articles on
Video Inspiration #3 - Tendril
Video Inspiration is a weekly post where we either feature a specific artist or show a sort of "best of" list of videos we've discovered during the week. Everything here may not be brand new, but we felt it worth sharing with the community. If you have good finds that you'd like to share, please feel free to send your links to abduzeedo@abduzeedo.com with "video inspiration" in the subject line. This week, I'm featuring Tendril. Tendril speaks my language. I love their philosophy and can see how it shapes their work for the best. Here's an excerpt from their about page: "Tendril is a constantly evolving process. We devour film, art and design at a frightening rate. We ask questions, listen, sketch, and create. We dare to be naive and see every new client and brief as an opportunity to create our best work. We are full of ideas and untold stories. We are passionate and precise. Our vision is to rediscover the everyday through the filter of our imaginations. To inspire and be inspired." I hope you enjoy their work as much as I do. I've embedded several of their videos below but be sure to check out their website for more eye candy. TENDRIL / 2010 Reel from CHRIS + ALEXANDRE on Vimeo. Soundwave / Bell Canada from CHRIS + ALEXANDRE on Vimeo. Heart / Bell Canada from CHRIS + ALEXANDRE on Vimeo. Happiness Is / Hershey's from CHRIS + ALEXANDRE on Vimeo. Surviving The Future / CBC from CHRIS + ALEXANDRE on Vimeo. Express Yourself / TFC / Samsung from CHRIS + ALEXANDRE on Vimeo. Delicious Wants Out / ORVILLE from CHRIS + ALEXANDRE on Vimeo.
Video Inspiration #2
Video Inspiration is a weekly post where we either feature a specific artist or show a sort of "best of" list of videos we've discovered during the week. Everything here may not be brand new, but we felt it worth sharing with the community. If you have good finds that you'd like to share, please feel free to send your links to abduzeedo@abduzeedo.com with "video inspiration" in the subject line. MTV Rocks! - Ident Compilation from PostPanic on Vimeo. Typewear Reel from Bruno Ferreira on Vimeo. Flying Lotus - Kill Your Co-Workers from Warp Records on Vimeo. Upper First - Showreel 09 from Upper First on Vimeo.
Video Inspiration #1
This is the first in an ongoing series of video inspiration. I hope you enjoy these finds. Please let me know in the comments what types of video inspiration you most enjoy and I'll do my best to keep it coming each and every week! Strange Arrangements from weare17 on Vimeo. Woos from PetPunk on Vimeo. MTV AUSTRALIA / TOP 50 from Maxim Zhestkov on Vimeo. Lemon Tree from Gentleman Scholar on Vimeo. I Have PSD from Hyperakt on Vimeo. Do the world a favour / OES from CHRIS + ALEXANDRE on Vimeo.
Jaw-Dropping VFX and Motion Graphics from Umeric
Umeric is a film, design, and vfx studio based in Australia. You can see more of their amazing work at their website: www.umeric.com Umeric Reel Umeric 'Until Now' 2010. from Umeric on Vimeo. Royal Elastics 'Feilfri' Royal Elastics 'Feilfri' - Umeric from Umeric on Vimeo. Swatch & MTV Playground Swatch+MTV Playground from Umeric on Vimeo. MSN Talk MSN TALK 'Butterflies' Spot A, English - Umeric from Umeric on Vimeo. HP + MTV Birth 'Birth' HP-MTV Meet or Delete - Umeric from Umeric on Vimeo.> MTV AVMA's MTV Australia Video Music Awards - Umeric from Umeric on Vimeo.
