Gearing Up for E3

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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Producing Videos and Graphics at Perfect World Entertainment

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!

3D Animations and Motion Graphics

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.

My Ruby Skye DJ Mix

I have to say that playing at Ruby Skye was unforgettable and truly a dream come true. I got to open for Boom Jinx (who was also rockin btw) as well as Myon and Shane54 and for that hour that I was behind those CDJ-1000’s I was in dream land. I knew from the last time that Boom played in the Bay Area he liked to have the DJ before play slower and out of respect I wanted to end my mix at around 128 bpm and at a lower tone but if I knew he was going to play rockin Electro Trance… I think that my outlook on my mix would have been 100% different!

Ill be honest in saying that this isnt my favorite mix that I have compiled but I’ve been asked to share it. I did the mix inside Ableton Live and I’m finding that I want to switch over to Traktor and the Audio Kontrol X1 from Native Instruments to do my mixing in. Its much more familiar in terms of DJ mixing. Ill still producer and master inside Live though.

Here is the track listing:

01 – Gregor Tresher – A Thousand Nights – Dubfire Quiet Storm Remix
02 – Robert Babicz – Dark Flower – Joris Voorn Magnolia Mix
03 – Alen Kenji – Ytaca – Manuael De La Mare Stealth Mix
04 – Christian Smith – Indecent Exposure – Original Mix
05 – Hector Couto – Arabe – Milton Channels Remix
06 – ThreeSixty – Cruise Control – Original Mix
07 – Sasha & Adam Parker – Lowelife – Original Mix
08 – Miquell Santos & Philip Michael Andersson – Endless – 6am Mix
09 – Andain – Beautiful Things – Spaio Sleazy Tek Remix
10 – Robert Babicz – Dark Flower – Fever Mix

RIGHT Click on the Album Art and Save As… to start your download. UPDATE: I tried to download myself and I had problems playing the track. If you download a .mp3 just change it to a .M4A

You can also listen and download the mix at soundcloud.com

Ruby Skye Mix Album Art

If you would like to hear more mixes from me check’em out here:

Live on Sound System Syndicate Radio

DJ Mixes a Plenty!

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RED SF presents sun-RISE!

RED is a San Francisco based production company throwing some amazing 18+ parties at Kelly’s Mission Rock. This event especially will be awesome because I am playing at it! I’m really happy and totally excited to be play at this show and you can find me rockin the dance floor from 10:30pm – 11:30pm. Headlining the show will be Bryan Kearney along with Spundae’s own FEI-FEI.

You can purchase tickets now!!

Direct from Bryan’s site, here’s a few snippets from his Bio:

“Bryan Kearney began DJing in the year 2000 and in this time has established himself firmly on the international dance scene. His sets contain the very best in upfront trance and techno with the emphasis always on energy and the unexpected.

He was a permanent fixture on the airwaves of Dublin throughout 2002 and 2003 with prime time shows on Energy Fm and Kiss Fm providing the capital with the very best in brand new material each week.

In 2005, he completed a remix of one of his all time favourite tracks, the massive Lost Emotions by Fire & Ice. The track has become bigger than first thought possible with the remix been signed for full release by the legendary Bonzai Records.

2007 was a big year too with solo tracks and remixes well received right across the trance spectrum. His debut solo E.P containing More To Life and Punchline had massive success with More To Life becoming the biggest selling download ever on Discover Records.

2008 continued on from where it left off with Bryan receiving two nominations at the Irish Dance Music Awards – Best DJ & Best New Artist.

2009 has seen him taking his performances and productions to the next level. He was voted runner up in the Best Producer category at the Irish Dance Music Awards, second only to John O’Callaghan

2010 is shaping up to be a massive year for Bryan with a significant increase in solo material, vocal tracks and collaborations right across the musical spectrum. This year will also see him launch his very own label entitled KEARNAGE (Carnage) Recordings.”

You can find more by going to his Bio page.

FEI-FEI is an extremely talented DJ from Spundae LA and her energy is going to rock your socks! Girl Power is about to receive a new twist. This ferocious international lady of trance, has captivated audiences worldwide with her pounding mix of trance and techno and you can be sure there’s some serious competition for the male DJ’s around the world. But don’t let her looks deceive you–She’s at the top of her game and has taken the industry by storm. In the past few years she has signed to several of the most critically acclaimed record labels in dance music—Armada Music, home to Armin Van Buuren and Vandit Records, home to Paul Van Dyk. She’s also signed to Discover Dark, John Askew’s label, as FFW, featuring an even darker side of Fei-Fei. She has wowed fans all over the world with a slew of chart topping successful productions, remixes and mix compilations and has garnered respect from several of the industry giants–Tiesto, Armin Van Buuren, Paul Van Dyk, Carl Cox, Above and Beyond, and Eddie Halliwell. With residencies and gigs across the world, regular radio appearances and releases on the most respected labels, nothing can stop her. Fei-Fei has made her mark and is about to take over.

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Mike “the monkey” Senften NAB Presentation

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!!

World of Warcraft – Trial of the Crusader – Gameplay Trailer

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!

World of Warcraft – Trial fo the Crusader Gameplay Trailer

DJ Lukasz on Sound System Syndicate Radio

Sound System Syndicate Radio brodcasts once a week on Sundays at 6pm PST. The show is hosted by DJ Zion and DJ Reign with guest mixes from local and international talent. The music is always rocking and it is usually in the realm of Electronic. From House to Trance as well as underground favorites of UK Hard House and NRG. This week I was a guest on the show and I couldnt wait to get my new style officially recorded for all of you to enjoy. I played a bunch of new tracks all in the world of Tech, Techno and Tech House.

I actually just found new inspiration for my style and its really a direct reflection of UMEK. Here’s his bio from his site: “Uroš Umek is internationally acclaimed music producer from Slovenia, seducing the masses with his own music blend for more than a decade. Always on the look for new sounds and determined to challenge every existing cliché in music industry, he managed to define his own vision of vanguard techno. Sure, this would not happen without the support of his loyal peers who’ve joined him on the production platforms such as Recycled Loops, Consumer Recreation and Astrodisco, with which they defined “Slovenian techno sound” and successfully invested it as an important driving force on the global club scene.” You can actually download a lot of promo mixes from his site so go and enjoy some new flavors of tunes!