Chromatte

     After our work in class on green screen I thought that I would do some research on a new technology in the keying world.  The base of the new technology is a new fabric that is made up of thousands of small glass balls, that are coated in aluminum, called Chromatte.  This creates a retro-reflective material that reflects light in the same plane that it receives light.  The second part of the technology is an LED ring that goes around the lens of a camera.  This green or blue light ring hits the fabric with colored light that is then reflected back into the lens, creating green screen effect.   The LED's do not cast colored light onto the subject however because they are not strong enough.  This technology allows for a really clean key with no spill or issues with reflected light and shadows, and the subject can be close to the wall.  Another benefit is that you can light the subject  in any way without needing to worry about getting the background light even and flat.  The fabric is expensive, but it creates a lot of opportunities for creativity that were previously impossible.
 

After Effects Scavenger Hunt

Not sure how many of us were already aware of this, but I figured I would share in case anybody wanted to participate.  Adobe has announced a sweepstakes that starts today and ends in March.  Anyone who participates has the chance to win some pretty sweet prizes such as the Complete Studio Bundle from VideoCopilot.  Here is the link to the official page with all the details.  Good luck!

Ae & Me Scavenger Hunt: Official Rules 

Also - unrelated...but I came across this article about ancient animation in Iran and thought it was pretty interesting.  Its wild to think that even ancient societies were looking for ways to create animated images.  Anyway, here's the article if you want to check it out.

Oldest Animation Discovered in Iran

It's Always Fun To Blow Stuff Up

When we were working on the birds flying in class on Thursday there was a lot of talk about setting things on fire and blowing stuff up. I was in the middle of doing a tutorial on Video Co-Pilot so I wasn't able to look into it too much. Therefore earlier today I took a bit of a look at some cool tutorials on how to blow some buildings up. Here's a short one:

And here's another one that blows up the Statue of Liberty. I didn't look into it too much, but I will definitely look to explore it more as time goes on:

Film Riot - Helicopter!

Although this effect itself isn’t all that complicated (or at least seemingly not too complicated), I find it to be very impressive.  The way the production team put this piece together is pretty spectacular!  I love the fact that they didn’t only show you what their (final) product was, but also how to do it.  This group, “filmriot” appear to have countless videos for how to add things to your production.  What makes this even nicer is that they show people who are ‘amateur’ film makers, aka low budget productions or the at home movie maker type of person.  On a side note, their intro sequence is phenomenal as well!  I love everything that they have going on.  I feel that they found a very good balance of too much vs too little, making it just right!  I really like this filmriot page!

Extensive FX Test

This video was made by a guy named David Paplia, under the YouTube username, Nephuxs. This features the use of many special effects from VideoCopilot.

On the description, it says "Background removal, motion tracking, 3D models, I did it all based on the tutorials provided by VideoCopilot. Also used Optical Flares, Action Essentials 2, and some other goodies".

It also shows the "Before" clip used at the 0:13 mark. It seems that adding sound effects, 3D ships, and other stuff from Star Wars, especially the Wilhelm scream, makes a difference in a video.

Mark Twain Claymation

Before you watch this video, just know that this is some really creepy claymation. I personally find it really interesting but some people might get kind of bugged out from it. This 5 minute claymation is based off of Mark Twain’s Mysterious Stranger. It’s the story of three characters who meet a strange creature (satan?) who basically points out the flaws of human nature and our society in general. It’s a very dark piece but the animation is amazing. I can’t imagine how long this video took to make. I saw this video one night on adult swim really late at night once, and thought I was dreaming. “Life itself is only a vision, a dream, nothing exists  save empty space and you” is the closing line in this video and directly out of Mark Twains story. Check it out if you're into satan or claymation 

Transforming Train Whaddup

So this an animation done by some dude named Dan Tremont, an animator who is skilled as any I've ever stumbled across online. This is a simple, 12 second animation that showcases the animators talent for texturing, modeling and animating a very interesting sequence. This probably took a long time to render, but I'd say it probably landed him a few jobs. Maybe he can make the next Transformers movie better than the last two God-awful pieces of "cinema." But I digress, here's the vid:

 Tell me that isn't awesome.

It's simple, yet totally effective. It's a stylized animation, not super realistic where this could be in a Transformers/Battleship movie, but simple enough to get the point across. That's what the best short VFX clips do: they showcase the author's talent.

But here's a friendly reminder that sometimes the best visual effects are no visual effects at all (miniatures and practicals)  :) 

Star Wars meets Dragon Ball Z

So growing up, some my favorites movies were the original Star Wars Triology and one my favorite TV shows was Dragon Ball Z.  So why not combine them.  What other way to do this than with After Effects right?