Motion Graphic Inspiration: Imaginary Forces
Imaginary Forces is a leading independent production company with offices in Los Angeles and New York. They have been creating some of the most compelling titles for films and TV series as well as other types of motion graphics. The core of their business is beautiful conceptual design and great ideas that have been solving their client's creative problems for nearly 15 years. As our name suggests, we are a force of nature, a force of the imagination. There are no limitations to our work, no boundaries. We can wrap our creative way of working around any challenge, and in the process we challenge ourselves, always striving to do the best work and to inspire others. For more information and to check out other fantastic works of Imaginary Forces visit http://imaginaryforces.com . Be prepared to spend a good amount of time over there, their work is fantastic. 500 Days of Summer - Film Titles Boardwalk Empire Main Titles 2010 MTV VMAs Mad Men - Main Titles & Marketing Campaign The high-powered and glamorous world of advertising in the 1960s received the Imaginary Forces treatment with this award winning main titles and marketing campaign for this original AMC drama series created by Matthew Weiner, executive producer of the "Sopranos". "Mad Men" opening sequence created by Imaginary Forces received the 2008 Emmy Award for Outstanding Title Design. Mad Men has received critical acclaim, particularly for its historical authenticity and visual style, and has won multiple awards, including nine Emmys and four Golden Globes. It is the first basic cable series to win the Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series, winning it in 2008 and 2009. Imaginary Forces is the first company in Emmy history to receive three nominations in the Main Title Design category! We have been acknowledged for our work in Human Target, Nurse Jackie, and The Pacific. Congratulations to everyone who worked on these fantastic projects! Human Target – Main titles Human Target is a high octane, action show that has something for every one. It takes a brave, selfless man to make himself a "human target" in order to save the lives of those in danger. Based on the popular DC Comics comic book and graphic novel, Human Target s a full-throttle action drama centered on Christopher Chance (Mark Valley), a unique private contractor /security/ expert/ bodyguard hired to protect. Sex and the City 2 - Main Film Titles The Twilight Saga: Eclipse Imaginary Forces Montage Reel Autumn/ Winter 2010
Motion Graphics Inspiration by Kyle Cooper
When the great Kyle Cooper spoke at FITC San Fran this past August, he did not disappoint. Kyle Cooper is an American film title designer who is known for his memorable, evocative work. Most notably, he elevated the opening titles to an art form with the film, Se7en in 1995. His work has inspired a younger generation of designers, and to this day, he has produced many more film titles. His story in a nutshell is this: Kyle Cooper studied under Paul Rand at Yale, and decided that he would focus on creating film titles. In 1996, he co-founded the creative agency, Imaginary Forces, which is focused on motion design. Once the agency grew substantially, he left and founded the agency, Prologue, which is where Kyle remains today. At FITC, Kyle Cooper gave a very inspiring presentation entitled "Others: Content and Creative Community". His presentation offered us a rare glance into his genius; Kyle described his creative philosophy and process. As well, he showcased a few of the title sequences that he has designed. While Kyle strives to provoke an emotional reaction from the audience, he does not want to reveal too much of the story. His focus remains on creating strong concepts, and tweaking them until they are solid. With Iron Man, he created visual riddles with the typography that allude to the story; this served as a means to connect with the audience. Kyle understands the need to engage an audience; he carefully develops visuals that have relevant, contextual meaning to the rest of the respective film. These days, we have a plethora of digital tools available that make it easier to create digital pieces. That being said, having more tools does not necessarily equate to better quality work. Analogue forms of content have their own merits. Kyle admitted he had a preference for analogue content—that is, physical objects and handmade effects. Se7en has plenty of these including a hand-drawn alphabet, mishandled negatives, scratches, etc. His reasoning behind his preference is that analogue content offers much more room for creative exploration. Analogue content can be arranged, rearranged and juxtaposed quickly to establish meaning and tone. It is raw, and there is an authenticity that digital tools may not be able to produce. As a result, analogue content gives way for some interesting experiments, some of which may be happy accidents. 