Another way that I enjoy bringing digital media to life is through 3d animation and motion graphics. I was always fascinated with special effects in movies and on tv as a kid, so once I was introduced to After Effects I was delighted to have all the tools I needed to produce my own. Creating motion graphics also goes hand-in-hand with 3d animation. I started out using 3d Studio Max, and got familiar with creating models for game design, but eventually wound up using Cinema 4d as it felt a lot more natural. Here are just a few examples of my work, and be sure to check back often for more.
This was a short demonstration of compositing effects for the Likwit Junkies' (Defari & DJ Babu) music video "One Day Away." New assets were created in Photoshop, and then all of the compositing was done in After Effects. The footage was supplied to me as a DVD in 4:3 format without any effects whatsoever. I added masking, particle effects and time-remapping using Expressions (scripting language for AE) to simulate a video "scratch" effect.
One of my favorite aspects of digital media is the ability to combine music, art and programming all into one. MusicGraph is a short animation I created using Cinema 4D, MoGraph, After Effects and some original music.
Nocens Sonitus roughly translates from Latin to "Evil Music," which was exactly what this song reminded me of. Using photographs from around Philadelphia taken by "Fawn Dollahs," and artwork commissioned by Thom May, I created this surreal fly-through animation in After Effects.
Another one of my all-time favorite projects, "Rich 'n Stingy" is the name of a song I produced with Wu-Family members Chi-King and 12 O'Clock (Brooklyn Zu, Sunz of Man). The song was recorded in Orlando during the Winter of 2005 and for a show in Downtown Orlando during early 2006, I grabbed a few cameras and a few friends to record the performance. After getting back home at about 3am, I put together a quick video edit of this song for promotion. It was shot to miniDV on two handhelds, edited in Premiere and composited with After Effects. The song was produced with an Akai MPC2000XL, an ASR-10 and a Yamaha AW4416.
This was a short video originally created to test out some new plugins in After Effects using public domain footage and original music.
Illegal Information is a short (less than 5 minutes long) documentary about online piracy. All of the footage was taken from public domain sources, and includes lots of self-shot footage. Animations and transitions were created in After Effects, and the video was edited using Premiere and Final Cut Pro. All of the music featured in this project is original.