A few weeks ago, I posted a project, inspired by some recent space animation from Trapcode Creator Peder Norrby. It started to have a real 80′s vibe so I went full on cheesy sci-fi. Here’s the result:

Red Giant TV Episode 69 – Cosmodius: Creating a Retro Sci-fi Logo Animation

In this episode of Red Giant TV, Aharon Rabinowitz walks you through the process of creating a Retro Sci-Fi logo. In addition to creating the logo, he’ll show you how to age the video to make it look like it came out of the early 80′s.

Watch the tutorial HERE.

Beats Antique, out of Oakland CA, are not your average experimental world fusion and electronic music group. If there were such a thing. They have described their music as an electro, xfunctional, acoustic, hip-hop, melodramatic, down tempo-freakness, world, gypsy, funk, vulcan, get down off your butt, sound. I’m serious – check out their interview with KVRX 91.7FM Austin:

The trio got together in 2007 in San Francisco to combine the artistic talents of David Satori (guitar, sax, viola, and percussion), Sidecar Tommy Cappel (keys, toy piano, drums, and percussion), and Zoë Jakes (belly dancer, composer, and arranger). All three are from a performance arts background and have a very visual approach to music.

Their latest music video, ‘Revival’, was directed by Ivan Landau who was also responsible for post production and VFX. Using both Magic Bullet Suite and Trapcode Software, Ivan’s video is an intricately woven visual tapestry that is a masterful example of how the two software tools can work in unison.

Landau has said it was ‘amazing, watching ‘Revival’ materialize from subconscious to screen’, so we asked him to tell us a bit more about this enthralling piece of work.

How did the video come about?

“Revival” started as a little dream.  It was a basic story of an epic journey to restore life to a world in decay.  It was a world made of snow and paper cutouts.  It was abstract, beautiful and weird.  I thought of Beats Antique and Leighton Kelly immediately.  Zoe Jakes, David Satori and Tommy Cappel of Beats Antique are artists that I have watched for many years.  I always admired their visual style and amazing live show.  They are a band who put equal emphasis on the visual as well as the musical aspects of their performance.  I approached them with the idea and they were immediately on board.

You talk about the project being a collaborative dream, were you familiar with Leighton Kelly’s work before?

This really was a collaborative dream.  Leighton Kelly is one of my favorite artists.  He captures profound emotion with subtle strokes.  I have known him for several years and, after perusing through his blog (http://dayone2012.tumblr.com/), I was totally inspired to collaborate with him.  The initial dream I had actually had Leighton’s illustrations in it.  I was a little nervous that if Leighton couldn’t do the drawings then the video couldn’t happen.  There was a lot trust between everyone making this video (namely Beats Antique, Leighton Kelly and Austin Rhodes, my cinematographer).  Everyone contributed.  It was a surprisingly smooth collaboration considering we were very rarely all in the same place.  The band was on tour for most of the project and, with the exception of our initial brainstorming session, Leighton was in India and Bali with a sketchpad, a small scanner and sporadic internet access.

How long did Revival take to produce, concept to completion?

The entire production, from subconscious to completion probably took about four months.  It’s hard to gauge exactly how much time was spent in actual production and post because I was usually working on it after hours, weekends and while other jobs were rendering.  At some point, for reasons beyond rationale, I decided I would just do all the post production myself.  I had a pretty clear vision of what I wanted it to look like and when I started experimenting with the shots I just couldn’t stop.

What was your favorite part, or particular sequence of the production?

My favorite parts of the video are the illustrated snowscapes and the dance sequence.  The illustrated environments were rewarding for me because it was like recreating the dream I had, except better.  Once Leighton started handing off his illustrations with these little details like spats and bow ties on the deer, I knew we were on to something.  The final dance sequence was amazing to work on because it was a total experiment.  Zoe designed the costumes and choreographed the sequence for the three main dancers (herself, Kami Liddle and Auberon Shull).  We basically could just hit record and they would nail it on queue.  I experimented with a lot of different looks for that sequence (macro photography and lazers!) and decided that stop-motion paper was the most appropriate.  I wanted it to look a little rough and out of control, beautiful and tactile.  Austin and I spent some long nights crumpling paper.

What do you like about using Trapcode?

I’m blown away by what people are doing with Trapcode.  I easily impress myself when I just make a little snow or floating dust particles with Particular or throw some Shine on some otherwise drab elements.  I had experimented with using organic elements for the snow, and while there is some of that in there, it never looked exactly like i wanted it to.  Particular is so dialable you can always get the look you want.  plus, how else could you make thousands of little fish explode from someone’s head? (that didn’t make the cut).

Do you have a favorite aspect to using Magic Bullet Suite?

I really do love Looks.  It almost feels like cheating.  It provides such good baselines that can be endlessly dialed.  I’ve actually learned a lot about color by inspecting and tweaking the Looks settings.

Were any of the Red Giant tutorials helpful?

I used to be a bit of a tutorial junky.  I’m getting better, usually not more than one a week at this point.  I’m basically self-taught so online tutorials have helped me tremendously.  I can’t even count how many of Aharon’s tutorials I’ve watched.  I’ve probably watched all the Red Giant tutorials.  I love how some of the Red Giant tutorials include the projects files.  Being your own teacher can form some bad or at least inefficient habits, so opening up clean project files has enlightened me to some better techniques.