3D animation and effects, on the other hand, don't offer that same luxury, and due to the amount of time that rendering takes, there is much less time (if any) to concentrate on tweaking the concept. Ultimately, it's hard not to argue that using tactile objects in the design offers an extra avenue with which the audience can connect. Kyle's creative process has paid off: With Wimbledon, he mentioned that his sequence was chosen over the work that other studios had created, which was more 3D and effects-heavy. See the opening sequence below: Kyle Cooper's talk reassured one thing: the best design is concept driven. While technology may offer countless possibilities, it doesn't replace having a solid concept in creating a stunning title sequence that resonates with us. Content is king, and building that community with the "others" is paramount... and Kyle Cooper knows this. Kyle Cooper/Imaginary Forces documentary (1 of 2) Kyle Cooper/Imaginary Forces documentary (2 of 2) Demo Reel 2006 For more information about Kyle Cooper visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyle_Cooper http://www.prologue.com/ The Dark Genius of Kyle Cooper http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.06/cooper.html About the Author My name is Janet Cordahi and I’m a Toronto-based visual designer who loves to explore new ways of approaching different design challenges in this digital playground. I specialize in creating original solutions via motion graphics, print and web. For more information about Janet visit http://eccentricity.net/ or follow her tweets at http://twitter.com/janetyelplanety
Motion Graphics Inspiration by Vellas & Laga
In 2008, a young animator, and a not so young art director, joined forces and started to work as partners, from that idea Vellas & Laga was created and since then they have created, directed, animated, and fought in a lot of films, for TV, Internet and any other interesting form of media. For more information about Vellas & Laga we highly recommend that you visit their website at http://cargocollective.com/vellasandlaga. But we have selected some pieces from their portfolio to feature here on Abduzeedo. Reel 2010 Vellas, 2010 Reel from Vellas & Laga on Vimeo. MTV - TOP 10 Graphic package created for MTV Brazil, for the classic show "TOP 10". We created the open titles, rank numbers, bumpers... Check it out. MTV TOP 10 Graphic Pack from Vellas & Laga on Vimeo. MTV Colírios Capricho Capricho is a teen magazine mainly for girls. They made a partnership with MTV Brasil and produced a reality show where the public will choose the new "boy next door". MTV Colirios Capricho Montage from Felipe Vellasco on Vimeo. Metro Newspaper Metro Newspaper from Felipe Vellasco on Vimeo. MTV - "Anti AIDS 2009" MTV Brazil invited 4 artists to create a 15 seconds spot, for their new campaign against AIDS. Thanks to Beto Shibata. MTV - "Anti AIDS 2009" from Vellas & Laga on Vimeo. WORK PROCESS: Boomerang Queda Livre Opening Credits created for "Queda Livre", an upcoming program from Turner Channel. Queda Livre from Vellas & Laga on Vimeo. Bats This is a small video that is shown on cinema, before every film created by Ioiô Films Bats from Vellas & Laga on Vimeo.
Impressive Work of Mato Atom
Mato Atom is a young self-taught director, art director and designer from Switzerland. He moved to New York in 2005 to work at a downtown motion graphics boutique called Psyop. After a year there he followed his own as an independed director focused on personal work in addition to work for global marketers. He has a very large commercial work online, but, what call more attention are the videos with a political character. I will show you here some videos and images from Mato's portfolio. For more information visit his website at http://www.mat0.net/ As Mato likes to say: he is an "ASTRONOMER WITHOUT A TELESCOPE", I'd say he's an astronomer in his own world. Videos Champions from Mato Atom on Vimeo. Docking from Mato Atom on Vimeo. Headache from Mato Atom on Vimeo. PussyMagnet 6009 from Mato Atom on Vimeo. BBC The Iraqi Oil Minister from Mato Atom on Vimeo. BBC The Iraqi Oil Minister from Mato Atom on Vimeo. Lost Below from Mato Atom on Vimeo. “Whenever it’s possible, I try to do something that is not connected to any kind of expectation about selling a product,” Other works About the Author My name is Caio Arias, I'm from Londrina, Brazil and I'm a motion designer who loves movies and music, of course the quality ones. I ended up workin in the movies and music business which is really good, however it simply demands all my time :) For more information about my work visit my Vimeo page.
