Mars Mission 2025 After Effects Experiment

I thought I’d share an exper­i­ment with that I cre­ated today with After Effects, Pho­to­Shop, Pre­miere Pro and Sound­booth. You could say I used lots of tools in my Adobe tool­box today!

First, I took a photo from iStock­photo and using layer masks and adjust­ment lay­ers I turned it into the sur­face of Mars, or tired to. I then took it as a lay­ered doc­u­ment into After Effects. I was inspired by this great post from Church Media Design and used it as a start­ing point to cre­ate the stars and aurora (big hint: frac­tal noise!) and added some text. I then went to Sound­Booth and I took some canned music and mixed it with a wind sound effect to cre­ate the sound­track. Finally, I brought the audio and video together in Pre­miere and then exported the file.

All in all it was a fun lit­tle exper­i­ment I can’t wait to do another one.

Digital Ephemera for Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Another Wednes­day has rolled around, so here’s my weekly col­lec­tion of inter­est­ing dig­i­tal ephemera I’ve found pok­ing around the vast Inter­net waste­land. Think of me as your guide through the eclec­tic dig­i­tal desert…

Today’s Menu

• Art & Design
• Motion Graph­ics & Video
• Mar­ket­ing
• Social Media
• Some­thing Cool
• Some­thing Strange
• Some­thing Terrible
• Three Sites Worth Check­ing Out (Chess Edition)

Art & Design

The Evo­lu­tion of Base­ball card Design 1887–2011
This is a fun col­lec­tion of Base­ball Cards from designer Stacy David Walling­ford. Just like the play­ers, I’d have to say that even the graph­ics seem to have beefed up dra­mat­i­cally. I’m guess­ing they’d test pos­i­tive for PhotoShop.

Case Study: The Revenger’s Tragedy Ini­tial Design
Okay a bit of a shame­less plug for my own arti­cle, but it’s a nice post that exposes my design phi­los­o­phy and method­ol­ogy. Take a look at how I came up with a design for GreenStage’s pro­duc­tion of The Revenger’s Tragedy.

Motion Graph­ics & Video

Teal and Orange — Hol­ly­wood, Please Stop the Mad­ness
A great rant on the overuse of color cor­rec­tion from film­maker Todd Miro on the desat­u­ra­tion of the palette in Hol­ly­wood films of late. I don’t totally agree, but it’s a great rant nonetheless.

L.A. Time­lapse
This is beau­ti­ful, and as John Nack says: “Colin Rich has done the nearly impos­si­ble: He’s made me find Los Ange­les beau­ti­ful.“

LA Light from Colin Rich on Vimeo.

Table 7
A very cute, clever and well exe­cuted short film. –via Neatorama

John Dies at the End
Okay, I don’t know what this is about even after read­ing this arti­cle. But I sure want to see it!

Mar­ket­ing

Seth Godin’s Blog

Many peo­ple have heard of Seth Godin, if you haven’t you should! His daily mis­sives on mar­ket­ing, com­mu­ni­ca­tions and human­ity are not to me missed. A truly invalu­able inspi­ra­tion for those nav­i­gat­ing the murky waters of mod­ern marketing.

Social Media

What Was There?

This site is an exper­i­ment in col­lec­tive his­tory. Using google maps and user sub­mit­ted pho­tographs they aim to cre­ate build a visual his­tory of the world. A wor­thy goal!

Some­thing Cool

Dig­i­tal Dead Sea Scrolls

After over 24 cen­turies, the work of archae­ol­o­gists, schol­ars and his­to­ri­ans the Dead Sea Scrolls will be acces­si­ble to every­one thanks to Google’s tech­nol­ogy. Google and The Israel Museum, Jerusalem have teamed up and are cel­e­brat­ing the launch of the Dead Sea Scrolls online. As reported on Google’s Blog:

Now, any­one around the world can view, read and inter­act with five dig­i­tized Dead Sea Scrolls. The high res­o­lu­tion pho­tographs, taken by Ardon Bar-Hama, are up to 1,200 megapix­els, almost 200 times more than the aver­age con­sumer cam­era, so view­ers can see even the most minute details in the parch­ment. For exam­ple, zoom in on the Tem­ple Scroll to get a feel for the ani­mal skin it’s writ­ten on—only one-tenth of a mil­lime­ter thick.”

Some­thing Strange

Cthulhu vs. the Sith (or the Car­rot Mon­ster Revenge)
A cute, if strange stop motion ani­ma­tion involv­ing veg­eta­bles, legos and the unmen­tion­able hor­ror from beyond the stars.

