databend

So I've been looking into loads of glitch sources and ways to achieve this kind of aesthetic for my current motion graphic project, throughout my searching I've seen the term 'databending' popping up all over the place.  - From the first search it turned out there are a fair few people creating distorted imagery from applying certain techniques to existing file types - databending.

Not only pictures are being experimented with in this 'databending' style, there are a load of motion graphic pieces from people taking normal video clips and 'databending' through audio programmes such as Audacity.
Once your head's around importing photos into text editors, video clips into audio software doesn't seem that strange, and some of the outcomes are pretty nifty. I was reading a post in which someone claimed applying the text edit technique to complicated vector files can create some coll effects too.

This example below is exactly the kind of aesthetic I want to include into some of my motion work, it's a shame it is a video file but I'm hoping there must be a way to achieve such a visual using after effects. What is so particularly enticing about this video is the change of direction and pattern as the frequencies change.

LINE

The Architectural League Beaux Arts Ball

Feel I haven't really posted any moving image through personal interest in a while, as abstract and un-informative as it is, I love the compositions created throughout this piece. It reminds me alot of my response to the visual language module last year. I'm always finding myself posting architectural/geometrical design to my context, not that it's a bad thing, just a personal note...

Golden

Many people refer to the earlier arcade/console games as the 'golden age of gaming', again it is very subjective to people personal views but there is a general consensus that it runs from the late 70's to the mid 80's. This could be the more focused, cropped in area of 'retro games' to persue and base my TV programme on. However my only worry is the vague nature of the wording 'golden age' or 'retro'.

"The Golden Age of Video games is when the world began to recognize what these devices were. Before Ralph Baer and Nolan Bushnell brought these systems into people's homes and the pizza parlor around the corner, these systems were still abstract concepts and experiments. It is during this era that Video games begin to make their mark on society and culture.

Not only do people embrace Video games and make time for them in their lives, many make substantial commitments with their budgets as well. During these formative years, the video game's cultural impact is reflected through its appearance in novels, films, and television shows."

"The period from the appearance of Space Invaders in 1978 through The Great Video Game Crash of 1983, when 8-bit video games emerged to rule popular culture, coin-operated video arcades appeared in every shopping mall, and the Atari 2600 and its competitors first popularized home gaming. Back then, Sega was known for making Vector Games rather than consoles, and Nintendo's Mario had never stomped on a Goomba. Creativity reigned, and a single visionary designer could still see an entire game through from concept to finished product, unlike the enormous Hollywood-style teams needed for today's high-end game franchises. Shoot 'Em Ups were especially popular, as outer space and stylized spacecraft were easy to render on the crude hardware of the day.

Your mileage may vary about considering this era as a true "golden age", considering the fondness for later generations of consoles. Still, it was the first time video games hit the big time, so it qualifies to some extent."

- I'm still looking to definitely focus in on a specific area of retro gaming, and from the research I've been gathering it's looking like the 80's was probably the most influentially significant period. It's hard for me to dismiss the 90's as it was such a big part of my childhood gaming experience, but it just doesn't have the cult classics that warrant a TV programme in my opinion - or at least not as interesting.

Pixels

I love this pixelated aesthetic, more so the colours that have been used in these two examples, maybe I should mess around with finding a few colours that would work in this way in attempt to create a textured/colourful screen, maybe an intro/outro screen etc. As much as it reminds me of the horrible effect that used to be availiable in windows movie maker, with the next portion of the movie 'fizzling' in or out, I like the idea of making a texture like this constantly in motion, all the pixels moving about and switching colours, no dramatic movement, so subtle that one could almost not see the effect without scrutiny.

Again looking at colour, particularly the RGB on this homemade screen, it's probably the picture quality but each colour looks less saturated than usual, less invasive on the eye than pure R/G/B. Could be quite a nice colour scheme to work with although seemingly rather predictable.

Re-Imagine

Amongst all the amazing graphics, constantly evolving and improving in games today, a designer, or pixel artist as he is known decided they need a bit of a strip back and get them back to the bare bones of gaming.

Junkboy has cleverly hypothesized many of our modern day games into 8 and 16-bit classics. Unfortunately they are only single frames, but the idea is excellent. However I'm not quite sure how Guitar Hero would work on any of the retro machines, with 5 colours corresponding to buttons, that most (especially earlier) consoles' control pads simply cant cater for! Loads more examples here!

