Videos get moved and pulled all of the time and it's tough to keep them updated. Please email us if you find a dead link with the URL of the posting. If you know where there is a working link, even better! Thanks a million!
The Red Giant/MyToolfarm NAB Contest submission was officially over earlier this week and we had several terrific entries. Because of a problem we had with our uploader, the entries were also collected via another method, so this is not every entry unfortunately. This will give you a good cross-section of what was entered and if the winning entry is not in this bunch, we will put it online. There were about 24 entries in total. There are some super talented designers and motion graphics artists out there. I was blown away by some of the entries.
For a video to qualify, they must use Trapcode Form or Magic Bullet Looks. The first place winner will receive a trip to NAB and present their project at the Red Giant Booth. The first and second runners up will receive software.
The official winners will be announced next week. The list below is in the order they were submitted from newest to oldest and is no indication of the winners.
I should also note that the star ratings are not accurate if you view at MyToolfarm, so please ignore them. I think they work fine, but I wonder if someone has come through and given them all low marks just to be funny. All of these videos deserve higher ratings than they've received. I'm going to look into this.
Jim G., one of our fine Toolfarm Forum Experts, IM'd this terrific reel from Ronin. I love reels like this - where they actually do some cool editing and sound effects to make a cohesive demo, instead of just string together an endless assortment of interesting clips. There are clever transitions and cool sound effects with the edits.
Stash Media Stash 33 trailer came out earlier this month. Man, this is some seriously cool work. I'm too lazy to re-write the description:
Fun, in all its shades and guises, is the operative word for Stash 33.
For instance: we open the main program with complete bunny-mad chaos from Pleix and MacGuff for Groove Armada, and then trample on through Psyop’s hip-rebel-comedy for Fanta, HSI’s deadpan take on Reyka Vodka, manic pirate/bovine/bicyclist stop motion for Cravendale from Nexus, crazed MTV Asia work from JL Design in Taiwan, Wilfrid Brimo going berserk for V Energy drink, Han Huggebrooge’s unhinged vignettes for Dutch TV, Make’s extremely flammable chipmunks, very curious characters from Curious Pictures for Crunch and we cap it all with a surreal and utterly original bit of action-lunacy about courage, show business and inter-media love created at Supinfocom by Corentin Laplatte, Samuel Deroubaix and Jerome Dernoncourt,,, you get the idea – check below for the full list of contributors.
Method's CG Reel came out today. I love the stuff done for Sears with the power tools blooming out of flowers. Amazing 3D and compositing. You'll see the fern and pink flowers with the drills. I first saw those spots at the Chicago Motion Graphics Festival in January 2007. Mindblowing effects.
Mason Dixon of the Chicago Motion Graphics Festival sent this one onto me. The Somersault's Winter Reel is incredible. I don't like to post too many reels, but this one has a combination of diverse styles, high-end work and innovation.
Somersault has a new site too. And... they're looking for a full-time and freelance 2D and 3D artists, so if you're looking in Chicago, here's an opportunity.
We're looking for a few good animators, editors, students or even just fans of visual effects to contribute to this blog. Not HTML skills necessary, but a good eye for the most ground-breaking and rule-breaking techniques and styles out there. We want eye candy! Yes, we do.
Interested? Drop me an email and tell me why you should be considered. You would be expected to make one post per week, but you can post more, as long as they're quality videos. You're welcome to add your thoughts and opinions about the video, too.
Natush, of Munchen, Deutschland, has produced some very cool visual effects, but what I'm really digging is the way that they present their work. You can watch their work as you normally would, or you can hover over and see the post production work as your watching. See the original shots before the matte paint and keying are done. Alternately, you can click to view two video windows playing simultaneously, with the pre-production in one window and the post-production in the other. Such a simple idea, but so well executed. Really cool work, too.
This is definitely one of the nicest student showreels I have seen. This was done by Waldemar Borth, from Mannheim, Germany, and this showreel won an Animago award. Hey, congrats.
Students, take note... I teach at an art school, and many student reels are not very good. Yes, they try, and I don't want to be too cruel, but I see some recurring problems with the reels. Many are too long and repeat content, contain that is very amateurish, or looks exactly like something in an iPod commercial/Comedy Central ad/Green Day video. My advice? Be original and make your reel stand out. Make it personal. Put your best work on it. Keep it fresh. I wrote a short article on creating a proper demo reel if you're interested.
Waldemar does it right. The auto commercial and other content looks very professional, not like student work. He keeps it short. He even uses, I believe, original music. He shows a variety of styles, too. Nice work, Waldemar.
