[Motion Graphics] The Mini-Mograph Project

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[Motion Graphics] The Mini-Mograph Project

Postby Brad » Mon Jul 11, 2011 7:52 pm

So, Jon (Metro) was over here the other day and he wanted me to look over his motion graphics demo reel and give him some critique. I told him what I felt were his strongest pieces, and what he needed to just get rid of all together. I also told him that he should just make a bunch of new shit as well, primarily focused on good design skill and slick animation. My main suggestion to accomplish this was to make a bunch of short one-off animations. This is most definitely inspired by Nick Campbell's "5 Second Projects" thing that he's been running for a while. It's basically a way to motivate people to get off their asses and just make shit. He gives people a theme and a deadline to make something, and then submit it to a Vimeo group. Then he and some other people review the submissions and name a winner.

I told Jon that I would provide him with a theme and some suggestions. Today he messaged me asking for his first "assignment." I came up with both a theme (in this example, the theme is "Fake." However you want to interpret that and incorporate it into your piece) and a motif (meaning, some kind of visual characteristic that is present in the animation. In this case, I said "thin and orange"). So he set about working on his, and it just so happened that today at work, I really didn't have anything to do actual WORK on, so I started doing one of my own. I came home and told André (Kristyrat) about it and now he's working on one.

So then I figured, maybe I'll put up something on the Org and see if anybody else would be interested in joining us. I'm calling it the "Mini-Mograph Project." I'm not laying down any real ground rules and there won't be any judging or whatever. This is purely for people who are interested in motion graphics and animation that want to help build their demo reel with short sweet little bits of fun. We'll post our results on here and give critique where we can.

If you want to participate but don't know the best way to start, or are lacking motivation, here's some helpful tips:

Spoiler :
Watch some cool shit - Sites like Motionographer, Behance, Vimeo's animation & motion graphics category and SqueezeMe.tv (among many more) are great sites to get inspired. If you just want to watch a bunch of demo reels, there's Reel Roulette.

Look at traditional design blogs - The core skill when it comes to motion graphics isn't about how well you can use After Effects or Cinema4D or whatever. It's about how well you can design and how creative you can be. Aside from studying graphic design in school or through books, one good way is to look at good examples of what works and what doesn't. Some blogs I like are Pitch Design Union, Veer: The Skinny, SmashingMagazine, The Fox Is Black, Fuel Your Creativity, and many more

Work on typography - Highly related to the previous item. Type is one of the biggest staples of graphic design and by extension, motion design. Check out sites like Thinking With Type, I Love Typography, TypeForYou, and many more.

Do some tutorials - I know a lot of people like to bemoan video tutorials and ridicule people that use them, but I really think that's short-sighted. What they're really upset at is people who just copy what's done in the tutorial step by step, and then slap that in their demo reel. That sucks. Don't do that. Use tutorials for what their intended for, which is to learn the tools, and also to learn how to achieve a more cohesive and useful workflow. So yeah, do some tutorials, figure out how stuff works in the program, then use that knowledge to achieve your own idea.s Obviously most people know about Video Copilot. There's also GreyscaleGorilla (mostly Cinema 4D stuff, but some AE stuff as well), MotionWorks, The Pixel Lab (again, mostly Cinema4D stuff), AEtuts, among many more.

Think about multiple ways to approach a design - Imagine that you're approached by a design client and they have a specific product or service they want to sell, but they have NO idea what the design should look like whatsoever. How are you going to approach it? Many people have a certain comfort zone that they know they're good in and don't like to venture too far from it (I certainly have this problem). Well if you want to grow as a designer, you need to consider multiple avenues, especially when it comes to producing video, and this can certainly be applied to this Mini-Mograph project. You could accomplish your 5 seconds of animation using any combination (and I stress the word combination) of the following:
- 2D motion graphics in After Effects, Motion, whatever
- 2.5D motion graphics in After Effects, Motion, whatever
- 3D motion graphics in Cinema4D, Maya, 3DS Max, Blender, whatever
- Live action
- Hand-drawn frame by frame animation
- Stop motion
- Puppetry
- Etc.
Maybe you shoot some live-action, then frame by frame draw cool animated bits on top of the video, or you do cool 2D flowy animation and integrate 3D animated objects into the background. Or you just stick with one thing. However you feel would be the most effective design, play around with it!

MAKE STYLEFRAMES!!! - This is something I've had to learn to do over the last several years. When you're working in the industry and you have a client project, and you know what the primary theme is, you never go straight away into production. The pre-production phase is AS (if not MORE) important. It gives you an opportunity to look at the spot from different angles, and gives you freedom to mess up. You come up with multiple looks/styles which then goes onto a client review. A look is decided upon, and then you go into production. Thankfully, since your styleframes are essentially supposed to look like a still frame straight out of your finished video, you probably already have a lot of the work done. Then you just animate. Now, I'm not saying that for the purpose of these mini's you NEED to make styleframes, but I genuinely feel that it's a good habit to get into. It lets you focus more on the design, rather than the animation.