Guitar Hero

 Mirrors Edge

Sin & Punishment:
Star Successor

Saturn

Shortly after my last post I found this little gem. A few years later this start up ident was found on the Sega Saturn, one I'd never had the pleasure of viewing before (my mega drive kept me happy). Absolutely brilliant short motion graphic, space like small particles flickering around as the camera pans through them finally making up the logo, sega continued to use this effect for a couple more ident, and designers are still using very similar effects to this da (hopefully I'll come across one soon and link it back.

Oldent

Several start up idents across a range of gaming consoles, particularly fond of the 2 minute N64 clip, Mario running around and interacting with a 3D N64 logo. Haha they all bring back memories, more surprisingly I felt the music and sounds to have the most reminiscent effect, remembering humming them as a kid. Goes to show that the choice of audio is very important, brands have always frantically strived for longevity and recognition, sounds and 'jingles' add another sense of communication, more often without us even realising, but most often remembering for years.










Unlike the others this is an early eighties advert for the Atari 2600, rather rudimentary techniques are used but to good effect, some of which still influence motion graphics today in various ways im sure. I love the Atari logo the name in clean rounded type, very typical of the time. I chuckled at the screen shot below the video, I know my existence was in minus years at the time but £129.95 was quite expensive back then, around £500 or so?

Flashback

Although only lasting a minute, the introduction to Flashback set many standards to come where animations were concerned. Delphine Software proved that you didn’t need the latest technology nor a huge budget to set the scene of a game.
Featuring some of the most fluid pixel based animation known to date, the introduction to Flashback became incredibly iconic and often spoken about between gamers. So much so, it was one introduction you were happy to watch again and again, every time you booted up the game.

It's quite appropriate that my topic is one that was at the forefront of moving image at the time, although it was in gaming form they still had to think about title sequences and idents etc for the start of each game, and even the boot up of each different consloe. A later post will cover as many idents/intros to games and console boot-ups, hopefully gaining some inspiration as to how I could recreate this sucessfully using After Effects to fit in such a modern world of graphics.

10's

I found this rather helpful link, a massive directory of top-ten games from various different sources, a good 50+ lists from over the years with an overall summary/ranking at the bottom. Some of the games mentioned don't come under the catergories I've been looking into, but it is nonetheless a very helpful source. I've included the overall top ten list they complied but will definitely be referring back to this site for further investigations...

A few other pointers that were mentioned on the website;

- Action games tend to be the most popular genre. Sports games are decidedly not.
- Sonic the Hedgehog is not popular. In fact, Sega in general has not left much of a legacy, with barely any Genesis games making anyone's lists.
- Tetris is the only puzzle game anyone seems to care about.
- The most popular video game character of all time is clearly Link, closely followed by Mario.
- Despite being the famed "first video game ever" Pong has not aged well, and today no one seems to consider it relevant. Pac Man and Space Invaders are also surprisingly unpopular.

Retro

So I've chosen to persue retro games as my subject matter for this 'Top 10' brief. The catalyst for this idea came though an After Effects file not opening correctly - documented in a post here. What intrigues me most about this topic is the glitchy/pixelated aesthetics most commonly found in video games post 1980's right through to the mid 90's. 

Today, many designers across all fields crave crisp, life like graphics, not only in games but many digital platforms. I want to work backwards in a sense, experimenting with this retro feel and hopefully capture some beauty in what can otherwise be seen as old, crap graphics.

Club TV

Facu Labo was the curator of this Club TV rebrand. I was initially drawn to this video through the Club logo, thinking it was merely an image, the link took me to this pallete perfect piece of moving image. Labo's use of colour is exquisite. There is another video here exampling the rebrand although alot less visual in terms of idents and programme intros. Club TV is a polish channel, and by browsing the foreign website and programme images I get the feeling it's a contemorary channel, focusing mainly on fashion, glamour and lifestyle.



We had a brief-briefing this morning on the second part of our moving image module, Fred mentioned looking at the relevance of brand identity in relation to audience. The colour, type, shapes and on the whole playfulness of this re-brand fits the target democraphic perfectly. - With fashion and interior design reverting back to a more vintage/retro feel over the past few years, the colours here are reminiscent of those found 20/30 years ago and still going strong.

Plenty

Two reels here from PLENTY studios, their headquarters are based in Buenos Aires - Argentina and they've been producing some phenomonal work for companies and brands all over the world. I thought it would be nice to have their showreels from the past 2 years together here, showing development and a vast range of projects worked on by the team. I love the initial ident, black screen with vibrant green shapes and block colour filling up the logo.


