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 here is a clip form a commercial I did that had to do with UCF Athletics. Instead of just using regular-old text, I constantly try to think of different methods to present title work. In this sports themed commercial I added the title work onto a material in Cinema 4D and created a waving pennant using the cloth tag.

I would recommend using the cloth tag to create any sort of waving flag like this rather than the wind deformer. The Cloth tag is very easy to set up and with some trial and error you can create a much more natural looking movement than with the simple wind deformer. Don’t forget to make it a child of a hyperNURBS object to make it even smoother.

There are several tutorials on this subject already out there, including this one.

I’d really like to get more in depth with the cloth tag to better understand how the settings can alter the movement and reaction of your object. I haven;t been able to find an in depth review of what certain things like flexion, global intersection analysis, global drag, etc. actually “do” when changed. If anyone has a breakdown of this to link to or would perhaps put it in writing please let me know.

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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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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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I posted a new tutorial for you Cinema 4D users out there. I was working on a project where I wanted the camera to shake, and I developed a camera shake method that is easy to set up. It incorporates User Data (very similar to expression controls in After Effects) to let you create a custom camera shake parameter to control on your own with Xpresso. Go ahead and check it out.

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Head to the tutorial Page to check out my latest tutorial, where I use Cinema 4D and the MoGraph module to create a 3D speaker that is powered by a sound file. You end up creating something like this: 

MoGraph Speakers from Michael Szabo on Vimeo. 

 

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Here’s a little clip just in time for tax season. I used mograph to create a scene where someone’s bills are getting out of control. All I used was a cloner object to clone multiple types of bills and a randomize effector to vary the positions and angles of the individual papers that make up the stack. I also modeled all the objects in the scene, even the seagull painting in the background was a vacation picture of mine.Eventually it will be in various car commercials here and there.***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.*** 

 Mograph: Stacking Bills from Michael Szabo on Vimeo. 

 

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I made a new page where I will start uploading animations that I create in MoGraph. I find myself constantly messing around with MoGraph’s cloners and effectors, and I just wanted a spot where I can put anything cool I design.

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It took awhile but I posted my next tutorial. I use Cinema 4D to make “Super Text” in this one. I would define Super Text as kind of like Superman’s font but not quite. It uses 3D lettering with a vanshing point to create a similar effect that you would see in a comic book perhaps. This tutorial involves a lot of the basics of Cinema 4D, combined together to create a cool text effect. This one deals with extrude NURBS, bend objects, lights and cameras, and more. I hope you enjoy it and can use it.

My mission on these tutorials is to show people a new design or result that I developed on my own. Since a lot of my skills are a product of online video tutorials, I try to create new techniques to not only expand my abilities but of anyone else who wants to learn.

My paper rip effect tutorial has reached nearly 800 views in just a couple months. Pretty good considering I really didn’t do anything to promote it. Thanks to AE Freemart for finding it and linking it up.

So head on over to the tutorials page to create some Super Text. I added the ability to leave comments to the page, so feedback is definitely appreciated.

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