I think that they did a pretty good job with the graphics, but like most instances where two good things are combined, the story line suffers (there is no story). Here is a perfect example of two cool things combining to suck:


Not only does the story line suck in this one but the graphics do as well.  For everyone who just watched this I am sorry.  Chances are your IQ just dropped 10 points.

The Dark Knight Rises

Everyone knows (and most love) Christopher Nolan's "Dark Knight" trilogy. While I'm personally not a major fan of most conventional comic book adaptations (i.e. Captain America, Iron Man, Superman), I believe this trilogy was captured extremely well both aesthetically and in terms of story structure - for that, I have a special place in my heart for it. Part of what made these films so pleasing to the eye was the balanced, yet spectacular use of special effects animations. Here is a fan produced title sequence that offers a unique approach to introducing the last film of the series. The designer is Dogan Can Gundogdu, a communication design student from Turkey. It was part of a class project, which is surprising considering how advanced it is. He started received job offers almost immediately after releasing it online. Here is the material rendering of the mask:

Toy Story - Live Action

Toy story has become a classic movie of our generation with its cutting edge graphics and editing techniques to tell a story. Two fans Jonason Pauley (19) and Jesse Perotta (21) wanted to visit the facility where it was all created. Unfortunately for them Pixar does not let any visitors in unless they have done something fantastic. So armed with $1000 and 150 friends they created a shot for shot live action remake of the entire movie. The result is quite spectacular and the effort that must have been put forth is immense. What I find to be interesting is seeing this story told without animation. The characters are literally less animated with no facial expressions or fluid movement. This makes the scenes less believable and its harder to connect with the characters. That aside it is a very cool project and definitely worth a look. 

Aside: They learned yesterday they get to tour pixar.

Chris Landreth's - Ryan (2004)

Ryan Larkin was an influential Canadian animator who made several amazing compositions including the 1969 Oscar-nominated short, Walking.  Chris Landreth's film, Ryan, briefly explores the life and career of Ryan Larkin through interesting and unique animation techniques.  Below is the full movie:

Also:

Walking by Ryan Larkin & National Film Board of Canada Website

bad sound can kill animation

So i was browsing the internet last night and i found this Simpson's  short

It's pretty bad. It's new age Simpsons jokes that come too infrequently and are not funny enough to make the viewer laugh but there is also a huge flaw in the way this short was put together. If you watch it you see the sound isn't mixed well and many part just seem to drag on forever since there is no music or anything over it. It really goes to show that graphic need sound to keep us entertained. I'd recommend watching this one but be warned it can be uncomfortable to watch at times

Fantastic closing credits

This past weekend I watched "Blue Valentine" and was completely blown away by the closing credits. Normally I don't watch credits to the end but I felt so compelled to watch the entirety of this film. I think the role of the closing credits is to make the viewer reflect on the film they just watched, and these credits do just that. 

SPOILER ALERT. The ending to "Blue Valentine" is really sad. I'm usually not the sappy, romantic type but this film really hit home for me and the closing credits really drove home this melancholy, depressing feeling. 

 I love how the fireworks effect is used to reveal fragments of still images of the two main characters, Dean and Cindy. Not only is the effect really beautiful, the fireworks also serve as a visual metaphor to the passionate and tumultuous relationship the two had. And on top of that, the effect syncs to this really emotional musical track. 

 I'd love to learn how to produce this effect. I'm just guessing, but I think the effect can be mimicked in After Effects with a particle playground that is linked to the exposure of a layer. 

Danger Planet

Danger Planet from Justin Burks on Vimeo.

This animation is called "Danger Planet," an animation made by a student in college. It contains no dialogue, yet the character developments are so rich and deep with the visual landscape that it creates. The animation itself is nearly flawless and the character designs are inspirational and beatutiful. The fact that their eyes tell the story through expressions is genius.

Sorry this is late, my internet literally just started working again. I hate Apogee with a passion.

hey a little late because of the snow but here is my blog post i know last class we focused more on the effects for real shots but i really like my internet cartoons




this is an interview with the guys that make, well made homestar runner i don't think they have updated the cite in 5 or so years but they just started out making things as a hobby and made my favorite web series. I'm betting you guys al know about homestar runner but i drove back to campus witha kid who has never heard of it so.... if you've never seen it check it out.

Mega64: TODD & AARON'S GAME AWARDS 2012!!!!!!!!!

While the title of the video may seem a bit... insane, this video shows a lot of what we did in class on Thursday.

This video was made by Todd and Aaron of Mega64, a series of videos that would combine video games and the real world together.

As you watch the video, you can easily see that the guys are using a Green Screen. It's possible that this video was edited with color keying in After Effect or any other editing software. In some parts of the video, there has been a "Track Camera" motion used as the background would move with the characters (mostly in the end of the video).

