Motionworks

This look for an “Untraceable” film promo is based on graphics from the original trailer. The base is a simple static fractal noise layer and scan lines created using the Venetian Blinds effect. The binary code is a field of custom Particular particles with a camera fly through. A nice addition – courtesy of a funky Maltaannon expression – cycles the one’s and zero’s randomly. CC Lens was used to warp the background via an adjustment layer.

The main text effect was created using two AE text layers, one with ones and zeros and the other with the title “Untraceable”. Each layer has an Opacity text animator applied with the zero/one layer set to animate from 100 to 0% opacity using the Randomize Order setting and the Untraceable layer animating from 0 to 100% using the same Randomize Order setting.

The text was treated with a series of effects including Fast blur, CC composite (to comp the text back onto the blurred version) and a light blue to white Ramp effect. A second adjustment layer with CC Lens was used to warp the main text but that introduced some tearing at the edges of the frame. To hide the tearing and add further detail, a Mosaic effect adjustment layer was used with a soft feathered mask to restrict the effect to the left and right edges of the frame.
To finish, the overall color and contrast was adjusted using a Curves adjustment layer followed by a vignette (Magic Bullet Misfire Vignette) adjustment layer. The entire look took 2.5 hours.

Watch movie

My Bond. Classic Bond Teaser 4 has won Gold for Best On-Air Ident Design and Silver for Best Design in Promotion at the Australian Promax awards.

Sorry posts are a bit light at the moment but I just moved house after nine years! The good news is Motionworks 2.0 is almost ready and will be online within weeks. I think you’ll like it

We are working hard on MILG5 so I thought I’ll let you in on a little status update. We are already halfway through. If everything goes well we should be releasing it in no more than 6 weeks. Unfortunately I became very sick and sometimes I have to give my plans up, go to the doctor and lay in bed for a few days. (more…)

In this 45 minute Adobe After Effects session we take a look at the techniques used to create the James Bond graphics for Fox Classics channel. Topics include green screen techniques, batch live trace using Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Bridge, creative text animation and creating fire and smoke using Trapcode Form. Watch e-seminar

Update: The recording is now online.

Trapcode Form came in very handy for the Bond. Classic Bond graphics, allowing me to create the stylized fire and smoke which are featured throughout. Here’s one of the fire looks saved as a preset for you to play with. Download preset.

The next E-seminar is fast approaching so I thought you might like to see this comparison version of the Fox Classics teaser I posted recently. In this version (Quicktime 4MB) I’ve used the Linear Wipe effect to reveal the original green screen shots used in the spot.

Lately I seem to be doing plenty of grunge-style graphics, the most recent of which is the promo graphics for Rambo. If you’ve seen the film or even the trailer you’ll know that it’s ultra-violent; and it would have been easy to do something blood-soaked but I decided on a more subtle approach. The online trailers for the film feature different styles, one where the graphics have a polished metal-look and another with a stone-look. The stone has a nice gritty feel and to me the polished look didn’t suit the subject matter.

As with many of my previous projects I built the background using a number of different stock images of dirty walls, cracks etc. and combined that with key art from the film. I particularly like the cracked concrete, which I felt was indicative of the fractured emotions of the Rambo character.

Rather than placing all the background layers into a single comp, I made them 3D and distributed each in z-space so that when the camera pans to the right you see a nice parallax effect.

The text was created and animated using Zaxwerks ProAnimator with a stone texture applied to the front face (Mikey our Maya guy whipped that up for me). I used Curves to move the blacks towards a deep red color.

The blood behind the text is a duplicate of the text with Roughen Edges (using the Color Rust setting) and Turbulent Displace applied. The Turbulent Displace creates a nice smearing effect.

Finally the light moving across the background is a simple animated Fractal Noise layer blended with the background using the Color Dodge mode.

Check out some full rez frames here and a Quicktime movie here (10MB).

