Check out the Flyer I made for my Brother's Birthday Bash at The Office this Saturday.. yes I know, I'll be at AC Lounge spinning that night.. so go to the Office and show some love to my brother who is joining the Dirty Thirty Club and swing by AC Lounge and get your Dirty Dancing On!
Rocked out another flyer for Ed and Julz for their EVERY SATURDAY gig at The Office.
Went for a goofy and hip look.. theres so many layers in this piece HAHA I'm kinda glad I could tie them all together to give it that unified look..
Lets see.. from top to bototm.. Vector Rays, Paint Splatter, San Diego Night Skyline, Earth and Stars.. HAHA and i may have gone a little too Lens Flare happy.
This is a holiday promo that I worked on for New Years.. Its done completely in AfterEffects, also Photoshop for the elements.
AfterEffects was used for the 3D Camera Rig and Lighting Effects. I pulled some Fireworks and fortunately they were already keyed out so it was easy to add to the composition. The Keylight is what gives the elements that shadow and 3D feel, you can see it when the elements pop up.
I had a hard time thinking of things relating to New Years LOL.. Champange, Top Hat, Fireworks, Noise makers.. the infamous Times Square Ball.. what else? I thought the Dancing Baby.. but apparently that was soooo 90s LOL..
Junior (The Discopunk) Hit me up to do some graphic for for the Brass Rail's New Years Eve Party.. The work was for a Double Side Flyer, a poster and the tickets.
Julz asked me to rock out a new design for their Wednesday residency at Bar 923.. So here is what I came up with.. looks like the owners approve and these will be sent to the printers.. Be on the lookout for these around town! Come support on Wednesdays its always on and poppin.. and if you're feeling a little kinky.. stop by Hustler next door HA!
Check out this Stop Motion Video from China.. can you imagine how long this took to create? holy frack!?
When he goes fullscreen I was floored. Some people just have more time on their hands. I could easily see this done in AfterEffects, but you could lose a bit of the effect.. enjoy.
This promo wasn't completely designed by me, my old boss Michael did the overall work, I just helped Stephanie patch it up a bit with some required elements. Mainly fonted her, added the logo in the corner (with all the animate in's during transitions) and I threw together the quick website fullscreen at the end.
The idea for this show is a pretty sweet concept, its a user generated content-based show. Which means ALL and i mean all the content will be produced by the viewers. Even the viewers decided what goes on the air with their votes. The show airs this month, and already there are tons of members on the site.
So If youre into karaoke or just making a mad fool of yourself, sign up for karaoke for cash and have your friends vote for you.. its ALL FREE.
We in design.. well in this case at the station find humor in a lot of small things.. and sometimes small things snowball into larger very unpredicted things. HAHA..
Heres the backstory of the headshot as it came about.. Back in Aug when we converted over to the CW, promotions picked up a whole slew of posters and promotional products for all their shows. One of which was 90210 posters, so originally I took a picture I had in my library of "could use in the future" photos of friends here at the station.. printed out a picture and taped his head on Ethan's body on the poster.. Well the photo only lasted about a day when Geoff took it down, and he told me it was funny, just need to take a better one instead..
Well this day has come.. we finally took the picture to put on the poster.. but when I first printed the image..it was too small.. thus resulting in the headshot type of picture we got here.
I eventually printed out the correct size and put it on the poster, but still kept on to the "headshot" photo. Jokingly Geoff and I had the funny idea to autograph the photo like Johnny cage in mortal kombat..
A few days later I thought it would be funny if I posted his picture on our white board.. and just for shits and giggles, I drew a rendition of what I thought the pic would look like.. he saw it and laughed.. "Asshole.." he said.
We left.. and when we came back.. there was 2 more drawings.. @_@ wtf? hahah so I had the bright fucking idea to have everyone who rolls through add their render.. and thats how it started...
This is how it started.. the shirt's eventually became a a running joke of all the bands he likes..
This is how the board looked like before christmas.. I believe we are going to keep this going til the new year, and i'll post the final masterpiece when I get back in.
I think Juryel's looks like Samuel L's "Jules" from Pulp Fiction, Josh's (the buff one) is probably the most disturbing and...
By far, Stephanie has some superior white board drawing skills.
Its the little things in life that make the days go by faster...
This is for all you Old School Thundercats fans.. this is by far the sickest fanmade promo i've ever seen, this is so well done and well thought out.
Can you catch the movies in the promo? Cheryl was the one who originally forwarded this link to me, and when I was at work, she asked if I had seen the link she sent, and we watched it there, I immediately caught the Indiana Jones Last Crusade scene in the beginning, then after watching the rest realized that it wasnt just a single movie, but various well woven movies.
