A New Way To Do Things

In an effort to make my life simpler I decided to use my Vimeo account to post my videos. I will just embed them from there into my posts. This should also be better for you, the viewer, because it won't navigate you away from the post. I hope this is a suitable solution for everyone.

I also plan on updating all my previous posts to be this way, but it may take a little time.

Enjoy!

"One" Campaign

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I recently was asked by my church to make some PowerPoint slides and some banners for a 4 week series. I was basically left wide open to do whatever I wanted. All that was provided to me were the phrases "one vision" "one commitment" "one hope" and "one confession"

I took those and decided to have the same look and feel throughout, but assigning a color for each week. I wanted the banners to work together slightly so I designed them all as one image and cut them out. That way the background elements would run throughout all 4 banners. The finished banners were 6 x 1.5 feet.

I tend to use a lot of stock images for textures and other elements and really wanted to make everything from scratch for these images. The texture in the background was from using a custom textured brush and varying the size and transparency along with some noise and photoshop clouds layers.

I always enjoy doing this stuff because I'm left wide open to do whatever and I really get to use the opportunity to play around with other styles. For these I would say my influences were Chuck Anderson and James White.

The images above are of the four title slides, one note slide and the banners.

Merry Christmas! ... really late

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So my wife asked me to make a Christmas card this last year. It's the first one I've ever made and quite honestly she kind of drug me kicking and screaming into it. I just ended up waiting until the very last minute and stayed up late making it, when all I really wanted to be doing was playing video games.

After I was done I really liked how it turned out and I'm pretty glad Katie prodded me into making it. I know this post is way after the holiday (don't worry the card itself was done in time to hit the family's mailboxes before the 25th), but I liked it and thought I'd share. Maybe this will kick me into posting some more stuff.

I hope everyone had a great holiday season.

UPDATE: Kindle 2 Design Contest

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So it's finally here! After months of waiting my Kindle 2 has arrived and I love it. It's made me a believer in the digital delivery of books. I want to thank engadget.com and adafruit industries for putting on the contest and all the people who voted for me to win one. I wish I could give you all free kindles as well, but I can't, so deal with it.

In the image link above I'm including my concept sketch that I drew up on the hotel provided notepad while I was in the middle of working a PowerPoint presentation. After that you can see the Illustration line art and a couple of photos of the completed Kindle.

Here is a link to a feature engadget did on the etching process and adafruit industries. The etching of the Kindles is towards the end. Also, here's a link to images of the five winning Kindles.

Thanks again!

Superman Shirt

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One of my best friends turned 30 just a little while ago and his wife asked if I could make him a t-shirt. He happens to be a Superman fanatic so I felt it was only fitting to pay homage to his childhood desires. I hear he likes it.

I sketched up what I wanted and then drew it up in Illustrator. Pretty straight forward, but a lot of fun to do. I've been working with Illustrator more and more and am enjoying it. I'll post some more stuff soon!

College of Science Event Video

This week we were asked to make a welcome video for a College of Science event. It was a series of talking heads highlighting the College of Science and welcoming the guest of honor, who is an astronaut.

We shot all the video on green screen and I took the edit provided to me and recut it in After Effects. I took each scene and keyed it out using Keylight and then created the backgrounds and animated key phrases from each person behind the subject. I also created the bloom effect between the cut-a-way shots in After Effects. The whole project was done in HD 1080p.

It was fun to do because I wasn't required to stay within the standard Purdue graphics which is predominantly gold and black in color. So thank you to the college of science for letting me make something different than what I usually make.

2009 Football Fireup Video

I did most of the compositing for the football fireup video this year. Adam Ruud and Brad Sommer did all the 3D model work, including the texturing and animation. Louis Dierckman did the editing of the piece and also added all the footage to the 3D screens in After Effects.

I started by keying out all the green screen footage that Louie edited, then compositing that with the backgrounds and other CG elements that Brad and Adam gave me. I also added all the atmospheric elements and created the computer interfaces you see the players using. Everything was done with Photoshop and After Effects.

Each year I feel I get to learn more about composition and AE. This year was no exception. I worked a lot with using the 3D features in AE and the built in camera to do the focus-pulls and pans. If only I had more projects like this to work on!

Enjoy!

On the Horizon

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It's football season again and that means another football fire-up video. One thing we try to do every year is push ourselves further and harder than the previous year. Last season was the first time we tried compositing footage and marrying computer effects with live action.

It was a good learning experience, but there was a lot I personally wanted to improve on. When this year rolled around we decided to continue down our path of CG and compositing and improving upon what we did last year.

Lets just say I'm pumped to finally have background elements to use.

The image above is a little teaser. Come to the game this weekend to see the debut of it! I hope you like it.