A look into the life I discover with music, art, design and fatherhood.
I must say that they really did the new Twitter right. Its clean, elegant and just fun to use. First things first is the UI change… You now have two columns: an infinite scroll of all of the tweets from the people you follow and the second column that shows your latest tweets. If you click on a tweet you get details of the tweet: the media associated with it and the latest tweets from that person. (more…)
I’m really starting to dig into the film world and it is quite a vast realm to sort through. From the different producers, directors, camera operators and all the tools that are associated with production it can seem overwhelming to find out where to start. I came across a great resource for tools, reviews and just the latest in the film world, a website called filmtools.com. The name really speaks for itself. There are so many great reviews of the latest trends, gear and tools that film makers, new independent film makers could use to get all the knowledge they need before they hit the real field.
Whats cool is that they dont just cover the most expensive gear, they cover some of the coolest stuff for a wide range of products. the iPhone OWLE Bubo is this housing for your iPhone that has a grip, an external mic as well as a interchangeable lens! They have a great article that shows a comparison and a full review of the product. They sell it too at a discounted price.
From their main website you can buy all the greatest gear, with discounted prices, their blog gives indepth reviews and true opinions from people that do this as a living every day and I’d trust their insights any day. I’d love to know of any other sites you might know of that teaches, discovers and tests the limits of the gear and trade that I have grown to love.
Here are the links to Film Tools:
www.filmtools.com
filmtools.wordpress.com
Great DSLR tools, tutorials and a wealth of knowledge can be found here:
I have been a designer for a long time but I never really took the time to immerse myself in the community. Only 2 years ago was introduced to Cinema 4D and I couldn’t get enough. My problem was that I didnt know where to go to find inspiration or tutorials for all the basics but I had to find them. Since diving into search and trying to find other people that love this application as well as video and motion graphics I found some of the most talented people that not only share what they do they take time out of their own days to live chat and really respond to answers in emails and I just want to share the people that I look up to and couldn’t thank enough for all that they share with us.
Mike “the monkey” Senfton. This guy comes from a DJ world (I do as well) and he is someone of real brilliance when it comes to creative expression through art. Not only does he understand that timing is key but he understands what beauty is in the presentation of a product or identity. His solutions to simple animations are really unique and something that not only myself but hundreds if not thousands of people look up to. Not until recently has he really come out to display what he does on camera and before that you can find his presence on Mograph.net. Which is just an amazing community to join if you do motion graphics. People really help out and try to do what they can to help you push forward. The Monkey was asked by the makers of Cinema 4D to do a presentation at N.A.B. about integrating sound into Cinema and after watching it I was blown away by all that he knows and shared with us. Not to long after he was approached by Nick Campbell (The Gorilla) and asked to do some tutorials for greyscalegorilla.com and he agreed. What an absolute pleasure to watch this man work and just play around with Cinema 4D. Here are two videos for you, the first is the NAB presentation and the second is the tutorial by The Monkey. The third is a piece of brilliance he created for ECHO.
Mike “the Monkey” Senften NAB 2010 from Lukasz Pason on Vimeo.
Joint Chains, Spiral Growth, Iterative Hierarchies, & the Golden Section from 4Dthieves on Vimeo.
Ecko Artifaks from 4Dthieves on Vimeo.
Nick “The Gorilla” Campbell. This guy… oh this guy is what this world needs more of. A man dedicated to not only creating beautiful motion graphics but on an endless question to share with us anything he can through his amazing tutorials. Most people who do tutorials they say do this and that, put in this number here and you get this. Not Nick. He takes the time to tell you why and what if this and if you did this you could get to the same place but we are going to go this way. He dives into a project with you and if he gets stuck while doing it he doesnt pause or cut the video so that he can make it perfect he troubleshoots right there. Live on camera. This is more valuable than the actual tutorial you are watching. Its something you only get to witness when you work on a project. Not only does he teach us he does a weekly live uStream for an hour where we either focus on a top or dive into questions right from the chat window. I’ve had my own questions answered during this and its so cool to have that kind of connection with a person you really look up to. He’s also done a lot with Photography and After Effects. He shows you not only 3D animation but compositing and lighting and so many different aspects of the video motion world… truly a guy that inspirational and inspired with positive energy for all of us to indulge in. One big thing that he’s done for the community is his 5 Second Projects. These are projects that anyone can do. It has to be animation, no longer than 5 seconds and inside a topic that he picks for us. The latest one was Nude No More and it was sponsored by Thredless. The winner was just announce and they got some cool prizes from Thredless.com. Check out the latest video tutorial from Nick on how to do a cool 7up animation as well as a video that tells you why you should do a 5 second project.
