Long shadows: adding dimension to flat design

The trend toward flat design hit big in 2013 with Windows 8 ("Metro"), iOS7, and website and logo redesigns by Google and others. As part of a general move away from skeuomorphism, Adobe application design elements “flattened out” after CS5. Flat and thin may be in, partly due to hi-res screens, but a missing dimension of "long shadows" added to flat elements became popular too.

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Read the rest at Pro Video Coalition in Long shadows: adding body to flat design in After Effects.

Fox News Deck: the future of news?

Fox News Deck: the future of news? is new at PVC. Techcrunch:

"The screens measure 55 inches, run Windows 8 ...Microsoft’s PPI business comes from its acquisition of Perceptive Pixel in July 2012."

TechCrunch later added: "If the new studio at Fox News, with its big-ass touchscreens, looks a little bit like Minority Report, that’s because it’s just like Minority Report." Fox leveraged Mezzanine from Oblong, the same company that helped create that movie UI.

User interfaces in the movies and beyond

About a year ago, interface designers Nathan Shedroff and Christopher Noessel published their book 'Make It So: Interaction Design Lessons from Science Fiction', on how sci-fi and real world interfaces influence each other. User interfaces and human-computer interaction is a vast topic. 

Mostly we're interested in creating graphics that visualize what might be possible, or perhaps prototyping actual interfaces, so it's nice to peek at what others imagine and who's involved, especially if they use After Effects and Creative Cloud.
  

Hello Computer!

HUD and GUI graphics in 'Oblivion'

...is new at Pro Video Coalition.

Oblivion, a new movie directed by Joseph Kosinski and starring Tom Cruise, features a unique mix of practical and digital effects. The HUD and GUI graphics seem to have been mostly shot in-camera after being created by a team lead by Bradley G. Munkowitz, aka GMUNK.

Sci Fi GUI project for FreeForm AE

Chris Bobotis of Mettle posted a free HUD-style After Effects project, Sci Fi GUI, created with CS4 and Mettle's FreeForm AE. The project (direct download) uses FreeForm AE's 3D displacement mapping feature; Freeform comes bundled with AE CS5 (or use a demo from Digieffects).

For tutorials on creating HUD interfaces, see AEtuts' Tracking A Futuristic High Tech Floating Interface (in 2-parts) and Dive Into A HUD Diver Mask Animation (also in 2-parts). For more resources and tutorials, see Designing & Compositing a HUD and posts tagged HUD on AE Portal.

Update: check out the UI of Space Fence, an orbit tracking system,

Update: AEtuts added Creating Additional Graphical Interface Elements by Stefan Surmabojov, which also shows some tricks for Shape layers..

Crop Precomps, a new After Effects script

"Paul Tuersley week" continues with a new After Effects script, Crop Precomps:

"This script can crop nested compositions to fit the image contents. Useful in cases like Photoshop imports where precomps are created as document size. It makes precomp layers easier to work with as their bounding boxes fit the images, and can speed up rendering by reducing the areas being processed.

Written on request for screen graphics designer Mark Coleran, whose work can be seen on the computer screens in movies such as The Bourne Identity and Tomb Raider. Mark designs complex user interfaces in Photoshop made up of many layers nested into groups, before importing them into After Effects to animate."

Color control panel for the iPad

@andymees notes summaries by Peter Salvia on the free Tangent Devices vWave-Lite for the iPad, noted recently by Steve Hullfish, Bob Sliga, and others. See blog scoop – chris from tangent devices discusses vwave-lite for ipad and color control panel for the ipad at Salvia's blog Proactively for a look cool vs. cost and lack of tactile feedback. Here's a video of the iPad app from Steve Hulfish:

Tangent Devices' iPad Color Controller from Steve Hullfish on Vimeo.

SIGGRAPH 2010 papers & previews

ACM SIGGRAPH 2010 is being held July 25-29 in Los Angeles. There's a list of technical papers on the site, along with a media news blog and YouTube channel with extra videos.

Ke-Sen Huang keeps a list of SIGGRAPH papers with links to the projects (and an icon if video is available).



Note: last year's crop was noted in SIGGRAPH 2009 Technical Papers Video Preview and SIGGRAPH 2009 papers & projects online.

Designing & Compositing a HUD

Via Motion Graphics eXchange is a new After Effects tutorial video from Dave Scotland at CGSwot, Designing & Compositing a HUD:

"Learn how to design and composite a combat Heads-Up-Display (HUD) with an automated tracking system [Boujou] using real ground targets in After Effects. Take a pre-tracked background plate and feed various target data into the on screen graphics, based on distance to camera expressions. Design and build various animated and static elements including random number generation and meter movement..."

For context, click the tag to see previous posts on Ironman’s HUD and Mark Coleran on screen design, especially movies in Nuke & the 'Iron Man' HUD + 'Iron Man 2'.

See also AE-specific advice in A Heads-Up on Using Reticles by Chris & Trish Meyer (which uses Artbeats Reticles), and Futuristic HUDs everywhere soon on a Video Copilot tutorial.

Unplugged 9: interview with Mark Coleran

Motionworks interview Unplugged 9 features Mark Coleran:

"Mark Coleran is widely recognised in the motion graphics industry for his outstanding on-screen graphic design and production for numerous feature films including The Island, The Bourne Ultimatum and Alien Vs Predator. In this candid discussion Mark gives a revealing, behind-the-scenes insight into how he broke into the world of on-screen graphics..."

See previous AEP posts on Mark Coleran for more interviews and info.

Nielsen: designing commercial messages for Twitter

Capria.TV noted Jakob Nielsen's tips on designing commercial messages for Twitter, Twitter Postings: Iterative Design,

"Leave it to Jakob Nielsen to bring iterative design best practices to tweets. For those of you who use Twitter for commecial ends, as opposed to merely sharing moment by moment minutiae, this Useit article might be of interest. A few pointers on scheduling tweets are also given."

Twitter seems appropriate for Nielsen's style; for designs with graphics, other approaches, by Steve Krug for example, seem to lead to pleasant results.

Update: themediamogul notes "Great article on CEO's using Twitter," CEOs' Take on Twitter.

Usability: Don't Make Me Think

From the Business of Software social network:

"Usability testing is important, but you've got other things to do. In this video, Steve Krug [author of Don't Make Me Think] ... talks about informal usability testing and how the minimum of work can give you extraordinary results."



Update: Ignore the Code has several good articles, like Usability Testing: It's not a Myth, Flatland, and Designing with Data. This was in one post:

The Science of Aesthetics by Keith Lang from Keith Lang on Vimeo.

Nuke & the 'Iron Man' HUD + 'Iron Man 2'

Dav Rauch from The Orphanage walks through their Nuke work on the HUD sequence from Iron Man in movies below from The Foundry's Youtube Channels (via 5tu).

Other reports and interviews on the same subject from Fxguide and Adobe --as well as a tutorial project by Video Copilot -- can be found in these previous posts.





Update: Iron Man 2 UI & motion graphics, both stills and short movies can be found at Perception:
"Using a combination of the Adobe Creative Suite of products and Maxon's Cinema 4D for 3D animation, Perception put out full 2k renders for what would ultimately be a film output for IMAX presentations and normal theatrical release. All working on the Macintosh platform, Perception's team of designers, compositors, animators and rotoscope artists worked tirelessly to deliver the entire package."

Update: In fxguidetv #099 Jan 07, 2011, Marshall Krasser details ILM's work on Iron Man 2 using Nuke.

TAMPER with the future of editing

Videomaker noted a very cool demo given several months ago at Sundance. The video, John Underkoffler TAMPER's with the future of Editing, is at the website of Making Of, a new behind-the-scenes "Web destination" founded by Natalie Portman and Christine Aylward. It was really a compositing demo, but hey.

“Tamper” was created by Oblong Industries, with technology they call G-speak, which some may remember from demo movies bouncing around last Winter. Despite the absence of actual editing, this technology isn't all arm waving -- it would make a great match with the stuff leaking out of Adobe and Microsoft labs in SIGGRAPH demo movies.

Recent AEP posts on SIGGRAPH demos include Seam carving, cloning, & cutouts and SIGGRAPH 2009 Technical Papers Video Preview. Interface and display news on AEP can be found in Gesture-controlled displays and posts tagged UI.

You'll have to go to MakingOf for the explanation of Tamper (you won't find one at YouTube), but here's a demo with just music:

oblong's tamper system 1801011309 from john underkoffler on Vimeo.

