This is just hilarious. Its is for Subaru and the spot showcases a mediocre car and what went behind it. Enjoy.

10) Oops
Directed by Chris Beckman

Using existing footage of people dropping/picking up their cameras. The first time I saw this video, I’ll be honest, I skipped through it in just under 15 seconds waiting for something extraordinary to happen. I came back to it 4 days later and watched it in its entirety and was amazed. Such a great idea and well worth the watch. Yes it’s 10 minutes, suck it up. This won Best experimental video of 2010 for the Vimeo Awards.

9) Something Lurking
Directed by Psyop

This spot is awesome in its attention to detail, to go along with the flawless CG. Psyop chooses to use real dolls and just change their expressions in post. I love the dolls don’t move or animate, just the sharks. Psyop just does it better than everyone else, period.

Nuit Blanche
Directed by Arev Manoukian

We’ve seen a thousand “cool” videos with high speed cameras of stuff blowing up, people getting hit with water baloons etc. But this video actually has a story; and it’s well done.

7) Timelapse Montage
Directed by Mike Flores

Wow. I can’t believe how many times I have watched this or shown it to others. Every shot is spectacular. All timelapse shots taking a photo every 2-5 seconds or so on a motion control rig. Of course an overlayed score from Hans Zimmer doesn’t hurt. The night shots look surreal.

6) Guy walks Across America
Directed by Sam Griffith

Title says it all. The video is all done stop motion. The hi-five at 1:18 is brilliant. Everything was done with a camera, a tripod, and a tape measure. Done in 14 days. 2,770 still frames were used.

5) Shiny Suds
Directed by Buck.tv

This is awesome from start to finish. Great idea, great animation and well executed. I love her “happy face” at the beginning.

4) Last Day Dream
Directed by Chris Milk

I love pretty much everything Chris Milk touches. He has a certain look that I just seem to love. This is a project for a 42 second Film Festival through the life of one man (in 42 seconds). I love how this person’s selected life could pass for literally anyone else’s life. Be sure to let this load all of the way, and watch away. All shot with the Canon 5D Mark II by Chris Milk.

3) Meet Buck
Directed by Dennis Bouyer, Yann De Preval, Vincent Sousa, Laurent Monneron (all from French animation school Supinfocom)

The animation, rigging is all awesome, but the texturing is what really separates this from anything I have ever seen. I just love the painterly approach to everything. Oh yeah, and these guys are all students.

2) Nike Futbol: Next Level
Directed by Guy Ritchie

The World Cup brought a lot of creativity to the ad world this year. And this is an awesome, very entertaining spot. I love how it is just one point of view through one person’s eyes. Similar to Chris Milk’s 42 second spot in the execution. Anyone who has played any sport, not just soccer, can relate to the games, the practices, and the sound design. One of my favourite sports commercials of all time (which is something I make another list about in the future).

AND THE NUMBER ONE VIDEO………………………

1) The Man Your Man Could Smell Like
Directed by Tom Kuntz with The Mill

This changed everything.
Tom kuntz also directed Skittles commercial “Beard” FYI.

This video uses stop motion, drawing, and perspective extremely effectively. They tell a great story while not being directly related to the lyrics and is one of those music videos where you just keep watching until the end. Not to mention everything is just so cleverly done, the video still has a soul.

Interview here: http://bit.ly/fgHiUU

5) OK GO: Pick One.
End Love:

This Too Shall Pass:

This entire list could be OK GO videos but I’ll give them just one spot. The one continuous take of This Too Shall Pass and the stop motion piece of End Love are both incredible. I prefer the Rube Goldberg Machine video of the two as it is just too entertaining and the sounds and visuals match the lyrics perfectly. Eric Gunther & Jeff Lieberman directed End Love and James Frost directed This Too Shall Pass, with the help of Synn labs.
Interview here: http://bit.ly/gc2qCQ

4) Kid Cudi: Pursuit of Happiness
Directed by: Megaforce

This video rocks and so does the song. Slick transitions. Slick compositing. Everything is just so seamless and the theme just fits the song. I am sure this is what Kid Cudi was thinking when he made this song.

3) Charlotte Gainsbourg: Heaven Can Wait
Directed by: Keith Schofield

Schofield is sick nasty. I really had a hard time deciding between his recent stuff. Let love Rule was very original (check it out here: http://bit.ly/dZysBO) and very enjoyable. He also directed MIMS: Move (http://bit.ly/H0XJr) and the XXX: Safe for Work spot for Diesel was hilarious as well (http://bit.ly/geNolq).
But Heaven Can Wait is my favourite. I love how every frame of this video is a great photograph (albeit done before). There isn’t a wasted frame or scene in this and I love how creepy and somber the tone is. The colour grading rocks too.
However. That said, He ripped this off, word for word off of other people’s photographs. See here: http://bit.ly/hS0PjX.
So make your own conclusions. I still like watching the video regardless, because the fact is, it is well done, and i enjoy every scene.

