Author: Greg2B

Categories
Daily 365

Santa Maria logo animation

This is another logo I found online, I believe on http://www.logoopenstock.com/. This was a stock design so it is not attached to any specific organization. I choose the logo represent a hospital keying in on the cross and the mom with a baby in her arms. I took this think the hospital focuses on prenatal care thus the catch line of prenatal specialists. My other thought was perfect prenatal care, but I thought that might be to much.

My process for creating the animation was simply outlining how and what I wanted to happen and find some calm music that would fit the mood I was going for. The animation is fairly typical standard build up, but it works well with this logo. The design I think for this is simply yet clean reflecting my overall goals for it.

Overall I would say this is a good one, though could be better but I did learn a little bit more about particles.

 

Categories
Daily 365 Motion Graphics

Wijmo Logo Animation

 

A while I was looking thought some free logo download website and I came across a bunch that I liked and save the link. After hitting a snag(which I know have an idea to get pass) in one of my other project I decided to take a quick break and work on something different. I searched through my logo links and found a cool logo on http://www.gmkfreelogos.com. I thought the design looked cool so I downloaded the file and it happen to come with a bunch of different variations and styles.

I was about to begin to design the final scene when I thought to look up the actual company.  Seems the company that produces these UI widgets is just as cool as their logo. Looking around there site I was able to produce the final end frame base on the bar chart which is one of their widgets. I have found that after doing these random logo animation the ones that turn out the best or that get finally made are the ones where I have ample information about the company. Just goes to show you the power of researching and information.

I brought everything into after effects and began to rig the main robot creating effect controllers that would let me animate the robot with ease. Arms rotation, retractable arms, writs rotation (which I didn’t use), hand open close (which I also didn’t use), eye close and movement, lower body thruster angle.  The fire also has some slight movement to it as well.

I outline the animation with little thumbnail of how the animation would play out I originally had it timed  out for 5 seconds but It felt rush so I just extended it which also allowed me to find a sound track that timed up well with it that I got from http://freeplaymusic.com/.  The sfx I download from http://www.freesound.org and my own personal collection.

On the whole I think the animation turned out all right. I took longer to complete then I wanted it too but I was able to answerer a question on Creative cow that happen to deal with my project as well. http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/2/1002593 Though I didn’t use my own expression in my own project since my parent hierarchy was crazy. The one thing I wish I could of found a decent solution that wouldn’t take a lot of time was getting the bolt on the head to move around and look good. I tried a few ways with beam and lightning but it didn’t look good.

This logo animation was not commissioned by Wijmo just done for fun. Check out http://wijmo.com if you’re into web design and development.

Categories
Daily 365 Xpresso Tasks

Xpresso Task 8 – Xstage & XShatter

 

This  would have been my submission to robertleger.net Xpresso Task 8.  Apparently I filled in the form on his site but when I woke up my information was still in the form. So this is an incomplete assignment from me since I didn’t submit it on time.

I created the XStage because, although I love keyframing, setting key frames just to switch a camera always seemed tedious using the stage object. Also whenever you need to adjust it you had to hunt down the key frames and then play it out and see how it looked. A back and forth process that seemed a bit much to me. So after getting the assignment this is one of the first things I thought of doing.

This Xpresso setup lets you set 6 cameras plus your start camera to switch based on whatever key frame you input.  Just enable the camera, drag a camera in, set the frame, and repeat for the next one. You can also offset the begging key frame and all the rest after based on the start value. This can come in handy if you need to have more than 6 cameras to switch between in a scene.

I created the XShatter simply because I wanted to see If I could do more effects without keyframes. This effect simply lets you choose when you want the effect to begin and how long based on seconds or frames.  I made this option because it annoyed me sometimes in the CS Tools, which are great, that you couldn’t base the length of a tool’s animation or property based on frame just duration in seconds. It worked most of time but sometimes I just wanted it to end on x frame instead of having to adjust the beginning to get it where want.

I also created XMelt which has the same setup as XShatter and was mainly a test to see if I could transfer the Xpresso setup to another effect.  I did a test with it on my 365 project if you want the see witch hat melt and shatter. http://365project.org/g2b/365/2011-06-13

The tentacle setup was a project setup by DAGraphix- http://dagpx.deviantart.com/

Once I finish my final render I will upload the files here and on my DA page.

Categories
General Inspiration Photos

LE CREUSET TRUCKETTE

Yesterday I went to my town’s celebration day where they have a bunch of shops off the main street, bunch of games for the kids, music and sell food. I took a quick panoramic shot that you can see below.

While I was there I came across a cool vintage truck across the main avenue parked in front of kitchen ware store.  This is a fully restored 1967 Citroen Truckette that is used to deliver the products LE CREUSET and an assortment of other supplies for 50+ years.



 

I think the color is what made me notice it initially with its bright orange color that stood out especially since it was kind of a dreary day. After that I really liked just the vintage style of the design of the truck and it’s compactness of design overall. As it states in the info booklet about the truck the design with the purpose to fit tight streets and alleys of cities and navigate the switchbacks of the countryside.  The booklet is nicely designed as well and fits the style of the truck with its half tone patterns giving it a vintage feel as well.

