My Flaming Text Tute is Up.

Finally worked out how to solve a problem I was having with Premier, cut the video into smaller chunks and you can get through it, simple fix but it has held me up for weeks. I put the first of my After Effect tutes up on YouTube today, the other one I haven't yet recorded. All in good time, I'm pretty busy with work right now.



It's funny how before I made this tutorial I searched for a tute on how to make flaming text and couldn't find any, and then as soon as I posted this I saw at least three others, however none use this technique and I think this give a better result. This tute will go into the Tutorial page with the others, eventually they all might get put into a seperate website, I've not quite decided what I'm doing with them as yet.

AMPLifier on Vimeo

Some wonderful sparkling clean modern motion graphics work from (I think) Japan. Not just visually stunning but in lockstep with the audio. I see a lot of Plexus being used, but in a good way.

More Lou. Sorry but I have to.

I just feel like I want to be induldgent and post stuff that isn't graphics related tonight.







Strange edits on this one, I think the film version had more lines than the soundtrack version and this has been edited together.










I love what he has to say about british rock and roll, ha ha.


This is cute also.

Lou Reed 1942-2014

We all have to go sometime, I just wasn't expecting this news today.




Thanks for all the songs Lou.

Arrows with Paths and Flaming Text in After Effects

Here is a peek at 2 After Effects tutorials I got in the works. I'm having a small (big) problem editing them so I wanted to get something up in the mean-time.

Ever wanted to know how to make those nice looking arrows that crawl all over maps? I have a cool and versitile solution that will do the job and then some. Plus a tutorial for a flaming text effect that's pretty flaming nice.

Birdy Test

Another little character for my project, here testing some of the 'smart bones' action. This character doesn't have to do much, just some basic bird motions.

Free Film Grain, Light Leaks and assorted looks.

My latest wanderings around the Internet turned up some nice freebies. These things could help tweak your project into a good place at the compositing stage, so I'll provide the links and a little run down on what's what.

  LightLeakLove

I'm not sure if these qualify as what I understand a light leak to be, more like off camera flashes of light creeping into the lens, but you can't beat reality and these are real. The free samples can be downloaded if you sign up to their newsletter, a pretty low risk affair considering what you get, which is a 1280 + 720 clip of assorted light flickerings from their range.


HolyGrain

They sell all types of film grain, 35 mm, 16 mm and even 8mm and at reasonable prices. They also provide a nice free sample of 35mm grain with a just the right amount of added dirt to look authentic and not stupid. This freebie also comes at 1920 + 1080 and you don't have to sign up to anything.


Vegasaur.com

The motherload. 20 free samples of Light leak flashes at a useful 1920 by 1080 aspect, Five free samples of Particulars at 1280 + 720, these being filmed dust float elements, and one 35 mm film grain (no dirt) also at the smaller 1280 +720 size.


And since we're talking dust elements, not that he needs the exposure, you will find a swag of nice high quality filmed powder over at Video Co-Pilot

And it doesn't end there, there is free video and elements to be had over at Videvo

Google Adwords - A cool animation using Anime Studio Pro

This is the latest animation work of Victor Paredes who works with Fluor Films to produce some of the most colorful and illustrative motion graphics around. Victor is based in Santiago, Chile.

Another look, another character design

Built and animated in Anime Studio Pro, comped in After Effects for the paper look.

Another character test

This is the last of this guy I promise, he's just a background character. Slightly better rig this time so I had him do something different this time.

Look development, 12 FPS and work-flow.

I've been designing a small animation project so as to learn more Anime Studio pro. This means drawing in my notebook and developing characters and ideas to bring into the animation, which is something I haven't done much of lately (drawing on actual paper). I've managed to build one of the background characters and animate him into a very economical looping animation that I could take into After Effects for some look development.



I used a 12 frame per second frame rate to un-smooth the motion and give it the kinetic feel of cheaper animation. The process of throwing it into After Effects has the added benefit of generating other ideas of where I might take this. I want to see if I can get another character up in the next few days, the process takes more time than it probably should because every step is a learning exercise at this stage. I should imagine things get much, much faster when higher competency is achieved.

Used Anime Studio Pro on a job.

This post is to note that I had a small motion graphic job this week that allowed me to make use of Anime Studio Pro, forcing me to just get into it and deliver something to order. It was the kind of job I'd be hesitant to take on normally, being a 2D character animation type thing, but now I feel like I can start to explore this area with more confidence.
When the promotion runs it's course I'll put it up, even if it's not A grade work the client was very happy with the result (and it represents to me a turning point). Anime Studio Pro has really captured my imagination, I should probably stop talking about it.

BOBO by Mike Scott

Lovely dream ambiance in this masterful doodle-like short. All penned by the animator Mike Scott with his brother David doing an incredible job with the soundtrack. Watch in full HD for the best effect.



It's another small scale yet big seeming production, the vista-vision frame aspect does some of the work but notice the visual shot construction, there is a strong sense of where things are in relation to everything as a whole. The audio mix is high quality as well and brings it's own dimension to the story.

The animator is using Anime Studio Pro (my latest software obsession) and Photoshop. Check out Mike Scott's blog.