I miss motion graphics.

I absolutely love my job! Lest you not believe me, I shall proclaim it again: I LOVE MY JOB. And my workplace and my boss and my coworkers (I work with my best friend every day, how cool is that?). But I miss one little piece of my previous job. I miss creating motion graphics. I miss stretching my ideas and inspiration in that way. I still believe it's better to be somewhere I like surrounded by people I want to be around than to be doing the work that I love, don't get me wrong. But I can't say that I don't miss the type of creative work I used to do. And though I know that I can always do that work for fun/me, I never realized quite how much time would go to watching my newborn baby, holding baby, and when I get time away from baby, doing laundry, housework and all those other undesirable things.

There's this very nice graphic video that I don't 100% agree with (I don't think it covers enough of the necessity to produce a quantity of work not just quality):

Here's to getting back to the work I love doing, soon I hope. How? I dunno. Ideas?

Favorite Motion Graphic Videos

Back when I was working on an Infographic for UM System (previous post) and the ADEPT introduction (previous post), I went through all my favorite motion graphic and infographic videos. Here are some of the motion graphic videos that helped inspire me... some have been around for a while and I continually come back to them, others are new finds for me:

7 Billion: Are You Typical?


Google - Introducing the Chromebook
Google - Introducing the Chromebook from Devon Hong on Vimeo.

Crisis of Credit


Oil'd
Oil'd from Chris Harmon on Vimeo.

Getting Lost
Getting Lost from Marco Bagni | LostConversation on Vimeo.

Don't Worry, Drive On: Fossil Fools & Fracking Lies
DON'T WORRY, DRIVE ON: Fossil Fools & Fracking Lies from MONSTRO on Vimeo.

The World is Obsessed with Facebook


Psychatric Answering Machine Typography Annimation


The Girl Effect
The Girl Effect from alexnbc on Vimeo.

Good: The Hidden Cost of War

Show-Me a Valuable Infographic

Early this year I was tasked with creating a motion infographic for the University of Missouri System that the President could use to share statistics outlining the value of UM in the state. I was frantic getting this project finished and I'm so glad that it's been released for the world to see:

(I do not own the copyright to this video. Copyright 2013 University of Missouri Board of Curators)

Motion graphics meets alcohol and substance misuse

How much do you know about alcohol and substance misuse and it's affect on society? Maybe it's one of those "out of sight, out of mind" things for you. It certainly was for me until I was given an opportunity to create a video that explains to health care professionals why they should care and what they can do about alcohol and substance misuse in their patients. Before you click away from this thinking "I'm not a health care professional, that's not for me," let me just tell you that it impacts you... even if not directly.

Someday, I'd like to see this become a PSA, but while I'm dreaming that vision away, here's the video I created that is now the first part of a training series:

ADEPT: an introduction from Academic Support Center on Vimeo.
An introduction to why health care providers should care about alcohol and substance misuse in their practice. The ADEPT training teaches health care providers what they can do about alcohol and substance misuse. MU-ADEPT (Alcohol and Drug Education for Prevention and Treatment) is funded by a grant from SAMHSA and utilizes SBIRT (Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment).

This is a perfect example of the kind of project I've been waiting for and why I wanted to work for an educational institution. The creators of this training series needed a way to convince their audience that this training is important. They were passionate about the information but it just wasn't coming across in their peruse-on-your-own powerpoint presentations. The hope is that this video is both educational and engaging.

For screen shots and more information about the creation of this video, visit the project on my behance portfolio.

On hold

Do you ever feel like your real life is on hold while your work life takes over? Well, that's how life has been for us lately, only with a few little trips dotting the landscape.

September and October have turned out to be very busy months at work. I had already started working on a very exciting all-graphics video for the ADEPT program at MU. Working on this introductory video which explains why healthcare providers (and really everyone) should care about alcohol and drug abuse and what can be done about it. Adept is a grant-funded project that teaches healthcare providers oh-so-important tools for addressing substance abuse in patients. I have learned so much on this project and the passion of our clients has rubbed off tremendously. I will share it when I can, as it's not fully completed yet.

