MograAfter following this quick low poly tut on cgtuts I was inspired to do my own little low poly model. The best thing out of this tut for me though was the tips and shortcuts the author give for modeling in C4D. I used some of his tips and when ahead and modeled this bird statue in my house. It looked too plain by itself so I added a quick design behind it as well.
I have been waiting like many other fans hoping for another next avatar cartoon and when it was announced from rumors to officially a yes even more excited. I have been following a handful of sites and people who always like the show and keep up with the news. So when this trailer was released last week after being viewed at SDCC I was way amped!!!…
I watched it a bunch of times and did the twitter as well. Then I went to sleep thinking about the trailer and what I could do with it. I deiced to make a commercial spot for it, something that would be used on TV in either 15 or 30 seconds. This turned into more of a trailer spot eventually because that’s how my editing and planning lead me to. I also wanted to use a past pretty common motion graphics technique that I had never tried before.
I proceed to begin by getting the highest quality version I could get which my first source, http://www.lastairbenderfans.com/’s video was taken down. But of course something this popular could not be contained and I found a good alternative at 720 HD.
I brought it into Premier Pro and proceed to reedit it into 30 seconds. The beginning is essentially the same I just shorten it but after that I just took it as a puzzle and piece it together. I kept in mind frames I wanted to do my freeze frame effect in mind that I though would look cool. I also remembered John Dickinson’s (motionworks.com.au) breakdown on how he approached it, though I made bunch of mistakes anyway(but that’s how you learn).
Once I had a rough idea of how it was going to work I made the clips I wanted to do a freeze frame on a after effects comp with dynamic linking so I could edit it and have flexibility to change it. I sort of designed it half in Photoshop half in AE depending on the clip. Originally I wanted to 5, Korra, her two companions, Mako & Bolin, Amon of the Equalists, and Naga Korra’s animal companion. There wasn’t enough time and there not being good shots of the two boys I took them out.
After the designing the freeze frames I just had to animate them. I also did 4 overall textures that also have slight animations as well that change after a while. I was trying to make the trailer seem more grungy and steampunkish since that is some of the idea behind the series. I think I could have pushed it more but I think it works well with the trailer as is.
Lastly I re-edited the audio in audition, which is a lot better then soundbooth. There is a little click I couldn’t mask completely when I jump the sound the match the footage but I don’t think it’s too obvious if you into the trailer. There was also another beat I wanted to hit but couldn’t quite get it. I had really high hopes going to this and I like the way most of it ended up but there’s a bunch I would have like to do more so it was truly high quality.
So there you go my fan commercial trailer of the Legend of Korra can’t wait for the show to start!!!!
This image is the first in a week series that I’m going to be doing this week. I’ve been following the word of the day from dictionary.com and I thought I would be a good idea to to use it to do the design a day thing that many people have been doing in the design world.
So my goal is to create a design in 1hr based on the definition of the word of the day. Then on the week end I will take all five days and make some animation out of it. The font’s i’m picking from either lists on http://www.digitalhitchhiker.com ‘s type Tuesdays or on http://abduzeedo.com/. Using this plus 15 min time limit to limit my obsessive font search tendencies.
This word means the following items below, I choose to interpret the third.
1.
Authorized; recognized; accepted.
2.
Included in the canon of the Bible.
3.
In mathematics, (of an equation, coordinate, etc.) in simplest or standard form.
In other news I created an animation inspired by turntable.fm that had an issue with some parts jumping randomly. I believe I found the culprit in my segmented rendering process based on this test that has no skipping anywhere. Just need to rerender and add the composite stuff I did before.
Lastly I created a quick edit of some of my 2d animation work. I did this a about a hour or so using premier to edit it all together without any crashes.
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.
I found this cool logo on seek logo and brands of the world and thought it was an interesting logo that might be cool looking in 3D and jumped into creating it. Initially I sketch out a little outline of what I wanted to happen while building the head. I came to a little snag when I felt the background was too plain since it was simple a solid color. I didn’t have much information at the time(though apparently there is a Dr. Cube vs. Themselves series which is really cool) to go on as far as the purpose of the logo so I just did a brainstorm about doctors and tools they use. After having a long list of items I choose some I thought would be recognizable. Pills, pill bottle, hospital cross, syringe and a scalpel. The scalpel is the weakest item I think as far as how it looks so that is why it is behind the head. The items move kind of fast and I would have like to slow them down a bit.
I had
already had the animation done for all of the main components using various Xpresso setups to rig the head and the text for ease of animation. The lighting went fairly well although I should have adjusted the lights a lot more because they killed the render time which was some where in 20 hrs or so, which is ridiculus and I will never do again for something so simple unless it’s the only way.The animation is kind of pretty short and doesn’t seem to have much of a point which is another fail but it was fun to make.
Lastly I did my final composite in After Effects adding some levels and other effects. The logo was done by Velimir Andrejevic who has great work on their website, velimirandrejevic.weebly.com/, and behance, http://www.behance.net/velimirandrejevic, check em out!
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.
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.
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.