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.

Here’s my take on car commercials:

I really don’t think this type of advertising is really successful at all. Car commercials often take the approach of packing 10 pounds of shit in a 5 pound bag. Car dealers don’t want to pay a whole lot for advertising since they don’t have a bottomless pit of money advertising monoliths like Coke, Nike, and Apple do. They try to make their commercials cover all the bases and hope that maybe you retain all or some, or maybe just one thing from their commercial.  Dealers try to cram a line about the inventory, the prices, the rebates, the savings, the guarantees, the service, and the location and push the 30 second commercial to the limit, until it is bursting with chaos. My commercials have had cluttered graphics and titles, incoherent shouting from the announcer, and an overall information overload that leaves the viewer feeling and retaining nothing.

They don’t get it. They treat an automobile like something that is an impulse buy. Nobody is going to go out and buy a car because of all the great savings you promise them on a TV commercial. If they are thinking about buying a car, they will maybe consider your offer, but they are not going to look at your deals exclusively. They are going to shop around. make commercials that are funny, have good production value, and are less aggressive. Work on branding the dealership instead of trying to get viewers to leap off the couch and spend $20,000+ on a car right now.

Wow. </vent>

Eventually I will get burned out on car commercials. I might be burned out right now. 

So yeah, my site is one of the top few hundred thousand or so web sites listed on coolhomepages.com. Yea, kinda of a big deal. In other link news, I have removed ColorPrintUSA from the blogroll because the guy who emailed me about offering me work in exchange for a link never sent me one single thing to work on.

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.

Since then I have graduated and been hired. I’ve probably made over 100 commercials that have been on TV all over the country.  At this point last year I knew nothing about Cinema 4D or pretty much all 3D animation in general, and now I can hold my own with it. I look forward to another year of personal and professional growth.

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. 

Overall, I tweaked the rest of my site as well. I removed the links page off of the main part of the site, because it was pretty much useless. All the pertinent links are on the Blogroll to the left. I adjusted some of the formatting of my blog, updated my resumè, all sorts of exciting stuff.

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. 

I’m looking to freelance as a designer for the services they provide, so contact me or them to get started with any print design you need.

Like when a tortoise wanders into your backyard.

Originally uploaded by bigmikedesign

The ad agency that developed the Idea was BBDO in Toronto and the visual effects were done by The Mill.

I have not located the whereabouts of any basketball-playing-robots generator/plugins that I can get for Cinema 4D, have any of you?