Convocations 2009 DVD Opener

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For the Convocations 2009 season preview DVD we were asked to do something with kinetic text. Although I've seen a lot of uses of kinetic text in various commercials or on YouTube, I've never had an opportunity to make something using this technique. When Convocations came to us wanting to do this I was pretty excited to try it out.

Based on what Convocations wanted we decided to keep the movement simple and just focus on the message rather than a lot of flashy movements. Because of this I restricted most movement to the X and Y axis and kept the color pallet in line with their seasonal brochure, which happened to be rather muted with hints of color.

Convocations provided me with audio and music bed that I used to base all the text and movement off of. They also provided an outline of specific elements they wanted to see (the falling/raising stock line for example). I took the audio file and placed it in Adobe Premiere and used a new feature in CS4 that transcribes all the audio into meta data and places it at the appropriate time code. I then made whatever tweaks it needed and saved it out to bring into After Effects. Using another new feature in AE CS4 I imported the audio file and AE placed layer markers for every word of dialogue onto the audio layer based off of the meta data from Premiere. This allowed me to have precise timing for the words appearing and also allowed me to see visually what word was being spoken at what time on the waveform. I then proceeded to animate the camera/text to the timing of the voiceover. Click the thumbnail above to view the opener.

I was also asked to make three short segments highlighting the pick 5 option for that season. Convocations had a few ideas for them and below is one that I created.


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Overall this was a lot of fun to do and was a fun learning experience. Enjoy.

Pacers In-Game Segments

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At the beginning of the Pacers basketball season I was lucky enough to get to make a few opening graphics for small in-game video segments. The first one I made was a graphic for a segment called Bang the Drums Cam. Basically at the end of the this animated graphic there would be an image of some drums on the lower 3rd of the screen with an alpha channel for audience members to act like they were banging on the drums. I was asked to make it in a sort of Rock Band graphic style and the above link is what I cam up with. It was a lot of fun to make. I created some of the elements in Illustrator and brought them all into After Effects to add the animation.


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The second one was an opener for an edited piece showcasing NBA bloopers. I came up with the self-destructing text idea and I had a lot of fun coming up with ways to make the text fall apart. I created the background in Photoshop and animated it all in After Effects. Enjoy!

Addy Awards 2008

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The local Addy awards are being held at our facilities on Purdue's campus again so I was asked to make the screen dress artwork for the second year in a row. This year, unlike last year, the local Addy association had no theme for the event. Because of this I was pretty much given free reign to do what I wanted in the time allotted, which was about 1 day of work.

I saw some of the work done by James White on his site Signalnoise and have been fascinated with it. I decided to take this opportunity to make something inspired by his work. To make the screen dress I took the Addy A logo and recreated and stylized it inside of Photoshop. I drew the shapes and layered them until I was happy. I just wanted something really clean and minimal.

The second image was created using elements from the screen dress. It's a background for all the submissions for this years competition.

It was a lot of fun to just play around with the layout and shapes and work on something purely design driven. I hope Mr. White would approve.

Frank and Felix

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The third illustration for Finn's room!

Percy the Penguin

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Here is the second illustration done for my son's room. Done the same way as the owl illustration. I promise the next one won't be a bird. Enjoy!

Oliver the Owl

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A year ago, when we found out my wife was pregnant, she asked me to make some animal drawings for our baby's room. Now that our baby is 2 months old I feel I'm a little late making them (and she would readily agree), but better now than never.

The first one I made was an Owl. There really isn't any reason as to what animals I'm making other than they're ones that I think would be fun to create. There's also no particular reason that I named the owl other than I feel all animals in a kid's life have names and those names must begin with the same letter as the animal.

I began with a simple pencil sketch that took me all of 2 minutes to make. I then took that sketch and scanned it into the computer and proceeded to make a simple vector version of it in Illustrator. I wanted to have the smooth lines and simple shapes that offers. I then brought those shapes into Photoshop where I then made the final version that you see in the link above. I just used simple gradient colors and some watercolor brushes to create the texture.

It was a lot of fun to make and I promised to make 6 of them so you'll get to see at least 5 more of these little illustrations in the future. So keep checking back to see what animal will be next!

Composite Breakdown

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I decided to do a quick composite breakdown in an attempt to explain a little more in depth how the elements went together for the final shot of the 2008 football fireup video. If you watch the video linked to this post you will see 5 passes of the composite plus the final composite as it went to air. This project was really the first time I got to composite something with this many elements and there are things I wish we had more time to work on, but with the constraints in the production schedule we worked with what we had. It took me about 2.5 hours to assemble this entire shot.

Pass 1: Background Plate and Screens

The background is really something that was lacking and we just didn't have time to flesh out so it ended up being just a color ramp. I added some steam elements that rotate around the player because steam was something that found it's way into most of the graphics for the 2008 season. The screens were modeled and animated by Brad Sommer in Maya and textured by Adam Ruud.

Pass 2: Video Corner Pinning

I recived video clips of plays from our editor on the project. I took those and corner pinned the footage to each screen and keyframed them to move with the screens.

Pass 3: Foreground Elements

These were added for two reasons. To add depth and to obstruct the view of the player when we switch shots. The player was composed of 3 separate passes of the actor wearing various stages of the helmet being painted.

Pass 4: Mechanical Arms

These are the arms painting the helmet. They were modeled and animated again by Brad Sommer and textured by Adam Ruud in Maya. All three mechanical arms were rendered together as one pass so I rotoscoped them around the player.

Pass 5: Keyed Player Rotation Footage

We shot the actor in three separate passes, each pass with a different helmet on. We had one helmet that was painted silver, another painted gold, and another gold one with the decals on it. I used the foreground elements to make the transitions between the cuts. This is one area I wish we could have done better. When it was shot the actor just had to guess his stance from the previous shot and try to match it up and I think he did a remarkable job at doing that. Because of this there are slight jumps in his position. I wish we could have devised something for him to hold so that he would have been in exactly the same position. Though I do think for the short production time we had it turned out pretty well.

Pass 6: Final Composite

All the elements put together along with some paint spray.

Ultimately this was a lot of fun to make and I'm looking forward to doing more compositing in the future.

2008/09 Basketball Headshots

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This is an example of the headshots I made for this season of Purdue basketball. I was asked to make a motion headshot that had a grungy newspaper look so I dove into after effects and started to create something. We shot a bunch of footage of the players in front of a blue screen with our HD XDCAM. I digitized the footage and keyed it out using keyframe in AE. I took the footage and exported it out of AE using the filmstrip file format and imported it into Photoshop and applied a halftone filter to it. I then brought that footage back into AE and added to my comp in progress.

I then proceeded to flesh out the rest of the information by adding in the name, position, home town, etc. At around this point I stopped and took a look at what I made. Although I liked where it was headed, I didn't feel the look was fitting the look of the graphics for the season. It was turning a little too much into a western wanted poster. After talking it over with the art director we decided to scrap it and start with something new. Below is the work in progress of the version I scraped and ignore some of the text placement. I didn't actually get everything placed where I wanted it.


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After talking it over more with the art director he suggested I base the headshots off of another headshot I made for the preseason opener. Below is a still image of that design.


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I took the elements from the above graphic and some ideas I liked from my original headshot and created the final one. I again used AE to key out the footage and animated it all in AE as well. The headshot comes in over video and the begining and end is transparent. The image at the very top links you to the final version. Here's a link if you don't want to scroll back to the top.