TAPE Production and Postproduction Reel

In the midst of my daily adventure to find inspiration via the internet and the physical world around me. I came across a video today that was filled with motion graphics and animation that could do easily (being that we already discussed this in class.) The TAPE production and postproduction reel visually illustrates the use of particles, color correction, expressions, and green screens (or green people). Either way the video is pretty short but is enough to ignite your imagination with tons and tons of ideas.

TAPE | Production & Postproduction Reel from TAPE on Vimeo.

Title Sequence: My haves and have nots

As everyone currently taking this class (Motion Graphics and Animation) already knows, we are all currently working on our very own title sequences. Some of you are "done", some of you are "almost done," and some of you are beginning to panic that there's no way your project will be handed in on time. The reason for having 'done' in quotes is due to the fact that no project is ever actually finished. More can always be done.

For my project, I decided to make an opening title sequence for Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight. The film doesn't actually have its own opening sequence, so accidentally copying the original hasn't been an issue at all. The image above is actually a screen shot taken from the end of my sequence. I don't mean to toot my own horn or anything, but it looks pretty good if I do say so myself. Just like a movie trailer, though, I really only like to highlight the best aspects of my work. What I really want to do is put out my successes and failures with this particular project in writing. Why? I have absolutely no idea.

Let's start from the beginning. Now, I'm writing this post on Monday, but the project is due on Wednesday. Some faults I write about may be fixed by the time I submit the title sequence (probably not). As I was saying, the first noticeable issue with my sequence spans over the first 30 seconds--yes, it's a pretty big problem. The problem is that there's simply too much empty space. As the production companies' names are displayed, there's probably about five seconds of black between each of them. It's a bit boring and needs to have something there to kill the time. The idea of somehow incorporating the bat theme into this section of the sequence was given to me, but I'm not quite sure how I'd do that. Maybe just some audio? I don't know. The good part about the opening is that it's clean and simple. It looks good and it gets the job done.

The second part of the title sequence is a bunch of Sure Target. Again, it's really simple. I find that totally OK for this section, though. Each name that appears is matched to the music. They come and go on beats and no name sits there for longer than two or three seconds. The pace is certainly much faster than the opening. I was also able to work with a light that really added to the feel of the sequence. I parented the light to the Sure Target camera, which gave more of a focus to the field of view, and added a blue tint to it to match the color scheme of the film. I also messed around with the depth of field to give a greater sense of focus for viewers. This part of the sequence is definitely simple, but it has a bit more artistic value to it than the opening of the sequence.

As the sequence comes close to the end, I needed to find a good transition to move from the name credits to the movie title and bat symbol. Since, after all, the guy's name is Batman and the character's disposition largely stems from his phobia of bats, I figured there must be a way to incorporate the creatures into the sequence. What I ended up doing was using the bats as a sort of wipe transition. I keyed out the background of the video I found on YouTube and colored the layer so the bats were a dark gray instead of black (don't want them disappearing into the background, now do we?!). I have yet to add any bat sound effects--which will definitely add to quality of sequence--but I'll get to it eventually.

The closing of the title sequence is certainly my favorite part of the entire project. As you can see from looking at the first image in this post, it's clean and just looks really damn good. The bat cleanly drops from off screen and the actual title fades up on a beat (which is pretty awesome). The best part about the closing take place in the last couple seconds. What I basically did was made the title and bat become engulfed in black. It's pretty awesome if I do say so myself. To really make it look like it was disappearing into the blackness, I added a quick blur with a couple keyframes to the title and then dropped the opacity once the bat was completely covered so the text would completely disappear. It's a simple concept, I know, but that didn't make it any easier for me to figure out, so I'm quite proud of it.

Overall, I'd like to say I'm proud of this final project. It's not perfect, by any means, and it needs a lot of work. I'm happy with what I hope the final product will be, though, because it really showcases what I've learned this semester (which is a whole lot more than I knew four months ago).

