Curl Co. Productions

Freelance animation, illustration & motion design

Day 2 – Lightbulb

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I thought Day 1 was hard to find inspiration for this #15minmograph challenge. This time I had to go searching for assets before anything even came to mind. Then I had a lightbulb moment (see what I did there).

I knew I wanted to play with different ways of applying textures to a piece. I got my hands on a slate texture and a light bulb graphic from Pixabay, dumped a few keyframes on the vector assets and then started playing with the texture layer. Adding grades and effects to contrast and harshen it, and then playing with the blend modes on each layer before timer went and it was pencils down. Texture effects is a tool I commonly forget to play with in client work and I think this small task has probably brought it back to me as a go-to effect for giving vector animation a great organic feel.

Voila…

Day 2 - Lightbulb
Day 2 – Lightbulb

#15minmograph Challenge

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So in the past week, I came across a little challenge – #15minmograph.

It all started in my School of Motion Alumni group, one member, Ryan Plummer, challenged himself to create something in 15 mins and posted the result. I was totally struck by the idea. I have wanted to create something daily, I even toyed with the idea of a vlog but I don’t necessarily want my personal business up online more than it is now and wanted something more motion design and animation based, as my love for the field is only growing. This was perfect. Even on my busiest day, how can I not find 15 mins to create something small and creative? And so, I joined in.

The rules are pretty simple and whilst on a couple of occasions, I have broken them, which I will go into more details about day-by-day, the restriction amps to the creativity.

#15minmograph rules
#15minmograph rules

I will try to maintain this daily for as long as possible, I won’t beat myself up if I don’t get to it or skip a day, but I will try and I will post the results here and on Instagram. Feel free to click through to the post going in-depth at each challenge day.

Day1 - TheEye

Day 1 – The Eye

 

Day 2 - Lightbulb

Day 2 – Lightbulb

 

Day3 - Lifting

Day 3 – Do you even lift, bro?

 

Day4 - Slice

Day 4 – Slice ’em up, buttercup

 

Day5 - Awkward

Day 5 – Awkward Dance

 

Day6 - Rainin'

Day 6 – Rainin’

 

Day7 - Endless Summer

Day 7 – Endless Summer

 

Day8 - Epic Shot

Day 8 – Epic

 

Day 9 - Trapped

Day 9 – Offset Trap

 

Day10-SpinDown

Day 10 – Spin Down

Social Cinemagraphs

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Made with the talented Ensemble Australia Sydney team for Mundicare Australia.

It seems to be a burgeoning trend on social media at the moment, especially with social advertising. Cinemagraphs are “still photographs in which a minor and repeated movement occurs, forming a video clip. They are published as an animated GIF or in other video formats and can give the illusion that the viewer is watching an animation” (thanks, Wikipedia). And they are really fun to make!

In this case we used still images, I separated the different layers creating a clean background layer with clone tool in Photoshop, cutting out the midground and foreground content and separating each onto their own layer. From here it is a matter of relayering in After Effects and adding movement with puppet pin tool, position keyframes, layering and feathering light beams and using Trapcode Particular to add the falling leaves and buzzing bugs. For the flames the technique was about layering flame stock, playing with the screen mode and again using Particular to add smoke and embers.With each cinemagraphs

With each cinemagraph having a 2 week run as a Facebook sponsored post, they managed to crack 150,000, 250,000 and 350,000 views.

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