Mograph Milwaukee

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.

See you soon!

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…

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.

So what are you waiting for? Join the group!

If you’ve been learning Cinema 4D, chances are you’ve happened across HYPA.tv. Tim Clapham posted some great tutorials & tips for C4D, especially with regards to the mograph module. After 14 years, HYPA (the studio) has closed its doors, which means the site has been shuttered as well. But all is not lost. Tim is starting a new company: Luxx, and with it a new blog, helloluxx. All the old archives were moved over and there is already a new tutorial & scene file for C4d.

If you’ve never been to HYPA.tv, take a look at helloluxx. Tim’s posts are great for gaining a better understanding of how Cinema 4D works.

Introducing The Motion Exchange. Harry Frank of Gray Machine fame has started a social network built specifically for motion designers & vfx artists. The ides of the site is that if you’re a freelancer, a potential client could go on the site and search for something like an experienced (5+ years) cinema 4D artists who have experience in rotoscoping in Milwaukee. Harry is also working on a way to leave feedback on clients/agencies/studios, so you know what you’re getting into when you take that job. Or, you could just connect with other motion designers. There’s a tutorial video of sorts posted to give you a better idea.

It holds great promise and signed up over 400 users in just two days. Milwaukee is poorly represented, however.  As of this writing, there are only two Milwaukee motion designers signed up: John Fischer and myself. Mograph Milwaukee even has a group on The Motion Exchange, so sign up!

[UPDATE: This meetup will be held at Riverfront Pizzeria.  Come, eat pizza, have a drink, talk design!]

So we have our first official meetup coming up on Tuesday December 1st. The problem is, we don’t know where to host it. What we need is a ballpark figure for the number of people who will attend. With that said, we have a new events manager here and it accepts RSVPs. So take a look at the page for the December meetup and rsvp if you’ll make it.

Milwaukee needs a tight-knit mograph community if we are going to bring more work to the area. Let’s help each other out. Share ideas. Critique each others work.

We’re starting small, just a couple meetups to hang out and talk design. Our next meetup is planned for Tuesday December 1st. Location is still TBA.