Video of the Week #40
From time to time we have featured a nice motion graphics showreel. Showreel is a nice way to compile someone's work... we get to see the work of a whole year, and just the cool stuff. Today, we feature Onesize's reel. Onesize is a Dutch, Delft based creative studio, founded in 2001 by two creative partners. Focussing on (motion) graphics, animation, visual effects and live-action direction and production for film and television. It is in the combination of live-action, 3D, graphic design, sound design and music that we follow paths, which leads us to new opportunities in freshness and cutting the edge of design and concept. They got some pretty sweet motion designs, really worth checking out. Again, this is just the reel, for more of their work, visit their portfolio! Hope you like it! Cheers. ;)
Motion Graphics Inspiration by lilit Hayrapetyan
lilit Hayrapetyan is a motion designer and 3D artist from Yerevan, Armenia. She's the Senior CG Artist at Triadastudio where she's been doing are super cool and very creative works. Below you have some examples included the beer ad with the lobster that is simply awesome. For more information visit http://www.behance.net/LilitTriada
Vivid Motion Graphics Workflow Tutorial & Free Wallpapers
(via: www.whiteinkblog.com) Ok guys, This is a big one, I recently posted this over on my blog, but thought it would be cool to share it around. I'll take you through the process that went into making this project plus a few screencaps that work really nicely as widescreen wallpapers! To start to view it in HD, click over to Vimeo (I recommend that, HD is a big plus) or just check them out here. and just for the sake of it here's it on youtube HD. (notice the difference in quality of this and if you got to the vimeo page and watch it HD there!) Last weekend I was worked on a short motion graphics piece. The idea was to record myself in front of a greenscreen and then incorporate an element of visual effects. As the recording and editing progressed I become more interested in abstracting the video to become a new medium, a sort of particular environment that I could explore. This intruiged me so I continued down this road. In this atricle I hope to share some of my own thoughts and techniques when it comes to working with after effects, etc. You'll see that even with some rudimentary materials you can create some pretty impressive and vibrant visuals. Ok so to give you a break down of what was involved it was something like this. Film Greenscreen Content >> Capture/Cut/Key in Final Cut >> Particle Visuals, AE Camera Control, Sound FX & Music >> Final Ram Export Thats the rough workflow, of course there were some forward-backward process as you can imagine. This isn't going to be a tutorial but rather how you might approach working on something similar, I'll go through each of the stages and fill you in on what worked and what didn't. To start: Film Greenscreen Content Ok, so I had pretty limited access to facilities, it was about 3am so no recording studios would let me in. Armed with a pretty decent budget HD camera, tripod, one lamp, a .7x wide converter, some tape (you'll see why) and of course a few square meters of green cloth. I set it up like so: had the camera and the lamp in pretty much the same place, at 300w the lamp was too bright and was going to cast a strong shadow behind the subject so I pointed it up against the white ceiling so that it would bounce and defuse the light onto peter, that way you'd avoid a as much shadow on the green screen. Bare in mind peteys (he let me call him that) pants are green, so they would be tricky to key out, you might have to masked it out frame by frame (rotoscoping), he refused to wear anything different as you can imagine. Try to wear clothes that contrasts green, nothing from the green spectrum is what you're aiming for. You want the greenscreen to be as evenly lit as possible. Ideally I would have had a lamp on either side lighting from behind and making the greenscreen bright for an easy key. There was also an ugly florescent light – you don't really want these, if you can avoid it - directly behind and above me which actually helped soften the lighting in general. That came in handy in post when I was keying the footage. As you can see the camera is about at hip height. I'd also recommend getting the most vibrant green you can find, the green I found was a little muted. Ideally you're looking for