Happiness

Since the new year began, I've done quite a bit of thinking and reading about what it makes to be happy. And though most of my conclusions are repetitions of previous epiphanies, I also realize that thinking about what makes us happy and reading about happiness is part of how I can become more positive. I came across this short movie and think it is so worth watching. (It doesn't hurt that TJ Thyne is in the starring role, and I think he is fabulous on Bones!)

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.

No more imagination procrastination, please

At work I've had a few meetings about a potentially ongoing project for one of the colleges on campus. I was looking for inspiration to bring to my meeting today, thinking the project was essentially an ongoing retrospective told from the individuals who are part of the college's distinguished history, and was really trying to focus on how to make graphics for a prototype project about multiple people yet only having one person to begin with.

So I tried to focus on what the "many" could look like. I also began with something our client pointed out from the beginning - that it should have warmth and be human. I couldn't help but think of Dow Chemical's campaign "The Human Element" (Dow seemed to create this campaign to bury a shady past that has dolled out death and destruction for unknown thousands, but the ads themselves are quite good).

  

Just as as side-note, I can't think of Dow without thinking about the Yes Men who brought my attention to some of the atrocities of our generation. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend their documentary "The Yes Men Fix the World". It's very funny and poignant as well.

I also thought of the title sequence for In Plain Sight, a TV show that I've been watching on Netflix, which makes use of many pictures that come together to form one big picture - I've also seen this done in the movie Love, Actually.

However, I felt I would be coming to the meeting unprepared if I had not thought about how to incorporate ideas into something usable, which sent me down the road of procrastination by way of searching for more information. I found a couple of other images that could inspire a title sequence. The first is called "Houdini in plain sight", by blogger Ted Warnell:

And the second is an image of the HSBC history wall, found among images of cool places to work, on a UK site of "The 6 Coolest Offices in the World":

Surely, among all of these visuals I can transform these ideas into something else that is perfect for this project, right?

National Geographic...An old goal? A new one?

So, today as I was going through old email which I seem to never bother to sift, I found a bunch of National Geographic emails. The one on great migrations caught my interest, and when I went to the site, I was hooked by this lovely extras "music" video:

If you know me, you probably know that I love butterflies. I think it's the little girl in me who for some reason always wanted to be a tomboy but could never fully shake my love for beautiful things. Though I have grown up in both the proverbial and physical sense, I do still have a deep love for beautiful things - nature fitting right in to that category. Working for National Geographic was a goal for me not so many years ago, and though I do forget about my job-related desires when living the everyday work lifestyle, I wonder if I haven't lost some of that mystery and I wonder... how do the people who work for NG keep that mystery alive? How does anyone keep that magic alive in the everyday mundane "I get up, I eat, I go to work, I come home..."?

And now I'm reminiscing upon my little-girl dreams of becoming a marine biologist, my young woman dreams of working in the peace corps or for greenpeace, and my mid-twenties desire to work for a company that cares, that inspires, and is more human than corporate. Is that dream still there or has the process of day-in/day-out sucked it away?

Inspiration Research is the path to Where?

At work we are about to begin an ongoing project and though I can't say much (anything) about it, I will say that I went looking for design inspiration directly for this project. I'm not sure I know how to design something that has a style that will last for many many videos and over a period of many years! Anything for that long will eventually get boring and old. It's interesting that in my TAM class we learned about classic styles that never truly go out of style - pea coats, jeans, Chanel jackets, trench coats, etc - they get re-invented or re-invigorated but they remain in style. So that's what we are challenged to do in this multimedia video project.

I found little in my search that truly helped me solve this current conundrum, however I did come across some inspiring videos. I wound up on a website called MographTV and there I watched a well-told and beautifully shot short called Apricot by Ben Briand, which is hosted by Vimeo:

APRICOT — A Short Film by Ben Briand from Moonwalk Films on Vimeo.


After stumbling on Mograph, I decided to stick around and see what I could find. There was a link to a nice talk by designer Cameron Moll giving a lecture about good design versus great design. So far, I've only found time to watch about 15 minutes of it, but it seems worth my time to revisit and watch the rest of the lecture.

The world of 3D

I'm certainly overdue for a new post, and since my creative work life got overrun by a project, I haven't even had time to contemplate what's been inspiring to me. However, I still have adjustments to make to the video we have been working on, and for which I created some 3D and 2D composite graphics that weren't as effective as we'd like them to be. So, my world has been Maya and After Effects lately. Noting that, it is fitting that the video I found today was created in Maya. What's more is that I couldn't help but think "this is what I think transformational and disruptive technology could look like". And that is one of the subjects of our video that has been a struggle for me to grasp. I still don't know what it means for the University's Mizzou Advantage mission, but it sure looks disruptive to me.

Anyway, this stunning video is called Artificial Paradise, Inc. and here it is:


ARTIFICIAL PARADISE,INC. from Jp Frenay on Vimeo.

My work in Maya pales in comparison, but when I think about the fact that I don't use the program 40+ hours a week (most of the time) and I've only been using it for about two years, my animations are perhaps up to par with where I'm at in my huge learning curve.

Just to give an example, here was my first Maya animation created in 2008 as a way to introduce the University's Saturday Morning Science. (They did not end up using it because it did not feature their logo. I adjusted it later and added the logo, but it was not what they wanted. They decided their flat static logo was exactly what they wanted. Oh well, at least I was happy with what I created in a week's time.)