This is my result for the last motion graphics project. My original goals were somewhat lofty, involving a lot of stop motion mixed with computer based graphics. As I began working on the stop motion, it was clear that it would take much longer than the amount of time I had to work with. Instead of creating a stop motion Humpty Dumpty, I decided to film a live face and superimpose it over a computer based egg image. This worked well and gave a humorous result. In addition, I had created some shots of horses running in front of a field, but I could not get the motion of the horses to look realistic. I plan on going back and trying to work on their motion and perhaps adding it in.

Overall, the result pleases me and was a lot of fun to make. The animals and men were stop motion in front of a green screen that has been set up in my room for a couple weeks. I used a Nikon D200 that was controlled by the computer over USB to capture the images. Previous stop motion attempts I made were done at 12 FPS, though this time, since I was mixing it with 30FPS video, I decided to go at 15 FPS. This slowed me down a bit, but was not much harder and produced a smoother result.

For my next project, now that school has ended and I can devote free time to my own projects, I wanted to try working with proper puppets. I have several friends who are interested in this as well, so hopefully once the workflow with the DSLR is perfected we can get some good results.

In addition, I would like to mention that I got a job working in motion graphics and related areas coming right out of college. This is very exciting, as I am very eager to hone my skills in this area. I realize that I have not been doing this very long and there is so much to learn, but I feel like it is an endless ocean of possibilities for creativity and fostering the various ideas I have floating around inside.

So far, I have start constructing the set for the stop motion, which will be done in front of a green screen. So far I have the screen up, and have a greened table to animated on. In addition, I will be using a Canon DSLR for the stop motion, hopefully to attain the best picture and depth of field.

Soon I will post a storyboard or animatic of the movie, but until then here is a what the green screen looks like.

For this particles test, I used a green screen and motion tracking on the stick combined with a particle emitter. I used some various glow effects to create the bright particles and some general color correction as well.

For this test, we had limited source footage to work with. The guest lecture was very interesting and helpful, but I think maybe we should have split it into two classes so we would have more time with the green screen. I may use green screen for my final project. This basically just shows the keying with some goofy effects thrown in.

This is a short stop animation I made testing out a new digital camera I bought. I am thinking of doing some sort of stop motion green screen work for the Motion Graphics final project.

A sample animation of some text in After Effects. For this I used the position animator and some camera movements, along with a 3rd party plugin, Twitch, for the jittery camera at the end.

Here are some characters with a couple of fly-bys testing out the camera in After Effects.

I had a really tough time with the camera for this one. I’m not sure if there is an easier way, but it seems really difficult getting the movements to be smooth and to get a good view of how the camera is moving. A larger screen or multiple screens would probably work best for this.

I tried to add in some depth of field effects, but I think with my stark black and white scene its hard to see it properly. I’d like to build on this idea and have the characters moving around or perhaps have them be inside of some of type of world. 3d is definitely where I will be working for the final project though, it seems like there is so much you can do with it.

This is a basic mask technique test in After Effects that I used to create duplicates of my self. It involved masking around the small heads that pop up in the background when they intersected with the sliding body in the foreground. Sadly, the youtube compression reveals some of the areas of the masking through the artifacting.

This is a kind of motion comic test, it took a really long time just cutting the characters out, so the animation isn’t quite right yet. I’d like to tweak the easing of the movements especially and try to make it seem more dynamic as well as finish the other half of the scene and add some sound.