The muse

I knocked together this little test with the new mograph module in C4D. It's a brilliant tool and so much fun to use...expect more dynamics to come!

Having followed the fantastic podcasts, I recently decided to enroll at Fxphd. Its a pretty solid outfit and after a couple of weeks I can honestly say its living up to my expectations. I'm not really too interested in the 'nuts and bolts' of working a particular application (there are loads of tutorials for that) but rather the background to projects and industry best practice. If I pick up any gems I'll try to post them here but if you're interested in pushing your VFX skills forward I recommend you check out fxphd.

I created a logo animation for a Swiss film production company a while ago. The website for their latest production Save Angel Hope, has been updated and includes a trailer which looks great. The Director, Lukas is a great guy to work with so I really hope it does well. Check out the trailer at the official website.

If you're stuck for inspiration for your next motion design piece, this little gadget might help get the creative juices flowing.
Give it a spin and up pops a random phrase...
Linkorama: The idea generator for designers

On a recent project I needed to compress an MPEG 2 stream. After the first high res output from AE, I noticed really horrible artifacts in the final MPEG-2. After some exploration I found the root cause - I was using the 'Animation' codec for the AE QT output. Changing this to 'Uncompressed 8:2:2' solved the problem. No doubt this is a school boy error but thought I'd pass on a solution!

I've been back in the UK for a couple of weeks setting things up after spending a month or so mountain biking in New Zealand's North Island on our way home from Christchurch (needless to say RotoVegas and Auckland's Woodhill took 'top spot' status!). I'm now back into things and have been working on a couple of exciting projects - watch this space.

I recently had a discussion with the guys at Cactus climbing. As a result I decided to add Catcus to my lovemarks and posted my thoughts about the brand too. It seems my comment made it into the 6-monthly newsletter too. Nice!

Linkorama: Lovemarks (see half way down the page).

Given all the hype surrounding Myspace. I decided to have a look at it a while ago. I didn't add much info until recently. It turns out I'm now the first person under the term motion designer! I thought I'd post since its a passing moment that clearly won't last! :-)
Linkorama: Motion graphics designer

After effects gets the CS3 treatment. Get a sneak peek over at Adobe Labs.