99% of the work I create nowadays is car commercials. Compared to anything and everything else you see on TV, they set the quality bar pretty low. You know exactly what I mean.

I’ve done hundreds of them. My work tends to look better than those extreme examples, but nonetheless, most car commercials are doomed before I even get to edit one thing.  I can only imagine that most people who see car commercials on TV either:

a. Tune it out completely, rendering the advertising message useless.

b. Change the channel.

c. Groan/roll eyes/ sigh/other symptom of aggravation.

d. Some combination of a, b, and c.

They are what they are: cheap and quick. I sometimes make 3 commercials in one day from start to finish. The deadlines are tough sometimes, as I work furiously to try and crank something out that is so subpar. Occasionally my attempts to add a bit of style to the car spot are vanquished. Plenty of times I’ve been told to change a commercial I worked on to severely downgrade its overall quality simply because the owner of John Smith Cars wants it that way. Nevermind that I am the artist, I just have to give the client what he wants. 

BUT! Occasionally I get to do something creative, something that can showcase more of my skills. This is part of a commercial I made that is a bit nicer than any of the harsh reality I spewed proceeding this clip.

Intentionally Annoying Car Commercial from Michael Szabo on Vimeo.

I actually had a lot of fun making that acid-trip-intense-fake-commercial. It’s mostly a combination of various After Effects expressions to make the objects wiggle, vibrate, and dance in the most obnoxious ways possible. It was a challenge to make a mockery of some of the annoying attention grabbing gimmicks I sometimes am asked to pull.

Here’s my take on car commercials:

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So I had to come up with a design relatively quickly (That’s like 6 hours or so) that conveyed how owning a Ford vehicle already can save you a lot of money if you really want to buy a gas-guzzling F-150 that Ford is practically giving away.

Money Mailbox from Michael Szabo on Vimeo.

I modeled the mailbox in Cinema 4D and made it fully functional with a door and a flag. The money particle was easy to make, with a wind deformer modifying a plane object with both sides of a $100 bill as the materials. The emitter works well, but it lacks collision detection so the particles tend to intersect and overlap in ways a giant stream of money flying out of a mailbox wouldn’t here in the real world. Without using Xpresso and Thinking Particles I couldn’t get it to react properly, but the bills are moving fast with a motion blur and rotating so you really can’t tell. And thats what it’s all about, getting it done ASAP by finding corners to cut.

Thinking Particles is something I want to get good at, but there are no great books or resources I have been able to find to teach me. 

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I felt my home page was in need of a bit of a makeover, so I created a new welcome video. I consulted my Xbox for inspiration and decided to create a Guitar Hero style video for my site. After doing tons of interactive research while observing the details and nuances of the game, I did my best to recreate the look and feel of the game with Cinema 4D, Photoshop, Motion, and After Effects. If you’ve never seen or played Guitar Hero (or even more awesomer, Rockband) then I suggest you head down to somewhere like Best Buy and take the floor sample for a spin.

Motion Graphics Hero: Guitar Hero Style Intro from Michael Szabo on Vimeo. 

I’m pleased with the way this came out. It’s good to know that all of my research and hard work payed off.

I’m planning on doing more welcome videos to the site every so often. I’ll either have them play randomly if I can figure out how or I will have a way to cycle between them. 

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Judging by the date of my last post, I really haven’t done much on here lately. I have been doing plenty of motion graphics work while I’m actually at work, so I haven’t been chomping at the bit to work on extra stuff for this site when I get home. I’ve been playing plenty of Grand Theft Auto IV instead.

A demo reel update is in order…soon.

Anyway… I recently did this in a commercial for a company that builds swimming pools. I used Trapcode Form and this preset by Harry Frank. I tweaked a few things and thought it came out pretty cool. Swimming Pool Commercial Clip from Michael Szabo on Vimeo

I added the ripple transition using the aptly named “Ripple” effect in After Effects. By masking on and off the titles along with animating the width, height, and radius of the Ripple, the water appears to wash the titles away.

I like the widescreen shape I made, the slight bend in it is something a little different, and the spark that traces along the edge adds a little something to it. Expect me to use this element entirely in too much of my work.  

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It took me awhile to come up with exactly what I wanted to do for this contest. The theme was Compose an engaging animation or motion graphic video incorporating the Photoshop brand logo that illustrates the theme of “See What’s Possible.”  I ended up taking the design of my web site and animating it, hence the similar look of the random elements coming out of the computer.

 “See What’s Possible” Contest Entry from Michael Szabo on Vimeo.

 

The bulk of the work was done in After Effects, with some Photoshop, and I even managed to use a little CInema 4D in there, I couldn’t resist. The color spectrum look comes from the “Color” blending mode (shocker). The steps are shown after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

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Here’s a spot I did that shows off the toughness of the Toyota Tundra. It came out pretty cool, but unfortunately the compression knocks the visual quality down a notch. I used Apple Motion, After Effects and some Photoshop. The last 5 seconds are where you insert a dealer’s logo and location information.

***Safari 3 is having problems playing these embedded videos, but they work fine in Firefox. You can try that browser or click here to use a different page to view them.***

 
 

Toyota Tundra Rough Cut from Michael Szabo and Vimeo.

 

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Check out my first tutorial, it shows you how to create a paper rip effect in After effects. It’s a cool technique I’ve used in a few car commercials I’ve done. Check out the Tutorials Page to watch it. Sorry I’m not the best at these yet, I’ll get better at them in the future, so excuse my long-winded explanations.

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