Its fucking brilliant, the amount of time and compositing skill it took to make this piece, believe me I've watched this trailer like 30 times so far and each time I get something new..
So far I found:
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
X-Men 3 (is my guess)
Garfield
Spy Kids
Troy
Lord of the Rings: Fellowship
Pitch Black (Dark, iono)
Battlefield Earth (either that or Galaxy Quest not sure, but Battlefield would be better pick cause of how shitty it was LOL)
The Mummy
Planet of the Apes
The motion tracking alone in this promo is fantastic. They composited the faces to near perfection, and the times they used the original soundbite from the movie, just made everything work and contributed to the realness of the trailer.
Even though most of the clips are less than a few frames long they really took alot of time getting the detail or creating a whole new feel of sci-fi adventure.
I had this AfterEffects project from last year's holiday that I was working on, nothing special at the time, just this giant .psd (photoshop) file with all these separated elements. I wanted to start from outside the window and just push into the final scene.
The idea at the time last year, came from the Polar Express movie, where the camera moves from outside tracking the train, then transitions inside through a window. Only problem is at that time I had to do these split shifts and didnt have time to finish this project, now that my schedule is a bit more geared towards working on projects instead of doing daily show graphics, I was able to bring this project out and complete it.
Its amazing how much better in AfterEffects ive gotten, because now that I look back on this project, it was just a unnecessarily large project. haha.. and at the time I was just learning to build a dolly for a camera within AfterEffects. So completing this project was going to be easy..
The move was already in place, I had the camera set to 200mm, and a pretty shallow depth of field so you can see the how the foreground and the background blur out a bit, that took a bit of time of adjusting just to get what I need in focus, it also takes a big hit on your CPU especially on our non-intel G5s at work, so just adjusting settings on the camera really takes some time for the previews to render.
Originally the project was going to be John St Jon (our voiceover talent) to just say happy holiday from all of us at San Diego 6 (Fox6 back then) But now that I've done a few more composites I decided to go for a green screen shoot of our night anchors, I only had time to shoot our night anchors since I was also doing another 6 Promos for Stephanie and this promo was going to be done on my off time from those promos.
Once I got the green screens shot and composited, I threw in a banner that read Happy Holidays to be more PC. Geoff decided on me animating the banner so that it strokes in, like its being written, I added the lens flare to follow and it actually turned out pretty cool.
Everything in the piece is pretty much and individual element, and I let the camera determine what is in focus and what is not, the Z Space (for those who arent familiar with 3D space, Z Space is the space from front to back, X Space is the Horizontal Pan and Y is the Vertical Pan) so in this piece I pretty much a long string of items in Z Space heres a diagram:
Look at this from left to right, but imagine that this is the top view of the project...
Snow Window Decorations Candles Banner Talent Tree Fireplace
| | | X | | | | | | |
So the camera started with the snow, then as it pushes in towards the window the the snow gradually blurs out and pushes in passed the window bringing in the decorations in focus soon the candles, the banner and ending its move (at the X) as the talent becomes in focus leaving the decorations and candles in the foreground blurred out slightly and the tree and fireplace background out of focus as well. This gives it a more natural look and completes the 3D feel of the piece.. granted the background elements have that 2D look, but hey one step at a time. LOL.
one of the effects on the piece that was created from scratch was the use of an expression for the candle fire, the flickering effect was achieved using the wiggler on the opacity and setting the z value only giving you that look of it getting brighter and softer at a random sequence.
its the subtle things that make the piece so special. =)
Well after a year its finally complete hahah.. its not really a years worth of work, but just something that needed to be finished.. and now it is. Enjoy.
Rachel and I planned to do a photoshoot about 2 weeks ago, but due to scheduling conflicts we couldn't do it then. So we planned for today to go out and shoot, I chose the same spot we did the behemoth shoot, I love it, theres so much color and workable background that I had to try a few new things..
I love working with Rachel, shes super cool, and is experienced so there isnt too much to direct her in doing, so I can actually think more about the composition rather than spending valuable time adjusting and readjusting poses.
I told her to wear something "Fall"-type. She has a great personal wardrobe so pretty much any fashion type of clothing I ask for, shes got something readily available, which is nice, and she does her own make-up.. see! you can't ask for a better model LOL!