This video is about two guys yelling and over-exaggerating about what's the best game, characters and more hilarious things.

I suggest you check this video out, but beware, there is some colorful language!

Holy Green Screens, Batman!

When George Lucas set out to make the Star Wars prequels in 1999, he used green screens to help bring his vision to life. He simply put his actors in an entirely green environment and had his VFX team create alien worlds such as Kamino and Mustafar.

We all know that green screens and chroma keying is a common practice to for all sci-fi and fantasy films. How else could’ve Lucas created a planet covered entirely in ocean, or make two Jedi go floating down a river of lava? (Well, he could have done it practically, but CGI makes sense here). But did you know that even the simplest scenes, like two guys sitting on some steps of a building in NYC, are green screened?

Check out the video below, it is fascinatingly eye-opening.

In class on Thursday we learned HOW to key things out, but I never knew the emphasis some productions put on keying. It's quite remarkable.

Green Screen Spill Suppression

Right after going over how to key in class, I stumbled across this in depth tutorial about how to finesse the color cast that can sometimes be a problem when shooting on green screen.  This is a very in-depth tutorial, covered in two parts, that goes over different methods of removing green screen spill in After Effects.  Unfortunately, I'm having a hard time embedding the videos, because they are unlisted, but you can watch both of them here.

I particularly like how this tutorial covers so many different techniques to achieve the same result, as well as advice about when to use them.  Furthermore, the most advanced technique (limiting the green channel based on the average of the red and blue values) is explained clearly and with a lot of attention to the mechanics behind it.

The red-blue average method also has a plugin that you can download to achieve the same result on a single layer, which is very convenient.  This plugin also looks useful for further green screen effects, because it allows you to create an alpha channel based on just the spill light.  There are a lot of possibilites that this opens up, including using it to create a light wrap effect to further integrate green screen footage into a composition.

Avengers Special Effects

Going off of the green screen stuff we looked at in class on Friday, I went to youtube to look at some more advanced tutorials for some green screen effects. I came across a few stills from the Avengers, and then found a link to this behind the scenes video about some of the effects done by Industrial Light and Magic. If only we have the budget and hardware to do something like this...

Pixilation

    I just saw a few videos using this technique of animation and I thought I would look into how its done.  It seems that there are two main ways of creating a pixilation.  The first way is to arrange your subjects and photograph them, them move them and photograph them, sort of like stop-motion with real people.  The other way is to take a video and then in post remove individual frames to achieve the same look.  It is cool because you can manipulate the shots to make it seem like people are flying above the ground by filming them jumping at the camera and then take out all the shots of them except the ones when they are in the air.  This is one example of many effects you can achieve by using pixilation.  Below are a few examples that I found of this technique.





Luminaris from Juan Pablo Zaramella on Vimeo.

Creation

I was fooling around on you tube when I stumbled upon a couple really cool videos. First is Rising by Mikros Siggraph.  Rising was an amazingly done video of a caterpillar becoming a butterfly.  I thought the caterpillar and the cocoon were perfectly done but I thought when the butterfly was flapping its wings it looked looked  a little weird, almost mechanical.  But who am I to judge I don't think I could do it any better.


Next is a video called Origin of Creatures by Floris Kaayk.  This is a really cool video where all different types of body parts work together to try and create one large structure.  It must have been really hard and time consuming to put this together.  To see the different body parts separated from a regular body is really freaky to me.  But the part that I found most disturbing was the creature that gave birth to the other ones.  I'm not sure why it bothered me so much, maybe the way it vibrated, but it just did not seem right to me.


Both of these are cool videos and are really well done.

Frozen Morning

I find the effects/animations used in this commercial absolutely fantastic!  I would love to learn how to freeze objects in midair, along with freezing people.  Even more so, the talent is able to interact with all of these things!  I am absolutely blown away by this.  I feel that the perplexity of this perplexing thing must be enormous and potentially quite expensive to do.  I love the look of the camera moving around with these items stuck in a three dimensional space.  The change in perspective makes me wonder if the items in the air are computer generated or if they are actual item in frozen frames.  The human interactions aren’t as good, but are still convincing most of the time.  I think it would be very interesting to learn how they did this effect/how we could do it.  

"Watercolour"

I've been really thinking about how much music can impact the animations you decide to create, sometimes even shaping the overarching themes in their entirety. So - here's a music video from the Australian EDM group 'Pendulum'. It uses some pretty interesting 3D animations and color effects, so I thought I'd share. You can see a planet (or... something like it) throughout the video that slowly moves around a giant lighted orb of some sort (star?), until eventually these giant rays of light that it's shooting bust the planet open. Pretty sweet stuff. And the track is awesome too.

