Feature Friday #10

Posted September 2nd, 2011 / By John Kostrzewski in Feature Friday, Featured

Here’s a weekly roundup of some of the videos we found exciting around the web!

If you have a piece of work that you’ve created or have seen, contact us or become our contact on and send us the link.

Motion Graphics

from on .

The aim of the video is to interpret audio and translate it into visuals with geometric shapes.

By composing and designing this audio track, I was able to break down each note and effect to create graphics that interacts and syncs with the audio.

Visual Effects

from on .

The Killing Joke is a 15 minute suspense/fiction short film about a mysterious woman that finds a red balloon tied up to a curious little box on an eery derelict street. Using classic elements of suspense and working within a seventies aesthetic, ‘The Killing Joke’ is an action packed film that pays homage to some of the horror movies from that era.

Animation

from on .

The team used After Effects as the main compositing software. They combined the 2D drawings and paintings and 3D animation and digital effects into a single space in order to create a highly textured look. In addition to lighting and compositing the CG characters and props in Maya, the team used Maya Toon, Maya Hair and Maya nCloth, manipulating and merging techniques not typically used in the studio’s CG pipeline. Pre-compositing 3D components in Nuke ensured an efficient workflow. These files were also color-corrected and incorporated into the 2D environments in After Effects. Using Maya Paint FX in conjunction with cloth simulations and digital effects added to the video’s unique style.

Film

from on .

One of the challenges in making this video, was trying to get good storm and star shots. The opportunity doesn’t come along very often, the storm has to be moving the right speed and the lightning can overexpose the long exposures. I had several opportunities this summer to get storm and star shots. In one instance, within a minute of picking up the camera and dolly, 70mph winds hit. One storm was perfect, it came straight towards the setup, then died right before it reached it.

John Kostrzewski is the Editor of Fuel Your Motionography and a freelance motion graphics and visual effects artist, videographer and writer living in Minnesota. He is awesome. Follow him on Twitter at and .