September brought another interesting project to our team. The president of the university was responding to twitter questions via a video we produced. I got to work with new software to customize a virtual set for the president. I also made graphics and did the video composite for this video:



Last week we took a quick vacation to Orlando. It was my first trip to Disney World and it was a great time! Next week we're off to Washington DC again for work. Hopefully soon after I'll find the time to finish going through my pictures from this summer's Grand Canyon/Zion vacation and be able to post more of those pictures, and then I'll be sorting through Disney World and DC. Whew, when will I ever get to complete that quilt?

Plant Sciences and Campus Dining

What do Plant Sciences and Campus Dining have in common??

Answer: They had videos produced by us that were finished and mastered on the same day. Oh, and they both relate to food, but that's not really the answer I was going for. Other than the fact that they were finished on the same day, Plant Sciences was a year-long project which was mostly finished about a month ago, whereas I started the graphics and edit for the video for the NACUFS conference less than two weeks before I finished it.

The "NACUFS 2013 Conference Preview" video was shown last weekend at the latest conference. Each year the participants watch a video preview of the next conference. Rather than bore the participants with a traditional video, the idea was to entice them with this short "music video". I did not design the logos or the "tomato bomb box" featured at the end of the video, but I did make them move. For more info and stills, visit the project on my behance portfolio.


For "The Division of Plant Sciences" video, I made the graphics, made adjustments to the video backgrounds of the graphics, and even shot a few clips of the video.


For more examples of the work we've done at the University of Missouri, visit the MizzouVideo YouTube site.

The CAFNR Edge Opening Process Part 2

This is a continuation of my previous post on how I created the CAFNR Edge Opening. Picking up where we left off, in Photoshop.

8. Now, with all my layers in one single image, it tends to bog down After Effects to work with so much information at one time, so I decided to break it up into sections. I saved an image with everything. Then I began deleting layers, so that I had all of the layers for Biochemistry together and then saved that as a new file. Back in my previous file with all the layers, I deleted down to having only Agriculture degrees together and saved that as a new file. I did this until I had it broken into manageable portions (click on image to view larger):

9. Next, in After Effects, I imported my first segment, Biochemistry, as a Composition. (I did this one a little differently than the rest since it moves independently first and then when the whole image pans, it scales back and moves with the rest. So, I created the circle and insides as a document, and I also have a document with that and the expansion lines/coloring that matches the scale of the whole image.)

10. One of Andrew Kramer's AE tutorials shows how to do this next technique, where I used the Write-on Effect to make each part of the drawing appear. On the first layer to appear, I drew a mask:

Then, I applied the Write-on Effect:

And copied the mask path into the brush position. It automatically applies keyframes as roving keys for each of the points on the curve, so I can move the beginning and ending keys and all the middle ones move to adjust. Then I increased the brush size, changed the hardness, and brush spacing so that it draws on very smoothly. Lastly, I set the paint style to "reveal original image". (Note: at this point, if outer edges are still not covering and I can't or don't want to increase the brush size, I would make adjustments to the mask path. Those adjustments do not automatically change in the Write-on effect, you have to copy the path and paste it in the brush position again.)

11. Next, I adjusted where the write-on begins and ends in the timeline, and began adding a mask and write-on effect to all the other layers, off-setting their start so that they don't all draw on at the same time.

I set the text (made in Illustrator) so that it matched up with the molecule elements. I also duplicated that layer, erased all letters except "CAFNR" and put spaces between so that I could take the opacity of the first layer from 100 to 0%. With all the layers of this comp finished animating, it was time to have the Biochem comp animate in the full-image comp. Because the beginning would eventually animate on via the write-on effect, keyed to match with the narrator's hand movement, it was left for later. However, the transition from Biochem to the whole image required a scale and position change, done with keyframes.

I also parented the Biochem comp to the sketch and offset the beginning movement of the sketch so that it would begin as Biochem shrinks back into the image. The expansion lines and coloring were added as another comp and also parented. Since they did not require animation, I simply lined the comp up with the sketch and made that position/scale the settings I applied to all other imported comps/PSD files. (When you import a photoshop file with layers and tell it to import as a comp instead of as footage, it appears and acts like a comp in AE, simplifying the process of importing and re-aligning each individual layer.)

12. Next, I imported the Agriculture PSD file as a comp with editable layers.

I began steps 10-11, drawing masks, applying the write-on effect, and off-setting each layer to make the drawing "paint" itself on over time. The comp was parented just like the previous, and adjusted in the main timeline, to match the music.

13. Repeat steps 10-11 for all the rest of the psd/comps.
The background comp required making a pre-comp mask for the write-on effect to appear large enough.

(This was only for the first section where the background writes-on, but the rest of it is just visible since it has already appeared.)

14. Now that everything appears via the "write-on" effect, and exists in neat little "pre-comp" sections, they all get parented to a single layer. I animated the position of that layer over time and set all in-between keyframes to "rove across time". Then, I used a comp with simplified layers (flattened in photoshop, not including the "biochem" part since it distorts too much), and dropped in my polarized image to the scene. I warped the non-polarized flattened image using the "Mesh Warp" effect over time until I had half of the little planet. Using a dissolve between the now-warped panorama and the polarized image, I made sure my animation matched between the two and what's left is the polarized image, or "CAFNR little planet". Here's an image of the mesh warp:

The CAFNR Edge Opening Process Part 1

A year ago, I was hard at work creating an opening graphic sequence of all the majors in the College of Agriculture, Food, and Natural Resources. I finished the project and blogged about it at the time, but recently began to think that I might want to be able to look back at the process and maybe others would want to understand how I created it. So, in an effort to make the process about as transparent as possible, here's how I did it (including other tutorials that helped me figure out how to do this):

1. It began with an idea. The idea was to quickly showcase each of the CAFNR majors in a way that related them all to each other. I gathered inspiration from a number of places, two of which I blogged about. During the process of creating, the idea had to change based on feedback, but that's ok. Regardless, I began this stage of the process with a sketch:

2. Since I knew I wanted the final image to appear like a little planet at the end of the animation, I wanted to make sure my starting image could warp properly. So, I polarized my sketch in Photoshop so that I could make adjustments and have the image on hand as a reference. (Previously, I learned how to make little planets by polarizing images from this tutorial by Gavtrain.)

Before continuing to create the images for animation, I pulled my sketches into After Effects and made a sort-of animated storyboard. I took the panorama sketch on one layer and animated keyframes, then set those to "rove across time" and added text layers. I parented those text layers to my panorama layer so that they would all move together. Then I added the polarized image to the end, seeing how that might sync up. This allowed me to see where I needed to stretch the image to fit all the text in the allotted time. As it turned out, I needed to stretch the beginning to fit all the Agriculture-related majors. (click on image to view larger)

I also parented each of the text layers to the sketch so that they all move together.

3. In Photoshop, I created a new project with the preset of 1280 x 720, imported my panorama sketch, then increased the scale of the sketch so that I could view the biochem image at full-resolution. Then I selected Image > Canvas Size and increased the scale until I could see my whole sketch. The resulting canvas size was 7129 x 3129 pixels. I decreased the opacity of the sketch so that I could see my new drawing over top. I used the pen tool to re-draw each line that I wanted to appear as if it was drawn with one stroke, as in the book path seen here:

And, creating a new layer, I set my brush so that it had a varied shape that progressed based on "pen pressure" and hit the "stroke" button at the bottom of the "Paths" panel (where you see my cursor in the image below). I learned this technique from the light streaks tutorial, which I posted about early on in my blog. For the most part, each line that appears on the final image is its own layer and has its own saved path.

 Hint: since there are so many layers in the final images, it is helpful to label all layers and paths for ease in making changes which inevitably happen.

4. Because I was thinking about this in a process similar to my experience painting, I decided to give it an overall background "wash" of colors. To make the ground, I made a layer of green and then used the gradient tool, making the bottom darkest and giving the middle a lighter shade of green as seen here:

5. Next, for the sky, I made a new document (which wasn't really necessary, you could just make a new layer), set my foreground and background colors to blue and white, then used the clouds filter to create an overall texture.

