3/52 This is a style of illustration I’ve always liked, so I decided to try my hand at a picture of my wife, Emily. I still want to work on this more, but for the sake of 52 Works, I’m posting it in its current state. (I’ve never been particularly good at drawing, so it’s practice practice practice.)
For months I’ve been trying to articulate a blog post about crowdsourcing and design competitions. This post by Heather Parlato on Creative Freelancer sums up my feelings exactly and offers several suggestions to those considering these contests (especially smaller businesses).
“Falling” For week 2 of 52 works, I settled on this animation (after several false starts through the week). I’ve been wanting to do a series of seasonal identities for a while. With this, I’ve finally managed to start on one. It was a good excuse to get more experience with both Particular and Cinema 4D.
I helped work on the 3D graphics for this video by Jesse Rosten. When he first described the concept to me, I was sold immediately. It’s great to see it come together so well and get so much attention (for the right reasons).
As my first official week of 52 Works, I finally got around to creating this Threadless design: More Pixels. It’s based on an image I made earlier from (of all things) a Twitter conversation. Regardless, it’s up for voting until January 11th, so vote it up, get it printed, then buy it up!
Keep a folder for the digital equivalent of crumpled up pieces of paper with ideas that didn’t pan out. They might be useful later.
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Me (Source: twitter.com) |
As of Today, we’ve sold over 110,000 copies for a total of over $500,000. Minus some money for PayPal charges etc, I have a profit around $200,000 (after taxes $75.58). This is less than I would have been paid by a large company to simply perform the show and let them sell it to you, but they would have charged you about $20 for the video. They would have given you an encrypted and regionally restricted video of limited value, and they would have owned your private information for their own use. They would have withheld international availability indefinitely.
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An interesting experiment and I’m glad it’s working. But as Anil Dash noted, for this to work you have to “start by being one of the greatest talents in the history of your craft.” |
Over the last few years I’ve neglected personal projects and almost solely focussed on other people’s work. Next year, I make more time for myself.
I’ve decided to set up a challenge for myself. Through the course of 2012, I will produce 52 “works”, one every week. These will mostly be animations, but might be anything from a photograph to woodwork to a smaller piece for a larger project. But these need to be self produced, not any client work.
I will post these here, but will also have a dedicated page on my site once I get this rolling. So keep an eye out. And if you notice me slacking, call me out on it!
You cannot eat exposure, nor pay your rent with it, nor buy health insurance with it, nor put it in an exposure bank for a rainy day. You need money for all of that. That is the trade – you trade your time and work for the client’s money. You both need something from the other. Exposure can be a byproduct of this transaction, but it should NEVER be the basis for it.
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| — | Scott Benson |
Compositing Tip: Quick Grain
Film grain is one of those things that can really help sell your composite or graphics (or help reduce banding). But it can be a pain to render on top of an already complicated effects stack. To make this much easier, here’s what I do in AE:
- Create a one second comp that’s the largest size you’ll use—for me, that’s 2k (2048x1152).
- Place a 50% gray solid and add the Add Grain effect. (Effect>Noise & Grain>Add Grain)
- Chose your preset. I typically like to use Kodak Vision 320T for graphics, but it will vary for composites.
- Render out an uncompressed image sequence or QuickTime.
- Import the render and change the frame rate to match your project (if necessary). Also set the looping to something that will cover your longer comps. I work in broadcast, so it’s mostly 15, 30, or 60. All of this is done under File>Interpret Footage>Main…
- When it’s needed, place this layer above your graphics, set the transfer mode to Overlay, and adjust opacity to vary the strength of the grain.
You’ll now have a quick way to add grain to pretty much any size comp at any frame rate. By using such a large frame size for the grain render, you can use it on any smaller size comp by just keeping the scaling to 100%.
I actually have a few different types (and sizes) of grain, and even just plain noise in my collection. The differences are subtle, but they make a difference.
I was digging through some Final Cut Pro plist files for a new tool I’m working on and I stumbled across this: a string labeled “FutureOfFCP.”
This is the super last version of Final Cut Pro. For realz. No more updates… ever!
Hope you like FCP v7. Because that’s the last one you’re going to get.
Okay, sarcasm aside, can we stop focussing on when the next version of FCP will come out or how much Apple cares about pro users or what the discontinuation of the rack-mount Xserve means. Instead, just use the tools you have available right now to make your living or finish your projects. Trust me, you’ll be a happier person. We need more of those.
Lost In the Details
We keep getting lost in the technical details. I don’t want to go to a panel to hear what role Avid/FCP/Adobe played in your post-production pipeline. I don’t want to be sold to. I’d care more about the creative decisions and obstacles overcome in the process.
[End rant about Lost editors panel at the Savannah Film Fest next week.]
Please. No.
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/07/microsoft-and-adobe-chiefs-meet-to-discuss-partnerships/
Interesting find by @odd_enough. A tumblog with random music to design to. Now I just need a script to go through it like a playlist on random.
