Cannonball Media

This is a parallax video I created from one of my grandfather's WWII photos. I believe most of his photos were taken in Italy.

This effect is created by separating elements in a photo based on proximity to the camera and then adding each layer to a 3D scene and moving a 3D camera through the scene. This gives the illusion of depth.

This was a fun weekend animation project for a great organization that supports one of our local middle schools.

Waiting for an important email...

This was a fun weekend project to add some motion capture to 3D models and give it a 2D cartoon style.

This was my experiment turning a sound wave into a tangible item. In this case, it was a piece of jewelry.

I recorded the audio and displayed it's waveform. I turned the waveform into an Illustrator vector graphic. Then I extruded and revolved it in a 3D application.

This video shows the design and manufacture of some custom basketball awards we made. We got the idea from a wood working magazine and applied modern manufacturing techniques to achieve our goal. Thanks to Wally Corwin and Mike Walker for your help with this project.

A short animation project I worked on with my kid this weekend. This one combines motion capture animation with dynamics.

Reshuffle

A recent motion graphics project

A little something for Valentine's Day.

Motion graphics using particle trails with depth of field on the camera.

Shape blending to make motion graphics animation.

This animation was created using motion capture data on a 3D model of a soccer player and rendered with a solid white shader to give it more of a 2D appearance. A toon outline was applied to give it some depth and the text was animated in After Effects.

This is a short animation created for a local high school play video prop. The request was for a complex looking equation that is animated as though the actor is writing it on a chalkboard.

Do do this, I found something that looked somewhat complex and had it written out on paper with a black Sharpie. Then I keyed out the white background of the paper and used After Effects to animate a path that was used as a mask to reveal the text underneath. The chalkboard sound effect was added at the end.

Dragon Hunter Bubble Gum Animation

This was another use of motion graphics driven by audio. The song is called Dragon Hunter and this particular take on it was composed by my oldest (which is the real reason I made the animation in the first place - who knows how long he will let me do this stuff!???).

Tornado Animation

This is an experiment in fluid dynamics. I made this by emitting particles from an hourglass shape and made them follow the outer surface area in a spiral fashion. Then the particles were set to emit a dynamic fluid that was adjusted to look like smoke/dirt/cloud. The settings were tweaked and a bit of color added. You can see some of the particle sphere shapes in the simulation at the top and bottom of the vortex. I forgot to turn them off, but decided to keep them to better demonstrate the flow of the vortex.

Motion Graphics Trails On Bellydancing Mocap

I used some motion graphics trails on this bellydancing mocap animation to show the dance sequence without showing the dancer. My kid says it looks like a school of fish.

This is an animation in the same style as yesterday's post, but this guy is animated.

Here is the same animation from a different angle. These datasets are fun to work with.

Mandelbulb Animation 1

Here is an animated version of the still image posted a few days ago. This shows the change in the form of the mandelbulb 3D fractal when the mathematical function animated from the power of six to the power of twelve and back again.

Baneeneez Coconuts And Grapes

Hey guys! I worked on this project with my son over the last couple of weekends and it turned out pretty cool. He made this music titled, "Baneeneez Coconuts And Grapes" and I made a little motion graphics animation to go with it. I have been wanting to experiment with driving graphics using audio, so this was a good opportunity to do so.

The main animation is just some 3D cubes that are hooked up to the audio using the motion graphics tool set in Maya. The scale of the cubes in driven by the waveform of the audio and rendered using a surface shader, to give it a 2D look. That footage was then combined with the audio in After Effects and the audio was converted to keyframes. Those keyframes programatically drive the glow effect that you can see when the cubes expand, by using an expression to link the glow expansion parameter to the size of the waveform in the audio.

Corn In Autumn

The cooler weather inspired this stock footage.