Have been messing around with the Trapcode Particular plugin in AfterEffects, here are some of the more interesting ones, mostly from various tutorials on VideoCopilot and Graymachine …

DANG!! This is amazing! It’s so incredible to see advanced systems and techniques suddenly become very simple and easy to use?

nice!

Really more of a photoshop technique, using the vanishing point tool released in CS3 then exporting into after effects essentially turns a 2d images into a 3d space … pretty cool eh? More info on how to do it on videocopilot.net

Lots of great motiongraphics work on Will Goodan’s site, but this piece which pays homage to some of the great eighties cartoons such as Thundercats, Transformers, MASK etc is GENIUS!!

If I was in New York from the 4th - 7th of December I’d be going to this: BLIP FESTIVAL 2008, a four-day event showcasing nearly 40 musicians and visual artists occupying the international low-res cutting edge … nice!

I love animation. I love how diverse and creative it can be. Really loved this piece composed entirely of machine-knitted frames. The music is by the Montreal band Tricot Machine (which translates to ‘knitting machine’). Found on Drawn!

So here’s some of the best music video’s from last nights Bug 10 at the BFI …

My favourite video was this brilliant animation by Laurie Thinot for the band Autokratz:

Funniest video goes to Rogier van der Zwaag for ‘Nobody Beats the Drum‘:

Wierdest / filthiest video is a joint winner by Eric Wareheim for Parisian Goldfish by Flying Lotus and also Keith Schofield’s viral trailer for Diesal.
WARNING: neither of these videos are suitable for work, home, kids, adults or anyone who might be offended … by anything! (which is why I’ve linked rather than embedded them)

Love this video - excepts for the ‘My Secret Heart‘ exhibition, the visuals were created mainly in C++/openGL/openFrameworks (the ribbons, stars, particles) and composited with the silhouettes (shot for real) in aftereffects.

So on the theme of ’stories’ I was thinking about intro’s and trailer’s of films where a story is often condensed down to a short period of time. So decided to go for a bit of a ‘mashup’ re-cut trailer of an existing film - The Empire Strikes Back! (You might notice the influence from the intro to ‘Snatch’)

Anyway you can check out my film here. Also as the winner for this week I get to choose the theme for next fortnight: SCARY!

One of my favourite events in London (though I feel I’ve missed it the last couple of years) is One Dot Zero. It’s basically a big motion graphics festival which this year is taking place at the BFI between the 14th and 16th of November. I’m a bit gutted as I’m away that weekend, but I would definitely recommend seeing it if you have an interest in these type of things - particularly try and see the Wow+Flutter and J-Star showings also the AV Departures event along with This Happened are sure to be excellent!

Last night’s Bug at the British Film Institute was yet again very good, Mr. Buxton was on good form again with a guest appearance from comedy nerd and film director Richard Ayoade (that guy from the IT crowd).

My favourite video of the night was the slide-projector masterpiece ‘Knickerbocker’ by Fujiya Miyagi whic was directed by Wade Shotter (to view click on this link and select the video in the top left)

Prize for strangest film of the night easily goes to Efterklang’s song ‘Illuminant’ directed by Tobias Stretch … very strange!

The new Radiohead video for their track ‘House of Cards’ is pretty ace. Made without the use of any camera’s, but rather a whole load of scanning and laser devices, best thing to do is watch the actual video first …

… then check out the ‘Making of‘ video.

Also quite cool is that the data is licensed under Creative Commons so supposibly you can download it, do your own thing with it, then upload and share it into the YouTube group (will be interesting to see how popular this is?) More info on Boing Boing and GoogleCode.

Really enjoyed the Radiohead gig last night in Victoria park, east London. They played most of the stuff from the new album (particularly enjoyed ‘Weird Fishes’ and ‘House of Cards’) plus a few tunes from the olden days (the gig finished on ‘Paranoid Android’ which was immense!)

However I also really enjoyed the lighting design supplied by Element Labs (who also did the setup for the Daft Punk tour last year and Coldplay’s ‘Speed of Sound’ video), it consisted of a massive 3D curtain of 7 and 9 meter long light strips which just made for an amazing effect!

There was good times to be had last night at Bug, though it was a bit of a shame that they seem to be having a few sound problems at the BFI (not ideal for showcasing pop videos). Nevertheless there was some great stuff shown, my favourite was this fan-video by Dennis Liu for the song ‘Again and again‘ by the band ‘The Bird and the Bee’ all based around the OSX desktop!

And for weirdness/awesomeness value check out this video by Alex Smith for the Pivot’s song ‘In The Blood‘

The excellent ‘Bug’ featuring the even excellent-er Adam Buxton is on this Thursday at the British Film Institute, showcasing some of the wickedest contemporary music videos. I think the event is sold out now - though if you’re really desperate to get in you can sometimes turn up on the night and see if there’s any spaces. I’ll try and do a post on some of the best ones on friday …

Wow, this is amazing - like good ‘ol Quicktime VR but with video instead of still images … check out the demo here (be sure to move your mouse around over the video)

Found on the Protein blog

Really like the new music video for the Justice track ‘DVNO‘ which takes a poke at the old retro tv idents. One of them inparticular reminded me very much of the old BBC video ident - so cooool!

Am currently watching Mark Kermode’s Film Reviews live on Radio 5 … the quality of the stream is pretty good and it’s actually quite interesting viewing - another example of the blurring between TV and radio?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/fivelive

An interesting development to come out of BBC Research and Development recently - ‘surround video‘

“Surround Video is a means of visually immersing the viewer into a TV programme.

It is like surround sound, an optional extra that enhances viewing on a normal display. The idea is to use a wide angle (or fisheye) camera fixed rigidly alongside the normal camera shooting the programme, and to project the image onto the walls, ceiling and floor of the viewer’s room.

The image is scaled and positioned to ensure that it aligns up with the existing TV, and warped to compensate for the distortion effects that come from the wide-angle lens and projection system. Although the projected image will be dimmer and of lower resolution than the main image, it nevertheless gives a strong feeling of immersion, particularly with motion cues being visible in the viewer’s peripheral vision”

Wow! If you like karaoke AND people dressing up as robots you’re going to love Robot Cowboy! Check out this video of him in action or find out more at CDM

Last Saturday’s episode of Click was interesting - all about the concept of visualising radio, how it might work, pro’s and con’s etc. The argument seems to of come around due to the fact that most new devices for listening to radio these days will come with a small colour screen which will enable extra information to be broadcast alongside the audio.

On the minus side it has been claimed that this will just mean for cheap tv, but I like Andy Parfitt’s idea (head of Radio 1) of “glanceability” in that “it can’t be content that you must look at in order to get the picture” (so things that nicely supplement the audio - EPG’s, visualisations, track lists etc)

Read the article / Watch again

Really like these LED jackets made by Moritz Waldemeyer for the band OK Go. Although to appreciate them fully you have to see the video of them in action!

More info on Pixelsumo