2) Audiobullys: Only Man
Directed by: Jonas & Francois

This video is just full of awesomeness. Jonas and Francois are without a doubt my favourite music video directors. They love integrating  custom typography, coming up with inventive camera work, energy, and they always seem to do work on great music tracks too (check out the Justice D.A.N.C.E. video they did a few years back: http://bit.ly/fseaMP). very original and creative group of guys. This video has a huge amount of custom designed shoes that look gorgeous on camera. They shoot from below to show a very interesting perspective everything about this is enjoyable for me.

1) Arcade Fire: The Wilderness
Directed by: Chris Milk

http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com/

I almost broke down when i saw this video. I hadn’t been home in so long that this video kind of hit me pretty hard. They kind of cheated. They used Google maps and HTML5 to drive the visuals to customize everyone’s music video experience. You type in your hometown information, and they create a music video using street views of your neighborhood. Freakin Brilliant.

Congratulations to the meathead who hacked into my website. I should get that back up and running this weekend. Im due for a massive update, and I am cutting a new reel from the summer right now.

I had the opportunity to work on a lot of personal projects in my last few weeks at The Electric Company. The guys there were absolutely amazing at helping me with the craziest of ideas.

I was just creating work and ideas that I thought Ad Agencies would be looking for. So that meant creating beer bottle ads, end tag mnemonics, and quick promos.

Particular 2 Tests

Ive been going slowly through a Digital Tutors DVD that I highly recommend called Modeling Interiors in 3DS Max.

The guy goes through step by step how he models everything in the room. There is nothing on texturing or lighting. Just modeling.

One thing I have noticed is that the difference between a very CG looking object and a more photo-realistic one, is that the CG looking object lacks the imperfections real objects have. Pillows aren’t square they have a bit of a sag to one side or the other. The push/pull painting option (see soft mod in Maya) is great for creating these necessary imperfections.

After I rendered the still out of a simple couch and coffee table scene, I took it into photoshop and added some chromatic aberration, blurring, and dodge and burn. Its not too bad looking but I’m very happy with it because its my first real model with some decent detail. I am not a huge fan of modeling, but it is VERY gratifying to finish something like that. I look forward to doing more.

check em out here

his website is also here:
http://www.mfinleydesigns.com/

Morgan Finley is a web designer and printmaker who is looking for more and more freelance web design work. Hes a big wordpress guy and understand typography really well. Check him out.

WOW.

Now thats a badass reel.
It was definitely under 2 minutes but it was powerful. Great editing, amazing sound design, and more importantly great work. He does motion design and VFX for websites. His website is pretty sick as well.

I’m emailing this guy as you read this because I have to know how he did some of the shots. His web stuff is killer.

Robert Kaniszewski is the designer’s name

4 minutes is a huge amount of time and one thing I have realized is that staying organized is paramount. Sometimes you can get away with being slightly organized just enough so you can get the project out the door. But when you are working with a spot of that length (we are using 38 compositions in total) and you are swapping after effect project files between each other it can be quite maddening.

We are keeping a regular solid in the background with a simple light, soft shadows, and all of the elements fly into the center of the screen animate and fly off so every ‘comp’ is a clean plate and has the same start and finish frame.

We are also using 3D elements as well such as DVDs and a scratch lottery ticket. I made the lottery ticket in 3D, took the photoshop file made the center section ‘scratch off’ revealing text made some simple particles as it came off, rendered this out as a jpeg sequence and mapped that to the material of the simple plane i made in 3D so we could get a camera move with 3d shadows. rendered the shadows in mental ray with a ambient occlusion pass, and then a simple scanline render for the ticket itself. Took all this back into after effects added more particles to the ticket as it is scratched off and the section is done.

I also did the end tag for future shop which was a lot of fun to do as well. A note: I finished this end tag, I was working in quarter res the entire time, but when I switched it back to full quality just before rendering, I was getting a crazy amount of noise where the absence of light was. I fixed this after changing the aperture of the camera. This was very simple, but I sat that for an hour before figuring that out. Just a tip.

Wow. I really don’t know what to say about this. I really do not understand what I just watched. Was that a commercial promo spot or a movie? Very amazing stuff from Moving Picture Company who has dabbled in pretty much everything:

their vfx reel is here

But we watched the SyFy spot and one thing is very clear that everyone here at work agreed on. That spot is going to be referenced to over and over again for years to come. Ad Agencies are going to be going from studio to studio pitching ideas from the spot in the future. Lord knows that it will be a month before we see the spray can idea.

The SyFy trailer itself was a bit odd in that it seemed like way too many ideas smashed together that seemed to show off ‘hey, look what I can do!’ rather than sticking to any theme, and this began to throw me off a little bit. I started to lose focus on what I was watching as I began just wondering what crazy vfx shot I was going to see next. I am still a firm believer that the new SyFy rebrand is something I like for the both the channel and the vfx industry.