So yeah! If you want to participate, the current theme/motif is:

THEME: Fake
MOTIF: Thin & Orange
DURATION: 4-6 seconds


However you want to incorporate/interpret the theme and motif is up to you. Just make it cool and have fun!!

And here's one quick bit of inspiration: Make It Better
Some of you have probably seen this already, but I figured I'd share it anyway. This is easily one of my favorite motion design pieces to come out in a long while. It just does everything superbly. It takes a very simple concept, and then shows a beautifully exposed look at the design process, all wrapped up in some ridiculously sexy animation. It's message is inspiring, it's visually stunning, and it's plain fun. Great great great stuff.
Last edited by Brad on Mon Jul 11, 2011 9:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: [Motion Graphics] The Mini-Mograph Project

Postby Metro » Mon Jul 11, 2011 8:15 pm

Yeah, lets get some more people involved. I want to see what other people are going to do.
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Re: [Motion Graphics] The Mini-Mograph Project

Postby Neverend » Mon Jul 11, 2011 8:19 pm

This sounds interesting, il see if i can do something :)
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Re: [Motion Graphics] The Mini-Mograph Project

Postby Magnus » Mon Jul 11, 2011 8:29 pm

If only I had less work...
Screw it - I'm in. I've missed animating those graphics. heh
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Re: [Motion Graphics] The Mini-Mograph Project

Postby Kitsuner » Mon Jul 11, 2011 8:59 pm

This is well timed, since I'm starting my mograph class tomorrow.
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Re: [Motion Graphics] The Mini-Mograph Project

Postby trythil » Tue Jul 12, 2011 3:02 am

http://depot.ninjawedding.org/veryrough.mkv

As the filename implies, very rough. It has tons of motion stabilization problems and a very nasty-looking rotation.

However, I probably won't have the time (or, frankly, motivation) to work any more on this, so here it is. Plus, despite the low production value and sloppy tracking, I still think it's funny. Which is more than I can say for most of my video work.
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Re: [Motion Graphics] The Mini-Mograph Project

Postby Nya-chan Production » Tue Jul 12, 2011 4:20 am

I'll see if I have some time, but I am highly interested, mostly because my skills in "creating from nothing" are next to none D:
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Re: [Motion Graphics] The Mini-Mograph Project

Postby Magnus » Tue Jul 12, 2011 7:29 am


Idea was pretty neat. However, the shaky camera and the abrupt jump-cuts sort of threw the simplicity of the clip off a bit.
Fix the issues - either try and make it more flowing in 1 take, or place smoother cuts - and the clip could be really awesome!
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Re: [Motion Graphics] The Mini-Mograph Project

Postby Brad » Tue Jul 12, 2011 7:46 am

trythil wrote:http://depot.ninjawedding.org/veryrough.mkv

As the filename implies, very rough. It has tons of motion stabilization problems and a very nasty-looking rotation.

However, I probably won't have the time (or, frankly, motivation) to work any more on this, so here it is. Plus, despite the low production value and sloppy tracking, I still think it's funny. Which is more than I can say for most of my video work.

I only watched the first 6 seconds.
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Re: [Motion Graphics] The Mini-Mograph Project

Postby trythil » Tue Jul 12, 2011 10:23 am

ZetZu wrote:

Idea was pretty neat. However, the shaky camera and the abrupt jump-cuts sort of threw the simplicity of the clip off a bit.
Fix the issues - either try and make it more flowing in 1 take, or place smoother cuts - and the clip could be really awesome!


It was one take split into different layers with different stabilizer settings.

I grew tired of the immense slowness of AE 5.5's Warp Stabilizer on 1080p footage over a gigabit Ethernet link. Windows 7's Task Manager reported my CPU usage at around 30% during stabilization and 40% RAM usage, so my guess is that there was just too much data there to comfortably work with it over gigE. I'll have to look at faster equipment and/or bigger drives in my workstation so that I can avoid going over the network.

Anyway, I decided "I do not want to wait for this" and just rendered it out.
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Re: [Motion Graphics] The Mini-Mograph Project

Postby NS » Tue Jul 12, 2011 11:02 am

Very cool, I just gotta find a songs and do some brainstormin' and I'm in.
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Re: [Motion Graphics] The Mini-Mograph Project

Postby Brad » Tue Jul 12, 2011 6:51 pm

http://vimeo.com/26351643

Enjoy :o

Also made a Vimeo group. So whenever you've made something, upload it there and add it to the group.
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Re: [Motion Graphics] The Mini-Mograph Project

Postby McDirty » Wed Jul 13, 2011 4:47 pm

Nice and simple vid Brad. I love the hexagonal design as well. Where do you get your background textures from mostly?
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Re: [Motion Graphics] The Mini-Mograph Project

Postby Metro » Wed Jul 13, 2011 8:03 pm

Nice Brad. Very pleasing and professional looking =D
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Re: [Motion Graphics] The Mini-Mograph Project

Postby NS » Wed Jul 13, 2011 10:52 pm

Yeah I definitely like it. The colors and shapes are bright and bold but work together. It's simple but effective, just like I like it.
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