CBT promo complete + Luksus Ident for LS

I have now officially completed the Clear Blue Therapies promotional video! It feels like a good achievement, and I hope it does well on the Kickstarter page. It is not up there live yet, but I will be sure to post it when it is.

Here is an ident I coloured/textured and animated (The drawings were provided from Chloe.) This is the fictional film company ident that precedes the animated film "Love Soldiers" that we are working on at the RCA. Chloe was after an 80s style (I think the light rays could be a bit post-80s but it is quite a nice touch!) This took around half a day. I got quite into the timing of it - as soon as one effect stops another one starts.

Kickstarter CBT promo video update & making of

I have almost finished this project now! It has been a bit of an epic and has drawn on my skills as a motion graphics designer, compositor, camera man, editor, 3D artist, time lapse recorder and musician! If anyone has any ideas of one word that I could use to fit these different roles, I would appreciate it! Audio-visual artist could be a good umbrella term.

Just a quick reminder - this work is for a promotional video made to represent Clear Blue Therapies on Kickstarter. Clear Blue Therapies is a therapy business founded by Saskia Griffiths-Moore. The video utilises motion graphics and draws on a news broadcaster theme to promote interest and help delineate Saskia's four phase plan.

Here are a few screenshots showing different parts of scene 2 on which I have created some nice bits of animation / motion graphics. The actual film itself will be out on Kickstarter soon - I will keep you posted. I just have a few final bits and pieces to sort out following some final feedback from Saskia.

I enjoyed getting the pencil out and drawing this piece to represent a conference.



Following this, I worked over it in Illustrator, then animated it in After Effects. Playing with the opacity of the fills adds a nice element of visual interest to the image. Also, conceptually, I reckon it enhances "the meeting of minds" element.



I also found it quite rewarding and satisfying working in 3D for parts of this project. The spinning logo and the books turning. Simple but effective!

And - this is a bit of an odd one - I'm quite proud of the train style LED text I put together. The font itself is called LCD Dot, and was created by Omer Kose --- http://www.omerkose.net/ I downloaded this off Dafont.

The bit that I'm proud of is the nice repetitive dot pattern I created in Illustrator for the LED light background! This lines up with the dots of the font. Then of course the colour and glow effect. It mimics the train style LEDs quite well. As things have turned out, I have been asked to change this style as it could be confusing, and takes away from the cohesion of the other fonts in the video. Think I may have taken Saskia a little too literally when she said 'text like you see on train displays'. Nevermind though!

Watch this space! The promo video will be out shortly....

Title sequence - workflow and screenshots.

This took around 3 days. I shot the timelapses and footage; created the sound (utilising a 120 bpm house loop by "afleetingspeck" off Freesound) then worked between Premiere and After Effects (using the Adobe Dynamic Link) to edit it together and add effects. The timing and visual/audio synchronicity seems to be key in maintaining a steady pace and flow to the sequence. As you can see below, the shots change precisely on cue with the drum beats.

The additive dissolve makes for quite a nice transition between shots. To further visually convey the pulse of the soundtrack I added a blue moving line effect in sync with the drum beats. It's simple but effective! I will upload the movie here when the video is up on Kickstarter.

Kickstarter campaign progress

Just a quick post this week. I have been quite busy spending time seeing my sister this week so I will be aiming to get this project complete for next Friday. This week, I have worked on adding text to imitate the look of the british rail LED screen type - this is timed perfectly with the words as they are spoken. I found this type off Dafont. It is called LCD Dot, made by Omer Kose.

 I also spent half a day going into town and recording some timelapse footage for the news title sequence. This looks great. The next step is creating a soundtrack to go with them - there's some great stuff on Soundcloud but I could run into copyright issues by using it, so instead I have found a good house loop off Freesound and will work on the track myself.

Train LED style text

Timelapse stills

Kickstarter update and some inspiration

Here are some icons and a main image created for the CBT Kickstarter campaign I'm working on. I'm aiming to get the film complete by next Friday, so it will be a busy couple of weeks!

And now for some animation inspiration...

I came across this neat little ad for the french post office a while back on motionographer. I really like how well it has been thought out and executed. Nice sound track too (from Amadou & Mariam.)



Here is a great little animation I watched yesterday made by Perrie Murphy. There is a simple element of truth within Colin that I'm sure many people can empathise with! It's pretty funny - definetly worth a watch!



So that's it for now. Catch you next Thursday!

Promo film for Kickstarter

Hi everyone, so it has been quite a while since I last blogged. Sorry folks! From now on I intend to do regular blog posts to keep people in the know of what I'm up to. Since compositing a couple of shots on the independent feature film "The Otherworld" I have realised that I would be much better suited to work on short form productions which offer a higher degree of creative input and a greater variety of work. One of the things I have been working on recently is a promo film for my friend and aspiring alternative therapy business entrepreneur - Saskia.

Promotional film for a Kickstarter project

Saskia has a plan to set up an alternative therapy business and needs the video to act as an essential part of her kickstarter page. I had designed some business cards for her previously, which have proved successful. I believe she is aiming to raise around $10,000 so the video promo is definitely a worthy challenge! The basic idea for her promo is to create a news themed "special report" featuring Saskia as both reporter and massage therapist. Some clear and simple motion graphics, that sit with the live action recording will help delineate her ideas. So far we have done the shooting and now I'm working on the post production. I used my Sony NEX5 to record the footage in HD, and coupled this with sound recorded into a clip on mic.

Business card

Video Promo - still

The shooting took place in my flat, with Saskia filmed against a cream coloured wall. It took me a couple of days to create a clearly defined matte of Saskia which has enabled me to cut her out and place her into a news broadcasting themed environment. I have learned from Ron Brinkmann's book "The art and science of digital compositing" that the most efficient way to rotoscope is to use several mattes - not just one. So here, I have pulled mattes for her body and hair seperately, then combined the two. I have also used a light wrapping technique which creates a subtle effect of the background colours lighting up her outline. The images below show the work in progress:

For my own future reference, and for those of you who are curious - here are the effects I applied to pull a matte of her hair at a part of the video where it swings to the side. These effects are applied to a pre-comped garbage matte so the dynamic range is concentrated to the section of hair being cut out. The still shows the garbage mask and the subsequent matte along with the effects. I pushed everything into the green channel as this provides the best contrast between hair and no hair.

Next, I will be working on integrating some motion graphics with the next scene which shows Saskia as a massage therapist explaining her idea. Here is a still of that shot: