June 12, 2008

Recent motion graphics goodness

 

  • Roi Sabarov's Typeflow animation is poetry in motion.  ("That is awesome.  That goes on the blog."  --Margot, Licensed Nackwife.)
  • Fatal Farm makes some super, ah, unique remixes of 80's TV themes.  Knight Rider is brilliant, though be warned that you won't be getting the song out of your head. The rest are of mixed taste, so don't say I didn't warn you.
  • Mato Atom's "Champions" probably won't change any hearts and minds about Bush, Blair, & Co., but it's impeccably executed. [Via Sebastian Meyer]
  • I like the lo-fi stylings of these animated videos for Welsh band Los Campesinos!, created by Simon Ampel & Chris Seimasko.
  • The Whitest Boy Alive is all about optical illusions. [Via]

 

By the way, if you're going to be in NYC in a couple of weeks & are interested in After Effects, you might want to check out the next AENY meeting.  Jim Geduldick writes to say that the June 26th meeting will feature some cool speakers:

 

  • Visual Designer Marc Coleran, whose work has been seen in films like  The Bourne Ultimatum, Domino, Alien vs. Predator, The Bourne Identity, Blade II, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, The World Is Not Enough - just to name a few.
  • Visual effects artist John Montgomery, co-founder of the online visual effects news site fxguide, as well as the training site fxphd. His Clients and Credits include Super Bowl commercials for McDonald's, Disney as well as work for Budweiser, Miller, Hallmark, Sears, Moen, Gatorade, Morgan Stanley, and the ESPN and CBS television networks.

 

Check out the AENY site for more details.

10:25 AM | Permalink | No Comments

May 06, 2008

Technology sneak: Photoshop, AE, Flash

Last Thursday Adobe held a day-long event at which the execs briefed members of the financial community.  A couple of us spear carriers (Steve Heintz, Karl Soule, and I) were recruited to help show off some new technology that's baking "in the labs" (i.e. none of this stuff is promised for a future version, your mileage my vary, void where prohibited, professional driver on a closed course, etc.).

Check out the Connect webcast to see the goods in action.  (Scrub ahead to 18 minutes or so--about one third of the way through--to catch the demos.)  I show off some new performance tuning in Photoshop by playing with a 650 megapixel image on a Mac Pro.  It's too bad that the low frame rate of recording hides the fluidity of panning, zooming, and rotating via OpenGL hardware acceleration.  I also demonstrate automated merging of images to extend depth of field, as well as a 360-degree panorama mapped onto an interactive 3D sphere on which I can paint directly.  (Painting directly onto 3D models--mmm, yes.)  Steve demos Adobe's new "Thermo" RIA design tool while Karl shows off inverse kinematics in Flash and more.

You can check out the rest of the executive presentations & their slides here.

04:30 PM | Permalink | Comments [16]

April 11, 2008

Winners of the $20,000 Adobe design challenge announced

Congratulations to TJ Sochor of 3 Wagons Deep on winning the grand prize in Adobe's "See What's Possible" motion graphics contest: