The Innovation of Loneliness: a mograph piece

The Innovation of Loneliness from Shimi Cohen is a mograph that explores social networks and loneliness. Mentored by Eran Stern, it's inspired by Sherry Turkle's Alone Together and an article in Hebrew.

An Animated Arrow To Rule Them All

An Animated Arrow (Tutorial) To Rule Them All is a new tutorial from Monologue, a motion design studio based in Athens, Greece now sharing tips in English and Greek. Below is an example render:

Note: There's a small fortune of other precious resources for creating and animating 2D and 3D arrows in After Effects, posted now at AEtuts.

Motion graphics created with programming

Smashing Magazine has a nice feature on Beautiful Motion Graphics Created With Programming : Showcase, Tools and Tutorials.

Mograph TV interviews Motionographer

Here's a Mograph TV Video Interview with Justin Cone from Motionographer:

Interview with Justin Cone of Motionographer from Mograph TV on Vimeo.

New KeyframeTV episode

Keyframe TV, the only motion nowcast hosted by those 3 guys, has a new episode. They talk about:

• a piece that Anthony Furlong did for Promax/BDA
  
• what computers/hardware? and, mouse vs. tablet.
• umm, some personal pointers.

Episode 3 from Keyframe on Vimeo.

Painting with Light

No, it's not another post on Picasso's Light Graffiti, but a nice write up by Trish & Chris Meyer on Thomas Wilfred (left, 1889 - 1968), a pioneer in developing what he called Lumia, or the art of light. They've got specific background on Wilfred, including some movies.

The Lumia is in the class of devices called color organs. For some additional details see the AEP's Motion graphics 1961 and Visual music and motion graphics. Here's an excerpt from the latter:

In After Effects, since version 3.1 and the defunct Motion Math, you can synchronize any parameter with any other parameter, so a range of audio effects can be tied to graphic properties to create visual music.

Visual music has a long history in media like color organs, film and abstract animation, light shows, CGI, installation art, and even cave art. Abstract animation is not just eye candy, but often attempts to communicate or stimulate synesthesia or mystical states. While forecasts for an expanded or synaesthetic cinema (PDF) haven't quite come to fruition, motion graphics has. The term seems to have been coined or at least popularized by visual music artist John Whitney, who pioneered motion control cameras and the slit scan technique (showing it to Trumbull and Kubrick) -- and in 1960 named his company Motion Graphics, Inc. SIGGRAPH has a peek at some of his movies.

In addition to the Center for Visual Music, another specific resource for visual music is The iotaCenter. Also noteworthy is the work of William Moritz, who was tireless in documenting early work by abstract animation artists at CalArts and elsewhere and filmmakers like Oscar Fischinger. The Moritz article "Abstract Film and Color Music" in the book The Spiritual In Art: Abstract Painting 1890-1985 (documenting an LA museum show) is quite good. Online, there's a good roundup of color organs and such in Colour and Sound: Visual Music by Maura McDonnell.

Keyframe TV: a new podcast show on motion design

Keyframe TV is a new podcast show that will scour the web and TV looking for news on motion design & animation and applications. Keyframe is hosted by Tim Allen, Nick Campbell, and Pasquale D'Silva.

The first episode talks about Trapcode Particular, breaks down of an animation of Digital Kitchen’s Keybank Campaign, and answers the question: "Do I need to go to school to learn motion design and/or animation?"

Episode 1 from Keyframe on Vimeo.

Update: check out Enhancing Trapcode Particular with scripts at Motionworks by guest blogger Sébastien Périer.

Harry Frank interviewed by Satya Meka

AETuts has the text of an interview with Harry Frank by Satya Meka:

"I had the pleasure of meeting Harry Frank, the founder of Graymachine a resourceful website filled with various tutorials and many articles related to the industry. He is a popular freelancer and a veteran in Motion Graphics and is extremely popular for his training series “After Effects Expressions” and his training series on Trapcode products."        -- Continue Reading

SqueezeMe.tv feeds mograph news

Uh oh... looks like uni (it's really orange, but even then AEP is more unagi hand roll).

There's now a mograph counterpart for CrispyFeeds (but not the Forums). Justin McClure has launched a new motion graphics news resource website called SqueezeMe.tv:

"A one-stop jumping point for the current motion graphics happenings around the web, Squeezeme.tv pulls the most up to date information from all the most important places on the web related to motion graphics. It's also a great resource for eye candy with many links directly to wonderfully designed and animated videos on youTube, Vimeo and many others. So if you're a motion graphics person or just looking for some great inspiration, stop on by."