Optical illusions + mind illusions

Discover Magaine's Bad Astronomy posted a fun optical illusion on simultaneous contrast in The blue and the green [via Brinkmann]. The responses to the post are also interesting.

There's more from the original author, Akiyoshi Kitaoka. Shown below, the spirals of light green or light blue are identical (R=0, G=255, B=151; scaling may change the content):

Also, as noted by Keith Lang in his blog UI&us, there are also implications for user interfaces -- and not only because of optical illusions, but also because of what might be called "mind illusions," which Daniel Goleman has made a career out of explaining. See Lang's The Art of Expectations, and the video below from TED:

"Keith Barry shows us how our brains can fool our bodies -- in a trick that works via podcast too. Then he involves the audience in some jaw-dropping (and even a bit dangerous) feats of brain magic."

Update: For briefs on illusions relating to the perception of time, see MindHacks and a Philip Zimbardo video on The Time Paradox. And, to remain on topic, click the picture to view the motion 'after effect' from Akiyoshi Kitaoka:

Microsoft: Look Ma No Hands +SONY

Wired blogged from E3 yesterday where Microsoft hosted Steven Shpielberg in the introduction of a new game controller (from an acquisition of an Israeli firm), dubbed Project Natal.

See AEP's Gesture-controlled displays for similar projects by others.

Update: More from E3 in Sony Eyes Motion Control, Augmented Reality at Create Digital Motion,

OOOii: AE, Flash, and AIR in 'Star Trek'

Lee Brimelow posted a video interview with OOOii (formerly Blackbox Digital), a company whose work includes the gesture-based interfaces for Minority Report, the information design of Enemy of the State, the immersive technologies in The Island, the power walls of Déjà Vu, and the 360º projections in the recent Star Trek.

OOOii used After Effects, Flash, and AIR for Star Trek. This is from an earlier post:

"For Star Trek, senior developer Dave August created a complete ActionScript 3 framework for compositing and sequencing various effects that was used live on the set during filming. He also created an AIR application which was used for authoring the various sequences and also to control them as the actors manipulated them."

See also related previous AEP posts, Mark Coleran on screen design, Adobe Inspire on Ironman’s HUD, and Futuristic HUDs everywhere soon.

Update: see also ooo-ii: The Design of the Star Trek Movie Information Displays from Infosthetics.

Update: check out the UI of Space Fence, an orbit tracking system,

Gesture-controlled displays

A 2007 AEP post, UI control via webcam, mentioned XTreme Reality 3D, "a piece of software that works with your webcam to let you control applications and games with your hand in real space." It turns out that others were working on similar controls for TVs, according to NewTeeVee in Hands On with Softkinetic’s Hands-Controlled TV. Here's an excerpt:

"We write a lot about how the world of content available through your television set is undergoing a dramatic change. But the changes happening to your TV aren’t just what’s on or how it gets there, but also the way you interact with your TV set. Forget remote controls and buttons when you’ve got hands to change the channel and adjust the volume. We’ve been following this gesture-controlled TV trend for a while and recently sat down with Softkinetic to get a demo of their solution."

Here's a few demonstrations of the trend:







Update: via a blog without comments, CNET/CBS adds another example, but doesn't seem to acknowledge other reports or previous examples:

Quantum of Multi-touch + titles

Another wave of multi-touch memes has hit with the latest Bond thriller Quantum of Solace, CNN elections graphics, and Windows 7. The multi-touch UI, and movie titles, were done by MK12 Studios (mentioned at Fxguide). There's even a critique of the Bond UI by a consultant at Microsoft Surface, and Make magazine weighs in with Quantum of Solace - The Do-it-yourself version.



g-speak from Oblong Industries is another entry into the the Minority Report game, via Brooks Andrus:


Update: Chris Meyer notes an article and an interview with Ben Radatz of MK12, Art of the Title: Quantum of Solace.

Microsoft's inexpensive multi-touch display

Microsoft TouchWall can inexpensively turn any flat surface into a multi-touch display -- or so says CrunchGear. Microsoft seems to actually be innovating, and with different technology than noted in Microsoft Surface≠Minority Report. There's Techmeme cluster for more discussions...



Update: John Nack notes Flash-based and other multitouch coolness.