We love the intricate blend of Leighton Kelly’s work and if you’re familiar with the band you should spot some of their signature imagery used in Revival.

Ivan Landau is well known and admired for his work as VFX Editor on feature films such as Sin City, Aeon Flux, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and Blade Runner (Final Cut version). And we’re hoping ‘Revival’ is just this start of him turning his talents to music videos.

Links:

• Beats Antique http://beatsantique.com/
• www.facebook.com/beatsantiquefans
• Ivan Landau http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1010291/
• Leighton Kelly http://dayone2012.tumblr.com/

When Avril Lavigne launched her first perfume – ‘Black Star’ – it was praised as a sultry mix of dark fruits and dark chocolate. It was even nominated for The FiFi Awards, an annual event hosted by The Fragrance Foundation to recognize achievements in the scent industry.

From that auspicious start, the challenge for the promotions company was to create a commercial that would capture the visual essence of this unique fragrance.

Working for NY Visual Effects and Design Boutique SUSPECT, Jesse Newman created a captivating vision, using Trapcode Particular to add the final and literal sparkle. Jesse took some time out to tell us about his work and use of Trapcode.

“I’ve been fortunate to have worked on several creatively challenging and award-winning projects, including feature films (Armageddon), commercials (M&Ms, Verizon, HP), broadcast designs (Disney, SciFi, HBO) and short films (Shapeshifter, One Rat Short).

As far as workflow, the Trapcode plug-ins are regulars in my bag of tricks.  They are incredibly intuitive and powerful.  I used Form to create the interactive world of sparkling stars in the Avril Lavigne “Black Star” commercial and Particular to create elements ranging from the streaks in the Verizon FIOS logo to the bubbles following the fish in Shapeshifter.”

Jesse also told us “My true passion has always been my personal art, which gravitates toward hyper-real fantasy art.  I am currently on a year-long sabbatical to focus on an epic personal project for my daughter, depicting her as Gaea, Goddess of Earth.”

We wish him all the best with his personal work and look forward to seeing his new projects develop.

We really want to ensure that your workflow with the new OBJ feature in Form 2.0 is as seamless as possible so we’ve been constantly looking at that feature since release to ensure we have it working just right. This maintenance release focusses on that feature along with a few other goodies to keep things humming. Fixes in this release:

Form 2.0.2:

• We have improved the import of OBJ files so you should, in most cases, be able to have your OBJ match up exactly with how you had your coordinates set when you exported the OBJ from your 3D modelling application. A new parameter is available to turn this behaviour on and off so as not to affect existing projects.
• Motion blur calculations for the offset parameter with OBJ sequences has been fixed up so it now works properly.
• A crashing bug was fixed that gets triggered if you attempt to import an OBJ file that has unused uvw/vt coordinates.
• We fixed a problem with importing OBJ files that had a file path that contained non-ASCII characters.

Lux 1.2.2:

• It was possible to end up with a vertical line rendered in your project while using Lux. This issue is now fixed.

Bonus:

• Our suite installers are also relatively new and we’ve been working on improving those across all of the suites. On OSX, for this release, you will notice that the installer size is significantly smaller – this is not a bug – we’ve fixed up how we package our installer to make your downloads quicker and easier.

Download the latest Trapcode Suite installer here.

With a mantra that says “We don’t do annoying rubbish!” I knew Barbeque Design were going to be something a bit special, and they certainly don’t disappoint.

In April this year Barbecue produced a concept commercial for Toyota to introduce the new Yaris at the 81st Geneva International Motor Show. This elegant piece of motion graphics was developed using Trapcode Form, so we just had to ask Barbeque about their choice of software.

Managing Director Rüdiger Chmielus told us, “I think that from the moment I first used “Shine” I was a Trapcode follower. Especially the combination of Shine and Particular are essential for the typical “Barbecue” style. We use them on every project – even if it’s not obvious, they’re there. We definitely love this software!”

“The Yaris Project was finished under a very tight schedule and the final production took just under two weeks. We had one unit doing all the rotoscoping and tracking while another unit worked on the composites and the backgrounds.”

Based in Frankfurt and founded in 2007, postproduction and motion graphics studio Barbecue Mediendesign GmbH have produced consistently stunning concepts for brands such as Mercedes-Benz, Audi, Lexus and Porsche, not to mention numerous television ads, main titles and trailers.

As well as using Trapcode for commercial productions, some of their experimental work is equally impressive.

Also, check out their amazing show reel:

In case you missed it, we recently shipped Trapcode Form 2.0. Never content to just sit back, we spent some time post-release fixing up a few issues that we discovered and wanted to share the fixes for those issues with you today (as well as a bonus fix for Lux!). The issues we have resolved:

Lux 1.2.1:

• If the spotlight was pointed at 90 or 270 degrees to the camera, you end up with a single line of transparent pixels.