Some­thing Terrible

Worst Band Ever Butch­ers Pink Floyd
So bad, it’s almost good… almost!

Three Sites Worth Check­ing Out (Chess Edition)

• It’s Your Turn. My favorite online chess (and other board game) site. If you want to chal­lenge me at chess chal­lenge Ulysses 2004.
• The Chess Web­site YouTube Chan­nel. Great video chess lessons and lectures.
• US Chess. The US Chess Fed­er­a­tion offi­cial site.

Great Design! EF: Live the Language

If you like good clean design and fan­tas­tic video work, check out the great cam­paign “Live the Lan­guage” for the com­pany EF Inter­na­tional Lan­guage Cen­ters, which is, accord­ing to their website,

…is the world’s largest pri­vately held edu­ca­tion com­pany that spe­cial­izes in lan­guage train­ing, edu­ca­tional travel, aca­d­e­mic degrees, and cul­tural exchange.”

See Ad Credits…

I’ve only embed­ded the “Paris” one, my favorite, but you should really check out all the videos in this campaign.

• Barcelona
• Bei­jing
• Lon­don
• Los Ange­les
• Paris
• Syd­ney
• Van­cou­ver

The cam­paign was cre­ated by the Swedish Agency Camp David, and I love, love, love these ads. They are beau­ti­ful, no doubt, but more impor­tantly they totally sell the idea of travel. What I mean by this is, that when we think of trav­el­ing to a for­eign coun­try, what do we think of? Not the lit­tle annoy­ances of lost lug­gage, spend­ing too much money or the dif­fi­culty in find­ing the rest room, no we think of adven­ture, new vis­tas (lit­er­ally and fig­u­ra­tively) and even romance.

These ads are per­fect because they func­tion as a gor­geous short hand for the mythol­ogy of travel; they show you exactly what you expect to see, what kind of expe­ri­ences you want to have and the life chang­ing per­spec­tive you will gain. Watch­ing these amaz­ing ads is sort of like implant­ing mem­o­ries of a sum­mer study­ing in a for­eign land with out leav­ing your com­puter. Kind of like Total Recall’s Blue Skies of Mars.

I am very impressed with the art direc­tion of these spots, all the ele­ments of the pro­duc­tion enhance and sup­port the over all theme of “Liv­ing the Lan­guage.” They are beau­ti­fully shot with a photographer’s sen­si­bil­i­ties, enhanc­ing both the allur­ing loca­tions and actors. The music is catchy, hope­ful and wist­fully evoca­tive of expand­ing hori­zons. Also, as a typophile I par­tic­u­lar­ity loved the clas­sic yet vibrant typog­ra­phy. Note how each ad uses typog­ra­phy to sell the idea of the city with­out being cliché. The pro­duc­tions are cer­tainly top notch.

All adver­tis­ing is, at some level, manip­u­la­tive, but in this case I don’t mind, because one, I am aware it is mythol­o­giz­ing travel and two, I love that myth. Mythol­ogy is the way we humans orga­nize our fears, desires and hopes. They are ways we explain what we go through in life and what we hope will hap­pen. These myths mat­ter, as Joseph Camp­bell so elo­quently explained. As these ads remind us, there is plenty of adven­ture left to have in the world, it’s just right out­side and all we have to do is open the door. Or, I sup­pose, if you’re on a bud­get and have broad­band just click play. Either way, it’s a good way to look at the world.

You can check out the com­plete series and more cool videos on EF’s Live the Lan­guage YouTube Channel.

Paris Com­mer­cial Cred­its for EF Inter­na­tional Lan­guage Cen­ters.
Directed by Gus­tav Johans­son (gustavjohansson.com)
D.P: Niklas Johans­son, fsf (niklasjohansson.com)
Typog­ra­phy: Albin Holmqvist (albinholmqvist.com)
Music: Mag­nus Lide­häll (twitter.com/?magnusthemagnus)
Pro­duced at Camp David (campdavidfilm.com)
Client: EF Inter­na­tional Lan­guage Cen­ters
Cam­paign site: ef.com/?livethelanguage

Digital Ephemera for July 13, 2011

Another Wednes­day has rolled around, so here’s my weekly col­lec­tion of inter­est­ing dig­i­tal ephemera I’ve found pok­ing around the vast Inter­net waste­land. Think of me as your guide through the eclec­tic dig­i­tal desert…

Art and Design

Entire Text of Nov­els Used in Out­door Poster Campaign

This is very clever! The entire text of the novel A Clock­work Orange printed on a poster as a part of an adver­tis­ing cam­paign for New Zealand online book­seller Whit­coulls. As a big fan of  Burgess’ dysu­topian clas­sic I am par­tic­u­larly drawn to the poster. The New Zeland based ad agency Draft­FCB came up with the out­door poster cam­paign, “Read More Books.” The cam­paign that reminds us that some of the most pop­u­lar movies began as books. Other posters in the cam­paign include  Char­lie and Choco­late Fac­tory and The Girl with the Dragon Tat­too.

