Subscribe
For the longest time I tried to build this complex roller coaster scene and it never went anywhere. I wanted to build a theme park around it or do some cool materials on it, but I could just never get it to become anything that wowed me. Basically I built the track around the text, and unfortunately I had to keyframe the cars to death, this doesn’t run on some sort of physics system.
Short & Gray: Roller Coaster from Michael Szabo on Vimeo.
I thought I could use an Align to Spline tag, but the animation wasn’t smooth enough because the car had to slow down and speed up fluidly on certain parts of the track. And it took me back to high school physics when we discussed roller coasters, and from that I learned that each car in the coaster makes up the speed in terms of the system, which is the combination of all the cars combined. So each car had to be angled and positioned individually, instead of just cloning a couple cars and being done with it. It was a huge hassle, so that’s why there are only 4 cars, because it took forever to put them in the right position.
All in all it’s OK, I purposefully kept the camera far back so you wouldn’t notice a few sketchy details.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
read comments (0)
A Cinema 4D conspiracy theory:
Short & Gray: UFO Abduction from Michael Szabo on Vimeo.
I’m going to New York for like 2 weeks, trying to make something happen. Peace.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
So I’ve got all of these unfinished projects that are just rotting on my hard drive. I come up with an idea and don’t know what to do with it. They are usually pretty simple, and I rack my brain trying to come up with a ground-breaking way to present my simple idea. It usually results in a dead end. So instead I’m just going to start posting them under the umbrella of “Short & Gray.” Since they will have just a plain old gray texture and be 5 seconds or less, the title fits. Maybe I will be able to use them down the road as part of a bigger project; it’s always good to have a library of random designs built and ready to go.
Here’s the first one, Jiggle Text:
Short & Gray: Jiggle Text from Michael Szabo on Vimeo.
It’s just some simple MoGraph using a Step Effector and a Delay Effector. The text is bouncy in a Jello type of way.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Here’s a little something something I came up with just adding a bunch of effectors together in MoGraph:
Text and Arrows – Formula Effectors in MoGraph from Michael Szabo on Vimeo.
The main effector in charge here is the formula effector. That is controlling the motion of the text flowing around and the floating of the arrows. The random effector and target effector are also involved. I also like the candy or bubble-gum color scheme got going on here.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Here’s an animation I made in CInema 4D using Mograph. It’s a drum kit, made of words, that reacts to the beat:
Cinema 4D Drum Kit from Michael Szabo on Vimeo.
OK so, I don’t think I’ll be getting a job in the music industry coming up with catchy beats. I made this crappy beat in Garageband, and hooked up each drum to a separate Sound Effector to drive the animation. I could make a better beat, but I wanted to make something simple with all the drums involved. I think it’s a cool way to visualize a drum set. The font is called Chunk Five and it’s my new favorite.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Here’s a Cinema 4D train moving through a subway station:
Cinema 4D/After Effects Subway Train from Michael Szabo on Vimeo.
The subway platform comes from istockphoto. I modeled the train in Cinema 4D and brought it into After Effects to fit it into the scene. By moving the train so quickly with a heavy motion blur, you can get a way with a relatively basic model of a subway car with not a whole lot of detail. I added some HDRI lighting to simulate the fluorescent lights above and color corrected the train to make it blend in with the color and feel of the environment.
I mean, the clip isn’t anything earth-shattering; you could easily just get a clip of an actual subway train passing by. But sometimes the best part about being a designer is making something out of nothing. A still photo becomes alive with hopes of convincing the audience that there is no animation at all and it goes unnoticed.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
So this is my entry for this week’s 5 Second Project theme “Old Video Games.” I started modeling an old NES Cartridge in Cinema 4D but couldn’t figure out what exactly to do with it. I figured the theme would provoke everyone else to try and emulate old, crappy video game graphics so I wanted to do something else to differentiate myself a bit. I thought about all the old terrible games I used to play (technically I still have them) and how lame they seem nowadays, or how they were poorly designed and thus nearly impossible to actually beat, or the myth that blowing on the contact part of the cartridge would actually make the game work. Since you can play all these old games online with various emulators, the cartridges seem dead and worthless, and visually sort of resemble a tombstone.
Old Video Game Graveyard – 5 Second Project from Michael Szabo on Vimeo.
I had a few other game name ideas, but I threw out the scratch paper I jotted them down on. Using your own NES game experiences, feel free to come up with one and post it in the comments.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
So my latest tutorial creates a design that is a bit hard to describe. It’s a sort of a 3D stroke-light streak-burst-glow-particle-explosion-reveal-animation. That name just rolls off the tongue. Here’s a practical example I made with the technique:
If I remember correctly I got inspiration from a Ford Flex commercial like this one at some point last year (It’s towards the end):
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
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 »
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
