Cellar Roots is an award-winning magazine of student poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and art in all mediums. They are looking for graphic designers to help with this school year’s book! It will be an awesome portfolio opportunity and a nice way to make some extra bit of cash. Contact Cellar Roots’ Editor-in-Chief Bill Barr for more information at cellarroots.editor@gmail.com.

You can also check out the Cellar Roots website at http://www.emich.edu/cellarroots/.

One more installment from the recent round of exercises where students ventured into the land of make believe.

eff off billy. from RACHEL AURIEMMA on Vimeo.

I haven’t yet conducted the interview but will soon.

Another installment of featured student work. This time it is Erin Anderson’s exercise for the motion graphics class. The short exercise asked students to explore the theme “it all started the day that the real world met the land of make-believe.”

Untitled from Erin Anderson on Vimeo.

Describe a little bit of your thought process in addressing the project brief, why this solution?
I was looking through the videos at archive.org trying to come up with a solid idea. They had some wartime videos that I was watching and I started to think what it might look like if an atomic bomb was a happy experience rather than a horrific one.

Describe a little bit of you working process.
I’m pretty new to AfterEffects so I occasionally had to look up some things that we had already learned in class just to remember how to do them! I also had this weird problem where I got white squares in my final rendered movie. I looked it up all over the web but I couldn’t find anything. When I got to class, Ryan explained that if you have preview view selected on an effect, it gives you that little square with your effect in it and if you don’t change it to the final view, it’ll render in your final one. Weird. I used a LOT of parenting too!

What are some of your inspirations for your solution?
Hmm, I would say most of it was actually the things that we learned in class. While we’re in demos, I sometimes have an idea of what can be done with what we’re learning. I stumbled on the work of Carolina Melis through Motionographer and I really really love her work.

What did you gain from this experience?
I definitely have a better understanding of motion tracking and parenting. I also had of fun trying to get the new things to blend into the old with effects and playing around with those for the first time. Obviously there’s a little bit of work to do in that area, but I feel like I learned a lot in this exercise.

Anything else you would like to add.
Motion is a learning process for sure, but I had a lot of fun working on this project!

Circle beats Square, Square beats Circle, Triangle Wins from erik simmons on Vimeo.

Another gem from the “Circle beats Square, Square beats Circle, Triangle Wins” exercise. Here is what Erik Simmons has to say about his work:

Describe a little bit of your thought process in addressing the project brief (why this solution?)

Since it was supposed to be a ten second video, I felt that I should try to do something a little simple but still hold some aesthetic appeal to me. Even though it was an exercise, I needed to figure out a theme that would flex that creative muscle while still finishing it within the deadline.

Describe a little bit of you working process. (Did you seek out tutorials, help, knew it all, what difficulties did you encountered, etc.)

While making the video, I mostly stuck with what I learned in class. However, it was a little difficult to figure out how I wanted the video to flow from scene to scene. To solve this problem I drew up a quick storyboard and sketched out the shapes. After that, it was just a matter of creating them in illustrator.

While some of the inspirations are obvious (Legend of Zelda’s Triforce) what other things inspired you?

Other than Zelda, Steven Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” inspired me to a make the shapes play music while changing color.

What did you gain from this experience?

The experience of applying what I learn to make these videos has been an enlightening one. Making these short videos has given me a lot of ideas for my personal projects. As a creative outlet, I make music, write and draw. I’ve always wanted to find a way to combine all three. Taking this class has given me a chance to learn how to do that.

Anything else you would like to add.

“Pre-compose” is an awesomely convenient feature.

This is the first in a hopefully ongoing series featuring student work along with a short interview about their process.

For one of the first exercises in the Motion Graphics class this Winter students were asked to create a short-short animated sequence interpreting the theme “Circle beats Square, Square Beats Circle, Triangle Wins.” Below is short interview with Ryan Haury about his work above.

Describe a little bit of your thought process in addressing the project brief; why this solution?

When I saw the project brief, I automatically thought “make cool battle sequence”. My first idea was to mock one of the sequences from the Matrix when they’re dodging bullets, but I figured that would take a lot more work to make look cool; Tron would be just as engaging w/ much less complications.

Describe a little bit of you working process. Did you seek out tutorials? Were there any difficulties you encountered? Or did you just know it all?

The basis of the animation was really just animating masks and parenting. The only problem I had was turning the lightbikes while keeping a “light wall” behind them. I ended up just creating new walls and masking out the old ones since they were all parented to the bikes. As for tutorials, I found the “retro film look” and the “3D Letters” online at Graymachine.com (“Retro Style Graphics Tutorial”); I think they definitely help the video look more “Trony”.  

While some of the inspirations are obvious, what other things inspired you?

Besides Tron itself, the Graymachine.com tutorials definitely paved the way for this animation. They set the guidelines for me and I did the rest. Oh yeah, and definitely the “Tron Guy” from youtube. He proved to me that the 27 year old movie still kicks digital ass.

What did you gain from this experience?
This is the first time I actually used multiple cameras simultaneously in AE-it felt like I was actually making a movie.

Anything else you would like to add?
One thing that I discovered myself is the “faking” of 3D objects. Since AE is 2.5D, it’s hard to create an object that’s fully 3D, and that’s not a cube. The best way to fake it is to create multiple layers at different depths (z-space), then blend camera work and motion blur together. If the camera/object moves fast enough and/or the layers are close enough to each other, motion blur will likely do its job, and blend the layers together, giving you a “3D” object (or at least enough of one to fool the viewers eyes).