Motion Graphics Demo Reel: Tony Zagoraios

Nice work by artist Tony Zagoraios. Pay attention to his detail, timing and his use of typography. The reel is textural and nice to look at too. Enjoy and Fire It Up! Randolf

Design Animation VFX Showreel 2011 by Engine

Oh yeah, hot stuff. Good mixture of CG with cutting edge motion graphics editing, the song helps out in a big way. Be sure to check out their site below. http://www.engine.net.au

Tubecreative: Showreel

Tubecreative is a visual effects and motion graphics studio responsible for some of the graphics you see in commercials, TNT & The Food Network. Check out the reel and see if you can get any ideas into how to enhance your work. This showreel has lots of variety in a short span, so for that reason, its worth checking. Be sure to check out their website below:

http://www.tubecreative.com/

Fire it UP.

Randolf

NAILGUN: 2011 Motion Graphics Reel

If you are like me and are amazed with some of the motion graphics openings to shows on HG TV, SyFy Channel, and ESPN, check out NAILGUN. Their work is cutting edge, fun and clever. Many of their animations are short (less than 5 seconds), but really that's all you need to create something way cool.

As an animation instructor, I always push my students to create simple animation, showcasing good solid design and these guys are a great examples of that. Be sure to check their showreel to get ideas for projects.

Nailgun 2011 Showreel >>

ILUVUXDESIGN & Yellow Submarine

If you have ever designed your own website, rearranged your livinging room furniture, or lost sleep over the colors of your fonts on your blog, you are, in the most common way, a User Interface / User Experience Designer. If so, this animation is about you.

Animation Peeps, its not always about slick realistic CG renders, as you'll see here sometimes its more important to get a clear interesting message across. The styling is reminiscent of the The Beatles animations in Yellow Submarine, not sure if the message was ever clear in Yellow Submarine, but it sure was a nice trip.

Fire it Up and Enjoy!

Le Petit Nicolas: Cut Paper Animation

This movie intro features animation utilizing cut pieces of paper in a "pop up" book style fashion. Do you think this was done in CG? The animation is cute, clever, and has a nice feel. Just a little somethin somethin to keep you inspired.

Fire it up!

Cinema 4D: 2010 Demo

Saw an inspiring presentation today...For the slick broadcast motion graphics you see on ESPN, NBC, ABC, CBS and SYFY Channel (basically, all the networks) Cinema 4D is the ticket. The main reason: quick rendering, and seamless integration with After Effects.

Add to your arenal. To learn more about Cinema 4D, be sure to visit the Maxon site.
Fire it up! & Happy New Year.

Cinema 4D Tutorial:

Mary the Braveheart

This is an animation for Sydney Children's Hospital. The animation has got a nice 2D/CG look to it. Its interesting and gave us some great ideas. Fire it up and enjoy!

Randolf

Be sure to check out the storyboard animatic for this project to see where pieces like this get made.

Naldz Graphics: 3D Typoography

In my advanced animation classes, as everyone progresses towards the creation of their final demo reel, comes the subject of typography. No, we aren't graphic designers working with typographic layouts on a regular basis, nevertheless the subject is important. Its important because its directly related to marketing, and marketing is what you have to keep in mind when designing your portfolio, website and demo reel. As an animator, you may be called upon to create animated text via CG or After Effects and you definitely have to create animated text to spice up your demo reel.

Your animation demo reel will work fine without animated text, but since you are "the animator", you want to show that you can animate anything. Doing so, shows people that you pay attention to detail, the overall package, and it showcases another marketable skill that Art Directors might want to use.

Naldz Graphics is a site that showcases great examples of integrating CG text in design. When you look at these examples, pay attention to the camera angle, the diagonals create interesting compositions and if you are animator, take it a step further and ask yourself how these designs can be animated. One other benefit in creating text in CG is the ability to create materials, notice how the text in the example I've included has a shiny reflective plastic material. This ability also creates unique textures, gradients and values that unique only to CG.

So if you are a modeler, texturer or animator, use those CG skills to create interesting typographic compositions and spice up your portfolio. Have fun and fire it up!

R.

Dean Zulich: Photography Website

Today, we were visited by former Art Institute of Seattle graduate Dean Zulich. A native of Bosnia and Herzogovina, Dean is a commercial photographer focusing on conceptual fashion, advertisement and celebrity photography and is most famous for his success as the runner up on Vh1 reality television show "The Shot".

In a short amount of time, Dean garnered success from his engaging photography. His compositions and subject matter are interesting and thoughtful, and we were very fortunate to have him share his road to success with us. His talk was quite inspiring.

What struck me about his talk today, was his feeling on the importance of continuing personal projects. Doing this "keeps the fire alive" and its what keeps him going, and he said that, I realized how much I missed that feeling, and will be putting together a personal project soon. Doing personal projects is an easy way to enhance your demo reel and or digital portfolio. Viewers will be able to sense your enjoyment in personal projects and they usually get more attention.

To learn more about Dean, visit his website, http://www.deanzulich.com His website is nice and clean and features his different portfolios (books).

Hey Dean, thanks again for your visit, for sharing and for inspiring. Keep up the outstanding work and best of luck in all you do.

Fire it Up!

Randolf

VJ Robson Victor: Demo Reel

One in a while, I'll browse through various video sites to check out the latest and greatest of demo reels. This one, by VJ Robson caught my eye initially because of the Wolverine image before it plays.

What a nice surprise. When I saw his reel, I was immediately impressed. He's got a good sense of design, color, layout and knows how to animate elements in a way that is engaging. He's got great timing and shows a lot of variety in his work. I think VJ has been around. The students in my classes are often very expert in drawing, painting and are very good at creating vector style graphics, but need to see more examples of how movement can make their pieces better. This demo reel is a great example of that and its a trait that comes with years of observation, practice and taking risks.

Hey VJ, well done. Thanks for inspiring us. If you happen to see this post, feel free to post a response and by all means, keep up the awesomeness!

Fire it up!

Randolf

Filmaker IQ: 1001 After Effects Tutorials

Filmmakeriq.com features thousands of tutorials on creating films. In the Digital Effects category, you'll find 1001 tutorials on creating vfx in Adobe After Effects. If you are a short film/animation pioneer, you'll find articles on securing funding, organization, and you'll see other tutorials to help you with your video editing like Premiere, and 3D softward like Maya.

Thanks Isaac for the link, this is a great resource.

Filmaker IQ After Effects Tutorials >>