Logorama

This short animated film is directed by a group who calls themselves H5. Although it’s 16 minutes I highly recommend everyone to take some time out of their night and  watch this. It won an Academy Award for Best Animated Short film and won the Prix Kodak at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. Immediately the first thing you’ll notice is all the different logos. In total, this movie used 2,500 different logos/mascots. The extensive use of these logos is a statement of what our society is becoming or what will come. We are run by these major corporations whether we realize it or not. The main characters in this film are all logos from different companies and of course the evil character is Ronald McDonald. The police are trying to take him down because he’s on a shooting spree but simultaneously an earthquake begins and the entire city of Los Angeles falls to pieces and everything explodes and ends. This is a powerful statement about the world we live in and the inevitable demise of it.  Other then the messages, the animation is amazing in this film. The logos come to life and are just as exact as the real ones. 

[adult swim] - A Look Behind the Scenes

Adult Swim has been around for the past 12 years and has graced our television sets with dozens of various animated series.  Not everyone appreciates the humor, but I think we can all appreciate the wide variety of animation Adult Swim offers which go way beyond traditional ideas for animated series.  Below are a few videos I found interesting that give a behind-the-scenes look at the animation studios who make these shows, and some of the process involved in creating them.  The first is a behind the scenes look at the animation process for the Adult Swim show, Squidbillies.  The second video looks at the animation studio.  The language is a little..well..there's a reason these shows only come on so late at night.

Zombie Effects

One of the things I'm interested in After Effects is altering how people look. I have always liked how demons, vampires, and other weird human-like creatures are made in After Effects. Some of my favorite movies that do this are Van Helsing and Dawn of the Dead. Even something as simple as altering somethings face or color correcting a person can help a film make the impact that it wants.

Zombie Effect

Demon Face (even though it looks like an alien to me)

Name Animation

This week I began to concentrate on what I wanted my name to look like for my reel. I stared with my favorite animated title sequence. "The Art of Flight" is a 12 million dollar snowboard movie sponsored by Red Bull and created by Brain Farm Cinema. The title sequence really stands out because of how well they blend the animation into the live action. Originally I wanted to emulate one cut where a piece of wax splatters revealing the Red Bull Brand. 

Art of Flight - Intro Title Sequence from Helio Collective on Vimeo.

After some research I found the company that was hired to to the sequence called Helio Collective. After watching their reel found here, I found a piece done for Dakine which I though would look a lot cooler. 

So this is my goal:



Dakine animated logo from Helio Collective on Vimeo.

Superbowl Commercials

Everybody loves Superbowl commercials. They have become so popular that the commercials are almost bigger than the game itself. Whether this has something to do with America's incessant commercialism is an issue to tackle on a different blog. What I couldn't help but notice this year was the massive use of motion graphics. You'd be hard pressed to find just one commercial that didn't employ some use of computer graphics or animation. Here are three commercials from this year that used 3D animation and particle systems for sure:

After Effects - Music and Visualization

So after Thursday's class I kept playing around with some of the expressions that we had worked with, and was interested in expanding the music pairing's that we had made. After getting absolutely nowhere for a while, I went onto Youtube and started looking for tutorials of different cool things to do with music in After Effects. I came across these two videos:

I chose to post these two because the music in each varies, so I thought it would be cool to compare them both. I haven't found a tutorial yet, mostly because after I found these I spent a bunch of time watching other music visualizations created in After Effects.

Disney's "Lion King" - in 3D!

The creator of this video is from this page on Tumblr. It is also accessible on YouTube, which is uploaded by Lifesuit.

This video parodies a memorable scene in the movie, "The Lion King", in which a certain character dies from betrayal. While the movie version was emotional, this version changes everything. At it looks like the creator used 3D models of the lions and animated them (with a bit of the puppet tool being used that you'll see in 0:13).

My guess is that the models could've been used in Blender or Milkshake 3D possibly with some puppet tool editing in Flash or Affect Effects.

The weird thing about this video is that it gained over a million views in less than a week. I understand why, it's too hilarious that you would just watch it again and again. Even though the animation is not impressive at all, it does well in humor in my opinion.

I suggest you all check it out, especially if you've already seen the movie.

Bonobo Music Video

I’m into all different types of music, but recently I’ve been getting into trip hop and other electronic types of music. I recently came across a music video for this song “Cirrus” by Bonobo and the music video blew me away. This music video takes old clips from old 1950 films and creates a collage of moving images. Although it starts off pretty normal it takes a huge turn fast and the creator layers all the original clips we saw on top of each other. One thing that I really like about this video is the clips move to the beat of the song. It makes the clips flow really well and not look as random. It’s also really interesting they were able to pan on the images, it created a cool effect. Creating music videos like these are something I’m extremely interested in, I hope I can get editing skills like these someday.  I think we began to sort of work on something like this, with moving the square to the bass/treble of the song. Although this video has kind of a creepy/eery feeling it’s definitely fun to watch and plays with your head. 

