Playing catch-up

There are some things that I've worked on in the past, which have newly been uploaded to the web, and I'd like to share them here.

First off is the full i98 commercial:

A previous post of mine contains the vfx breakdown of the intro, which is my work. I would love to lay claim to the entire ad -- and that work is certainly within the scope of my ability -- but it is not my work. The main body of the ad was done by Matt Beecher. My work is only the intro and outro ... the 'top and tail', if you will.

Next up is my very first After Effects project, from way back in early 2007:

Sorry about the jingle. It still gets stuck in my head. But it was neither my idea, nor my implementation of the idea. I just did the visuals for this. If I could do it all over again, I would be much more efficient and churn out the same product in half the time.

Finally, we have the full Innovation Campus video:

You can check out the promo, which I had posted recently. This is the full thing. I'm most proud of the use of silhouettes and depth of field in this video. The information content is something that the general viewer may find a little, well, irrelevant to their needs, but the visuals should (hopefully) distract you from this!

That is all for now. My next project seems to be a quick turnaround, informational motion graphics project, so that hopefully will hit the net before too long.

... Emck...?!

Here it is, the Relativity 2010 commercial for local TV:



The graphics work is my own, and it's work that I'm proud of. I'm particularly pleased with the animation of the spheres. The rendered look is also a look I'm very pleased with. This is Final Gather at its finest, er ... lowest settings, in fact, but it shows the technique off rather nicely.

Keep aneye out for a gfx breakdown soon, although I must confess that, by using the final gather method, this was one of those rare 'the final render is the Final Render' projects. There was almost no 'fixing it in post', except for the shockwave at 00:07, and of course the video window frame which was handled in After Effects rather than being a 3D element.

Note, also, the JJ Abrams-esque lens flares!

(note: the title of this post relates to a movie, in which characters would pronounce the famous E=mc² phonetically. A virtual cookie to whomever can tell me which film that was.)

A taste of things to come

Cubes. How cute. Truth is, I've been playing around with final gather rendering in Mental Ray and the results can be very sexy. Especially if you want rounded, plastic-looking cubes ... on white.

This is a precursor to my current project, which uses the same technique. This picture was one I concocted to show the boss, "here's one I prepared earlier" (which translates, of course, to "I've already done it, try to keep up"). This project has to be finished on wednesday in order to, er, be premiered on the sunday following. So I guess that in a week I can reveal what I've been doing....

Fun projects...

... don't come along often enough -- or hardly at all, in fact. The following represents one fun night of animating:



Now, this didn't play out the way I wanted it to. Obviously, we've completely ripped off the South Park style, and as such, I wanted Les (bus driver) to have a flip-top head, like the Canadians in the much more talented and popular TV show. This idea was vetoed. I also felt that the music should be a reveal only. As in, cut to the guys in drag singing "I Will Survive" and get the hell out. This also was vetoed, and as a result, the joke is dragged* on far too much.

At any rate, a shout out to Matt (I don't know how much he wants to put his name on the project) Beecher for what may charitably called the design (he's actually good at it, but crudeness was the order of the day here).

After a hellish week of grinding through un-fun work, it was awesome to spend a few hours feverishly animating this. It gave me an appreciation for how South Park can be turned around in 1 week(!), even if they use different software.

As for the reception, well, Marty walked up to me and said "I hope you've got a real good lawyer", which I think means it's a success on some level or another. Les, I understand, didn't watch it, and in all probability still has not. But they were both good sports and really cool to work with, and also -- might I add -- changed the script for the better during the audio recording. Cheers guys!

* Pun sort of half intended. In that I realised its pun-ish-ness before I actually typed it. But it's not contrived, I promise!

The i98 ad....

... is now airing, I'm told. So it seems I've jumped the gun a little in terms of posting my vfx breakdown, but there's no harm done as it represents a full 3 seconds of the final ad!

I'm doing some 3D work on another ad, and this one should look pretty darn sexy. More to be posted soon....