The texture was too intense for me, so I increased the scale and might even have added some blur to it to decrease the contrast. Then, I added a haze at the bottom, by creating a light-colored gradient and applied that to the bottom.

I imported the sky image as one layer into my drawing, behind the ground.

6. It looked very flat to me, so to add some overall texture, I used a photograph I had taken of a piece of dyed fabric and desaturated it:

Then I added it as a layer over my whole image, changed the blend to "Overlay". Since it did not cover the whole image, I used the clone stamp tool with a soft edge to paint the same texture over the rest of the image as seen here:

(This texture layer remained on top of all the other layers, with the exception of the biochemistry circle. I wanted the texture to have the same scale when that part was full-screen, so I colored the inside of this circle separately, using radial gradients, and added the fabric texture on top, then collapsed those layers together.)

7. Next, I needed to color the rest of the image. Knowing that I wanted to animate the coloring process gradually, I painted in one color on a new layer, then painted another color on another layer, and so forth, as you can see with the layers I've highlighted in the image below.

I set my brush based on the area I was working with, but for the most part, I used the brush presets tool and set it to "wet" edges, used a sponge brush, and set the flow and opacity below 100%, as you can see in the image here:

Next: How I transformed the final PSD image into a motion graphic in After Effects.

A New Invention as a 3D Animation

In April, the University of Missouri Biodesign and Innovation team asked if I could create an animation for their new invention. The final animation was shown as part of their presentations to potential investors and end-users.

They modeled the device, which I then texturized, animated, and modeled other elements in the scene to bring it to "life" in this 3D animation:


The Innovaject team are: Mr. Michael Barnett, M.D., Ms. Miranda Shaw, Ph.D., and Ms. Xandra Sifuetes, MBA

The CAFNR Edge Opening

For many months at work, I've been working on establishing a working idea and creating an opening for a promotional video for one of the college's on the MU campus. The first time I blogged about this project was December 2010 and the last time I blogged on this project was in March 2011, when I finally started to get knee-deep into creating my opening graphic. These are the final illustrations that I drew in Photoshop and animated in AfterEffects:

And the opening (before the title was changed to "The CAFNR Edge: Find Your Connection") can be viewed on Vimeo:

MU CAFNR Edge title graphics from Katrina Kouba on Vimeo.

All images copyright Katrina Kouba Boles

Work for Work

So almost three years ago now, I worked on a video for the Center for Sustainable Energy at MU. We were really pressed to get it done in time for the energy summit. I was very proud of what we accomplished, especially since we had so much other work to do that I stepped up to the plate and wrote the script, came up with a visual style for it, created all the graphics, went on some of the shoots, and edited the final project together in time to play at a kiosk. Only, they decided to show it at a breakfast instead. I finally decided to upload the video to my vimeo account. I still think it has value. Does it need some extra finesse, of course, but there just wasn't time. No, I mean literally. I was working from about 7 am to about 11 pm with a couple of 15 -30 minute food breaks, sleeping and then getting up and going back to work. Anyway, three years later, and here it is:

MU's Center for Sustainable Energy from Katrina Boles on Vimeo.

Ads really can be Beautiful

Most of the commercials I end up seeing are trying to sell me a drug for a problem I don't have that may lead to a side effect worse than the problem I'm trying to cure. No thanks! It's no wonder I change the channel, mute, or otherwise avoid commercial interruptions. But occasionally, I come across a real diamond in the ruff and those are the times that I want to call up the production company and say "Hey, I have degrees in both design and art, am a working designer-artist, and though I wouldn't normally want to work in advertising, I'd love to work for you!" The commercials I've watched on Buck's website make me want to do just that. The difference is that with these commercials, they're all diamonds and there is no ruff...what a beautiful thing!

Here are a couple of my favorites:

C-Tree from Own Your C on Vimeo.



Sherwin Williams - Bees from Buck on Vimeo.


Google eBooks from Buck on Vimeo.