How To Make The Cherry 7up Look With Cinema 4D from Nick Campbell on Vimeo.
Five Reasons To Enter the FiveSecondProject from Nick Campbell on Vimeo.
There are more people that choose to inspire and share with us and I just want to mention them briefly. Robert Redman from Pariah Studios also shares a lot of knowledge with us and he too has some great tutorials for us. He goes beyond Cinema 4D and teaches Realflow and a few others. you can find him at http://www.pariahstudios.co.uk/ Secondly John Dickinson from Motionworks also share a lot of great technical info with all of us and you can find him at http://www.motionworks.com.au/ . Just recently I discovered James White from Signal Noise. Well I a have been a fan of his work for a long time but he is now making tutorials in graphic design as well as a live broadcast to share and answer anything we throw at him. He’s such a friendly guy and so respectful thats its no wonder why his art is so beautiful and I have much respect for him.
With all of these mentors that indirectly teach us we can really grow as a community and I hope that more and more people find the time to share something new with all of us. I hope that one day I too can share more than just a project file with the community and embrace you with knowledge about a certain technique inside C4D. The road is never ending with design and if you think you have nothing else to learn you are kindly mistaken because there is Always someone better than you. Find that person and learn from them. Drive yourself to try something new everyday you can. Go back and look through the basics just incase you missed a key point that could quicken an process. Immerse yourself in the community that shares and encourages through constructive criticism so that you too prevail in the endless stride to perfection. Be open, be kind and explore beyond the limits of your knowledge everyday.
Holy crap… E3 is next week!!! I thought that it was weeks away and I had all the time in the world to really get ready for it but it sure snuck up fast! I have finished all of the work that I was faced with in terms of trailers and company videos ahead of schedule so thats a bonus. We also got all of our camera gear so that we can shoot peoples reactions to our games and find out what people want to see in the development of future games. Ill break down our gear in a sec here, first off just an overview of the games we are bringing with us.
The first game we are going to show is Battle of the Immortals. The game is already in open beta and is really picking up a lot of traction. We’ve expanded to new servers and just really spent a lot of time listening to the user. The development teams are in-game, on the live servers listening.
The game is a lot of fun to play and visually stunning too. You start off and before you really know it you are at level 20 doing your first instance. This is definitely my favorite game we have! Its a fast pace Action MMO RPG that really hooks you off the top! A big focus is also the ‘Soul Gear’. The creative team really sat down and thought through each piece and how it looks, Animates and skills your character. Here’s a the Open beta trailer and a ‘BOI Blueprint’ of the Magus character Soul Gear.
Battle of the Immortals – Open Beta Gameplay Trailer from Lukasz Pason on Vimeo.
Battle of the Immortals Blueprint – Magus from Lukasz Pason on Vimeo.
The next game is Heroes of Three Kingdoms. This game is really based more on PVP with its campaigns. You do a campaign that has a player limit of 60 people!! Madness… Inside HoTK you get to choose to be part of the Wei, Shu or Wu and lead your character through defending you kingdom. Its unique in the way that the economy is really based on which kingdom is ruling the lands. So its very interactive with the community! Here is the teaser for HoTK:
Heroes of Three Kingdoms Teaser from Lukasz Pason on Vimeo.
Lastly we are going to reveal our game play trailer for Forsaken World. Its already in closed beta in China but we finally got our hands on the client and the game is really polished! I ill update and post it once we get back from E3!
As for the gear thats going with me to E3, its a pretty small but awesome kit! We just purchased the Canon 7D with a kit lens, the 24-135. We have the beachtek DXA-5Da for sound recording and the Sennhesier Evolution Wireless Mic Packs. All of this fits nice and snug into a little Pelican 1400 case. I really wish that this kit was my own. Its such a great run and gun setup. Once thing we might be missing is a shotgun microphone but I think I might have a solution for that… Here are a few shots of the toys I get to play with!!!