I love how the art work is cre­ated using only color and the text of the books and recre­ates iconic images of the film or the book cover. To quote the great philoso­pher Darth Vader, “Impres­sive, most impres­sive. via DangerousMinds.net

The Ani­mated GIF is Dead. Long Live the Ani­mated GIF!
I say “G-iff” you say “J-iff” but we can all agree the arti­cle “Ani­mated GIFs Tri­umphant” by Anil Dash is pretty cool; as is this great col­lec­tion of ani­mated GIF’s on Tum­blr.

Amaz­ing Harry Pot­ter Paper Cut Designs
See­ing these gor­geous paper cut out mas­ter pieces from the insanely tal­ented Brit­tney Lee is, well, magical!

Mar­ket­ing & Social Media

This is a great lit­tle talk from Gary Vayn­er­chuk:  Thank You Econ­omy – SXSW 2011 Inter­ac­tive. He brings up dif­fer­ent points about the human­iza­tion of busi­ness, dis­cussed at length in his book The Thank You Economy

Film,Video and Motion Graphics

Hitch from Pas­cal Monaco on Vimeo.

‘Hitch’ — An Alfred Hitch­cock Cook­book
What’s the per­fect recipe for sus­pense? Alfred Hitch­cock knows how to dish it and his recipe is explained in this great grad­u­a­tion project from the highly tal­ented Felix Meyer, Pas­cal Monaco, Torsten Strer, at the Uni­ver­sity of Applied Sci­ences and Arts in Hannover.

Fred­die Wong!
If you haven’t checked out any of the great stuff from Fred­die Wong, stop what you are doing and do so, you will be well rewarded; you’ll laugh and be amazed. Check out his stuff: Fred­diew YouTube Channel | Freddiew2 YouTube Chan­nel | His Blog

3 Cool Sites Worth Check­ing Out

modelcoasters.com
Just as it says, like peo­ple who build model trains, but these make the minia­ture peo­ple hurl their plas­tic lunches. You’ll see some great crafts­man­ship on dis­play on this site!

Chi­nese Pro­pa­ganda Posters
For­eign Pol­icy Mag­a­zine has a great run­down of Sino-propaganda. Make Sure you get to #5 the note about mis­trans­la­tion, it is pretty funny.

The Cen­ter for Car­toon Stud­ies
A nifty place to get all ani­mated and that.

Drop a line in the com­ments and let me know if I missed some­thing cool.

Digital Ephemera

Another Wednes­day has rolled around, so here’s my weekly col­lec­tion of inter­est­ing dig­i­tal ephemera I’ve found pok­ing around the vast Inter­net waste­land. Think of me as your guide beyond the dig­i­tal desert…

Art, Design and Retro Items of Note

New Shag Tiki Print
This new print from the great Josh Agle or  Shag, mythol­o­gizes the great long lost Poly­ne­sian Pop Palace, the Kahiki Sup­per Club.

Use­ful Illus­tra­tor Typog­ra­phy Tips from Smash­ing Mag­a­zine
File under: good to know. | Link

30+ Infor­ma­tive Typog­ra­phy Related Blogs
A nice round up of some good blogs that are just your type. HA! | Link

World’s fair of the 1930’s
A nice look back at some of the World’s Fairs in the 1930’s. Includes some of the lesser known fairs. | Link

Movie Posters Ani­mated into Neon Signs By Mr. Whaite
Now these are just cool! | Link

Great Design Free­bie
An Ele­gant Login Form for Pho­to­shop | Link

Star Wars Retold in Pic­tograms
The Force is strong with these min­i­mal­ist mas­ter­pieces from some­one who goes by the han­dle kisia. | Link

Film, Video and Motion Graphics

Star Wars Begins by Jamie Ben­ning
Con­tin­u­ing with the Star Wars theme, Film­maker Jamie Ben­ning has cre­ated an amaz­ing unof­fi­cial com­men­tary video with footage and  inter­views about the Star Wars films. Too bad the com­men­taries on the offi­cial discs weren’t one par­sec as good as these. For the true Star Wars fan! | Link

Man­hat­tan 4.33pm from Lizzie Oxby on Vimeo.