2010


2011


One of my randomized words was 'Float', although I've pushed it back to focus on collide, that kind of concept could work well - filling up a tank with letters in, in turn the letters floating upwards as the tank fills.

Somersault

A title sequence for somersault, not sure exactly what somersault is but I really like this short motion graphic from Nick Campbell. Created using only layers and the 3D camera in After Effects, this level of quality seems very reachable given the time we have available for this module. A definite sense of perspective is achieved as the coloured strips build up and the 3D camera shot moves amongst them



Although sound isn't a consideration at this point in our experiments, the sound used here feels very appropriately 'positioned' so to speak - As a new key frame kicks in, and the mood of the shapes change (the rigidity or flow) the sounds change accordingly.

Physics

Trying to find videos and examples of motion graphics that work with physics and momentum in the same way one would find in real life if something was dropped, thrown, rebounding off something etc. This example is an experiment in cinema 4D, and is comprised of 40,000 cubes, a rather collosal amount of objects to work with, taking an hour to work out the physics and 30 minutes to render. I would've thought more time would be spent making something like this look as good as it does, but I'm sure once a level of techincal ability is reached on any software things can start to become infinitely easier.



I'm looking to acheive and encorporate these physics into my experiments with the word collide, falling at real time once colliding together or hitting the edge of a frame. Another area of concern is how letters react when bouncing or being hit by another letter, I've started to experiment with the concept but only on a basic level.

Collide

A video rather appropriately called collide, and although appearing to be only made up of spheres and blocks, I can imagine this is quite a complicated short piece of motion graphics. The spheres make up a human figure that moves incredibly fluently and when it runs into the blocks, the gravity and speed of the falling parts react in a life like manor.


I found this kind of realistic gravity hard to recreate when working in after effects earlier, it's still early days with the software and I'm sure it's not too difficult to achieve - definitely something for the pinboard.

more 4

Not actually a post relating to the more 4 channel, but more visual excitment from the creatives behind some of the most iconic TV idents and motion graphics in TV history. A few years ago channel 4 hosted a 3D week, broadcatsing various shows, user submitted content and idents in 3D for the viewers pleasure (they set up a scheme with sainsburys to distribute the glasses). It's been a bit of a struggle to find specific title sequences standing alone, but there was a few...







This kind of 3D effect isn't at all what we're looking at currently as it's an entirely different technical process, but depth of field is, and trying to achieve 3D effects through different techniques. I want to experiment with camera layers in AE, moving around 3d text to achieve this sense of perspective.

Viral

The music industry is becoming ever more visually orientated, obvioulsly album art and one's favourite band poster have been a strong essence of musical culture for a very long time, however the internet and moving image have opened up whole new worlds for the way we experience music. Online musical platforms have been popping up in their numbers with more and more artists turning to the internet in hope of fame by spreading their talent through these viral environments, attracting alot of public attention.

This has naturally led to yet another area of industry to be visually catered for, I wanted to post a few examples of the kind of idents I've come across in the recent months from the aforementioned viral platforms. (The main content of each video is absolutely irrelevant)

Links

It's amazing how random links through design can penetrate other areas of one's design practise, put into context, my last post documenting recent design around the city of Amsterdam completely randomly landed me on an example of motion graphics after following up a link in one of the pictures - www.getitdone.org

"Get it done is a global community that empowers you to positively change people's lives", this piece of kinetic typography is a promotional/persuasive video encouraging people to get involved

Fashion

My recent creative interests have grown towards design for the fashion industry, from high end branding through to the promotion and retail aspects. It's an area I've been considering for PPD and Enterprise projects, and effectively my potential career, but I don't want to pigeonhole myself too quickly.
I'm looking forward to really getting my teeth into this moving image module and it was reassuring to come across this video of various motion graphics/idents for fashion related brands from The Light Surgeons. Depending on how this module and the software treats me, I would like to think I'll keep moving image as a skill for the future.

Rudd

Researching into motion graphics, a fellow peer found these lectures from some of the major contributors in today's motion graphic world. Matt Rudd has been working alongside channel 4 for the last 10 years, working on their many branding and identity projects. He makes a very relevant point approximately 6 and a half minutes in about reduced, simple and pure design becoming more and more important in this day and age with iphones and androids having small displays with apps fighting for user attention.

He moves on to talk about the latest projects currently underway with channel 4, showing examples of very elegant experiments, abstracting the channel 4 logo with a heavy influence from the cubist movement.