The shoot was fairly quick, since parking was $8 an hour and I had to be at work for another green screen shoot, we pretty much setup shop at one spot and just fired off as many shots as i can in the time we had left. Here are a few shots, i'm still working on the rest but heres the progress for now:
FYI, I did run a few treatments and made some adjustments in photoshop:
-My normal skin touch up
-Soft light to accent & highlight where I want the focal point to be
-Contrast Bump/Desaturate
And this time around I actually tried something new, the photos at the stairs were very bland, there was so much grey from the stone steps and the wall plus the railings that I needed to add some color to it, so I ran a gradient using colors from the image dark on the bottom to the lighter color on top and that resulted in the redish hue you see on the bottom stairs and the greenish tint in the upper right of the photo.
I'll post the rest on my myspace when I finish going through all the photos.
Its been sometime since I've last done a sweeps piece that required so much time and effort, But Elex Michaelson's social networking piece needed some spice and came to us for some graphic magic. Elex originally approached me with some basic ideas with showing off the websites, fly ins, him in the profile.. good stuff just needed more umphf. So i thought I'd throw in the idea of a green screen shoot, he didnt quite picture it then.. but now after its done.. i think i've swayed him to think more outside of the box for his standups. hehe
Here is the entire clip that I worked on.. in total it took about 3 days to shoot, prep and composite.
First off I got a little carried away with the Twitch plug in for the transition ins for the myspace and facebook logos.. but I think a 3rd one would have over done it LOL.. The first part shows how you can customize myspace pages, so i grabbed a couple screen shots of peoples pages, some friends some just cause of the dramatic color change.. you'll notice the first one is Edric's profile, then Paramore's, and the last one is the Mindzalike with the half nekkied ColCol and Julz. lol..
The stand up was so long that I had to create movement just for the sake of visual appeal.. so that why I made the facebook logo transform into a frame to hold the page it self.. it was a great transition to break the standup and go a little dynamic by putting him in the profile pic then scrolling down to the wall where I threw in Angie hitting on Elex on his wall.. I put Angies name there because shes the editor of this package, so I thought it would be funny to add that easter egg.. "How are YOU doing?".. BTW, that was my facebook profile page.. i chopped it up and recreated some open spaces so i can do the wall effect, and increased the profile picture size so I can fit the video in there.
After the transition out, i centered Elex on the screen to prep for the photo montage.. in the photo images you will see, a very young Scott Buzo (AM Director), my bud Jay Kantor, Rob and his awesome handlebar mustache, Erin Bossen (Mykiel on San Diego Living), Jayne and her peace homie look, and our friend Candice from Canada. Pretty much Stephanie ran through as many profiles as she could and pulled tons of pictures we can use for this piece.. especially for the last effect..
The photo gallery, originally I had envisioned a more 3D-ish wall with some persepective cool lighting, photos flying at you being built on a profile gallery page.. but I was running out of time (I would have a few more extra hours on this if I hadn't worked a split shift on friday thanks to dipshit part-timers) But with the time i was given I was somewhat happy with the first effect I tried.. I usually, when compositing, do a couple of rough drafts and see what I like best and work on that effect, but with the time crunch I had to just get it done.. Steph pulled the pics I threw them in the project..
To get this effect I just created the first movement and placement which is on the lower left corner of the screen, and just duplicated it 3 more times to get a tower of 4, and one of my favorite shortcuts in AfterEffects is the Hold OPT-Drag/Drop to replace a clip.. so all I had to do was duplicate the same photo change the Vertical Position for the ending keyframe and drag and replace the photos with new ones.. once thats done duplicate the 4 and adjust the horizontal position.. and once everything was in place and timing out i just staggered the start times of the keyframes to have them look like its randomly uploading a picture to the gallery.
Its actually fairly simple to do, especially when you know the shortcuts LOL.
There are a ton of pictures on that wall, from pics of me now, and pics of when i was skinny, Edric, Julz, Michelle, Jayne, Stephanie, Juryel and some very odd japanese candids, and pretty much everyone who either worked at the station or still works there.. if you had a myspace or facebook.. and you were friends with us.. we stole your picture. HAHAH..
Once again my brain was fried.. even after I finished that piece.. I had to design all the elements for that nights show and I was 2 hours behind and had to catch up on daily work to be done.. uggh.. but getting the creative juices flowing is well worth the effort in the end.. i get a sense of satisfaction when i finish.. not like web, once i finish.. theres another fire to put out.. =/
Heres the entire sweeps package, you'll notice they gloriously show Stephanies Myspace profile, and they actually search ME on Linkedin and Google.. which is why you'll see my name pop up through out the package. haha.. I didnt do it.. they just wanted to make a point that when you join linkedin your linkedin profile gets bumped up when someone googles you.. which is really odd because I just started that profile back in august, and never really log into it.. and it surpassed alot of my other social networks.. haha.. i might have to do some clean up if its that easy to google me.. lol..
