2009 SHOW REEL – The Inspiration

so anyone that knows me well enough knows that i get lost in two places on the internet. wikipedia and youtube. and after browsing around and looking at some of the best examples in motion graphics and interactive brand reels, i’ll have to admit there wasn’t much time left to work on my own project! but some of the things i’ve found were pretty inspirational.

as i started working on this reel, a lot of things that i’d seen in both places began to coming back to my memory.  i’ve been a passionate fan for animation since i was a child.  while saturday cartoons are long gone, i saw something once in an opening for Naruto that caught my eye.  it was a rotoscoped bird over a sky texture.  with a long time appreciation of anime and especially the way their openings always flirted with motion graphics,  i decided to somewhat model an intro around that.

i’ve always enjoyed the symbolism of birds and especially those of crows and ravens.  growing up in the northwest learning about native american culture was a part of every kid’s elementary curiculum.  in native northwest lore, ravens are thought to be the creators of the earth.  in many other cultures they represent ties to the underworld or guides to the afterlife.  in asian cultures they’re representation are often good omens, harbingers of the sun, and in Japanese culture the Karasu-Tengu (crow demon) is often seen as the god of martial arts. one of the things i’ve always loved the most about crows is how intelligent they are and are so often referred to as tricksters. in a lot of ways this is why a ‘sky textured crow’ ended up being a perfect representation of what i’m trying to do here.

i’ve wanted to rotoscope something since i first saw the original Lord of the Rings animation (1978) from the public library.  and even moreso after watching Frank Frazetta’s Fire and Ice (1983).  i found out that rotoscoping can be really gruelling work, but the flow you get from it is absolutely worth it.  the way i animated the layouts kind of represents the process of my sketching art style.  rough. while i’m no inoue takehiko, i’ve always admired the rough sketch styles and especially his sumi work in Vagabond (a manga based on the life of Musashi Miyamoto… amazing)

using a lot of the great tutorials found on Video Copilot i’ve been working my way through some AfterEffects special effects and then replicated them the way i saw fit.  diving into the world of special effects and motion graphics left me absolutely impressed.  people like Rokkaboy, Favorite Color, Christopher Hewitt‘s Sci-Fi Work, Stardust, Igloo, and MK12 got me really fired up at the work in the interactive/motion industries.  through my diverse background of programming and animation, this line of work seems to be another great opportunity for me to use all my abilities.

we’ll see where this reel takes me.