Progressive Animation

I've been looking over old favorite examples of what I call progressive animation today, as one of the producers I work with has asked for an opening title sequence for one of the colleges at MU is having us produce a video overview/promo for their college. (The promo of the University that we did this summer went over very well with this particular college and they want their own awesome promo.) So, the producer came to me with an idea that, as he was explaining it, sounded a lot like an animated progression that would take the viewer through all of the majors and give a holistic overview of the college and how all of these majors are related.

We were talking about finding videos that would somewhat depict what he had in mind and I started showing him some of my favorites. I have wanted to figure out how to do one of these progressive animations but hadn't yet had a "story" to follow as my basis.

"Drift" by Psyop is an animation I came across several years ago when I began working here, and I think it still holds up:


Next is one I found more recently and was very intrigued by the Paula Scher look that they used with the text, and then really liked the simplicity of the shapes which enhance the story told by the narrator. It's by GOODMagazine and is called "The Hidden Cost of War":

What I am, what I am not

Contrary to what may be expected of me in my job, I am not the type of artist/designer who can come up with an idea or create some sort of graphics without inspiration and without the end product in mind. Early in my job, I somehow managed to force myself to create a whole bunch of meaningless backgrounds for use on any show, and I still have those backgrounds but they don't really do anything for me and they don't really add much to the shows that they end up in. I occasionally get credit for making particularly exciting and special graphics, but what is often not realized, I inevitably made those graphics with that particular show and particular underlying audio in mind.

I have come to see the creation of graphics or creation of art in much the same way I expect inventors came up with their inventions. First there was a need or idea for the invention. I can't imagine it came from the emptiness of nothing, rather I think of most inventions as fulfilling a particular need or some desire. In much the same way, I don't believe in creating motion graphics for a show without knowing a little something about the show first. If fantastic graphics are required, then I require some things as well: answers to certain questions for the parties involved about the preconceived notions for how said graphics will look and feel to an identified audience. I also need to know the interested party's definition of "spectacular" or "fantastic" or whatever adjective is used to describe these graphics I am to make. How can I succeed without a definition for success?

With that in mind, I wonder if there are any artists out there who can essentially work in a vacuum. Are there some incredibly gifted people out there who never need google images or vimeo's groups? Yes, occasionally, I will come up with an idea that is completely unrelated to any project I am currently working on and that may get used for a future project, but once again, that future project must have a need for that graphic.

I suppose you could say that I don't believe in graphics for graphic's sake. Perhaps that's because I've seen productions where the graphics get in the way and actually distract from the overall end product.

In seeking inspiration, I went to one of my trusty sources, a group on vimeo for motion graphic artists. There I found another fantastic animation called FLUX by candas sisman and after watching this beautiful thing, I read the description below. Lo and behold, this artist got inspiration from somewhere too (from İlhan Koman). No vacuum here.


F L U X from candas sisman on Vimeo.

Humor

After the day I've had...mostly just fighting with Adobe Flash and being completely unsuccessful, I just need something that will make me laugh.

Well, I found The Onion's Greening the Iraq War on The Daily Green and it is just what I needed:


Right up there in wacky news...I found out last night that the Pyramid in Memphis, TN is going to become home to Bass Pro Shop. To quote Becky when we found out this news, "that sounds like an SNL sketch." Really, how bizarre is that. But I guess it's green...reusing building currently in disuse.

And, now for a more serious, but also really good video on the effects of the Iraq war:

created by GOODMagazine
I highly recommend watching more of their all-GFX videos, as they are really very interesting and well done.

Behance: A Site to Join?

There's something about working at a computer during the week that makes me not want to post a blog on the weekend. Never-the-less, today I found myself on websites I'd never been to, looking at marvelous graphic design. I started on designm.ag and was attracted to:

 

by Mike Campau at SeventhStreetStudio

by Mike Campau at SeventhStreetStudio

But these images led me to another site I'd never seen for creative professionals to post their work and get noticed! Hmmm, methinks I need to sign up. I wonder how much I could post of my on-the-job work since I don't personally own the copyright. Anyone know? More fascinating, impressive things were found on behance.net

"Resonate" by Si Scott

The only problem is that I can't embed any of the videos uploaded to the site, so you'll have to click on the link to check this one out:

"Aregak" in the portfolio of Lilit Hayrapetyan