Mograph Milwaukee

Well, the 3rd Wednesday of the month is here next week. That came up rather fast.

For several reasons (one of which being the weather) we will be shifting gears from our usual meetup. This time, we’re going to meet up at Iron Horse Hotel (The Yard if it’s nice our, otherwise Branded) and hang out, talk shop, and get a few drinks. We’ll still be catching up and talking about the group animation project, but this will not be a structured event.

If you’ve never been to a Mograph Milwaukee meetup, this might actually be the the best time to come and meet some of Milwaukees best (and most fun) motion designers and animators. It should be easy to spot us—we’ll probably have a laptop or two out—but if you have trouble, send us a message on Twitter or Facebook or contact Paul directly. One of us will let you know where we are.

I know it’s two weeks late, but here’s all the relevant info and information for our group animation. First of all, the guidelines.

#T by JAwS

Keywords: Industrial, Chase
Do with them as you will. Be as vague or literal as you want.

Color Pallete: Old Tyme

You can also download the ASE file. You don’t have to strictly use only these colors, but you should try to include some or all of them.

Technicals: 1280×720, 23.976fps
You can work at 1080p if you want, but we’ll assemble the final compilation at 720p.

Order of Animators:

1. Rick Kump [audio file]
2. Tim Chiappetta [audio file]
3. John Fischer [audio file]
4. Pete Prodoehl [audio file]
5. Miles Fabishak [audio file]
6. Paul Conigliaro [audio file]
7. Chris Larkee [audio file]
8. David Kopidlansky [audio file]
9. Jack Packard [audio file]
10. Jon Richter [audio file]

Each section is roughly 10-12 seconds. I tried to make them about equal, but the breaks don’t all land on a natural musical phrase. It won’t be that easy on you! [If you want, you can download the full song here, and the last half (the one we're animating) here.]

We’re encouraging you to contact the person before and after you to figure out how the pieces will fit together. But if you don’t, that’s okay too. This is a giant experiment and pretty much anything goes. (If you don’t know how to contact the other animators, let me know and I’ll probably be able to help out.)

So that’s it! We’ll talk progress at our next meetup on July 21st. The tentative deadline is our August meetup on August 18. Let’s see what happens!

This just arrived in my inbox from our friends over at the Milwaukee Animation Group. A local filmmaker is looking for an After Effects artist to do some compositing and VFX work on a sci-fi film in August. Looks to be a paying gig as well. Information follows:

After Effects Whiz Needed for Feature Film

Wisconsin Filmmaker is starting post-production on a sci-fi movie, and is
looking for an After Effects expert to create explosions & muzzle flashes,
computer screen motion matching & design/animation, prosthetic makeup
fixing, and various other special effects.

This is a funded project, and the director is looking for a portfolio that
demonstrates the artists’ ability to create the above effects.

The artist that is chosen will be expected to work at their own facility and
use their own equipment, have solid, professional communication skills, be
able to take direction accurately, offer creative feedback, and be available
to work starting In August.

Interested parties should contact Howard Waddell:

h.waddell@midweststudios.com

It’s that time again. In a little over two weeks (June 16), we will be hosting our next meetup. The theme?

We’ll be discussing some seriously great work that’s out there and trying to figure out how it was done. Bring links or quicktimes of mograph work you’ve been wondering about, and we’ll wrap out collective heads around it to see if we can break it down.

Keeping along with that theme, we will be giving away Harry Frank’s After Effects Expressions and Trapcode Form training (worth $65) in a free drawing. Then you will indeed know how the f#&! to do that.

There’ll also be another first: we’re offering free food. We’ll have subs and beverages available because we’re just that generous. Here’s the details:

7:00pm Meet, talk, network, eat, drink, be merry.

7:15/7:30pm Discussion. There’ll be a few business items to discuss about our group, then we’ll get on to viewing some works and trying to break them down.

8:45 Quick overview of our group project. Where we stand… What needs to be done… Setting deadlines… We’ll also be nailing down a specific theme to work off of. After this meetup, we’ll be kicking it into high gear!

Depending on time remaining we may have time to show off your stuff, but it’s not guaranteed since we only have the space until 9:00pm. So come to Bucketworks on June 16th at 7:00pm to eat, meet awesome people*, pick everyone’s brain, and maybe win some stuff.

*Seriously, the people at these meetings are really awesome.

In light of our upcoming group project, I’m really going to push you guys for your contact info for our member directory (remember that?). We’re also going to compile a business directory, which was brought up in a previous meeting.