James Bond Opening Credits

So I was thinking about all of the cool opening sequences that I have watched recently and one really stood out.  The opening to the new James Bond movie Skyfall was incredible.  I remember watching it in the movie theatre with one of my friends and we were just amazed.


007 Skyfall - Opening Credits (Best Quality Yet) from Gunnar Lien on Vimeo.

(Sorry the Italian version was the best quality one I could find)

The very beginning of the sequence is underwater and while it looks really awesome also seems like it could be easy to make.  After that, Bond is in a 3-d environment and this looks really complicated to do.  After that  it goes back underwater this times with dragons and fire.  Then all craziness ensues with picture in picture in picture giving it a fast paced dangerous theme.  After that it is back to the 3-d environment. Then another part that goes into his heart and then ends with a close up on his eye.  Adele also does a great job with the music, and the intro enhances the sound to get a very sad but energetic feeling.

I looked up who designed this intro and it was a man called Daniel Kleinman.  I looked into more of other Kleinmans works and he has done the intros for Golden Eye, Tomorrow Never Dies, The World is Not Enough, Die Another Day, and Casino Royale.  These intros are all very similar but also very well done.  Apparently the key to success for a James Bond opening sequence is an erie but fast paced song, graphics, guns, girls, and blood.  Now they don't all follow this formula, (ex: no girls in Casino Royale's) but pretty much thats the winning recipe.  I love James Bond movies and I am looking forward to more movies and title sequences in the future.

Bead Game / Afterlife

Here's some early pioneering stop motion animation from Ishu Patel, who worked for the National Film Board of Canada for over twenty-five years producing and directing animated short films while also working as an educator. He developed many animation techniques, including one that allowed thousands of tiny beads to move under a continuously zooming camera (which can be seen in Bead Game). He is known for his experimental style and focus on deep philosophical issues.

Bead Game (1977) was nominated for an Academy Award in 1978. He used beads as a medium and transformed them continuously, offering his vision of evolution from the smallest forms of ancient life to modern man.

Afterlife received an Outstanding Achievement Award at the London Film Festival in 1979. He placed clay shapes on top of glass and lit the animation from below, producing what you see here. This particular animation is considered one of his greatest.

While these videos are both pretty old, it's still important to understand how far we've come and how these animations have inspired artists today.

Music Videos

Something I have always been interested in watching and making is music videos. I love how creative and freestyle they can be. One of my favorite music videos is Immaculate Misconception by Motionless In White. It is a great video that mixes actual staged footage, and live footage that they took from a show. The story goes along with the music, and is very well directed. The video is very dark to go along with the music, has quick edits to go with the fast music, and a lot of the images make you wonder what you just looked at.

Another kind of music video I enjoy are the text based ones. That's something I have always loved to do in my free time, and it's a great way to learn After Effects while doing complex things with just text. My favorite one of these is A Creeping Dose by In Fear and Faith. I feel like the background images go great with the message of the song, and the text movement is awesome in my opinion. What separates this video from others of its kind is how the background images are also changing and not just a single background image.

Dragon Baby

The thing that impressed me the most about this piece is the fact that even though the viewer knows it is fake, it is nearly impossible to catch any flaws in the animation.  This looks soo real and and so well done that its production personal must have an extremely experienced background.  It is one thing to fight on the green screen and then make it look like they are in a miniature environment.  But the fact that they were able to put the child’s head on the actor with such an apparently flawless execution is absolutely stunning.  They were even able to achieve all the head movements and various expressions necessary from the baby with the correct orientation of his head.  The editing that must have gone into this must be remarkable.  I realize that this level of animation mostly likely won’t be able to be achieved from just this class alone, but it would be very interesting to know how they did this.  I am in awe.  

How sound creates character

One of my favorite animated films is Pixar's "WALL-E." I find the way in which the directors and animators of the film bring such life and character to these futuristic robots amazing. The following clip is an interview with Andrew Stanton (Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc, Toy Story). The sound design in "WALL-E" is incredible and Stanton gives a little insight into how he used sound to develop the characters in the film. Often times I find myself marveling at computer graphics in films, but this interview shows how sound is just as important as image in animation.