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I have to say that I am really excited to be working at PWE. The people around here are a lot of fun to work with. We all go out and have drinks, go bowling, ice skating dinner and so on. The company is growing and its really an exciting time to be with them. All of our games are free to play. From start to finish the game is totally open for you to enjoy! We have 3 titles currently released, Perfect World International, Jade Dynasty and Ether Saga Online. We also partnered with Runic games and acquired Torchlight which is available through steam and on the Mac too!!
So the first thing that I was asked to do was to create the companies Intro and Outro graphics. Simple task huh? The intro was to just a simple logo reveal and let people know who’s game this is. The other video producer here, Jason, had a simple vision and so I executed it in C4D. The outro was to be a little bit more elaborate and I had freedom to do what I wanted. So what I wanted to do was reveal a world with a sun, have the logo fly in over it and have our horizon line reveal by having the world somehow transform into it. So here are both of those videos for you to enjoy.
Perfect World Entertainment Intro Slate from Lukasz Pason on Vimeo.
Perfect World Entertainment Logo Animation from Lukasz Pason on Vimeo.
We just released open beta for our latest release, Battle of the Immortals and its speeding up to be quite the amazing game. We’ve had a lot of great response and the user feedback has really been essential to the development of the game. Its pretty awesome to see our developers be so in-tune with what the community wants and they make changes to the game based on those requests. Simple things like the in-game font, WASD movement and also new dungeons that give players a bigger challenge vs the typical instance run. I got a chance to create some developer diaries as well as our official Open Beta gameplay trailer. This game is a lot of fun to play and I think I had more fun playing than actually editing the game… lol.
Battle of the Immortals – Post Mortem from Lukasz Pason on Vimeo.
Battle of the Immortals – Adventures from Lukasz Pason on Vimeo.
Battle of the Immortals – Open Beta Gameplay Trailer from Lukasz Pason on Vimeo.
The next task I got to do was the Forsaken World logo animation. Since china only has the chinese version and we are making the E3 gameplay trailer for it I got my hands all over do the animation. It was a fun challenge to learn how to make fire wrap around 2D text and I learned a few new tricks on this one!
Forsaken World Logo Animation from Lukasz Pason on Vimeo.
Lastly, or at least the latest video that I can show publicly until after E3 is our Heroes of Three Kingdoms teaser. This is the first gameplay video about the game and I was excited to make it! The animations were a lot of fun to do too. Using concept art and doing a kind of Sherlock Holmes approach to it (the movie titles for the new movie) with ink style dissolves between rulers of the three kingdoms. Check out the video below!
Heroes of Three Kingdoms Teaser from Lukasz Pason on Vimeo.
I’ve got a couple more to upload and release as soon as I am able to so stay tuned and thanks for reading! Now if you want to learn more about the company, go to www.perfectworld.com or check out our youtube channel for all of our trailers!
Over my short span of I think now 3 years doing motion graphics I’ve learned so much and I just wanted to share with you my journey from the start to today.
First things first… The first time I was asked to a motion graphic at work I was solo. I mean they laid off the production department and I was left to learn how to edit and do motion. Needless to say I was thrown into the fire pit and had to find a way to survive.
My first piece was for Podshow, or formally Podshow and now being released as Mevio. They asked me to redo the sting for the company that would be anchored on to every video uploaded as well as distributed to all of our 3rd party producers to place on their videos. Pressure much?
This verson was not released. This was my favorite of the bunch that I made. Funny thing is, I dont have the current version uploaded, ill have to get it and upload it to vimeo soon.
UPDATE: I uploaded it and the final approved version is after the unreleased.
Unreleased MeVIO Sting from Lukasz Pason on Vimeo.
Mevio Quad from Lukasz Pason on Vimeo.
Ill try to go in order of creation but that wasnt how I uploaded everything. The next few movies were for the branding of our individual channels. Mevio has 4 main channels or networks, Men Women Tech and Music. I was asked to make an animated graphic for each. Here are those:
MeVIO Tech Intro from Lukasz Pason on Vimeo.
MeVIO Men Intro from Lukasz Pason on Vimeo.
MeVIO Music Intro from Lukasz Pason on Vimeo.
I really dont like the womens one. It was poorly done, the director for it never really knew what they wanted.
When our president was finally picked we wanted to do world wide coverage of the inauguration so I was asked to make a bumper for the all of the clips. I really enjoyed making this in a day and I think the outcome was pretty awesome!
