Mograph Milwaukee

NA# from Blake Fawley on Vimeo.

Nice flick which combines filming, motion graphics, nature and technology….I like!

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.

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.

MK12 // Spring 2009 Reel from MK12 on Vimeo.

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!