My buddy Maltaannon from Polygon Studio has just released a brand new custom effect for Adobe After Effects for creating beautiful and convincing light wrap effects. Light wrap is the effect where colour from the background image is mixed in with the edges of the foreground image, creating a realistic composite. This custom effect has some extra special features including edge blur and a color matcher which you can use to tint your foreground image with color sampled from the background.

I’ve had to create this kind of effect in the past manually and also used Key Correct Pro which is great, but if you don’t need everything KCP has to offer or it’s beyond your budget, then CE LightWrap is an excellent and great value solution for an important step in convincing compositing.

You’ll find more information including a video tutorial in which Maltaannon shows how to create a light wrap effect from scratch here. CustomEffects are Adobe After Effects Animation Presets with all the controllers packed into a single group so it looks like a regular plug-in. For more on CustomEffects click here.

In this 17 minute tutorial (35MB Quicktime) you’ll learn the basic workflow for Red Giant Software’s Radium Glow plug-in. This was the first time I’d used the effect and have been pretty impressed with the results; you have a lot of control over exactly how and where the glow appears on your footage. Definitely worth a look.

The tutorial features the Adobe After Effects version but it’s also available for Adobe Premiere Pro, Apple Final Cut Pro, Motion and Avid AVX2 systems.

Full disclosure: I work in Television as a News Anchor. In my spare time and off hours, I study 3D motion graphics by reading, doing and visiting great sites like Motionworks. JD’s latest post on his newest boxing promo sparked a question that he asked me to post here.

By way of background, one of my goals working in daily TV news is to keep things looking fresh. There is a certain routine to the stories that one sees coming round, again and again. The challenge is to keep the story looking new and interesting.

Certainly JD has done boxing promos before, as you can see elsewhere on his site. I thought the last one he did was great, and then JD topped himself with this latest one.

The question I pose is this: how do you stay fresh, creatively while repetitively working on the same type of spots. As designers you may have worked on the same kind of spots many times before. But what things do you do to ’see’ the spot differently from the way you did it before.

Post your comments on how you keep the spark of creativity alive vs. repetition.

Another boxing promo created using Adobe After Effects, Illustrator and Photoshop. For this 3 day job I wanted to create a scene reminiscent of a boxing gym wall with old posters and banners. These fighters are up and coming but quite low in the rankings and this will be a battle of brawlers, so this gritty, unpolished look fits nicely.

The basic idea and color palette came from a cover for an X-Box game I found when looking for inspiration. Here’s the frame from Illustrator showing the X-Box cover, the raw text layout and the finished layout. I used the Illustrator Envelope warp tool to warp the text.

This next image is the result of treating the clean Illustrator image in Photoshop to give it some age and character, all done using stock grungy images.

To create the 3D displacement on the images, in Adobe After Effects I used Zaxwerks 3D warps then a simple wiggle expression to shake up the screen in time with the big hits on the soundtrack.

There is also a subtle lighting effect created by animating a radial Ramp from side-to-side. My friend Maltaannon helped out with this expression: swing = Math.sin(time * how_fast_it_goes) * how_far_it_goes;
x = value[0] + swing;
y = value[1] + swing;
[x,y];.
This was applied to the “Start of Ramp” and “End of Ramp” properties. All you do is replace the “how_fast_it_goes” and “how_far_it_goes” values with your own numbers, or link them to expression sliders. It will swing both points at the same rate and you can set the points where ever you want them in the comp and they will swing together. Doing it this way means the ramp won’t change size as it moves back and forth across the comp.

Here’s a comparison movie (Quicktime, 9MB) showing the original edit at the top (split into ungraded on the bottom left and graded on the top right) and the finished promo at the bottom. Note at the beginning I removed the ugly advertising on the back of the referee’s shirt and at the end I left space at the bottom of the packshot for details and various channel logos.

My buddy Andrew Kramer has just launched a new forum on Video Copilot and I must say it is VERY popular. Andrew also kindly invited me to participate. Check it out here.