Inauguration of Change from Lukasz Pason on Vimeo.
This next piece was for promotion purposes. It was basically an ad of what we could do for you. The concept was a box that we passed around to different producers and each one said a piece of the marketing who ha ha. Looking back at it now, I’d do a few things a little differently but I still like it.
the Box from Lukasz Pason on Vimeo.
CES2010 was pretty big this year and we wanted to cover the coverage and we called it: CESPool. This was a lot of fun to make. I wanted to go for a techy animation to hit on the technology covered in the event. This was just a bumper graphic to brand the segments since it wasnt really a show.
CESpool 2010 from Lukasz Pason on Vimeo.
I started to dive into the Cinema 4D community and I found some fun tutorials as well as plugins to use. So here are a few animations that show those test renders.
Destruction Test PT.2 from Lukasz Pason on Vimeo.
Xplode + Thinking Particles + GSG Light kit = Awesome. from Lukasz Pason on Vimeo.
Family – Discovery Style from Lukasz Pason on Vimeo.
This next video was done using only after effects. I wanted to get more comfortable with Particular 2 so I decided to just jump in and try something different. I used CC Sphere as well as some Tracode Shine and Trapcodes Soundkeys to map the particle movement to different frequencies.
Particle Playground from Lukasz Pason on Vimeo.
After being laid off, I found a contract gig with a company called Sky Creative. They wanted an animation the was synced to another animation. I had to work with another motion designer doing the video that showed off the products for Safilo and I did the LED panel animation that accompanied that. The video was played for 3 or 4 days in New York as well as Las Vegas and a big fashion show convention where Safilo has a 10k sq ft. Booth with a runway. Pretty exciting to tell you the truth. Here’s the animation that I had to do for it.
Safilo Attract Loop LED Panel Animation from Lukasz Pason on Vimeo.
2 more left!! Thx for staying with me if you have read through this far. This next one gained so much traction and was played by thousands. Really the first animation of mine that got so much play time and it was just a fun little test using a voxel preset and some mograph dynaimics inside my 3D app, Cinema 4D.
Carousel from Lukasz Pason on Vimeo.
This last piece was a quick 2 day, actually 2 late night into early morning creation done for a pitch. They wanted to spoof off of the ESPN Sports Center look for the US Food Service. The first part of the animation I made the scene but another animator did the animation and I did the second part of this which was the logo reveal.
US Food Service from Lukasz Pason on Vimeo.
I have to thank you for taking the time to take a look at my progression over the years. There were many more little pieces that I made but they were all for live action videos and I just dont have the time to dig them all up. Keep up with the videos that I create on my vimeo page.
I have been learning how to use Cinema 4D for a little while now and I have also tried to immerse myself into the world of motion graphics to learn as much as possible. I’ve had a chance to come across some amazing people as well as tutorials and project files from some of the most influential people and Mike Senften is one of them. He comes from the world of being a DJ and he understands how to translate audio syncing into animation and how to make sure everything is timed out correctly. His presentation at NAB was devoted for this and I wanted to share it with you. If you enjoy Cinema 4D and want to learn a little bit more audio integration, check this out!!
So I have to admit that yes, I am a warcraft addict. I love to play MMO’s because of the interaction with people and the amount of teamwork you have to do in order to accomplish the same goal. My main toon is a 80 raiding Shaman on Medivh that is Enh/Resto spec. I’m going well with gear but I just cant dedicate as much time as we all would like to playing.
I had a job interview for video production and I was asked to do a trailer for an MMO. I was going to use theirs, but I dont own a PC and the games they make are not available on the mac. I thought VM Ware with Vista would do it but it ended up giving me super slow frame rates. I decide then to take it to WoW, the only logical decision as he said ” Any MMO, I just want to get a feel for your style.”. So here it is in all its glory, my MMO Trailer for Trial of the Crusader.
Incase you dont know, Raiding comes in both 10 man and 25 man raids. These events can go on for an hour to 5-6 depending on how commited your team is to getting all the bosses down. I was able to find a few groups in both 10 and 25 as well as on 10 man heroic version (the harder version) of TOC and I was really happy with what I came out with. All of the footage is from in-game video and I shot it all with the in-game video recorder. I hope you enjoy and any feed back is welcomed!