Marvelous Spider Text, Man
Something I worked on in After Effects that really doesn’t try to mimic any style or theme you’ve seen before, nope not at all.
I submitted this to get picked up as a tutorial that I would get paid for, and it probably won’t in the end. So if not then I will record the tutorial for this technique and post it here.
I am mentioned honorably
So AETUTS+ announced their winner for the logo reveal contest I entered. Mine was ok, the winner’s was way better, quite slick. I got listed under honorable mention, I think that’s like one step better than getting one of these:
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WOOOOOOOOOO! I’m awesome!
Aetuts+ Logo Reveal Contest Entry: Puzzle Pieces Animation
I had this idea in my head for awhile. I wanted to create a 3D model of a jigsaw puzzle that can have the pieces animated into solve it with just a few keyframes. It can be textures with whatever, it’s a puzzle so it can be a replaceable image of anything. Well I finally got around to doing it for the Aetuts+ Logo Reveal Contest.
It’s based on my old animation in Mograph, the Current Cubes animation. I thought that if you cloned puzzle pieces into a grid cloner that you could control the assembly of a whole jigsaw puzzle. You could do some could random effectors to make the pieces scatter and have it pop back into place. This logo reveal contest came up with Aetuts+ and I couldn’t come up with anything special in After Effects off the top of my head, so I grabbed the puzzle idea off my idea whiteboard and got to work. I have no graphic moral compass apparently, since I’m primarily using a 3D application to do a logo reveal for a site devoted to tutorials in a 2D application. I’m a monster.
Continue Reading
5 Second Project: Kick the Bucket
So I finally jumped in Greyscale Gorilla’s 5 Second Projects competition. Here is my entry/interpretation for the category of “Kick the Bucket.”
I guess I can call myself a character animator now.
New Tutorial: Create a Galaxy with Fractal Noise
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.
First Demo Reel Update of 2009
So let’s see if I still remember how to work this blog thingy.
Here is my updated reel. I removed some car commercial junk that wasn’t going to impress anyone. I added my comic book spot that still hasn’t been on TV and won’t ever be, unless somebody wants me to freelance it for them.
I’ve got an After Effects tutorial idea in the works, but I’m procrastinating on it because things outside of working on computers all day have kept me happily occupied.
The Exciting Adventures of Savingsman
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. Continue Reading
Yep, They Bother Me Too
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.
Waving Pennant in Cinema 4D
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.
Demo Reel + Site Updates
I updated my demo reel by adding and subtracting a few things. I added a few clips like my Adobe Contest Entry and my Paper Stacking Desk. Most of the stuff remained the same, I just added a few more things I have done in Cinema 4D.
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.
