Here is the most thorough Global Illumination tutorial I have ever seen for Cinema 4D. It’s for release 11 and higher, which has a revamped interface and set up. One day soon I’m going to strap myself into my chair, lock the doors and not come out until I know every single part of this tutorial.

I just posted a new tutorial for After Effects. I show you how to create an animated spider web that catches some text flying into it. It starts by showing you how to create the web in Illustrator and then how to make it elastic and bouncy in After Effects. Enjoy and hit me up with any questions you may have.

My newest tutorial is posted. It shows you how to create an entire space scene in After Effects using primarily the fractal noise plug-in. I got inspired to do this based on part of this tutorial where it showed how to use fractal noise to make a star field and I took it a bit further. Fractal Noise has always been considered one of the most useful plug-ins; I’ve used to create tons of different things from clouds to curtains. Check out the video and you’ll be on your way to creating a scene straight from outer space.

Check out visualfxtuts.com for a new tutorials from around the web for a bunch of different applications. There’s some good stuff on there already and it’s going to keep growing. Go check it out.

So remember when I did a bunch of belly-aching about how all the car commercials I make all the time are so dumb, boring, ineffective?

I recently had some down time at work and got to knock out a project I devised and has been on the back burner for awhile. If I had my way, I would spend most of my work week doing one nice, creative, and clever spot like this instead of a dozen crappy ones.
 
I don’t really think it’s very hard to come up with something different and creative to sell cars. This is merely a spec spot, so it’s unfortunately never been on television. I really hope it does, but at the rate were going, it might never make it on. It was an even better idea when I thought of it this summer when gas was like $13 a gallon.

Technique-wise, I did the whole thing in After Effects with some initial help from Photoshop. One thing I didn’t do is draw the characters, they were purchased on cartoonsolutions.com. I recommend their products because they are relatively cheap and they give you a bunch of pieces to assemble various poses for your character.

I did however create the Guzzler. I took the image of a standard SUV, a chevy Tahoe I believe, and manipulated the front grill and headlights to look more like a character. I added a wiggle expression to make him shake while idling and a smoke emitter using Particular to make him an evil earth enemy. The rest of the spot comes together using some over-animation principles and lots of bright, flashy color combinations that I’m normally not allowed to use. It was a lot of fun to design and edit. It took about 3-4 days to do, but it could go faster now that I have the technique down.

Overall the concept has been well-received, but unfortunately I can already hear whispers of changing this, tweaking that, swapping out those, and all of a sudden it will end up being a complete downgrade from what I came up with. Oh well, I guess that’s what you get when you willingly allow car salesman make your creative decisions. 
 

Here’s 2 good new links for you:

cgtextures is the best texture site I know of.

stockfootageforfree offers what it says, stock footage for free.

I added my website to coolhomepages.com. It’s a good reference for web designers; it provides inspiration and examples of all sorts of designs. So when you submit your site to their database and they think it’s cool, YOU WIN AN AWARD!!!!!

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.

Head over to www.colorprintusa.com if you need just about anything printed or designed.

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.

I finally got on FLICKR and to upload some of my photos. I’ve always liked photography, which lends itself to many motion graphics and 3D design related techniques I use. I’m not too great at it yet, but I always keep my camera handy ready to capture that unforgettable moment…

Like when a tortoise wanders into your backyard.

Originally uploaded by bigmikedesign

I used to have a Mitsubishi Galant, I wonder if it was made by these robots.

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?