Tiller Roast and Toast

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I know I haven't posted anything new in a while and that's because my wife and I had our first child, an awesome little boy, in December. We're both really excited and are both looking forward to raising him. So I've been a little busy learning the ropes of being a new dad. I had some time off of work for parental leave and I just got back a week or so ago.

This graphic is the first thing I've gotten to make since I've been back to work. I admit I felt a little rusty, but I had a great time making it. Coach Joe Tiller retired from his position as Purdue's head football coach this season and they're honoring him with a Roast and Toast party at the university. They asked me to make a graphic for it and the link above is what I made. I only had a day to make it and overall I was happy with the results.

Enjoy.

2008 Football Fire Up Video

This year for the football opener we wanted to try something we haven't really done before. We wanted to try incorporating 3D animation with live footage that was shot on blue screen.

Brad Sommer spent the better part of a month modeling all the elements in Maya for the video. He had the pieces that we used for props available to him in order to match the CG ones to the physical ones as closely as possible. Scott Horton then directed a shoot with an actor in front of a blue screen over the course of an afternoon using a Sony XD camera in HD. We had three sets of pads in different stages of being constructed and shot scenes multiple times with different combinations of pads.

We then had a couple of weeks to assemble the entire opener. Louie Dierckman edited all the video that appears on the screens and between the shots of the player. Adam Ruud textured all the CG elements in Maya with shaders he wrote. I keyed out all the bluescreen shots and composited all the CG and video together. I used After Effects and Keyframe to key out the footage. I then added the background and the CGI to the shots. I adjusted the lighting and color and tracked the shots together. Finally I cornerpinned the video to the CG screens and created the end graphic that the team walked out too.

Overall this was a fun project to do. We learned a lot in the process and we're looking forward to doing it even better the next time around. Enjoy the opener.

Football 2008 - Spirit Bumper

The 2008 Purdue football season is in full swing and we got the opportunity to create a lot of new graphics for the season. Most of the grahics we create are sponsored elements. This video is what is sold as a spirit bumper. All it consists of is the sponsor logo and some fire up text. In the past all of this stuff was created out of house for us to roll on the LED boards, but this year they came to us to make everything in house. I wanted to do something a little more interesting than the typical one of these which usually is just the logo on some bad background with plain text. I didn't have a lot of time to create these (just a few hours) so I tried to make them as interesting as possible in the amount of time I had. The main thing I changed from what typically is done was to add a motion reveal for the intro. The video below is what I came up with.



Due to the lack of time I purchased the light images online. I composited the rest of the shot together with the text and logo in After Effects. The background was created with a black solid and a couple of lights with the Trapcode Lux filter applied to them to make them volumetric. I added a stock video of the steam to add some motion. The logo and text I animated in After Effects in 3D space. The text has a glow filter on it. I used another layer of text behind it to create the dark rays in the light by applying Trapcode Shine and changing the color to black. I then changed the layer type to multiply to have it blend with the background. There is a separate light on the logo and text to illuminate it accordingly.

Enjoy.

Upcoming Project

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I know I haven't posted in a long while. That's because I've been busy working on the upcoming football season. I'll write up a good in-depth post when we're done with the project, but for now you'll just have to make due with a couple of rough still composites of the project.

Enjoy!

Convos 2008 Season Opener

Each year Purdue Convocations asks us to make their season preview DVD. It's one of the more fun projects we get to do each year. We undertake most aspects of the DVD's production, from creating all the motion graphics to editing every segment together to creating the entire DVD menu functionality and animation.

We started the process by meeting with the client. They asked for a clean line opener and that's about all the direction they gave us. With that to go on we came up with a concept. We wanted the whole thing to look like vector graphics, but have motion through 3D space. To do this we asked Brad Sommer to create the motion lines in Maya. Brad and I decided to have the lines create the Convocations logo and have a camera flying around through the lines.

When Brad was done animating the lines along paths in Maya, he handed the rendered file off to me to work on in After Effects. I took his animation and added camera shake and a camera bounce to the audio. I then took a depth render pass that Brad created and applied it for some depth of field. Brad's animation ended with the spinning blue line so I also added the full Convos logo and camera pull to reveal it.

We shot the Convocations director on a green screen and both Brad and I keyed him out in After Effects. Brad then took my pass of the opener and combined that with the keyed video footage. I then took that After Effect project and added an animated lower 3rd ID and transition to the opening segment.

Frustrating

So I have two new videos to post, but for some reason I can't get any new videos to link up from my website. I'm sure it's just a check box or something I'm missing. So know that I'm trying to get new content up here, I'm just having issues. They'll be posted as soon as I figure out what's going wrong. Please be patient!

---EDIT 5/16 ---

So I fixed the problem and the post below this is actually the first of the two new videos (I just hid the post until I could fix it). The post after this will be the second. Enjoy!

Sports Graphics Reel

This video is a sampling of all the sports graphics we made for football and basketball last year. We're gearing up to start conceptualizing the look of this upcoming football season and I thought this edit was a very good look back at the variety of graphics we made.



The edited piece was cut together by Scott Horton. All the graphics were a collaborative effort and most of the ones I worked extensively on are already shown in past posts.

Enjoy!

Purdue President Inauguration Backdrop

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I've been working pretty hard on a project that I can't post yet but here's an idea of what I've made for the project's DVD. It's a screenshot of all the after effects compositions I made for the menu's transitions. If you can count how many are there you'll get a prize. So in the meantime I'll post something I made today.

I was asked to make a quick background for the Purdue president's inauguration. It was used as a backdrop for the entire stage. Basically they just wanted something with the Purdue Seal on it. I thought it turned out nice for what it is.

I also found out that my "I am a Boilermaker" poster won a regional Gold Addy award and has been submitted to the national addy awards. I guess it's going up against the major players in advertising now. Wish me luck.