Paperman - Disney Animated Short

Paperman: Disney Animated Short

+ Behind the Scenes

Paperman is an Academy Award Nominated Short Film made by Walt Disney Animation Studios. The complex animation process used to create the interesting graphics in the short involve a combination of 3D and 2D graphic elements. First, the concept art is used to make the format of the characters real. Next, the characters are brought to life in 3D animation sequences. Since the director wanted a hand-drawn style, each drawn frame is hand-drawn over in a 2D painting program, while another program computes the in-between frames. This creates the look of a 3-Dimensional hand drawn animation that is something unlike anything that's been done before.

PAPERMAN LINK BECAUSE I CAN'T FIGURE OUT HOW TO EMBED A YOUTUBE VIDEO

Behind the Scenes of Paperman

Nuit Blanche - So many layers!

This week I decided to go back and view some of the older vimeo links I have amassed and I came across this classic. It's a short called "Nuit Blanche" and it is about the moment when strangers connect. This video is incredible to watch and the efforts taken by its creators to make this project come together must have been immense. This video really stood out to me because its the type of material I really want to learn from this class. (especially the slow motion water and glass shattering!)

Click to watch the movie here but make sure to check out the accompanying video of the process to create it below!

Nuit Blanche from Spy Films on Vimeo.

Making Of Nuit Blanche from Spy Films on Vimeo.


-Samuel Dickinson

hey everybody so for my first post i thought i'd post about How It Should Have End. It's a popular web series and i'm sure most of you guys have heard of it and if you can't tell from the name  they take notable movies and give them a different ending. The interesting thing about the serious is that it uses Photo shop and After effects for all the animation. In the video it has a behind the scenes look at the process they use to make the animation. It cool to think that we have all the same tools that he has and with the skills could potentially do what he does. any way check out this post and see what i mean



also: i'm not sure if it is posting the wicked witch video because it displays the hobbit for some reason

Lightning Hill Productions

I found this really interesting title logo that someone made for their films. It's under 15 seconds so it's quick and catches the eye, it has perfect camera movements and animation, and the lightning effect at the end is a perfect combination of After Effects and in-scene lighting techniques. This animation was created in the free open-source program Blender, a program which I have used extensively over the last several years, so to see the results from this program be this exceptional is exciting and inspirational.

Life of Pi

     I recently saw the Oscar nominated film Life of Pi.  The CGI in this film is amazing and incredibly difficult, since the CGI of a tiger on a boat had to be cross cut with shots of a real tiger.


     The company that created the CGI graphics, Rhythm & Hues, composed 690 shots of the 960 shots in the film, this includes 85 percent of the shots that involve one of the main characters, the adult Bengal tiger, Richard Parker.  over 600 artists in three countries worked on bringing the scenes to life, including 15 people on hair alone to place and comb all 10 million hairs on Richard Parker.  This company is not new to the art form however, they also did all of the animation on The Chronicles of Narnia and The Golden Compass, so they have a pretty good idea of how animals should move.  The animation is incredible, and the most impressive thing is that while you are watching the movie, you rarely think that the animals are computer generated.

After Effects - Intros and Snow Effects

I really want to get to know After Effects, so naturally I got really distracted by watching videos of a bunch of cool plugins that you can create. I think opening titles can really be great to watch even if you do something simple with them, and I always seem to be become extremely uninterested when the text or opening titles to a movie or project are simple. Here is a cool template I found that I thought were really cool:

Going off of that, I have always been real interested in the plugins side of what After Effects can do, so I looked into some tutorials that would be a challenge yet still be entertaining. There is such a wide array of effects to use on a movie, but given the weather, I figured this tutorial looked appropriate:

I'm Older than After Effects! (Just Barely)

Over the summer, After Effects turned twenty.  Given that this was a big milestone, there has been a lot of history coming out about the program, that I thought would be interesting to post here.  Development on After Effects was started in June of 1992.  It was created by the Company of Science and Art, and codenamed "Egg".  Version 1.0 was released in 1993 under the name we all know, "After Effects".  With After Effects' recent anniversary, screenshots of the original interface have been popping up.  Let's take a look:

Image Credit: Daniel Wilk via Motion League

The thing that I find most interesting about this screenshot, is that if you look past the old-school mac interface and the floating panels (which are still part of the Photoshop interface, among other Adobe products), remarkably little has changed.  Sure, the tool set has expanded dramatically, and After Effects has grown exponentially more powerful now that we are up to version 11.0, but the fundamentals are the same.  There is still the project bin with all the media, effects controls, the layers panel, properties, and timeline (now combined under the timeline panel); all the basics are there.  There are even more similarities if you take a look at the 1993 After Effects Demo Reel...

