dark clouds. Its actually really sad in my opinion. I was expecting much more from it. So I want to try to challenge myself with this option. I would want to make my own title sequence for this show, something thats much more dynamic, something that reflects the show very well.

So either way, Im thinking Batman, but I'm not sure which way to go. Right now I'm leaning more towards the Gotham option mainly because I can be as creative as I want. But I could also do the other one and have a little bit of fun with it. I could really go either way. What do you guys think? Leave a comment and let me know which bat idea you like better.

Opening Credits - Game Of Thrones

While trying to come up with the title sequence I wanted to recreate, I had a lot of ideas and options to choose from. After watching multiple opening credits, I decided I wanted to recreate the Game of Thrones title sequence. It is personally my favorite show and one of my favorite opening credits, I think the animation of the maps and realms in the opening sequence is fantastically done. This is the show opener for the first season:

 So instead of trying to recreate the animation of the maps and realms, I would like to do a title sequence showing the characters and scenes from the actual show. I would also like to play around with effects such as fire and ice since they have significant meaning to the show. I think the special effects and a dark and contrasted color palette would really make a good show opener. I would base my opening credits on this fan made version I found. The opening credits would also be for Season 1.
This is the fan made version: