A vision of the future…

Thoughts?  Too much?  Not enough?  Probable?  Improbable?

Killer design, either way (produced by Oh, Hello….and, yes, Microsoft).

Incoherent Thoughts (and outcoherent ones, too)

Do you ever feel distracted when you don’t really even have any distractions?  That’s me.  I’m distracted, and not necessarily by something.  Just distracted.  My mind has been blank way too often recently.  Even when I have an idea– some design, something to write, something to do– it doesn’t happen a lot, unless I have some external motivation to do so (i.e. deadlines).  This realization is just yet another to add onto the pile of realizations and reasons that I’ve been losing myself and my voice lately.

I’ve been working, but not doing or being.  Kind of machine-like.  So if anyone were to tell me right now, “man, you’re a machine,” I’m not going to take that as a compliment.

Why is that a compliment, anyways?  Who would rather be a machine?

Regretfully, I’m not always a very disciplined person, so the season of Lent is a strange one for me.  Yes, I’m a Baptist, but I think Lent is awesome.  You know, in that somber, self-sacrificial sort of way…

I’m not sure why Lent is so frowned-upon across Protestantism.  I think it may have to do with some misplaced association between Christian ritual and the Law (in the Hebrew/Pauline sense).  Some say that Christ has set us free from such things.  I think where we miss the point is in our understanding of just what this “freedom in Christ” means.  Is this freedom to indulge completely and consistently in our desires?  Or is this freedom from the desires that tie us down?  I think that one of the prisons that Christ can save us from is this feeling that our daily routine and preferred lifestyle is of utmost importance.  I find myself in that prison.  But freedom in Christ is a higher calling, and one that requires sacrifice and discipline.

The ritual of Lent, practiced sincerely by a community, can be a wonderfully powerful thing.  We’re not often strong enough to follow this path of sacrifice alone.  And it certainly doesn’t hurt to block out these forty days, if only to prepare our too-stagnant hearts and minds for the Easter season.

———————–(This is a line to separate serious thoughts from non-serious thoughts.)

I still haven’t seen Slumdog Millionaire.  I’m going to have an Oscar rental festival once these movies hit stores.  I’m happy that Slumdog, a film with no Hollywood Royalty attached to it, got so much love.  I’m also happy that an uplifting movie took home the gold– recently, “happiness” has not translated into Oscar success.

It’s also time to say farewell, as my favorite movie rolls off into that CG sunset.  WALL-E received more nominations than any other animated film ever (six), but still was victim to the apparently strong anti-animation inclination in the Academy.  It didn’t get the Best Picture nod that it deserved (which would have been a victory for animation artists everywhere), and got snubbed big time in losing both the Sound Design and Sound Mixing categories.

WALL-E was a truly unique work of art, and I’m sad to see it go.  I’m hoping that Up can deliver on the already massive pre-screening hype it’s been building up in the last few weeks.

———————–

I’ve been pulling double-duty the last couple of weeks (and will be for at least one week more), as I’ve been freelancing for North Point Community Church again.  They sent a couple of title package jobs (my favorites) my way.  Not even my own family has seen either of these, so I thought I would post them.

(If the videos don’t pop up, just go to my vimeo page.

Also, the new Concoxions home page is up.  And it’s got Flash in it!  Ok, it’s just a simple looping slideshow, but I’m pretty pumped about even that.

I’ve starting to work on some ideas for the Chillipepper promo, and I really want to see if I can throw in some basic 3D motion graphics this time.  It’ll be a great learning experience.  I did this two-second test today:

(You can see an HD version if you click “HD is off”)

And finally…a model of a glass of water that I made today.  Just for fun.

13 Days, 5 Videos

It’s been an exhausting two weeks.  Chillipepper was this past weekend, so exhaustion was already in the cards, but this time around, we decided on doing a whopping FIVE major videos for the weekend, instead of the normal one or two.  To make things more peachy, this process started less than two weeks out, which is my normal minimum timespan for getting one significant video done.  Yippee!  

Thankfully, while this could have been an unmitigated disaster that sent me running from the world of motion design and video forever, it was actually pretty invigorating.  Though, I was working 12 hour days and some extra hours on the weekend, and was even editing in between shooting actual sessions of Chillipepper.  I would like to avoid doing that…well, ever again.  

