I was asked by Grand Union to design a website for Coca-Cola, based on the word “Carnival’. They didnt want a literal interpretation of a Carnival online, but an innovative online digital Carnival-like experience, with music and interactive Audio-Visual elements mixed in with the content (the various brands Coca-Cola have). The idea was to show the diversity of their range, rather than just the usual ‘classic’ Coca-Cola drink everyone knows about, but in a light, fun way. They asked for designs which showed a 3D environment which would have various zones, each showing content tagged for that particular zone. They would be based loosely into 6 zones - fruit, energy, tonic, classic, water, and fizzy.
I made static photoshop designs to present to the client, as well as the movies above, to show how the Flash Papervision site might look.
Here’s an earlier video I made for them, which shows how the Audio-Visual elements might work, along with how the 3D might look. I didnt have the time to do anything more than basic animation on the panels of one ‘cluster’, but it shows how the whole environment might be driven by the music It has beats, don’t be alarmed!
Microsite for Lawgiverz, built in Flash, for electro-breakbeat artists. They wanted an unusual, minimal site, with all content easily updatable, so its all pulled in from external text files, along with the unnerving soundtrack. For the main video I filmed them in the masks they wear onstage and treated the footage in After Effects, getting the flickering hologram effect (”Help me Obi Wan, you’re my only hope”) the Giverz were after. They now get most of their gigs through the website. The MP3 player is still a bit buggy though, dammit.
www.lawgiverz.com
Duke Digital comissioned me to make 10 movies for Nissan, based on storyboards they had drawn up, exploring the various aspects of the new Nissan Murano and Qashqai cars (Click here to see movies on the Nissan site.).
Murano ‘Ambience’: One of the main problems in making these movies was getting assets, and making films out of the assets we had. The photography was really nice though, so I separated the pictures into layers, and filled in behind the front layers a bit, so i could then move the camera through 3D space in After Effects, to give an effect of floating through the car, with the focus blurring out to give the illusion of depth.
Murano ‘Intelligence’: A guy at Duke went down to Nissan HQ to play around with the car and film the TV display in the car. I smoothed out the footage, and comped it with the photography in After Effects and slowly panned the camera around.
Murano ‘Interior’: Similar effects seen in the ‘ambience’ movie. On all the movies I used the 3D lighting in After Effects to bring some subtle movement to the photography.
Murano ‘Safety’: This features a 3D swoosh which flies through the chassis - I used Trapcode’s Particular plug-in for After Effects to get the effect.
Saint Digital commissioned me to create an animated video in After Effects, to use as a background video on their redesigned website. It was based on a static design by Rob Northam.
I arranged all the elements in 3D space in After Effects and had the camera move around slightly to give depth and the effect of floating in the scene. I used particle systems to create the background and clouds, and Flash to animate the graphical elements at the edges. The actionscripters made it fullscreen, but in the end it slowed the interface down too much so the original static design was used instead. Ah well, its a nice bit of work anyway. I’ve added some sound fx and some music (gnostic dub by jon 7).
10 second digital ad to be shown on outdoor screens around London. Featuring a 3D swoosh, built in After Effects (with Trapcode Particular), along with some nice lighting. Made while working at Saint.
Saint commissioned me to make an intro movie to their data visualisation microsite they built for the BBCs White Season, called ‘Spectrum’. I was asked to create a swirling cluster of thousands of coloured particles. I made a black and white animation using a 3D particle system (Trapcode Particular) in After Effects, then streamed it into Flash where it was coloured using layer blend modes by a blurred pie-chart representing the live data (hooked up by actionscripters) - it’s basically a cool pie-chart. The site was a finalist in the Cannes Lions award.
View site. Click on ‘Spectrum’..
I also made a 10 second promo for BBC White Season ‘Spectrum’ microsite, which was shown on BBC1.
Heres some footage of earlier versions of the cluster, in black and white..
Volvic ran an initiative where they built wells in Africa, thus providing water equivalent to 10 litres for every litre they sell. Saint made a microsite for it and asked me to build a Totaliser - an animation showing how many litres had been donated so far. I filmed a small cog turning, for the water-wheel, and used a particle system in After Effects to create the ‘water’. Actionscripters hooked up the display to live data.
View site.
Visuals projected onto layers of semi-transparent fabric hung in strips from the ceiling. A test I did for a gig with Trigger in Bristol, this footage looks better than the footage from the event, as I didnt get to set up the strips.
I made the footage myself, using a mix of filmed footage and After Effects work. I then ‘play’ the individual layers live using VDMX, along with twisted electro-breaks and electronica. The effect I’m trying to achieve is that of skewed perspectives. A co-ordinate system crash. The footage deals in multiple perspectives, with the 3D camera usually floating around some object. The footage can beam through several layers of fabric, and the effect is that the footage just hangs in the air. The whole thing constantly shifts, and never resolves itself, a kind of probability wave in a continuum of never-quite-thereness. I hope to do more of this kind of thing this year.
Expandable banner featuring streamed motion graphics, commissioned by Wunderman. I was given a piece of music, and a TV ad to base this design on. I created the lines and notes In After Effects, and synchronised it with the soundtrack, then exported it a black and white FLV into Flash, where I layered it up with blue and green ‘lighting’. This techniques is very effective - it keeps the file-size of the video down, and the Flash gradients come out perfect, colourising the B/W video. The video streams into the Flash banner, which gets round any file-size issues.
Flash movie with some transparent video action over the top. With music from Vladislav Delay. Based on a true story.