If you haven’t been to our meetups, they are fairly free form. We’ll start out with some industry news, move into the theme of the evening (if there is one), then open it up to anyone who wants to show or discuss something. Here are the notes for our January meetup in chronological-ish order.

The Motion Graphic Design Census started the evening. In general, there weren’t too many surprises, except for salary & rate ranges. Through many of us took the census, we didn’t quite remember how questions were phrased, so we didn’t know if that impacted the responses. (You should also take the 2011 survey. It’s only 5 questions.)

The Mill’s new reel is, as always, great stuff.

Anders Hattne’s AE 210% inspired the theme of the evening: more with less. We cracked open the AE project to look at the audio. Interesting techniques in there, though we were a little disappointed to not be able to peek at the animation itself.

30 Motion Tests in 30 Seconds was a different way to do more with less. 30 days to complete 30 separate one-second animations. Possible group project?

Two projects were demoed: Glue Gun Rain and Radio Smoke. The first was an attempt at finding something useful to do with CC Glue Gun. It’s one of those effects you rarely, if ever, reach for. By tinkering around enough, and with the help of a few wiggle expressions, we managed to get a semi-decent, if not slightly stylized way to get the look of rain falling on a window or pane of glass. What really helped was a high-frequency wiggle (300Hz) applied to the position. It managed to create dots instead of a solid line.[Project File]

The second project, Radio Smoke, produced (again, somewhat stylized) cigarette smoke. Using an ellipse shape layer with wiggle path, we were able to get the radio waves effect to behave somewhat like smoke. Adding turbulent displace on top of that further helped sell the effect. However, this was quite a render hog. To get the shape layer into radio wave, we had to use the “image contour” wave type. That coupled with the high frequency for smooth shapes slowed everything own dramatically. So it might not be practical, but it works. [Project File]

Our next meetup will likely be combined with MCAI Milwaukee. MCAI is a community of media communications professionals and expressed interested in what we do. It should be an interesting time.

Rick Kump brought up why he likes & hates Million Dollar Money Drop. It was an interesting aside.

We watched Make It Better. General consensus: great stuff.

Jack Packard got up and showed some of his work in progress videos which should be on Funny or Die in the near future.

BG Renderer was pushed (by me). Surprisingly, few people were using it. Hopefully, that will change.

Along with BG Renderer, Andoru Labs came up for the great RenderQ and AEae utilities.

Chris Larkee brought up using Premiere as an intermediate to get a FCP sequence to After Effect. The free Popcorn Island script was also mentioned, but agreed that it works better for smaller sequences.

Chris also showed a video about “LensWhacking,” a technique of not locking a lens to the camera to allow light leaks and a subtle tilt-shift like effect. He also showed off a video where he used natual lens flares shot over black and composited over footage instead of using a lens flare plugin in post. The technique was much more organic and interesting than simply using Optical Flares or Knoll Light Factory.

Rick showed off a recent broadcast commercial he worked on for Austin Straubel Int’l Airport titled “Liesure Travel.”

Of course, at Jack & Rick’s request, watched the music video for Major Lazer’s “Pon De Floor.” (Possibly NSFW, no nudity or language, but pretty lewd.)

To close off the evening, we watched the video for “No Room to Live” by Times New Viking. It’s an interesting video where portions of live-action footage of the band were given to several different animators and cut together.

It was a productive meetup. Hopefully you can make it to the next one.

210% After Effects from Anders Hattne on Vimeo.

Welcome to 2011 everyone! For our first meetup of the year, we will be back at C2 Graphics on January 20th at 6pm. The topic for the evening? Doing more with less. Lately I’ve been seeing some creative uses of limited resources floating around and I think we could all use some gentle reminding that we don’t necessarily need the latest & greatest software packages and plugins to make cool work. We’ll look at a couple examples and play around inside AE to make some interesting animations with limited resources (not to mention time!).

As always, bring yourself, maybe a Moleskine to take notes, some interesting links to share, and maybe even some of your own work you’d like feedback on or just to show off.

• Thursday, January 20th
• C2 Graphics (222 E. Erie Street, Suite 330)
• 6:00pm

Facebook Event Page

UPDATE 12/17/2010 10:15am – We will be meeting right at the iPic bar around 7:00pm tonight.

UPDATE 12/10/2010 5:10pm – General consensus seems to be iPic. As of right now, there are still 53 seats available (out of 73) for the 9:15pm screening, so I’m sure we won’t have a problem. Now the question is one of meeting beforehand…

For our December meetup, we’ll be taking it easy once again. On Friday, December 17th will meet at a bar (TBD) around 7pm or so, catch up on what’s going on with each other and the industry, then head out to see a 9:30/10:00pm showing of Tron: Legacy. We will hopefully be going to see the film in 3D at iPic in Bayshore Mall.

The good part is that all the iPic theaters are digital and it’s limited to 21+ after 7pm. The downside is, we’ll have to order tickets ahead of time, and they are $19 (includes popcorn). Now, if the general consensus is that this is too steep of a price, we can look at going to a Marcus theater instead, such as South Shore, Majestic, or Ridge, or the Showtime theater in Franklin. But since those are all a bit further out, we may have to adjust the schedule a bit.

So here’s the deal: leave a comment on this post, or on the Facebook event page to RSVP, leave a suggestion for a bar, and your feelings on movie theater. The deadline to RSVP is Sunday, December 12th at 11:59pm, I will order tickets Monday morning. Then, at the meetup, I will collect money from everyone attending. So please, only RSVP as yes if you really, honestly, truly will attend, and not just as a nicety. Don’t worry, our feelings won’t be hurt if you say no.

To recap, relevant details:

• Friday December 17th
• 7pm iPic Bar Some Bar (Jackalope? Tonic? iPic itself?)
• 9:00pm Head out to the 9:15pm screening of  Tron: Legacy (or later screening at another theater depending on group consensus)
• RSVP by Sunday December 12 at 11:59pm

We’ve been invited to attend the Milwaukee Adobe User Group’s 4th Annual Holiday Networking Event this Wednesday December 8th. It’s at The Irish Pub on Water & Irie in the Third Ward from 6-10pm. It will be a great opportunity to meet some of the other designers in the area.

I’ll be there. Will you?

We’re doing things a little differently this month. Instead of our usual meetup, we’re going to just get together, hang out with some drinks, and relax amidst the chaos of the ensuing holiday season. Next Wednesday, 6:30/7:00 until we’re done. The location is still TBD, so if you have an idea, let us know! We’ll probably be looking for a bar/pub in the downtown/third-ward area. Someplace chill that can accommodate a group like ours without having to shout for conversation. Got any ideas? Let us know!

Stay tuned…

Post your completed video to the Vimeo Group or upload it to the FTP account listed below by Friday September 17th at 11:59pm. Some people are using alpha channels, in that case, definitely use the FTP.

FTP Info:
ftp.mographmilwaukee.net
user: mgmke
pass: m0gr@ph

We’ll have it assembled and posted by the next meetup on September 22nd.