I would like to thank the many, many of you who have shared kind words regarding these videos.  It’s been really encouraging.

Chillipepper Intro

This one was entirely overambitious.  It’s not that I didn’t think I could do it, or that I was short on ideas for it…I’m just not skilled enough yet to do this sort of video quickly.  Though, I don’t think that any sort of fully animated video is supposed to be done quickly.  All told, it took in between four and five very long days to get this one done, which was just way too long given the situation.  I don’t regret it, though, because it was fun, and I learned a lot, and more importantly, it gave me a better grasp on just how much I don’t know.  The inspiration came from this year’s Chillipepper T-Shirt, with its simplistic, geometric mountains.  

Seesalt 09: “Invasion”

The idea to do a movie trailer-style promo for this coming summer’s alien theme (the only way I know to describe it) was my Dad’s idea, though there was some seesawing back and forth regarding whether it should be an old 50’s B-movie style trailer or a contemporary dark and mysterious one.  The B-movie one couldn’t be done well quickly, so I ran with the contemporary idea, armed with some stock video footage and some sound effects.  I have to give major thanks to Video CoPilot/Andrew Kramer, whose Twitch plug-in made getting this look a lot easier.  Kramer’s tutorials are the reason I know anything at all about After Effects, so this one’s for you.  

SAM 09: “To the World”

This one was easy.  The look and vibe hit me the first time I heard this particular Garageband track, and it was in the can roughly five hours later.  Special thanks to the “Wiggle” expression in After Effects.  

Seesalt 09: “See”

“This is so cheesy.”  That’s all I could think about when making this, our primary Seesalt promo.  But I wanted something simple, something that communicated strongly, easily, and effectively.  I’m actually kind of surprised that we haven’t done more with the word “see” in the past.  This video also demonstrates my continued obsession with light as a primary effect.  It’s the new grungy.

Art to Heart

This one, admittedly, did not get the full treatment.  This video was made in between the Saturday morning sessions and Saturday evening sessions of Chillipepper.  It was definitely the shortest project from start to finish, and definitely the video for which I had the least ideas.  This video is almost sleepy in a way…a great mirror of my physical and mental state at the time.  This is actually the first promotional video I’ve ever made that used lived audio from the event itself.  That was the only way I could think of to convey the narrative of Art to Heart.  The audio is of terrible quality, coming straight from the rinky-dink built-in microphone on my camera, but it works.  I hope.  

So now, it is time for rest.  And when I say rest, I mean time for rebuilding the rest of the Concoxions website, preferably by Monday.  Yippee!

Daily_Blog: 1/14

I’ve gotten to a point where there is so much I want to write, so much I want to express, that somehow welding all of these thoughts into some cohesive yet barely meaningful blog post is virtually impossible.  

So I’m not really going to try.  My fingers are just going to move for a while.

I’m in the midst of a creative renaissance, yet my one legitimate shot at using whatever skill I have professionally (at least for now) is gone.  This was expected, but still a little bit of a downer.  I have a lot of projects on my plate right now, and I’m even doing some further exploration during my “down time” (I can’t get enough of the world 3-D modeling and its infinite possibilities, even at just the demo level…perhaps associated with my PIXAR addiction…).  I’m very nearly done with a unique Seesalt promotional video– definitely unlike any we’ve ever done– and I’ve spent an exhausting two days throwing it together, driven by the opportunity to actually create rather than just quilt together redundant highlight video shots.  I have roughly five more videos to get done before Chillipepper next Friday, I’m frankly worried that I won’t have the same excited drive to pull me through those.  But pull through I must.

I just typed a long paragraph on the the dichotomy between the creative work that drives me and the more-prevalent, busy work that is somewhat soul-crushing.  Then I deleted it.  Keep moving, fingers.

So, seminary.  Why?  Sometimes it feels like I’m going just because I don’t know where else to go.  Other times I feel that this is a confirmed calling and a real opportunity.  I’m hoping for a bit more revelation and guidance than that, and soon.  I don’t want to not go and realize I missed a great chance to dive deeper into something I already find very fulfilling.  However, I also don’t want to get there and realize that I wasn’t ready to dive that deep, or that often.  I know that I’m passionate about theological education.  Theological education, in this “Christian nation” is lousy.  No, make that Lousy.  That’s right: capital-L and italics.  If I have the opportunity to spend the rest of my life encouraging students/people to think very seriously about matters of faith, religion, and theology, I would be very grateful.  I just don’t know yet if graduate school and eventually the classroom is where I’m supposed to do that.  I probably will never know for sure.    But I do know that I want to do something.  