Got a new promo from Stephanie to work on, this actually wasn't very hard at all to make, just thought it would look cool, and it came out pretty good.
The idea came from the old gin and juice music video, remember when snoop dog was smoking that blunt then in the smoke dr dre appeared.. same concept.
I had this cool smoke video that pretty much comes on as you see it on the promo, i did have to remap the time so that the smoke fills up the screen in the right amount of time, plus the original footage was too fast and very distracting, so doing this also slowed down the footage to a less obnoxious pace.
In order for me to achieve the effect I put the images behind the smoke, blended them into the smoke footage, but the problem i was getting was that anything that was below the smoke was staying in a greyscale mode, so to remedy that, I duplicated each layer i wanted to pop more and put them on top of the smoke, and transitioned them in.
So you'll see the smoke clips the image and reveals only the parts covered in the smoke, and once the smoke spreads through most of the scene I fade in the upper images in to bring out the headline and photo color.. so now that you know.. notice that the twilight logo starts to glow, and the Edward/Bella pic colorizes and the treehouse of horror logo zaps into red.
First off.. happy birthday steph.. today is her true birthday.. and she has us up early and working LOL.. She had booked me a photoshoot with her friend Emil from Behemoth for some product shots for their website.
Maybe i'm just used to working with models with some experience, so when it came to shooting Eric and Steph it was akward lol. Every pose seemed so forced, but when we actually got them out of thinking about posing, I got shots that actually looked natural. It just took Emil and I to converse with them, make them laugh and it was then where I would fire off and take some shots.. too bad I dont have a fast enough eye like Toks to see the shot and take it.. it was alot of trial and error and dialing and redialing.. but Im pretty happy with how the shoot turned out, got a lot of useful shots and snuck in a few artsy shots for personal portfolio LOL.
Here are a few shots from the shoot.. since its a paid shoot, I cant really show them all yet without approval from the client.. plus.. i havent run these through photoshop yet.. so these are exactly how i took them.
I've been talking with Kevin while he's on the road.. and I think I know the lens I want to get next. WOOT. I do love my portrait shots, so i'll probably head for a portrait lens.
Slowly but surely.. I just gotta practice practice practice. =)
We have found yet another reason to sneak a cameo on tv. LOL.
Stephanie had this promo for facebook profile pictures, and initially I looked for other profile pictures, but since they blocked myspace and facebook at work, i had to search google for them, and found a bunch of douche bags and whores.. which in some cases might be fine.. but for television not so good.
So we had the bright idea of just taking a camera around the station and having everyone take a quick classic myspace photo.. heres the final promo:
There wasnt much to this promo, Stephanie exported the video and i treated it in AfterEffects:
-Photos have a border with Page Curl plugin -Text Animation -Curves/Box Blur/Soft Light Blend for the video
There was no real difficult part to it, just a fun little piece to have fun with. Here are the photos that were taken, some made it in the promo, some didnt, I just didnt have time to do all the effects i wanted too. I was taking too much time making it, that I had to just finish it..
Although were not FOX anymore, this sure does bring back memories. This video was put together by two awesome individuals Rob and Nate. I remember when they were filming this it was a pretty big ordeal and a very big project for both.
I'd say about 70% of the people on this video.. DONT work here anymore. From one of my favorite people in the world Randy Michaels to Both Jasons, Estha, Brian Christie, Chris Salcedo, Nate, Scottie, hell even Toks is in this video LOL. The guy that hired me, is the director in this video. This video throws me back.. its actually pretty odd seeing how we've changed over the years.
The newscast that they brokedown was one that I was doing the graphics for. So all the elements you see were from yours truly. =) I remember cause when they got the breaking news story for the EB Games robbery, people were asking me if I had some new videos games they could play. HAHA
If you've never been to the station before.. here's a glimpse. This is what we do.
Well.. I'm intrigued by it, think of it as the "behind the scenes" of a program/website show.. But you have to admit there is a BIIIIIIIG difference between a designer and a coder/programmer.
I do know enough tidbits from a few languages to get the jist of the things, but I can't stare at code and fully see the picture like tank in the matrix..
you know... him:
Since the release of 2 of our main web managers, Larry and I have been put on the daunting task of re-coding the website to get it up and running so that everyone who contributes to the site can utilize the database tools provided by our server. Which means we have to decode the old.. and recode so that it's basically.. "idiot" proof.
The first photo is pretty much my notes.. on one of our boards. LOL.. my code friends probably think its easy.. and it is..
