The muse

Cinema 4D mograph 2 test

2009-11-09T18:52:12Z

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!

Back to school (sort of)

2008-04-29T10:36:32Z

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.

Save Angel Hope updated

2008-04-07T10:14:43Z

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.

Fluid modeling

2007-12-07T11:04:48Z

I've recently been doing some fluid modeling. Here's an example of the classic "wine pouring into glass" which was rendered out in Cinema 4d. Once the movie has played, double click the movie to replay it.

Mobile foam hotel

2007-09-14T11:06:52Z

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

MPEG-2 artifacts

2007-07-25T11:36:08Z

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!

Back in the studio

2007-07-24T11:36:31Z

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.

Lovemark quote

2007-05-15T15:32:21Z

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).

Top of Myspace!

2007-05-10T02:17:16Z

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 CS3 pre-release is out

2007-04-17T10:26:11Z

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

Motion tracking in PFTrack and Cinema 4d

2007-04-16T16:56:23Z

I've been doing quite a bit of motion tracking lately and I've come across a few gotchas for using PFTrack and Cinema 4d. Here are my notes:

choose an origin which is at the centre of the whole scene (if its a pan this will help enormously)

use the lightwave

change the default preferences in C4d Edit > preferences > import/export > Lightwave import > Scale = 200

Make sure when previewing the work that you've set the camera output aspect to the same as your background plate footage...if you don't it be jerky and out of reference. Happy tracking!

The perfect notebook?

2007-04-03T14:36:42Z

I was looking around my favourite Moleskine retailer yesterday and found the best notebook they've produced (obviously I'm biased!). It features pages with 4x3 frames for storyboarding ideas and making sketches - ideal for motion design projects. The quality of the stock is much higher than in their other pocket notebooks I use which makes it ideal for taking colour or changing ideas - of course it also means you can write on both sides of a page. Check it out here: Official moleskine catalogue On a sidenote I noticed that Moleskine was No. 8 at lovemarks

Client extranet

2007-03-25T20:13:30Z

Kevin Airgid has been an inspiration over the last few days. I've been to FITC (asyncronously of course with the help of iTunes) and listened to his presentation. In which he suggested using snif to allow clients to access files/revisions etc. However, with the help of my hosting company's handy one click installs I've set up a fully fledged client extranet based on ActiveCollab. It seems to have everything I need including user management and best of all keeps all the client information in one place so nothing goes awry.

We have a logo!

2007-03-23T21:00:54Z

I've been working on the docherty.tv identity and have finally developed a logo that I really like. Its a stylised eye/focussing ring which is everything I wanted it to be...the typeface is infotext from font shop which I'm very happy with in this context. It'll hopefully work well on the end frame of motion pieces and the elements of the outer rings have been retained to allow them to be animated as required. The new logo:

A thumbnail 'icon' for those times when less is more :-)