NY Pin­ball
A cool short film using New York City as a back drop for a huge pin­ball game. Now that’s a great use of after effects! | Link

Finally, Some­thing So Bad, It’s Good!

Mr T’s Be Somebody’s Be Some­body or Be Somebody’s Fool
A clas­sic self 80’s kids self help video from none other than the incom­pa­ra­ble Mr. T.  Link Please note that some of rap lyrics in the video are cred­ited to the Rhyme Syn­di­cate Boss, Ice-T. Also in an iconic twist you’ll get to see The New Edi­tion with Bobby Brown sing about the dan­gers of drugs and alco­hol. A must see for any pop-culturalist!

An Aptly Named Video: Amazing Stories Intro

Church Media Design posted this, if you’ll for­give me, amaz­ing open­ing sequence for a church Bible Sto­ries series. Hope­fully the accom­pa­ny­ing lec­ture & ser­mons were as cool as the open­ing cred­its.
 

“Amaz­ing Sto­ries” Title Pack­age from Tay­lor Cox on Vimeo.

This church series intro­duc­tion video was, no doubt,  inspired, at some level, by the Steven Spiel­berg pro­duced 80’s series of the same name. See­ing this mag­i­cal open­ing reminded me of how much I loved watch­ing Amaz­ing Sto­ries as a kid, which had an equally great mag­i­cal open­ing sequence. I’d post that too but NBC/Universal is annoy­ingly para­noid and had users take it down from YouTube and the “inter­nets,” oh well sorry about that.

I never real­ized this, but accord­ing to IMDB the orig­i­nal Amaz­ing Sto­ries series only ran for three years, but I was pretty influ­en­tial to me, as was HBO’s equally cool Ray Bradbury’s The­ater. Of course Amaz­ing Sto­ries and Ray Brad­bury The­ater had embed­ded in their DNA traces of the best fan­tasy show ever cre­ated, The Twi­light Zone.

Those pro­grams were at the same time dark, hope­ful, scary, funny and ulti­mately mag­i­cal. Includ­ing  Bradbury’s nov­els and short sto­ries; these influ­ences made me see the world from a slightly off kil­ter per­spec­tive, and I am very grate­ful I had a chance to be exposed to these works of art grow­ing up.

Amazing Short Animation of Stanely Kubrick Films

I found this amaz­ing ani­ma­tion short of Stan­ley Kubrick by Mar­tin Woutis­seth. I am a huge Stan­ley Kubrick fan and ani­ma­tion fan so nat­u­rally I com­pletely loved this and hope you will too.

By the way here is my favorite quote (again) from the late, great Mr. Kubrick:

The most ter­ri­fy­ing fact about the uni­verse is not that it is hos­tile but that it is indif­fer­ent; but if we can come to terms with this indif­fer­ence and accept the chal­lenges of life within the bound­aries of death—how­ever muta­ble man may be able to make them—our exis­tence as a species can have gen­uine mean­ing and ful­fill­ment. How­ever vast the dark­ness, we mus sup­ply our own light.”
– Stan­ley Kubrick, in an inter­view with Eric Nordern, Play­boy (Sep­tem­ber 1968)

Stan­ley Kubrick — a fil­mog­ra­phy - from mwoutis­seth on Vimeo.

Design, Mar­tin Woutis­seth http://finestblackdesign.blogspot.com/

Music, Romain Trouil­let : www.romain-trouillet.com
www.myspace.com/romaintrouillet

Ani­ma­tion made with mix­ing each Kubrick’s movies. Typog­ra­phy, col­ors, pat­terns and sym­bols are re inter­prat­ing. The old man is watch­ing behind his life, nos­tal­gic and the young one is think­ing about his future to write.

Some good Kubrick resources:

• The Kubrick Site — an Amaz­ing col­lec­tion for all things Kubrick
• The Offi­cial Warner Broth­ers Site for his films.
• Kubricks IMDB Site

via the equally awe­some blog Dan­ger­ous Minds

18 Great Film Studio Logo Openings

Going to the cin­ema has always been mag­i­cal for me. Per­haps the The­atre is truly the abode of the divine Diony­sus. As a child, my fam­ily would take my sis­ters, assorted friends and myself to this mag­i­cal cel­lu­loid realm. We would get some pop­corn and wait impa­tiently for the film to begin. Even­tu­ally, I would start play­ing a game, I would squint my eyes slowly to mimic the effect of the lights dim­ming. I would do this over and over, pre­tend­ing the movie was start­ing. I still do this, except, now I keep them shut, mostly so I can ignore the annoy­ing pre-show adver­tise­ments that plague the cin­e­mas like gum under the seats.

