Improving

Since introducing Cinema 4D into my workflow (finally!), I'm looking into recent or past projects that could probably benefit from some real 3D. In the Comcast promo video there is a sharp contrast between the videos I rendered in C4D and those done in AE, at least to me.

Here is a video cube that was done in AE (top) several weeks ago, and then was redone in C4D (below). It was a little tricky getting the videos into the textures, turns out C4D is very particular about the kinds of videos that you can use.



This was an attempt to create a galaxy zoom-out animation to zoom out from the Earth to view the entire galaxy as a whole. I had a very frustrating problem in AE getting my high-res planetary textures to show up properly in high-res (top) but it never panned out. In C4D it was many times easier putting a much better looking planet Earth (bottom)

The Comcast promo went up last week on Comcast On-Demand, if you are in the Chicagoland area you can view the promo by going to the On-Demand menu, selecting GET LOCAL, then CHICAGO CITY, then FUSION DANCE.

I did not edit the video, though I wish I did. Someone else edited the video, I think it was the Fusion marketing manager who did it. It's not a bad video, it's just that I wish they told me they were going to use some of my old (to me, outdated) videos that I created for them a month ago for the demonstration to Comcast. They used my old Cube rotating videos, wall-flash intro, and countdown.

They did have a scene in the video which was a live interview with a music artist, and it was HORRIBLE! Bad lighting, sound, overall quality was equal to a cell-phone-camera-shot Youtube video. I mentioned this to them (nicely of course) and they said they had many problems with the camera that they rented. They hope to iron out the issues by next time. I also made myself available for editing these videos if they need me to.

It is certainly nice to have my material for show on such a public and well-known distribution!

Right now, I'm going to be going through a revision of the old videos to make them more sleek and sexy, so that they can match the quality of the FUSION animation that I made for them last week.

For the next set of material, they will (hopefully) provide me with several music videos so that I can incorporate them into my updated animatics. Although, after this promo, I'm not sure of the direction in which they want to go with the next set of material.

Remote Collaboration

Saturday night, I held a conference meeting and webex on my computer for the Fusion producers to go over my designs and animation. We talked about changing a few things here and there, and they were able to watch me in real-time make changes to the project animations.

They were really impressed, not just with the animation, but with the ease of collaboration during that time and they felt that a lot was accomplished to allow me to produce the videos they needed. That was my first time using the remote collaboration software and it worked like a charm, it's so nice not to have to drive into the city and show things on my little laptop.

After that though, the changes they wanted required me extending an animation 200%, and that animation alone was about 22 hours to render, and they needed it by Sunday night. The animation finished rendering at 11:30 PM, so I was able to get an HD video to them before I went to bed.

I am currently waiting for word on when the video will be available on Comcast on-demant, can't wait!

Working with Reflections

At first I wanted to reflect a part of the Chicago city skyline onto the edge of the logo and zoom out revealing the entire logo, sorta like the way the Warner Brother's logo animation where they show the WB water tower reflected on the ege of the emblem before zooming out to reveal the logo.

But then the emotion changed. And I felt like I should give a "re-birth" to the logo. The "F" logo on the Fusion Website and all the animation's I have done in past incorporated the same sorta 2-D look with some 3-D elements, and now it's full blown 3-D with a sleek, elegant style giving the brand an updated look.

So I decided to reflect the standard "F" Fusion logo in the New logo and then zoom out revealing the new logo, like showing the Fusion brand "breaking out" of it's boundaries as an Internet Radio Station.

Here are some results: