I recently had the opportunity to shoot and composite an 'Explainer Video'. Recent web start-ups (that likely don't have any vowels in the company name :) often feature a video prominently displayed on their home page explaining exactly what it is that they do, and why it would benefit you. They're short (a couple of minutes) and sweet, and usually use a particular style to get the message across. One popular style is the 'hand drawn' look, and that's the style that was used in this spot.

It can be a very challenging method, but one that also allows for a great deal of flexibility in post-production. Each of the 'frames' were hand written on a white board, then composited in After Effects 3d space with camera moves. It involves a great deal of pre-production work to ensure that everything is going to fit where it needs to, and a lot of oversight during the shoot to make sure everything is both included and (we discovered) spelled properly :)

Click below for the spot!

I just wrapped up a small (or, rather a MINI (ha ha)) gig where I was asked to do some object replacement on a short video clip. It was a surprisingly challenging little shot: the car needed the tire rims replaced, and the roof and side mirrors were to be changed to black. After puzzling over how to approach the project, I settled on a three-pronged strategy: Using the 3d Camera Tracker for the tire replacement, the Rotobrush for the roof, and brute-force keyframed masking for the mirrors. The end result, of course, had to be perfectly photo-realistic.

Follow along on the video tutorial below as I discuss the use of these tools and how they all worked together to achieve the desired outcome. Best watched full-screen, HD of course!

I'll be publishing examples of all my future work here, but in the meantime I've got a vast gallery of past projects available for your viewing please HERE. Enjoy!

Well, it's been some time since I've I've updated my old blog. The intervening years have been interesting, exciting and, at times, challenging, both for myself personally and for the industry as a whole. I recently had an amazing opportunity to work with Jugnoo creating a fully-automated motion graphics ecosystem based on the After Effects platform. It was a geeky-awesome experience getting a square peg (Ae) to fit into a round hole (full automation), and certainly ranks up there as being one of the highlights of my career so far.

I will also be getting back to blogging on this, my brand-spanking new website, so you can expect more of the snappy, insightful, informative posts that I (used to be) famous for. I say "used to be" because for the longest time, I was first page in google rank when you searched "motion graphics blog". But three years of inattention, sadly, pushes even the best blogs to the hinterlands of the third page :(  So, back to it!