Even­tu­ally the lights would actu­ally dim, and (not to sound like a grumpy old man) in my day the cur­tains would part reveal­ing a large white rec­tan­gle where a culture’s dreams, hopes, fears and fan­tasies were pro­jected at 24 frames a sec­ond. But first there were the trail­ers, often times the best part of the movie going expe­ri­ence, then at the cin­e­matic event hori­zon, when the film would actu­ally start, you are treated to the film stu­dio and dis­trib­u­tors iden­ti­fi­ca­tion spot. I love this, when you see the Twen­thy Cen­tury Fox logo with it’s brassy fan­fare it gives me chills. It is impor­tant to note that these often are changed with dif­fer­ent musi­cal and col­oration or spe­cial effects, this helps set the mood for the upcom­ing film. I’ve noted some of these.

Here is a list of some great film stu­dio logo open­ings. I know I’ve left a bunch off, let me know what ones you like.

New Line Cinema

I like the use of the cin­ema logo falling into place with the swelling music.

Para­mount Pic­tures

This is a clas­sic one. I only wish I could find the one for Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Mor­gan Creek Productions

I’ve always enjoyed the ani­mated curves on this one.

DNA Films

A newer one, and it shows, that it makes great use of mod­ern com­puter ani­ma­tion. Con­sid­er­ing the stu­dio makes hor­ror and intense films it is very fit­ting.

Mar­vel Comics

A very excit­ing one that sets the audi­ence up for a ride. Plus I love designs that harken back to some sort of his­tor­i­cal roots. The use of halftone dots, flip­ping pages and close ups of char­ac­ters and thought bub­bles is fan­tas­tic.

Warner Bros. Pic­tures (matrix variation)

This is one of my favorite ver­sions of a stu­dio logo that aids the style of the film. Com­pare to the Reg­u­lar & Looney Tunes vari­a­tions.

Warner Bros. Pic­tures Reg­u­lar ver­sion (1997):

Com­pare the Matrix Ver­sion to this and you can see how much more effec­tive it was in stet­ting the tone of the film than if they would have used this much more pro­saic ver­sion.

Warner Bros. / Looney Tunes variation

Another great riff on the WB

RKO Radio Pic­tures (1930’s version)

This is a great logo. So disct­inc­tive and telling. It makes me feel so nos­tal­gic for King Kong, and the Rocky Hor­ror Pic­ture Show, where Dr. Frankenfurther’s mon­ster Rocky climbs up a 35 foot RKO Radio Tower, in heels no less!

Lions Gate Films

I like the Lions Gate Logo because it’s is great to see the Lion’s Gates of Agamemnon’s Palace at Myce­nae live again. Plus I like the clock work that is resides behind the magic of film. It is the most colb­o­rate of the arts, and the ani­mated logo hints at this fact. That the great and pow­er­ful Oz of Hol­ly­wood is a big machine behind the curt­ian. This one is from the hor­ri­ficly bad Saw fran­chise, but it does set the tone.

Lions Gate Films

Com­pare the Saw ver­sion to this nor­mal ver­sion and you can see how the Saw fla­vors the movie with dread from the first frame:

MGM
In a list like this you have to include the famous lion!

MTV Films Logo

A very clever use of the astro­naut and the ima­gry of the movie the­atre.

Pixar
Whimsy that harken’s back to the dawn of Pixar and the com­puter ani­ma­tion rev­o­lu­tion.

Uni­ver­sal Pic­tures (1930’s Version)

The older logos, like RCA & Para­mount are icons.

Uni­ver­sal Pic­tures: a con­tem­po­rary version

This one always seems to get my cin­e­matic juices flow­ing when I see a Uni­ver­sal film. It’s so clas­sicly Hol­ly­wood, using a globe to high­lght the uni­ver­sal lanu­gae of film and the film stu­dios narcissism.

Walt Dis­ney (New Logo)

If any film stu­dio logo open­ing sums up the ideals of a stu­dio bet­ter than this one I can’t think of it. It’s so full of imag­i­na­tion and child like won­der, plus it sells the iconag­ra­phy of the stu­dio like no other. Not only is it an trade­mark for the com­pany, it’s also ad for the theme parks. It is also an homage to Peter Pan; note the third star to the right in the open­ing shot and Hook (or is it Jack Sparrow’s) Pirate ship on the river

Twenty Cen­tury Fox

I’m sav­ing the best for last, maybe because I was such a fan of Star Wars, this will always be the quis­sential movie open­ing for me.