The app is really complex, you are able to come out with some useful jingles, great for that “last-minute-track” for any presentation or video…

I first recorded the drums without knowing where I was heading, just tapping the little drums on the screen to create a rhythm I liked. Than I started to fool around with the keyboards and the arpeggiator. I don’t play the piano in real life but that app make it easier for dummies like me, and the range of settings you are able to mess with is impressive! By twitching here and there I started to fullfil the gaps and by the end what came out is an energetic jingle, great for a bollywood action scene…

White Sonar by luisfelipebueno
Its missing a bass, but as I’m limited to 8 tracks (which is a lot!) I decided to leave it as it is. We can’t compare it with something done by a professional musician, but it’s great to have this as a tool for an emergency (or killing time…)

John Lord, worry not, I’ll never be able to perform anything close to what you use to do during the Purple’s period… =)

We still have miles to go, but last week we delivered a 45 seconds preview, right before leaving for holidays, and even if some things didn’t turn out the way we imagined I’m pretty excited with the result. This preview definitely helped us to understand some things about this project and how we can improve it.

We are mixing 3D environments with 2D drawings which can be tricky some times but came out as a great solution for this project.

I’m working on a two years-old MacBook Pro, my (only) weapon of choice, which is still a great computer but as any machine has it’s own limits. Because of that I’m used to work in a quarter of the final resolution in After Effects, and somehow I’ve felt in love with the pixelated version of some scenes without post-production. Here are a couple of screenshots, it reminds me of the good old adventure games I use to play when I was younger (emphasis on the “younger” part, I still consider myself young and believe I will do so ’till I’m 50 years-old…).

We expect to deliver the final version of the titles by the end of September, so avoid this website during the next month if you can’t stand the sight of blood!

This videoclip makes an amazing use of HTML5 with an interactive bonus in the end if you watch it through the official website.

A quite simple idea, performed by great artists, its a shame that HTML5 is not yet as smooth as it could be. The “window” movements are still a little bit clunky and the page demands a lot of power from the computer, but its good to see this experiments popping up.

Unfortunately I can’t embed the video here (even if you can find a version on youtube) but you can check my phrase by clicking on the image or check the official website for some dancers in tight body suits and some behind the scenes.

There is a post about this issue on the Greyscale Gorilla, and I agree with Nick’s explanation. “Digital abstraction” is definitely not something new, and the level of complexity in creating it changed following the evolution of technology and softwares. What before was achieved through software and hardware tweaking can now be reproduced by mixing a couple of filters in Photoshop.

On the (motion)graphics field, abstraction is the easiest way for achieving the WOW effect because we have no comparison with reality. Imagine a floating sphere in a white room: you probably never saw this in real life so you can’t compare the dimensions, material and movement with what you experienced before and you end up paying attention to how real the lights, reflections and the physics look like. A lot of freedom if you think, but it becomes harder to propose something really new when “everything is new”.

I love tutorials and I believe the internet is the best school you will ever find. It speaks every language (through different medias), has the answer for probably all the software doubts you had and will have, offers an almost infinite database of resources, and the best part: most of these things for free! But one thing is for sure, you can’t learn a style. From a tutorial you may learn a software or a technique, but the style is something personal. By following a tutorial you are recreating something with a style that is not yours, and that is completely ok for learning, but you should focus on the process instead of the result, so you can play with it later and create something original. But that’s not what happens usually, and the proof is when you find the “Andrew Kramer style” popping on several reels online (and I’m the first to admit that I have a lot of Video CoPilot hints on my old projects).

Check the Greyscale Gorilla post and remember this video next time you enter in your digital playground!

Oh, Sperms… Such tiny little creatures in chains with a “zombie behavior” and a precise objective, probably the most feared living thing on this planet. They are responsible for moments of great happiness, or anxiety depending on the circonstances.

Unexpected pregnancy is an issue that’s becoming more and more common as days pass by, almost crossing the “banality” line. So I thought that maybe it was the right time to start seeing it as a special celebration date.

This is my contribution for you that must give important news for someone you care about, a “greetings card”. No more tension or postponing it, this card is as easy to use as the one you received on your birthday or last christmas. Just print it, write your personal message on the back and send it (or deliver it by person if you can’t resist to see the reaction). Its a special occasion and you should celebrate it!

If you prefer not to have to use just be smart and protect yourself before. If its already too late you can download it on flickr.

On the official website I discovered the voice had a name: Tim Minchin. “YouTube it” and you’ll find the live performance, a stand-up non-stop declaim (…and now that main character on the animation looks familiar, doesn’t him?). Tim, as he website says, “is an Australian musician, composer, songwriter, actor, comedian and writer” (yeah, the guy is a great pianist!).He composed storm in 2008 and less than one year later, thanks to a friend in common, Tim met Dan Turner, a british designer:

“We’re lucky enough to have a mutual friend,” Dan said.

“We went out for a bit of food with Tim, got him nicely drunk, and then asked if we could appropriate his material.” (from BBC News)

It took two and a half men years to finish the animation, but the result is gorgeous! I was also happy to see that its possible to think about long term projects… I would probably not handle a two years project ’cause I’m too anxious but this animation got me itching…

This big-headed bird was drawn by my girlfriend a long time ago and for some reason it got my attention. I really like the way she draws, completely free and fresh. I don’t know if its because for me it seems all “wrong” with just four “toes”, multiple wings, a strange beak and those ??? on the extremes of the head, but are exactly those things that makes it unique. And if I used the word “wrong” before is because for me it’s really hard to do something like that, to express myself without being limited by concepts of our real world. I’m trying to improve that, but its not yet as pure and direct as that simple drawing is to me.

Because it was not drawn by me it was harder to imagine how it should look like in three dee. I showed her the renders later on and her reaction was: “-But it was a sad owl, I did’t imagined it yellow…”. Lets say that this was my interpretation of the drawing. I never saw it as a sad owl, at the maximun an indifferent owl. The color is mainly my sick obsession with yellow. I tried it blue but it was too much “twitter”, so I went for yellow because it fits everything… =P

You can find more renders on flickr, or even download an iPhone wallpaper if you liked it…

I use to model in Rhino and Alias StudioTool several years ago and I still think “the product way” when modeling, imagining surfaces instead  of boxes, and that creates me some problems when I try to do something like this.

I wasted a lot of time trying to figure out the best way to model the head keeping a clean mesh, and even more time on small details (as cleaning one mesh in a completely random way, more like “messing” than “cleaning”).

Then when everything is done comes the time to render it, and this specific step can be endless. It’s the funniest part, where you can experiment more and change the project completely by just playing with the textures. By the end I decided it was not the case for realism so I pushed the “candie gloss” button as you can see.

There are a lot of things I would change/add but I liked the result. I thought I would be working a whole weekend on that but I’m not that patient, after a while I’m already like “enough, time to play with something else…”. You can check the renders on flickr!