something that's pretty easy to key like this. As the lighting wasn't perfect I had to rotoscope some of the frames, you want to avoid that if possible. Say you need to rotoscope 3 seconds and you're shooting 25fps, that's 75 frames. Depending on the complexity of the movement that could eat up a plenty of time. Try do everything you can before post so that in post it's a smooth process. I turned the camera on it's side for the full body recording, for two reasons, first off, so that I could fit in the whole shot; and secondly when you're recording a full body shot on a greenscreen it makes much more sense to turn the camera so that the shot is vertical, this way you maximize the resolution. The action of the scene is now taking up pretty much all the frame. I said earlier I had tape and a .7 wide converter, yeah, about that... erm, I taped the converter onto the front of the camera, and surprisingly it worked a charm, it was crucial for full-body shots. I had no other way of doing it, the room wasn't big enough to move the camera back far enough. As I didn't need the image to be totally sharp this was ok, however if you want a really sharp image, dont tape your lens on. I think thats obvious; anyway, here's what it looked like. Cut/Key Capture in Final Cut After a recording I captured the MiniDV in Final Cut. I didn't need the key to be perfect., I just needed to get rid of the main bulk and isolate me to some extent. Here's a quick breakdown of the process. Raw footage was keyed then converted to B&W using Gradient Ramp in After effects. I had the particles respond to lights and darks so I crushed the blacks & whites together creating a strong contrast. Particle Visuals/AE Camera Control, Sound FX & Music After the footage was processed then came the main task, the one which required the most thought and was essentially the hardest of them all. I used Trapcode Form, an extremely powerful plug-in from Red Giant Software for After Effects. There are tens of thousands, quite possibly millions of different combinations for how this plug-in can look. It's easy to navigate but I think I've only scraped the surface. It was my first time using this plug in, be sure to check out their site for more info plus you can download the trail for free which is a great way to learn it. The way I had the plug-in set up was to convert the video into a 3 particle deep system. Consisting of the colours red,green,blue. I could have made it 2000, 243 or 68 deep, any number, it's totally up to you. However this will effect loading times. This is also applicable to all the setting, if ever you've used after effects you'll know that there is a huge range of possibility, a fantastic piece of software. Anyway by linking the particles to only display the lights of separate precomp (the b&w video footage of me talking) I now had a pseudo-3d animated environment that I could maneuver the after effects camera around. While After Effects may look 3d it's considered to be 2.5d so it has some of the appearance of 3d(X, Y & Z axes) but it isn't 3d in the same why 3DMax, Maya, Blender or C4D are. I was able to expand the particles to add some more depth to the video, like when I zoom into the face and you can sort of see my side profile even tho the shot was static and didn't move. For example you could achieve a similar effect with a photograph, actually for some of the parts I did use stills from the footage. Here are some shots of the flowchart from After Effects; how each layer and comp relate to one another. This is just a small portion of it. Final Ram Export Here is the result. Watch in HD if you can! When I was done I added it to the Render Que and exported it. Full HD so it came out pretty sweet. I'll also note that I was working in 32BPC, not the 8BPC default, this really worked nicely to bump out the glow. Here are a few screen-caps. Click them for full-res, the work pretty nicely as widescreen wallpapers. So there you have it, that's the rough workflow. If there's one tip I can give you to take away from this, it would have to be; try do everything you can on set to make the work in post as easy and clean as possible. I think this can be applied to plenty of other mediums, photography etc. You want a solid beginning to work with and then everything you do after that will be a breeze. Orignionally written for www.whiteinkblog.com, please subscribe if you liked this. You guys are what will make it grow and develop! Thank You!