Update: Similar sites like Techmeme are still edited by humans...

5 Free Apps to create Motion Graphics

Satya Meka posted 5 Free/Open Source Apps to create Mind Blowing Motion Graphics to his gutsblow blog:

"there are many other applications that are professionally used and they produce mind blowing visuals. Some of them, might not be as easy to use as regular applications like After Effects/Motion, but there are many resources to get started. With the help of these applications, you can produce really unique and robust visuals. Along with the details of the Applications, I also included some of the famous works done by various artists using them."

Here's the first five; details and movies are at gutsblow:

1. Processing (like a fusion of AE and Flash)
2. Quartz Composer (more ease of use from Apple)
3. VVVV (realtime video synthesis for Windows, similar to Quartz Composer)
4. eMotion (force-based physics simulations)
5. Nodebox (similar to Processing but based on Python)

Cloud tank effect with Scott Squires

Scott Squires posted some of the details of the Cloud Tank effect he used for the movie Close Encounters.

He also spoke a bit about this -- and more -- in a recent interview for The Masters of the Craft series from fxguidetv (#044). Fxphd has some related earlier items including Cloud Tanks and Realflow added - more cloud tanks.

Who is Pablo Ferro?

Motion Design has had several posts in the last year on the production of a feature-length animated documentary on movie title designer Pablo Ferro. Here's 2 clips on this doc to answer the question; more info and links are available at Motion Design.

The Art of the Title Sequences

The Art of the Title Sequences is a blog [not run by oft present Imaginary Forces; see comment] that features various title sequences old & new, like Vertigo, Alien, Se7en, and most recently, The Mummy 3.

There's also what seems to be a larger collection of titles at Forget the film, watch the titles. Another site with a big collection of movie main titles is Movie Titles TV.

Update: Veerle's Blog posted stills and movies to several film titles in Inspiration series: Movie credits.

And Daniel Kutz at another after effects blog adds a YouTube movie in 25 of the best title sequences part 2.

State of Design 2008 Recap

In State of Design Recap, Motionographer collected some favorites that were recently presented at Promax|BDA; you get video, credits, and original postings for more background.

Also, Trapcode gallery has some nice stuff, some of which appears on Motiongrapher, like the recent Barbecue for Lexus Hybrid Drive.

Motion graphics 1961

Create Digital Motion noted “Oscilloscopy” from Digital Worlds which contains some movies by motion graphics pioneer John Whitney, who was mentioned here previously in an overview post Visual music and motion graphics. Here's Whitney's 1961 showreel, Catalog:

Plus here's his brother James Whitney's Lapis from 1966:

And a recent oscilloscope composition by Robin Fox from Eyebeam's ReBlog:

If you like that, you might check out Oscilloclast, electromagnetic AV by Chris Musgrave.

Visual music and motion graphics

Video Thing mentions that a DVD of "light waves" artist Richard Baily (Solaris, Fight Club, Superman, ArtBeats, etc) will be available through the Center for Visual Music. His passing last year was noted here last year, and there are more resources at CMV.

In After Effects, ever since the now defunct Motion Math, you can synchronize any parameter with any other parameter, so a range of audio effects can be tied to graphic properties to create visual music.


Visual music has a long history in media like color organs, film and abstract animation, light shows, CGI, installation art, and even cave art. Abstract animation is not just eye candy, but often attempts to communicate or stimulate synesthesia or mystical states. While forecasts for an expanded or synaesthetic cinema (PDF) haven't quite come to fruition, motion graphics has. The term seems to have been coined or at least popularized by visual music artist John Whitney, who pioneered motion control cameras and the slit scan technique (showing it to Trumbull and Kubrick) -- and in 1960 named his company Motion Graphics, Inc. SIGGRAPH has a peek at some of his movies.

Later, Vice featured Whitney too. Here's some of his work, along with Lapis from his brother James Whitney.

In addition to the Center for Visual Music, mentioned up top, another specific resource for visual music is The iotaCenter. Also noteworthy is the work of William Moritz, who was tireless in documenting early work by abstract animation artists at CalArts and elsewhere and filmmakers like Oscar Fischinger. The Moritz article "Abstract Film and Color Music" in The Spiritual In Art: Abstract Painting 1890-1985 is quite good. Online, there's a good roundup of color organs and such in Colour and Sound: Visual Music by Maura McDonnell.

