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Ah, this is a little late, but I thought I would post it anyways. This is the final title sequence for a short film called “twenty three.”

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Yesterday was the first ever project slam at VFS. Arriving at 8:30 am, we had no idea what was going to happen except that we would need to produce a commercial and we would need to do it fast.

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Interestingly enough, both of my final motion projects for this term include an extensive amount of 3D work. While this wouldn’t be such an issue as I find modeling and creating things in 3D rather fun, the camera has been quite troublesome for me recently. For example, one of the necessary controls in Cinema 4D is control of the focal point for the camera. I would use the auto-keyframe option to make the process of creating a timeline faster, but what I didn’t realize is that the auto-keyframe only stores data for what you have moved; unlike after effects which stores all the data for an object. I suppose this is ultimately done to save space, but in the case of multiple keyframes that use the same focal length, C4D will transition the focal length from the previous change to the next, regardless if there are keyframes in the middle.

I suppose what I’m trying to say is that I ended up wasting a whole bunch of render time, but learning a good lesson about moving the camera in C4D. Exciting…

I have for you friendly folks two rendering projects I am currently working on.

The first is a soccer field that is being designed for a motion graphics infographic piece for this term. My partner and I are going to explain the lovely game of soccer (that’s football to you non Americans) and give the viewer a basic introduction to the sport. So, this field is going to be the primary container for the piece, moving about and exploring. Should be fun.

The hardest part I found was in creating the net. The goal itself was pretty simple and just a matter of creating the cylinders and then bending them as needed. The net though, was a bit of work because I wanted to put the

slight gravity drop into it. Ultimately, I created a plane and attached cloth nurbs, then bent it the same as the tubing. Finally, after setting fixed points to all the edges, I applied “relax” and watched gravity do its job^^ Quite thrilling when it all worked out. The ball was the result of a tutorial I followed. I had painted it beforehand but discovered that shrinking the size of the ball messes up the special texture, so I need to repaint it. *sigh* As for the field, the floor and texture are native to Cinema 4D while the lines were originally created in Illustrator, then imported into the area. All in all, it was a fun project! Now I just need to apply the camera movements and we’ll be in business.

The other item for you today is a pill I kinda threw together for a DVD menu. The ultimate look will feature text on the pill indicating “Play,” “Scene Selection” and so forth. I thought it would be cool to have the pill rotate when the user clicks the “left” or “right” button on their remove and shift to a new button. Here is the front where the main menu will be.

and here is the back where the special features or scene selection will be. We haven’t quite worked that out yet!

I’m rather proud of this idea and I like how it is shaping up. I’ll be sure to post more about it in the future!

As per my previous entry, I present my motion piece for last term!

I really liked the concept for this piece. It started off at around 8 pages of storyboarding, then got bumped up to 10 after talking with Cory. Sadly, I wasn’t able to execute precisely along the lines of the storyboard as I had hoped due to limitations on money and time, but all in all I’m rather pleased with how it turned out. The graphical style of the backgrounds is one that I have been toying with this term greatly in numerous other projects (many of which I have posted here).

To create the piece, I first sketched out my ideas via storyboard, then on the computer with my tablet. Then after finalizing my bluescreen videos with the alpha channel attached, I did a final environmental design and coloration of the world using illustrator. Ultimately my bluescreen footage was pretty good, though not perfect as I had a number of places where rotoscoping was required (and not enjoyed, I can assure you). I shot all the outside footage myself, even the skateboard shots. For those I ended up just leaning down on the board and holding the camera steady to take the shots. It wasn’t easy and I kept seeing visions of something going wrong and breaking the $1800 or so camera, but it was ok! I feel a little bad about the audio design as it was the last part of the project that I did. As a result, it was rushed and not mastered properly. However, I do think that it came together fairly well and that the simplicity of the solo guitar for the alternate world is really nice. I wanted to have only the music in that section, but it became clear that sound effects would be needed as well, so I kept them limited and light. The skateboard audio is some that I recorded myself using a handheld recording device. I made use of the slight hill in front of my apartment to record the audio on, but it took me 3 runs down (and then back up!) the hill to figure out how to actually record. That aside, I captured some good sound.

I think it was a successful project despite needing to cut out shots, rushing at the end and all the other foul things that happened. I hope you enjoyed it!

This is a character animation piece I finished today for my motion design class. I first conceived of the concept for the piece and recorded the audio (yes, that’s me… with a little tweeking of course!). Then I went about designing the characters. The basic mouse template was sketched out and then fully digitalized / colored in illustrator. I also made the background in illustrator (Look! I can make a vanishing point!). From there it was just a matter of creating the animation in after effects. Finally, I popped in some music and sound effects to round out the piece. Overall it was a really fun little assignment to do, even though I thought it was due yesterday and was really stressing out about it (given everything else I had to do). Thus, I was quite glad to discover that it was actually due today.

The motion and flash pieces are still coming along. I’ll upload a little sample of where my flash project is going over the weekend sometime to show a little of what I’m trying to do with it. Overall though, it looks good!

I got my first taste of recording audio sound effects today. For my motion piece, the main character rides a skateboard through different worlds so I needed a good SFX of skateboard sound on asphalt. Well, I rode down and pushed up the same hill about 3 times, recording as I went. Then I figured out how to actually record sound on the portable device. After that, I went up and down a couple more times recording some good sounds. Haven’t given them a listen yet, but I’m looking foward to it!