Superb Motion Graphics by The Ronin
We've been checking a lot of graphic design lately, and forgot a little bit of the sweetness of motion graphics. Taking a look at some older posts, I found out that a great designer never got his own post here. This guy is know as The Ronin. Rob Chiu is a British designer/director who has such an original approach to motion graphics, combing 2D illustrations with flowing camera movements, which is a great trend for motion graphics. And here's his 2009 show reel, which is pretty awesome, along with his works. The one called "Things Fall Apart" inspired Fabio to make his Mental Explosion tutorial for PSDTuts some time ago. Hope you all enjoy it and don't forget to visit his portfolio. Cheers! ;) 2009 Show Reel Flash on the Beach Webbys Gala Openning Hurricane - Athlete Things Fall Apart
Video Inspiration "Acesso MTV" by Santa Motion
We've posted about Santa Motion a few months ago and also featured some of their videos in our Daily Inspiration series. But the Santa guys have done it again. They've produced the ID of a new daily show on MTV called Acesso MTV. It has that retro style on it, a little bit 80's with neon, some pinches of surrealism and a nice typography. Definitely worth checking it out. We at Santa Motion (www.sant.at) produced from MTV the whole ID of their new daily show called 'Acesso MTV'. We were briefed by MTV to do something related to all the information access that we have nowadays. One of the concepts that we brought up was, how people can change with informations and that was represented with transitions to different places. The video was mainly made in After Effects. Doors and dropping frame in Maya and hands using all the quirky look from Poser. The job was developed in 30 days by our 7 people crew. Click here for higher resolution Credits: Client: MTV Brasil Creative Director: Beto Shibata/MTV Production Company: Santa Motion Director: Gustavo Rodrigues Design: Gustavo Rodrigues, Filipe Zapelini, Isabela Rodrigues 2D Motion: Rodrigo Pires 3D: Lucas Kazakevicius, Daniel Bohrer Composting and color grading: Gustavo Rodrigues Sound: Thiago Gautéri
Motion Design Inspiration by Osito.tv
Motion Design is one of the coolest areas of design, you can play with the brand and tell the story mixing images, animations and sound. Osito.tv is a great example, with an impressive portfolio with amazing works to big clients such as Nike, Cartoon Network, Pepsi, Microsoft, Honda and others. Below we list some of those, but as usual we recommend that you visit http://osito.tv for more information and works. Reel 09 Stills Images created by Osito.tv. for more information visit: http://osito.tv
Video of the Week #30
We absolutely love cars. We also love motion graphics. Make a combo of those two, and you've got an instant favorite. That's what the people at Glossy made: an awesome advertising motion graphic video for Lexus. The result is totally awesome. Lexus, directed by Crush.
Superb Motion Graphics Inspiration
We sure love a cool design piece... who doesn't love a fresh new piece made by Marconi, or James White? But when we talk about motion graphics, that's a whole new level of coolness. Motion graphics makes us literally travel through out design, and that's a big deal. MK12 is a design agency located in Kansas City, USA... and man, they sure make kickass MG's. They even make stuff for Hollywood movies... seeing their reel I've just realized that. Here is a brief selection of their work. Some pretty amazing stuff, that I simple know you all will like it. Anyways, you should also visit their site for further works! I hope you enjoy these! Cheers! ;
Stunning Motion Graphics by Mark Coleran
From time to time, we get to see movies that feature computer technology that we don't see much. Awesome futuristic operating systems, with touch screen tech, global positioning and all that. Today you get to know the man behind it all. Mark Coleran, a Canadian designer is the person behind many OS' we've seen featured in the silver. Have you watched any of these: The Island, Alien vs. Predator, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Blade 2, Lara Croft - Tomb Raider, Harry Potter & The Prisoner of Azkaban, 007 - The World is Not Enough, The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Ultimatum, Triple X 2, 13th Street, Deja Vu, Children of Men, Mission Impossible 3? If you did, then you know his work. But cooler than just reading movies names is actually watching his showreels. And here are 2 of them. You'll really like it! Cheers! ;) Mark Coleran - Showreel 01/2006 from Mark Coleran on Vimeo. I couldn't resize this next one, there was a lot of distortion, so watch it at Vimeo for a bigger presentation. ;) Mark Coleran - Screen Showreel 06/2008 from Mark Coleran on Vimeo.