Pittco promotional video from Jordan Cain on Vimeo.

This is a branding video for Pittco. They are a LAN coalition based in western Pennsylvania which hosts semi-annual gaming events.

This was my very first Cinema 4D project. I may have stumbled my way through it, but I learned a lot from this project. Most importantly, I learned that a proper work flow makes a huge difference in organization and efficiency.

Software used: Illustrator, Cinema 4D, After Effects.

Client: www.pittco.org

The New Solid button doesn’t work perfectly yet, as it brings up the system color picker, but editing the solid color after placement is easy with ctrl+shift+y. Still searching for a way to use the Adobe color picker.

Download: o3_AddNew version 1.5
Place in “Support Files\Scripts\ScriptUI Panels”, and as always, if the ScriptUI Panels folder doesn’t exist, simply create it.

This particular project is a byproduct of a separate project brainstorm and intended as a template for a webcast. I figured I might as well make it in case I have need of it. So it isn’t currently for anything, per se.

Programs used: Illustrator, After Effects

Music by: SebastiAn\Kavinsky

What: There isn’t much to explain in ways of what this video is. So I’ll put it as simply as can. It’s a burning head! Err, burning gas mask, to be exact.

Why: Mostly, I was looking at the forums I frequent and realized that my previous inanimate avatar was rather stale. So Instead of using Illustrator or Photoshop to cook up something cool, I thought.. “Hey! let’s use After Effects! It’s easier to return desired results in AE anyway”. And so here we are. I’ve had many people (mostly on the forums where it popped up on) ask me how I did that because it looks, and I quote, “completely badass!”. So, sure. Why not.

How: When I explain the process over to myself, it sounds ridiculously simple. The entire animation took me 10-15 minutes max, and then some random tweaks here and there after the fact. Though, I realize it might not sound completely simple to any non-AE fluent reader. Here goes -

1. I took a screenshot that I had of the “Pyro” character from the game, Team Fortress 2 (seemed fitting). I imported that into Adobe Illustrator, where I used the Live Trace function on it, but retained the color. I believe I used a color depth of 32. So not a whole lot of detail was left in, but enough to show some comprehension in the finished animation.

2. I imported the above illustrator file into After Effects. For those confused as to why I would import the project file and not say, something like a .png, the reason being is that when you import a vector file into AE, it allows you to scale the layer without losing any clarity at all. If I were to import the .png(or any raster image)  and scale to the size desired, it would look like pixelated garbage.

3. Trapcode makes a 3rd-party plugin for AE called Form. The Trapcode team is comprised of geniuses. The Form plugin is a particle grid that you can manipulate over the X, Y, and Z axis as well as apply various types of layer maps. For the Size layer mapping, I used the imported pyrotorso.ai. What the does is increases the size of the particle on the grid to correspond with the intensity of color on the image I used for the mapping. Keep in mind, that there are thousands of particles that are in the grid of this particular animation, so you shouldn’t be able to spot individual ‘dots’. You can, but most people won’t ever notice it unless they know to look for it.

4. Using this fire clip I got from Artbeats.com, I layered it over the RGB(or color) mapping of the Form plugin. So when the flame movie passes over one of the particles lit up by the pyro head, it will reflect the color represented in the video. Nifty, huh? But ok, that’s all well and good.

5.If we leave the animation like that, we’d have the same general effect of stenciling that pyro head over the video of the fire. But, we want the head to look as if it is rendered out of the fire itself and even look as if it is burning! So what do we do? Yes. We layer the fire clip OVER the Form animation. But do a little more than that, we apply a flowing fractal field that affects the opacity of the clip. So with that, you have some areas of the fire that show through at certain places, but never all at once. And since the field animates slowly, it will show through in a flowy manner.

6. At this point I was looking at the animation and thinking, yeah that looks MUCH better! Buuuut it’s still missing something. Right now it looks like a burning head, sure. But I wanted to give it the feel as if the head was actually IN the fire instead of made of fire. So I used another absolutely amazing Trapcode plugin called Particular to create burning embers that fly through the flames. It’s that extra subtle detail that completes the project. It may be small, but it adds a ton.

And that’s pretty much it. I adjusted coloring and added a faint glow later on. But it’s always nice to have the final product look exactly how you envisioned it before you embarked on the 15 minute journey.

Programs used: Adobe Illustrator, Adobe After Effects, Team Fortress 2

Client: N/A

Production period: ~15 minutes

GXL Unleashed Promo video for their Unleashed ’09 event in October. This is my second promo video for a LAN group (The first being FITES LAN Parties). Took me 5 days from start to finish; custom music, artwork, and video capture.

Programs Used: Illustrator, After Effects

Client: GXL LANs

Production time: 60 hours

This video was my first full production. It was the first time I had attempted such an endeavor and I had no idea how I was going to put it all together. I had a general visualization of what I wanted the video to end up as, but as to the actual procedure, I more or less winged it. And this winging process was reflected in the time spent producing it. When all was said and done, I sunk about 130 hours into it. At the time, that seemed rather fast in relative comparison to my other smaller projects.

The production time on this video is something to take note of, because my second full production video was just as complex (if not more so) but took me only 60 hours. This shows that I am steadily becoming much more competent with the tools at my disposal as well as more efficient.

All of the assets in this video are of my own creation, save for the music (Daft Punk – Robot Rock) and the game capture footage. Though the music itself was tailored by myself as well, using Adobe Soundbooth. Had to make sure it fit within a timeframe, and that there was a clear intro and outro; A lot of splicing and rearranging took place. Everything else was drawn in Illustrator and  animated in After Effects. It is with this project that my current respect for vector graphics took hold. Scaling graphics without losing clarity is unbelievably useful.

About 5 months later, while I was rendering this video in a format that my portfolio would accept for web-ready viewing, I noticed many methods that I had used to make some of the effects were awkward or could have been achieved by more efficient means. Just another of those realizations showing that I am getting better at my work.

This was my first, and last, perfectionist piece. As in, during the production, if something wasn’t quite right, I would spend hours on it making the dinkiest change…well, perfect. Word of the Wise: Making it perfect is commendable, but perfectionism won’t get the project done on time! Just because you see every single little imperfection in a project doesn’t necessarily mean the average viewer will as well. Heck, according to the client’s website stats, each unique visitor watched the video two times, max.

So just to sum up, this project is a milestone in my portfolio. It shows my mistakes, it shows my strengths, and it is a great way to see how far I’ve come.

Programs used: Adobe Illustrator, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Soundbooth, Vegas Video (for additional audio tweaking), Wolfenstein 3D.

Client: www.fites.net

Production time: ~130 hours