So, please use the contact form or send an email to paul [at] mographmilwaukee.net with whatever contact info you would like included (email, phone, twitter, vimeo, facebook, photo, position, company, etc…). If you would like your business included in a separate business directory, feel free to submit that info as well—just make sure it’s separate from your personal info. I just ask that any businesses asking to be listed provide motion design, animation, or VFX services.

Here is a sample of what a member listing might look like:

So let’s get going on this. Let’s make a definitive listing of motion designers, animators, and VFX artists, and businesses in the Milwaukee area.

[UPDATE: We will extend the deadline to our next meetup,Wednesday June 16th.]

Those of you at the meetup last Wendesday know that we have a project ahead of us. If you weren’t there, here’s the run down.

We were talking about this video from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. The basic premise is that the class took a song by AGF titled “Pianos,” broke it off into pieces, and each student  animated that section of the song according to the extensive requirements you can see in the Vimeo description.

We all thought it looked like a pretty fun project, so we’re doing something similar. John Wangles was kind enough to lend us use of his track “#T.”

#T by JAwS

Here’s what we’ll be doing:

1. Comment on this post and “officially” sign up to be part of this project. We’ll need to know how many people are planning on contributing in order to break the song up. Let’s make Friday May 28th Wednesday June 16th the deadline.
2. We’ll come up with some theme or constraints to make sure we’re all on the same page. So feel free to make suggestions. We’ll put up a poll on the blog to see what wins out by popular vote.
3. Once we have our list of people, we’ll break up the song and randomly assign sections. We’ll post the list along with contact info so you can talk to whomever is before and after you. Hopefully this will help smooth over transitions and make a more cohesive piece.

We’ll also come up with some sort of deadline & format requirements for final renders (which will more than likely be 16:9). But beyond that and the theme we end up choosing, it’s entirely open. 3D, 2.5D, 2D, cell-animation, stop-motion… the method doesn’t matter.

So sign up and suggest themes/constraints/color palettes/whatever in the comments. Lets get this going!

Admittedly, I haven’t seen The Pacific, but the title sequence is fantastic. It’s a great blend of practical shooting, VFX, and animation. The subtleties like the charcoal breaking matching debris from the battlefield and the paper texture matched perfectly to the live-action footage tie everything together. It’s a great imagining of drawings coming to life.

[Update: Added event to our Facebook page.]

Mark your calendars. Wednesday May 19th will mark Mograph Milwaukee’s 4th meetup. We’ll follow a similar setup as last time:

7:00 Mingle, Talk, Network…
7:30 Discussion about mograph trends. Maybe a demo or two.
8:00 (or whenever the discussion ends) Show your stuff. Bring something to show off, or perhaps more importantly, something to get critiqued.

We’re sticking to a laid back atmosphere here, but we’ll need to wrap by 9:00 so the Bucketworks crew can head home. If there’s interest, we’ll head to one of the nearby bars to keep discussions going.

See you there!

We could write an extensive post covering what’s new in AE CS5, but Chris & Trish Meyer have covered that over at ProVideo Coalition. It’s well worth the entire read, but here are some highlights:

• Native 64-bit (No more out of memory errors!).
• Roto Brush.
• Mocha & Mocha Shape.
• DE FreeForm.
• Native R3D file support, including color & metadata management in the Interpret Footage dialog.
• Two new blending modes: Subtract & Divide.
• New keyboard shortcuts for keyboards without the number pad (laptop users rejoice).

Well, it’s been a while, hasn’t it? Snow has melted, it’s nearly 70° outside, and taxes are almost due. A lot has happened since our last meetup.

Our next meetup will be on April 14th, 7:00pm at Bucketworks. General schedule is as follows:

7:00pm Mingle, meet people, talk, have a great time!

7:30-ish guided discussion/talk about a topic TBD*

8:00 Show off your shit! Seriously, bring stuff to show on DVD, QuickTimes on a flash drive, Vimeo link, whatever! Show us what you got… what you’ve been working on… or something you need feedback on.

Hopefully our new location will all work out well and it’ll be a great time. But that won’t happen if you’re not there. So be sure to make it out!

*About that TBD topic, we know our group involves people from many skill sets and experience levels. So finding a discussion topic that will apply to everyone is a little difficult. If there’s something you want to talk about—the recent unionizing talks in the VFX industry, a how-to style breakdown of a specific video or technique, where to find inspiration, etc–let us know! Otherwise it’s just going to be me rambling for half an hour, and no one wants that. Seriously, you don’t.