Normally I would link to an entire page, but there's so much cool stuff from Exopolis, I thought I should post it all. Exopolis is an L.A. based creative studio that develops for seemingly every type of media available. I don't know about you, but I'm inspired!
My homie, Dru, sent me this one asking how the keying was done on the BET spot and the roto on the NASCAR spot. My response: Very carefully. Actually, I told him he needs to get Ultimatte Advantage and Silhouette FX Roto.
Jerome Olivier is a mograph artist who has worked in Tokyo for many many years. His reel is terrific - lots of variety, interesting edits, cool music. Those of you working on your own demo reel... take notes!
You may recognize his name from the film Missing Pages, a unique short film that has won film festival awards all over the world. I interviewed Jerome in February 2006.
Onesize is a production studio in Delft, The Netherlands and I gotta say, this one blew me away. It's the Onesize 2006 Demo Reel. They're taking styles and techniques that have been done before and put a new interesting twist on them. The result is mindblowing! Seriously cool stuff.
They've done work for MTV, KFC, Nike, Vans, Mitsubishi and others.
(Note: This file link says temp, so please tell me if it gets moved and you get a broken link. That happens sometimes, to my dismay.)
I like to get some variety up here by featuring projects from big post houses, cool student work and some interesting techniques and styles that I've never seen before. This one came via Charlie Forbes, one of our Toolfarm Forum Experts.
Nicholas C. Raftis III, a fellow Michigan artist, is a video/audio artists create inherently fused synaesthetic animations and music, via programming generative systems in Max/Msp/Jitter by Cycling 74. I have no idea what that means, but the result is really interesting and fun. His work deals with abstractions of space and reality.
He has performed live music and video under the pseudonym "OOO" at numerous large scale electronic music shows, alongside notable artists such as Juan Atkins, Wu-Tang Clan, Jimmy Edgar, Richard Devine and more. He has done interactive audio/visual installations, published albums of music on many record labels, and screened films in festivals worldwide.
This is Nicholas' Demo Reel. I would like to point out the twisting effect on the city scape and the cool graffiti effects. Very cool, indeed.
A little trip down memory lane... This AE 3.0 Promotional piece is an infomercial-type video from 95 or 96 with appearances from Trish Meyer, Tim Sasson, Lynda from Lynda.com and others. Classic. Oh, how far we've come.
Re:Vision Media is a company run by Brandon Hirzel, a new media artist from Detroit (props for Michigan!), now living in San Diego, California. He works as a freelance motion graphics, cinematography, music video, VJ...
I saw his eye-popping reel on Brandon's MySpace URL. What really delights me about this reel is the effect where the video freezes, an outline is drawn around the character and the person becomes a bit posterized. As this is happening, textures, graffiti, lines and other elements draw on behind him. Okay, this effect is all-over right now, but I haven't seen it this superbly. There's so much detail. A definite 10 on the cool factor.
The reel is vivid, energetic, tight, fun to watch and everything a reel should be. Well played, Brandon. Well played.
Check out Mr. Monterani's demo. I really like this guys work - the simplicity and style. I really dig the bit wit the dots and the Americas which become Antartica. This is just quite a bit different than most of the work listed here in Inspirations... and probably more along the lines of what many of you do from day to day. The music reminds me of something from Down With Love - fun flick.
Besides having a domain name that I'm sure people would fight over, motion-graphics.com, Erik's work is marvelous... really cool and different. One of my students alerted me to his site after asking me how he did the Lance Armstrong animation.
Fabulous compositing and 3D, and really good compression on their Quicktimes. The Embassy Visual Effects Inc. has created some (un)believable and seamless effects for the big screen. I love the creeping roses and the collapsing Guggenheim.
Wow! This is one of the best reels I've ever seen. It starts off with cool live action vector-looking people (ala iPod) and then goes into a stellar showcase of work. My fave is the butterfly/flower animation that's about the halfway point. I really dig the way the ended it too. A+
shake.com - Quality animations, a melange of styles and some high-profile clients make this reel a good fix when you hit a creative block. Lloyd Alverez has one of the more modest sites I've seen in a while, but it really puts the focus on his outstanding reel.
Yeah, an interesting site to say the least. As you watch the gentleman in the leotard do hip swivels, take a peek in the Broadcast section. Gmunk has a great style - of course, I've seen this style a lot lately, but I saw it here first. Make sure to check out Happy+Reel_02.
MyToolfarm Red Giant NAB Contest Entries