Besides being an enlightening look at the graphics and music of the '90s, you can see that all the basic tools used by graphics artists on a daily basis were all there.  There are masks, text, layer styles, keyframe animation, even 3d layers, all on display.  This is not to say that After Effects has not improved, but rather to show that the basic core functions are still used and relevant.  Just for kicks, I'll leave you with one more bit of After Effects history before wrapping this up: An unopened AE 1.0 box.

Image (and box!) by redefinery.  Check out their scripts, they're useful!

And here are some other interesting links pertaining to the After Effects anniversary or it's development (or both).

• The Ae & Me blog, celebrating 20 years of After Effects
• The Ae & Me video interviews
• Pro Video Coalition's After Effects at 20
• Screenshot and thoughts on After Effects 1.1

HSG (Hayop Sa Ganda)

One part of motion graphics and animation that interests me the most is title sequences.  In this piece by Praveen Fernandes, I am going to focus on the first nine to ten seconds of the video, where there is a great title.  The editor did a great job syncing up appropriate audio with his animation in order to give it an extra bit of punch.  With the animation itself, I really like how many things there are going on at once.  To start off, there is a camera movement to the right while the the Title itself also spins in to the right at a slightly faster pace.  While all of this is going on, there is an elaborate web of blue laser-like lines that is being navigated in an opposite direction.  All of this along with the complementing audio gives a very professional look to this title sequence.  

After Effects Channel on Vimeo

In my search for cool videos that use After Effects I stumbled upon on a Vimeo channel solely dedicated to editors making animations in After Effects.  Some of these videos are truly amazing:
MIRAGE from Frederic Kokott on Vimeo.

They have all types of different videos.  They have promotions for bands, video mapping, student projects, and pretty much any thing else you can think of.  One of my favorites was done by a senior at California State University at Northridge.  This is completely animated and in my opinion very impressive for a college student:

Tanks for Nothin' from Armstrong Motion and Design on Vimeo.
Take a peek at this site, it will blow your socks off.

Solipsist Short Film amazing use of green screen

The title of this magnificent video is called Solipsist, meaning that the self is all that can be known to exist. Its a belief anything outside of your own mine is unsure and does not exist. Andrew Huang directed this short film which was honored at the Saatchi & Saatchi New Directors Showcase at Cannes Lions and won Best Experimental Short Film at the Slamdance Film Festival. This film also caught the attention of singer Bjork, who hired him to direct his music video “Mutual Core”. I decided to share this video because of the unique combination of amazing art/costume design with special effects done in post. In the first part, the girls were shot in front of a green screen however their costumes were real and were moved by string during the shoot. Their faces however were done in post, where they created the moving little snakes with CGI and placed them on their faces. The last part with the sand men, was shot in front of a green screen. They filmed actual sand separately going through a hole and replaced their faces with what they shot during post. Although this video is aesthetically pleasing and amazing to watch, the process to make it isn’t as difficult as we think. This film also had amazing audio that made the costumes seem alive and underwater. Hopefully we’ll be learning the basics in green screening and can learn how this is done. Bellow the video is the behind the scenes on how they made it. 

Interactive Music In Digital Environment

When searching for topics I came across this project that really interested me both as a machine and as a visual spectacle. It is called the V Motion project and It is funded by a company similar to Red Bull. They created a device that takes human motion and midi maps it to a computer running Ableton Live. The person movements actively trigger the music being created in real time. What interested me was how the graphics in the background are also manipulated by the persons movement as well as the music. This is only the first version of this technology but the developers want to make it so more then one person can interact with the program. Check out the video and see it in action but also check out this blog which describes exactly the process used in creating it. 

Blog of how its created!

-Samuel Dickinson

Waking Life - Rotoscoping

The first two clips below are both from animated films by director, Richard Linklater.  The first is from Waking Life, the second is from A Scanner Darkly (feat. Keanu Reeves).  I've always appreciated the use of animation to tell a story and the ability to bring out certain artistic elements in a film.  These two films in particular really struck me with their ability to create such a unique asthetic and are what inspired me to try my hand at animation.  The last video takes a look at the rotoscoping technique via a specially designed program called Rotoshop; currently not available outside the company.

Awesome Series : PokeAwesome - Just a Pokemon Battle

The creator of this video is Arin Hanson, also known as Egoraptor. This video is one of many in a series he calls the "Awesome Series". Egoraptor makes parodies of many memorable video games like Super Mario Bros., Dig Dug and more. He started in 2006 on Newgrounds.com and his videos are found on his YouTube account, Egoraptor, today. If you compare this video to another from a couple of years ago, his animation style has improved. I enjoy his videos for the animation and the humor. Especially this current video, "PokeAwesome", which involves one of my top favorite game series. This video was animated in Flash and it took him a few months to complete.  I hope to one day create animations with humor similar to his and an art style I can be comfortable with.