Attack on Titan - Guren No Yumiya

Dust and particles fly across the screen in this action packed, extremely exciting intro to Japan's "Shingeki No Kyojin - Attack on Titan". A very popular intro for both its theme and production values, the opening sequence to this anime focuses on foreshadowing, bringing the giant titans into view multiple times, as the screen is covered in blood.

For someone who has never seen the show before, the intro may just be an action-packed sequence that doesn't quite make sense. But, for someone familiar with the series, each and every scene in this 1-minute long video represents an important event (or events) in the series. Theme composer "Revo", whose previous compositions include the ever-popular video game "Bravely Default" on the 3DS, composed this theme for the show. (They also composed the theme for the second opening, "Jiyuu no Tsubasa".

Aesthetically, the opening has a lot of shakycam - it looks like they could have used Sure Target or something! There is also a lot of bloom, and staticky, glowy particles floating around the screen at most times. In addition, the building breaking apart partway through the intro appears to be a 3D model created in Maya or something along those lines. The character animation itself would definitely be more difficult, but the minor parts of this intro would be fairly simple to recreate.

Avatar: The Last Airbender Opening Sequence

Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko probably didn't go out to create one of the most critically acclaimed animations ever to grace the Nickelodeon station, but they did, and here we are.

Avatar: The Last Airbender is a feat of cultural references, storytelling, fantastic animation, drama, and comedy, all blended together in an easy-to-swallow package that will most like stick with generations of children and adults alike. The show appeals to its demographic (12 to 18 year olds) with the action-oriented fight scenes and the humor, but the story is thick enough to appeal to older viewers as well.

No matter what way you look at it, Avatar: The Last Airbender is a good show to spend your time watching. The quality of the animation is also top notch, and the opening animation from the very first episode definitely reflects that. Please note the animation style, reminiscent of eastern paintings, which the show draws a lot of its atmosphere from.

Gravity Falls Opening

Because I absolutely adore Disney's Gravity Falls, my first post is about the opening sequence to the show, as seen here.

Series showrunner Alex Hirsch gives us just enough visual exposition and foreshadowing in the 40-second intro to pull viewers in, which is accompanied musically by Brad Breeck's "Made Me Realize". It's a mish-mash of sights and such from the bizarre town of Gravity Falls, which protagonists Dipper and Mabel have to live through with their strange Uncle Stan. The opening is crisp, to the point, and well-designed, showing off the show's weird sense of... well, just about everything. It's a feat of design of some sort, that's for sure.

Explorations in After Effects

I recently got After Effects onto my laptop, and oh boy.  Despite feeling absolutely awful the last few days, I felt kind of like a kid at Christmas getting to use the program and explore some of its features.  A slightly dorky kid, but hey, it is what it is.

Naturally, I did what any successful student would: I pressed buttons and played with things until my little MacBook Pro sounded like a 747 taking flight.  Then, I realized I'd probably have more straight up directions from a tutorial on YouTube or something of the like, saving my poor computer...and continued on blazing my own trail through the program.

It's kind of funny, but I feel like I learn better by making mistakes and being shown the right way from there, rather than just having the answers to my questions given to me straight away.  That way, when I do something right, I've figured it out on my own, and will therefore remember what I did much better.  Being instructed is great, but I really do enjoy exploring new things while they're still somewhat mysterious to me (computers and technology are not my forte, to put it simply).  I guess the same thing goes for my philosophy on life, make mistakes and learn from them, but that would be another blog post entirely, and I'm considering a very early bedtime tonight.

Looking at other things I've dealt with this way (learning another language, teaching myself better photography, some life lessons, things like that), I can say it's not a bad method for me; in fact, it's usually a pretty successful way of getting things done.  Plus, every now and then, mistakes turn out wonderfully, so I'm hoping that a few of my After Effects snafus can become something fantastic.

Anyone else feel they learn best like this?  I'm kind of curious.