Okay get ready to strap on your motion graphics black belt, Making It Look Great™ 4 is available now. This is a new 2.5 hour workshop by me (John Dickinson) that will walk you through the techniques I used to create the NorthStar Martial Arts Opening Sequence.

Topics include: Discussing key design decisions, Background creation and modification, Creating graphic elements in Adobe Illustrator and After Effects, Logo preparation in Illustrator, Logo modelling and texturing in ProAnimator, Preparing JPEG files with Illustrator Live Trace, Getting the most out of mini-dv footage, Creating 3D banners with 3D Flag, Tricks for isolating glows to logo bevels, Simulating refraction and depth of field, Finishing touches to add mood.

We’re still working on the promo but you can check out the Introduction here, and Lesson 1: The Design here.

Okay so we’re getting a good idea of what Adobe After Effects plug-ins each other uses on a regular basis. It’s quite understandable that so many of you use utility effects like Curves and Levels, and 3rd party effects like Particular regularly, which is such a versatile plug-in.

Now let’s share thoughts on effects we avoid, prefer not to use or just plain hate. For example, do you prefer to do all of your 3D in a dedicated 3D application rather than use Zaxwerks 3D Invigorator or ProAnimator? Perhaps you think something is particularly cheesy and overused? Of course it all depends on ”how” an effect is used because even a great effect can look cheesy. Personally I tend to avoid using any of the “Transition” effects as actual transitions, but will often use something like “Linear Wipe” without keyframes to mask a section of another layer. If you have a link to something cheesy you may have done or seen, share it with us, we promise not to laugh (much)

Okay everyone it’s confession time…

1. What effect included with Adobe After Effects do you use the most?

For me it is a close contest between Fast Blur and Curves… with Curves probably the winner.

2. What is the 3rd party plug-in for Adobe After Effects that you use the most?

I had to think hard about it and there are times when I use a specific plug-in a lot then not again for some time. I use Zaxwerks, Knoll Light Factory and many of the Trapcode effects regularly. But generally I’d have to say Trapcode Shine, I know that some of you are gasping right now, but the truth is it’s one effect I find a lot of uses for, from volumetric lighting to enhancing glows and color grading.

What about you? Now tell the truth

As a broadcast designer there are many terms one must understand in order to know what the hell a client is asking for. The problem is people use different names for the same thing. When I was first asked for a ”Clusterbuster” I thought the guy wanted some kind of chocolate bar

So once and for all I’d like to create a list of broadcast terminology that we can all use, and I’d like you to be involved. I’m going to start off by listing some of the terms I use and what I know to be the definition, and other names (I’ll include more as I remember). If you think you know differently, have another name for the same thing, or know of something I’ve missed, let us know. When the list is complete, I’ll post a document everyone can refer to:

Lower Third Super: (lower third, super strap, strap, banner):
A graphic that sits at the bottom third of the screen and includes information, most commonly someone’s name. The type on them can be a “slug” (ex. 5-alarm fire) or a “locator” (123 west elm st) or an “identifier”. (Joe Six-Pack from East Wherever)

Full Frame Super:
A graphic, usually text, that covers the entire frame.

Snipe:
5-10 second lower third animations that play during the show promoting some other show or what’s coming up.

Interstitial (Clusterbuster)
A short show (up to 5 minutes) that is broadcast in-between full length shows.

Promo(Promotion):
A sequence that advertises an upcoming show.

Bumper (Next, Promo):
A short sequence (5-10 seconds) that plays in-between shows, that advertises an upcoming show(s).

Play Off(Pingel, Bump in):
A short sequence that plays before an advertising break.

Play On(Pingel, Bump out):
A short sequence that plays after an advertising break.

Packshot (End Page, End Board):
A graphic at the end of a promotion that includes the date and time of a show(s).

Ident (Station ID):
A short animation that culminates with a channel’s name/logo. Used to brand a channel.

Animatic:
A rough animated storyboard used to give some idea about the timing of a sequence.