Jake Delhomme played lousily on Saturday.  I’m normally in your camp, Jake, but I have to call it like I see it.  

At the McAfee preview weekend, one of the topics that my peer/faculty panel discussed was the blurring of divisions and the elimination of labels.  ”Liberal Christian” and “Conservative Christian” (or just “Liberal” and “Conservative”) simply don’t work anymore, and they never should have.  A person cannot be defined by our perception of where they may fall on some theological or political spectrum.  It’s an excuse to not get to know someone for what they really think (about any matter; not just, say, homosexuality).  I could rant so much more about this, and I may one day, but for now I simply ask: do your best to never use these labels in your everyday conversation.  I still find myself doing it, just because it’s easy.  But it doesn’t help.  

The first one hundred pages or so of Rob Bell’s Jesus Wants to Save Christians are very interesting.  I don’t know about the other pages yet.  Some may call it revisionist history, but I at least applaud Bell for refusing to accept Sunday School interpretations of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, recognizing that Solomon was an utter failure as a King, for example (he then goes on to claim that Jesus fits the bill as the “true” son of David).  It’s definitely thought-provoking.  American Nationalists may want to steer clear, though.

Actually, go ahead and read it.

Also (completely unrelated), go to www.capacity.tv and check out the new branding job that Capacity did for Cartoon Network.  The Capacity folks are truly, truly, truly talented motion designers, and if you watch TV, you’ve undoubtedly seen a ton of their stuff (NBC, NFL Network, and about a dozen other stations).  I first found out about Capacity when they were profiled in an old issue of Relevant Magazine, and have kept an eye on them since.  On their website, be sure to check out “Planted,” an animated short based on the Parable of the Sower.  It’s neat stuff.

If you made it this far, you are a patient, patient person.

SAM Highlight Video Screen Grabs

Link

Inspiration: Awesomely Creative Toyota Commercial

…from Logan (the Pixar of Motion Graphics, in my book).  They’re normally my main source for motion graphics inspiration, but this time they pull out a great live action short that is, surprisingly, almost completely devoid of special effects.  Will it make you want to buy a new car?  Probably not.  But it’s engaging nonetheless.  Click the picture.

One Down…

Can I sleep now?

More thoughts when I come to…

It’s done. Can I go home now?

 

 

Inspiration Double Take

While I’m personally looking for inspiration in order to make a Seesalt theme song video, I thought I would answer a couple of requests to pass along a couple of videos that I’ve been hooked on lately.

The first is the opening video for Drive 2008 at North Point Community Church.  I actually had the opportunity to do some work for this conference (just some looping animations for individual sessions), but this is the video you need to see.  I talked to Mike Davis (NP’s staff graphic designer) at my graduation, and he said that the video was a combination in-house/out-of-house job.  No matter what, this one pretty much sets the bar for church conference videos, especially with its three-screen awesomeness.  Click the picture for the link (link goes to Ragamuffin Soul, blog of one of the worship leaders/all-around-creative-gurus at Buckhead Church in Atlanta).

The second video is one that, if you’ve been watching TV lately, you’ve seen.  But this is a special request from my sister, so I thought I would throw it up there.  This is the new iTunes commercial advertising the new Coldplay album–done by a studio called Logan, who has done many of the iTunes commercials, and they’re pretty much one of the standards that little beginners like me hope to emulate.  For such a short commercial, the feel is amazingly dramatic, and it’s an incredible example of how particles and lighting should be used.  Click for link.

 

 

Inspiration: Fire

Here’s a quick break from whatever you may be doing right now.  If you need any proof of how gripping motion graphics can be– and how crazy good some of these artists are– take a look at this advertisement for the Konzerthaus Dortmund Concert Hall’s 2008-09 series, done by a studio called Sehsucht.  If you can get past the somewhat-creepy sounding narrator, you’ll see a pretty stunning use of light and fire to create what would otherwise be some simple textual elements.  This is the kind of stuff you’d hope to realize one day (in the distant, distant future).  Click the picture for the link.