Motion Designers in Milwaukee
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.
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:
This is brilliant. What if Saul Bass designed the Lost title sequence?
I love good title design.
[via MillionairePlayboy]
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.
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!
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!