Stumbled upon this NikeSnowBoarding short video on my Vimeo timeline, because most of us are still working on our title sequences and just playing around with fonts and such I thought this would be a good inspiration. This is a 2D piece, so I liked how they applied depth through some effects-- that i can imagine being possible on After Effects.

Let me know how you feel about it.

Nike "Never Not" from Mike Bishop on Vimeo.

It's about Character (pun intended)

I fell in love with puppet theatre when I was a kid, and the fascination about it has never stopped entrancing me. There is something magical about the transference that occurs from puppeteer to puppet and vice versa, as the puppet character takes not only a life of it's own but starts controlling the life of the puppeteer!

As Ricky Syers, creator of Stix says in this video "I'm not really sure where Stix is going...but I am willing to go along for the ride".  This experience holds true for all of us who work in this or other forms of storytelling. We see our characters take a life of their own and have to be very careful not to intervene but simply clear the way to let them express themselves.

Like Gustave Baumann, a maker of marionettes and creator of The Puppet Wranglers said in his comment about the work of master Bill Dwiggins; "These animated pieces of wood, properly jointed, take on a life of their own, move about in ways you never dreamed of, and rewrite your script without bothering to ask permission."

William Addison Dwiggins (1880-1956) by the way, was a type designer (characters, get it?), calligrapher, typographer, illustrator and writer, one of the foremost contributors to the printing arts, but my admiration for him comes from the world he created through his Experimental Theatre, where some truly extraordinary characters came to life, in a meticulous carved environment where every element of design, wether visible to the audience or not, was made with the exacting precision of his great font designs, widely used in the book publishing industry, and carried today in digital form by Linotype.

Dwiggins is also credited with coining the term 'graphic designer' in 1922*


*Livingston, Alan and Isabella., 'Dictionary of graphic design and designers'. London: Thames and Hudson, 1992

Kroll Show Title Sequence

Kroll Show Skit

    Last year, during my mass media research methods class, we had the opportunity to talk to a writer that worked on Portlandia, Arrested Development, and Comedy Central's Kroll Show. Our class watched the Kroll Show pilot before it was aired and the one part that stuck out was the animated intro sequence. Famous icons, fonts, and titles are recreated to say Kroll show and flashes quickly with the electronic music. This intro seems simplistic but graphic artists must've photoshopped each individual font and put it in the necessary background. The last Kroll Show title with the explosion in the city seems fairly easy to recreate. The only question I have about this sequence is how did Comedy Central get away with using all the fonts and titles from famous shows and games. I would think that there would be some type of copyright lawsuit of sorts. The show is quite funny but like many sketch comedies, it's either hit or miss and not all skits are funny.

-MCH


*The title sequence wasn't a choice on the blog youtube search but here is the link.
KROLL SHOW INTRO

Neon Light Text Tutorial

For my final project I am creating a title sequence for the new show Bates Motel, which premiered a few weeks ago on A&E. The show itself doesn't actually have a title sequence, but everyone knows that the best part of a sketchy motel stereotype is the flashing neon sign out front, so I really wanted to include that in my sequence.

As it stands right now, all the text in my project is a flashy neon sign font that I built in After Effects. When I was in the early stages of figuring out how I wanted to arrange my text, I found this tutorial on neon signs and thought it was pretty helpful. Check it out if its something that interests you.

Da FONT?

So for my other class with Arturo, Fiction Field I, we're currently in pre-production for our final projects. My main role in the production is in post- editing, as well as in graphics.

For this film I really wanted to create a credit sequence that would not only compliment the film, but also the things I have learned in this class on After Effects. I came up with a few ideas for sequences, but before I could finalize those I realized that I would need a proper font to represent the film and its theme.

Thus: Dafont.com

Basically, this website is the business. It's got a gazillion fonts and you can search based on certain preferences, so you can find just about any type of font you want. So yea, it would be super helpful if you needed a new, free font for an animation or film!