You’ve probably noticed that we’ve been a bit quiet lately. The reason is two-fold. One, sometimes I have a personal life… sometimes. One of those ’sometimes’ has been recently. Things have just been a bit busy on my end. The second is that we’re looking for a new venue to host some more focussed events and meetups. Miles and I are looking at Bucketworks tonight to see if it will fit our needs. Hopefully it will.
This brings me to my next point, we’re having a meetup soon, emphasis on soon. This time around, there will be more focussed discussion instead of a free-for-all as we’ve had in the past. We’ll still be looking at cool/inspiring videos and discussing what we’ve each been doing lately, but to kick things off, we’ll be talking about two items of interest to me lately: the possibility of a VFX union, and the state of numerous online tutorials and how they affect the up-and-coming motion designers as well as established talent (so, everyone).
Now, this isn’t to say all our events here-forward are going to be centered around topics solely chosen by one or two people. Most events will morph around and change depending on who shows up and what’s interesting to them. So, if you have something you want to talk about, bring it up! Or, if you have an idea for a lead discussion or having speakers come in, let us know either in the comments or by dropping us a line at info [at] mographmilwaukee.net.
An idea came up at the last meetup to compile a listing of members and their contact info. This way, after a meetup when you’re thinking “Hey, there was that guy that was talking about this awesome thing… I have a couple questions for him,” you can look them up in the listing and drop them a line.
So, if you want t have your information listed, feel free to send it to paul@mographmilwaukee.net. You can include as much or as little as you want. As an example, you could send your name, picture, phone number, email, Twitter, Facebook, website, company & position, etc… Or you might just send your name and email. It’s entirely up to you.
As names start coming in, I’ll compile the list and put it up on the site for all to peruse.
We keep talking about adding videos to the Mograph Milwaukee group on Vimeo. So we figure, maybe we should do a quick tutorial. So here it is, in two clicks:
Pending any scheduling conflicts, we will host our January meetup on Wednesday the 27th at Riverfront Pizzeria at 7:30pm.
We had a great time at the December meetup. Thanks to all those who came out. It was a great way to get to know other motion designers in the area. We want to keep things informal at these meetups, but we hope to have a slightly (only slightly) more focused discussion this time around. The topic is still to be decided, but chances are we’ll be viewing some work (both our own and others) so bring something to show. If you’re on Vimeo, you should post videos to our group. We’ll be using that as a sort of collection basket for videos to discuss at meetups and other events.
Got an idea for what do discuss? Leave a note in the comments.
We’ll post more details to the site as we figure them out. As with everything in life, it’s a work in progress…
As of late, motion graphic artists have been taking sound bites from various films and animating the type in after effects. If you go to Vimeo and search “Kinetic Typography” you will find plenty of these animations. There is a trend among these animations of radial gradients and big bold typefaces such as gotham and avante garde. Anyone who took a typography class in college will really appreciate these animations. Typography is such a big deal in motion graphics, you see type everywhere in movie titles, commercials and so forth. Below are few clips I thought were done very well. Another website to check out is The Art of The Title Sequence. Here they list a bunch of feature films that have taken advantage of kinetic typography in their opening sequence.
Are you on Vimeo? You’re in luck. Mograph Milwaukee has a new group on Vimeo. We want to accomplish a couple things with this: first, it is a great way to share videos with each other, both yours and others’ that inspire you. Second We’ll probably pull from this group to show videos at meetups.
The opening sequence of HBO’s Six Feet Under raised the bar for television everywhere, with music by Thomas Newman and creative by Digital Kitchen. It won an Emmy back in 2002 for main title design, nothing comes close to Six Feet Under. The shows creator Alan Ball describes them as “elegant, cinematic, and so unlike tv”. The video above is a fifteen minute behind the scenes look at the creation of this beautiful opening. It’s very interesting to see how these ideas go from conception to execution.
Hey Kids! – just a reminder, tonight is the first Mograph Milwaukee Meetup. It’s a tremendous opportunity to rub elbows with the city’s top motion designers, see some solid work, and most importantly watch Miles Fabishak have a complete melt-down, eat an entire pizza at once then get falling down drunk. Huh? Huh? Doesn’t that sound like fun? Seriously though, Mograph Milwaukee is the creme de la creme for Milwaukee motion graphics. December 1st, 7:30pm at Riverfront Pizza. Mograph Milwaukee is picking up the tab on this, so all I need is a yes or no.
One of the big misconceptions about the motion graphics industry is producing great work in smaller markets. Most people would say you need to work in cities like Los Angeles or New York to land good jobs. However, a company based out of Kansas City is changing that. MK12 is a graphic design company best known for creating the title sequences for the films of Marc Forster, such as Stranger than Fiction and Quantum of Solace. It was founded by art school fugitives Ben Radatz, Jed Carter, Matt Fraction and Tim Fisher. Check out their 2009 reel!
Mograph Milwaukee is a community of motion designers in the Milwaukee area. We get together, talk design/motion graphics, and drink our beverages of choice.