Opening Title (Open, Leader, Intro, Intro sequence):
The sequence that plays at the beginning of a show to open the show.

Billboard:
A commercial right after a show or promo. For example, “This program was made possible by “brandname”. Preferably with the same design treatment as the program before it.

Classification(Netherlands = NICAM, Ratings bug):
Graphic before a program designed to inform viewer of age suitability for that program. Can also be a bug.

Bug:
A small graphic (well usually small ) that appears in the corner of the screen, used to identify a channel, show etc.

Transition(Swipe):
A short animation that acts as a transition between segments of a show. It has a logo or is designed according to the content.

Slate:
A graphic placed at the beginning of sequence used to display information about the sequence, for example Duration, Format, etc.

Over The Shoulder(OTS):
The graphic that sits over a news anchors’s shoulder.

You may or may not know that after leaving high school I trained as a ladies hairdresser. The reason I mention that is because last week I had my first chance to use those skills in my current line of work. Check out the movie link below to see my expert hairdressing skills coming into play on set. You’ll also see my even more amazing dance skills. But don’t worry, I included a couple of macho shots where I demonstrate gun techniques (I learned watching movies) to balance things up

007 Green Screen Antics (Quicktime, 8MB)

Here’s the last of the 4 Bond teasers for Fox Classics channel. This one took longer than the other three, for obvious reasons. We did a green screen shoot with models then keyed/rotoed the footage and vectorized it using the Adobe Illustrator Live Trace batch feature in Adobe Bridge. All animation was done in Adobe After Effects. To make the spot flow seamlessly, I spent quite a bit of time considering how to transition from one shot to the next, and took special care with the timing of each move to maximize readability but minimize any abrupt motion. Personally I feel it’s a good marriage of the Fox Classics style requirements with the “look” of Bond. What do you think?

Teaser 04: Silhouettes (Quicktime, 10MB)

Here’s the Adobe Photoshop file containing the text and layer styles used in the Enchanted project.

Here’s the link to the recorded version of last Friday’s e-seminar. As usual I walk through an Adobe After Effects project, in this case the graphics for the film “Enchanted”. Light sweeps and fairy dust, oh yeah!

Gridiron has released a video explaining the basics of their soon-to-be-released Flow product. “Flow automatically tracks your work from idea to end result and manages your assets and applications for your most complex projects, all without changing the way you work. Take 10 minutes to watch the guided tour and see for yourself.

Fox Classics channel will be screening a series of James Bond films over the next few months and one of my roles has been to create 4 teasers (short promotions that generate interest/excitement) which will be screening over the next few weeks. All created in Adobe After Effects of course. Here are the first 3, which each took around 1.5 to 2 days to complete:

Teaser 01: Bullet Holes (Quicktime, 3.3MB)
Teaser 02: Gun Barrel Walk (Quicktime, 4.3MB)
Teaser 03: Quotes (Quicktime, 7.1MB)

I’ll post no.4, which uses silhouettes, when it’s finished next week. While watching, keep in mind that Fox Classics has strict guidelines regarding color and font usage, so I had to work within those guidelines.

It saddens me to say that the Making It Look Great series is being heavily pirated via share sites and torrents. Please understand that this training takes many hours to create, by people like myself, Alan Shisko, Harry Frank and Maltaannon. We are all very generous and share our expertise and resources freely on our individual websites, which makes seeing our work stolen even more painful. Piracy really hurts, especially the small players such as Motionworks. Alan, Harry and I all have young children and are not wealthy people, so help us help you. Otherwise I’m afraid this training resource may disappear.

Thank you friends for posting so many so wonderful ideas for MILG5. Most of you were asking for tutorials on creating special effects and such, so I’d like to point something out. MILG series is all about creating great motion graphics and making them easy to build. The fifth edition is not going to be any different. Those of you who know my tutorials from http://maltaannon.com/ could be expecting something else, but it’s still MILG series so I have to keep up with the style and type of content. (more…)