Form 2.0.1:

• A crash with opening some projects with OBJ models containing texture coordinates.
• Added support for point cloud and vertex only OBJs.
• Fixed an error when keyframing fractal field parameters.
• Catch and return AE error when using multi-processing with low memory, now returns an error dialog instead of rendering blank frames.
• Fixed world transform being double what it should be.
• Added Invert Z option for OBJ models exported with a z axis opposite to that of After Effects.

You can grab the latest Trapcode Suite 11.0.1 installer here. The suite installer contains the fixes for both Form and Lux.

Every once in a while I like to put Netflix aside and look for a good short film on Vimeo (I have a Roku box, so I can watch Vimeo on my TV). There’s a lot of great stuff there, from a lot of talented people. In fact, I recently found a film called Unemployment, that was just so wonderful, I wanted to share it with you.

The hilarious, well shot, well-acted, and well written film is co-directed and acted by Chris Crutchfield and Austin Herring, two very talented guys who who’ve done a lot of great work together over the years. Trapcode Particular and Magic Bullet Suite, which are both part of Chris’ and Austin’s filmmaking arsenal, were used in Unemployment.

From Austin: “Trapcode continues to blow my mind every time they come out with a new plug in, and its no surprise that Magic Bullet is quickly becoming THE color grading software of choice for guerrilla filmmakers like us and high end Hollywood professions too. I use those on pretty much every single project I work on.”

From Chris: “Red Giant products have been a crucial tool in my arsenal. It’s like having a Swiss army knife of plugins, where there’s always something I can manipulate or modify, with relative ease and speed, that will allow me to achieve whatever look or effect I’m going for.”

I’m not new to Chris and Austin’s work. I actually found their stuff a couple of years ago, when they were working together at IMIGpro, where they created a series of “educational” videos to explain the various facets of our industry. I never realized how little I, and the rest of Hollywood, actually knew…

Ok, maybe they’re not educational, but they’re seriously funny – and there’s a bunch more, so check ‘em out. We’re glad that our products help such talented people tell their stories.

Check out more of Chris Crutchfield’s work HERE.

Check out more of Austin’s Herring’s Work HERE.

Episode 60: Creating Light Effects with Trapcode 3D Stroke

In this episode of Red Giant TV, Owain Street shows you how he created the beautiful and evocative light effects from a series of commercials for Demonfort University using Trapcode 3D Stroke. Keep your eyes open for great shortcuts and techniques.

Watch it HERE.

T. S. Eliot said “Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood,” and it’s the perfect way to describe the mesmerizing collage of images, words and music blended together to create ‘Found’, a stereoscopic short film by Nice Shoes out of NY.

This sumptuous, 3min 12sec showcase is part of the “Verses” series, where the studio challenges itself to visually interpret short poems. But it didn’t just open a poetry book and pick a random page.

Brian Bowman, Creative Director at Nice Shoes, found the poem scrawled on a piece of paper that caught on his shoe as he was walking down a city street at the end of a particularly stressful day. He picked it up, read it, reflected on it and tucked it in his wallet, chalking it up as just another one of those ‘only in New York’ moments.

From this inauspicious beginning, a work of great beauty began to take shape, and we were delighted to find that Trapcode and Knoll Light Factory were some of the go-to tools for the artists that brought ‘Found’ to its visual reality.

Brian told us: “Working with Red Giant’s unique tools we were able to make environments really come alive. The tools proved robust in a stereoscopic workflow, important for those subtle depth flourishes that strengthen the audience’s visceral experience of the film in 3D.”

Here’s the 2D version of the short film, followed by a video breakdown:

Learn more about Nice Shoes HERE.

Check out Episode 59 of Red Giant TV to learn about using Trapcode Software to create Stereoscopic 3D effects.

When Kung Fu Panda first hit cinemas in 2008 we fell in love with martial arts misfit Po the Panda and the Furious Five as they fought and defeated the evil Tai Lung. But this year the challenge for the teams at Dreamworks was how to create the second installment and build on the successes of the first film.

In Kung Fu Panda 2, not only have the characters developed, but the film itself has upped its game with more explosions, more chases and more visual excitement – all thanks to the dedicated VFX teams at Dreamworks.

Po Finds the Truth – Image courtesy of DreamWorks Animation

Lead After Effects animator at Dreamworks, Daniel Hashimoto and his close-knit team of AE artists have brought amazing impact to some of the film’s most memorable sequences, using Trapcode Particular and Form.

Po Finds the Truth (2) – Image courtesy of DreamWorks Animation

Daniel told us: “One of the film’s most dramatic sequences – “Po Finds the Truth” – pulled out all the stops. In this sequence, which involves a village on fire near the snowy woods, Form and Particular were used to create snow, embers, smoke clouds, and a highly-stylized flame effect. The customization and versatility of Particular made it a very powerful tool to have at our disposal. Our Visual Development Artists painted the stylized effects which we wanted to bring to life in the 2D sequences, but not just in 2D, but also in stereoscopic 3D.** And since Particular, Form, and Horizon all work within a 3D environment, they were ideal for the look we wanted to achieve.

Flame example Kung Fu Panda 2 courtesy of DreamWorks Animation

** Check out Episode 59 of Red Giant TV to learn about using Trapcode Software to create Steroscopic 3D effects.