 

You can find out more about their products at http://truelecreuset.com/

 

Also as an added share about cars and Art/Design you can check out the Great cars are Art TED Talk by Chris Bangle.

http://www.ted.com/talks/chris_bangle_says_great_cars_are_art.html

Categories
Inspiration

Colors Magazine #80


Just about every time I go to New York usually find my way into a bookstore of some kind be it Barnes and Nobel, Borders, a comic book store or some other bookstore. This past Friday I went into Borders right above Penn. Station and decided to check out the magazines. Instead of checking out the art magazine first like I normally do I went down another aisle. After reading the How Stuff Works book, which is always fun to read, I came across a comic book magazine which seemed out of place since the comics where in the aisle before.   It was titled Superheroes so I thought it would be a cool read.

It was a cool read but not in these sense that it had people with super human abilities, although their determination to do what they can for the world might seem like it to some. They were just “regular” people from around the world doing what they can for other people. What made the stories even better is that their all true stories about real people.

While waiting in borders I read about 75% of the book before I left. At the end of each story there is a page or so that goes into more detail about the story. One of the stories drew upon it’s similarities with dual identities specifically with Spider Man. The person in this story by day was a simple barber that listened to people’s problems. However by night he was the hostess at night club that was able to get everyone in the club to donate money for a woman who came to him earlier who had lost everything in a fire. There are many stories like that dealing with other people selflessly helping others the best way they can.

I would recommend anyone to pick up a copy if you can or order it from their site if you want to see some great art and some great inspirational stories about real life super heroes.  There also is an iPad app as well.

Categories
Daily 365 Motion Graphics

Designers Couch Logo Animation

I have been on Designers Couch for a while now and after looking at the logo over and over I thought why not create an animation using their logo. Thus the idea for an animation was born.  (If you don’t know what designers couch is it is online art community similar to Deviant Art but invite only with high quality work.)

My idea for this animation was to have the logo appear, then the couch form, and then text roll out. Along the way I got the idea for the particles to form the logo with a little delay bounce. I also added bounce on the couch logo part but I should have pushed it more to make it more noticeable. The text is a simple animate in with some bounce back.

The tag line I wanted to do more than slide in since I did that already so I came up with the idea to use the underscore that is part of the text to reveal the tag line then animate back under the text to form the final logo with text. The background was the last thing I added. I felt that the flat red to black gradient was too plain so I added the flat DC logo I recreated and looped it behind.

So here is my end tag of sorts using the Designers Couch Logo.  Overall it’s ok but could be better. I also think now I should do one for DA as well considering how long I have been on that site.

 

The awesome Ident music is by Alkis from audio jungle.

 

Categories
Daily 365

Designers MX Animation

If you haven’t checked out Designers.MX you should check it out. I made a previous post with some work in progress about the site so check it out for more info.

My goal with this animation was to create something that showed of the mix tape covers and in some way have them all fly int to main logo/title. In that sense I made what I wanted, however the look the I have ended with is not what I envisioned. I see many many things that I would change/fix but I needed to get this animation out of my computer so I can work on some other  stuff.

I made this in Cinema 4D using mograph for animating the mix tape covers. The mograph shader came in real handy for applying the mix covers.  The compositing I did in after effects. I wanted to try and emphasize the sound track and the music since the site is all about music so  I added the sound waves to the corners that actually go with the sound in either the left or right channel. The also get brighter/zoomy along with the whole scene when the beat kicks in.

 

feed back welcomed

 

Categories
3D Modeling Daily 365

3D Mecha NutCracker

This is a 3D Model I made based off of kidchuckle’s  Mecha Nut Cracker X-mas Card.  My model is a little bit different from the original illustration since I couldn’t figure out how some parts would work together and still allow it to move. And since my end goal it to Rig it and animate it I had to keep that in mind.

The model took me quite a while working on it off and on. Getting the bump texture took quite a while to get it right. Originally I was going to go with a brushed metal effect, but it didn’t quite look right so I found this diamond bumpy texture and it worked out a lot better.  The rest of the model was composed using extruded splines that I made based of the design in side profile & primitives. The cuts I made I made with Booles or just two parts off a primitive or extruded spline.

I still see some errors that could be worked on & there are probably some things I missed but I wanted to get to the next step and make it shoot stuff and drill into something.

 

Also the other day I posted another model I made based off a vector design from Go Media vector pack on my Deviant Art page.

 

 

 

 

Categories
Downloadable

Source Files for DuckDuckGo Logo Animation

I was asked by Gabriel the founder of duckduckgo if I could open source the raw files so below you can download the original project that I worked with. I left all the key frames and what not in it. There are two projects files, both are the same the only diffidence is I universalized one so that it can be used one systems that don’t have English as the default language . This way the expressions don’t break.

DuckDuckGo Logo Animation