Note: This video contains some swearing... or more than some.

Graffiti Stop Motion

Here is one captivating take on stop-motion animation. The artist uses graffiti, as well as other various items such as plastic fencing, for his own stylized interpretation of the life cycle. It uses some really creative ideas, such as a crab poking out of a wall and dumping over a paint bucket to use it as a shell. It's an unconventionally unique approach and I think you all would be interested to see it.

Zombpocalypse

Since I've kinda run out of zombie movies to watch from last semester, I turned to YouTube. As a student hoping to make a zombie movie, this is a great inspiration. It is a student film written, directed, filmed, and edited by a high school student. The sound effects are spectacular, very well written, and the special effects are pretty awesome. Definitely something everyone should watch.

Waltz with Bashir

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The following two clips are from the 2008 animated documentary “Waltz with Bashir.” The film is about a man trying to piece together dreams he is having with memories of his past in the IDF during the Lebanon War. I saw this film in the theatres when it first came out and was absolutely blown away by the graphics. I LOVE the color palette in the film. It is so simplistic, which it gives it this dark and ominous quality especially seen in the opening sequence with the dogs. I think the graphics are also really well done. They are really stylized almost taking on this graphic novel quality. Originally I thought the film was rotoscoped but after doing some research I found out the animators used Flash MX. 

An interview with the Animation Director can be found here.

Skip to 0:45 for clip:

IPhones Music Video

So I came across this really cool music video.  They take a bunch of different IPhones and play videos on them to make up a greater story.  This video would have taken a ton of planning.  Every video shown on the IPhones would have to be filmed previously and also filmed in a certain way to make it so when combined with the other IPhones the pictures made sense and flowed.  And then the planning to have the right IPhones brought on screen at the right times and in the right order.  I was just very impressed by the video and thought it was a really cool concept.  I hope you enjoy!

The Glitch

So this may or may not be my last post on this site and I wanted it to go off with a bang. Attached are two videos by a YouTube group called Corridor Digital (and their secondary YouTube account all about how they make their videos). The VFX in their videos are great and they even show off the stuff they do for us viewers so we get more of a personal connection with the group. They're located out in California and they post a lot of videos. Happy Hollandaise Sauce and a Merry Candlenights to all!

The Hobbit

It's finally here! The Hobbit an Unexpected Journey is now in theaters for everyone to experience and enjoy. I've been a Lord of the Rings fan since the first movies came out back in 2000, and have read the books twice since then (as well as any other readings that Tolkien and his son have offered). I was one of the few millions who went out and saw it at the midnight release and I can happily say that it does not disappoint. One issue I had was that I saw it in 3D and was forced to sit in the front row due to the theater being packed; so I unfortunately am not a good judge of whether or not the 48 FPS that everyone is talking about is a good or bad thing. The 3D was certainly a cool feature however, and I would like to see it again from a better perspective! The story holds up incredibly well. Peter Jackson does an absolutely faithful representation of the books through his movies, and that still holds true for the Hobbit. It is a little goofier than the original Lord of the Rings were, but that was expected, as the Hobbit is a more kid-friendly story to begin with. The effects are stunning as well. There is more magic this time around and fantastical elements that Jackson seems to rely more on green screen and digital animation. The video above shows how they work in the green screen technology as well as the new RED 3D camera systems. It's really interesting to see how goofy everything looks in real life, but is translated to look gritty and realistic in the film. This is in no way a bad thing either.  The story is now framed as a tale being told to Frodo by Bilbo; which I feel justifies a lot of the more ridiculous and animated moments as exaggerations to the story. An Unexpected Journey is to be followed by two more movies, The Desolation of Smaug and There and Back Again.

Here's a link to the official Blog for the movies:

http://www.thehobbitblog.com/

Please, do yourself a favor and go see this movie,

And good luck everyone with finals and have an awesome break!

adios amigos

Tis the season so I, as several others also have, decided to post a good ole Christmas video. This is just a little animated snow man and some lasers and beams. It's just a nice little video. I hope all of you have a great break and maybe I'll see some of you next semester. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, of course only if we all survive past next Friday.

Last Blog!

So I must say that this has been a great class. Looking back to my first blog and seeing my 'Kayla' name project in After Effects is pretty funny. Some classes I am slightly glad to have end, but this one I really wish I wasn't done with. I am definitely going to continue to develop my country music video and play around with video copilot tutorials. This stuff is so exciting and I can see myself working out in the real world someday at a job where this is incorporated.

And you know what... after all of this I finally feel like all of the times Arturo says, "You guys can do this right now with what you know!" I actually can do. Thanks everyone for a fun semester. Have a great break!



(Here is a little Holiday Greeting created in After Effects.)