Greg Jalbert, author of Bliss Paint (for Mac, RIP) collected info on some artists at Tonecolor some time ago -- including the rarely mentioned "Raster Masters" who used to provide incredible live visuals at concerts in the Bay Area. Some say that the genesis of Trips Festival and rock music light shows was the Vortex Concerts at the Morrison Planetarium in San Francisco, organized by visual artist Jordan Belson and composer Henry Jacobs in 1957–59.

A nice recent history of motion graphics and visual music (which is the sample PDF), with clips, is in Motion Graphic Design and Fine Art Animation: Principles and Practice by Jon Krasner. Another excellent source, which includes streaming video, is "A Critical History of Computer Graphics and Animation " by Wayne Carlson.

Update: Motionographer posted some background info on Larry Cuba's 1977 computer graphics Death Star animation for Star Wars -- which was commented on by The iotaCenter's Cuba himself.

With "A" for effort and exposure, Jakob Trollback's visual music experiment with the song "Moonlight in Glory" by David Byrne and Brian Eno was shown at the 2007 TED Conference. More interesting stuff can be found at the Center for Visual Music and Cuba's iotaCenter, and in Internet resources like Motionographer, a recent AEP post Motion graphics 1961 (pictured right), resources for DJs, VJs, and others (including the aging Tonecolor), and summaries on video art (or searches) and artists like Bill Viola and Steven Beck (UC lecture QuickTime movie).

Even these links will just scratch the surface of related activities now happening in motion graphics, VJing, and visualization.

Update 2: Considerations of paradigms of motion graphics and what After Effects represents can be found in Lev Manovich's essay After Effects and the Velvet Revolution and in the nice history of motion graphics by Matt Frantz.

As noted, Motion Graphic Design and Fine Art Animation: Principles and Practice by Jon Krasner (Focal Press, 2004) has a great history of motion and film with clips, but see also Brand Identity for Television: with Knobs On, by Martin Lambie-Nairn, (1997 Phaidon) which discusses and illustrates the design process for short television spots.

A Composition of the “Things Themselves”: Visual music in practice by Maura McDonnell is a nice summary with bibliography. She also runs Visual Music, a blog that documents artists, filmmakers, composers, musicians, video artists, and events -- since 2005.

See also Visual Music: Synaesthesia in Art and Music Since 1900, which has the same title as the museum show, and The Visual Music Film by Aimee Mollaghan (2015).

And let's not forget Cymatics, which was discussed in another post here on AEP.

Motion graphics open 'The Kingdom'

Motionographer notes motion design aspects of 'The Kingdom' Main Titles. I actually remember someone in the 1970's asking why the Arabs wanted to control 'our' oil.

Ink as medium and form for animation

Motionographer, the motion graphics inspiration site, has several newish items with background info. I like the ink/blood text thingie.

Update: the director adds, ..."there’s nothing really magical about the making of at all. we shot it all on HD DV in a very small fish tank on an old light box - so there nothing spectacular about the lighting, too. after that, we uses that footage as 3D-layers in AE. some 2D-tracking is done to conect some of the blood-branches - thats all. mainly we used just 2-3 tweaked takes to generate the more comlex shots.so, in fact it was some kind student-style piece of work.

...the text transitions are 90% in camera! we took foils to print on with an ink jet printer. than we used dishwashing liquid to blow the text away… some timeremapping effects…thats all."

Video Co-Pilot has similar stock footage (paint, ink, grunge) of with training called Riot Gear.

Update: see also RampanTV.com Tutorial – Create Ink Based Effects in After Effects:

AE to C4D: another approach

from Motionographer:
"Some of you may be familiar with Paul Tuersley’s excellent scripts allowing for the importation of cameras and other objects from After Effects into Cinema 4D. But sometimes your workflow calls for a different approach. Eric Henry has developed a clever process for importing the animation data of objects and/or cameras into Cinema 4D from After Effects."
...continue at AE to C4D: A new (more comprehensive) solution.

Light Waves artist dies

You might have admired his work in ArtBeats collections.

Tween/Motionographer mentioned that Richard Baily, the man behind the "Kryptonite effect" on Superman Returns passed away last week. There's more at CGChannel.
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