My oh my they grow up so fast…my blog is turns 1 today. I first posted on it last year at this time.

Since then I have graduated and been hired. I’ve probably made over 100 commercials that have been on TV all over the country.  At this point last year I knew nothing about Cinema 4D or pretty much all 3D animation in general, and now I can hold my own with it. I look forward to another year of personal and professional growth.

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Tags: Sup

So I had to come up with a design relatively quickly (That’s like 6 hours or so) that conveyed how owning a Ford vehicle already can save you a lot of money if you really want to buy a gas-guzzling F-150 that Ford is practically giving away.

Money Mailbox from Michael Szabo on Vimeo.

I modeled the mailbox in Cinema 4D and made it fully functional with a door and a flag. The money particle was easy to make, with a wind deformer modifying a plane object with both sides of a $100 bill as the materials. The emitter works well, but it lacks collision detection so the particles tend to intersect and overlap in ways a giant stream of money flying out of a mailbox wouldn’t here in the real world. Without using Xpresso and Thinking Particles I couldn’t get it to react properly, but the bills are moving fast with a motion blur and rotating so you really can’t tell. And thats what it’s all about, getting it done ASAP by finding corners to cut.

Thinking Particles is something I want to get good at, but there are no great books or resources I have been able to find to teach me. 

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Tags: After Effects, Car Commercials!!1!1!!!, Cinema 4D

I updated my demo reel by adding and subtracting a few things. I added a few clips like my Adobe Contest Entry and my Paper Stacking Desk. Most of the stuff remained the same, I just added a few more things I have done in Cinema 4D.

Overall, I tweaked the rest of my site as well. I removed the links page off of the main part of the site, because it was pretty much useless. All the pertinent links are on the Blogroll to the left. I adjusted some of the formatting of my blog, updated my resumè, all sorts of exciting stuff.

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Tags: Demo reel, My Work

I felt my home page was in need of a bit of a makeover, so I created a new welcome video. I consulted my Xbox for inspiration and decided to create a Guitar Hero style video for my site. After doing tons of interactive research while observing the details and nuances of the game, I did my best to recreate the look and feel of the game with Cinema 4D, Photoshop, Motion, and After Effects. If you’ve never seen or played Guitar Hero (or even more awesomer, Rockband) then I suggest you head down to somewhere like Best Buy and take the floor sample for a spin.

Motion Graphics Hero: Guitar Hero Style Intro from Michael Szabo on Vimeo. 

I’m pleased with the way this came out. It’s good to know that all of my research and hard work payed off.

I’m planning on doing more welcome videos to the site every so often. I’ll either have them play randomly if I can figure out how or I will have a way to cycle between them. 

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Tags: After Effects, Cinema 4D, Look what I made, Motion, My Work, Site Updates, Sup, Welcome Video

Head over to www.colorprintusa.com if you need just about anything printed or designed.

I’m looking to freelance as a designer for the services they provide, so contact me or them to get started with any print design you need.

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Tags: Blogroll, Check This Out

I finally got on FLICKR and to upload some of my photos. I’ve always liked photography, which lends itself to many motion graphics and 3D design related techniques I use. I’m not too great at it yet, but I always keep my camera handy ready to capture that unforgettable moment…

Like when a tortoise wanders into your backyard.

Originally uploaded by bigmikedesign

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Tags: Check This Out, flickr, My Work, photography

I used to have a Mitsubishi Galant, I wonder if it was made by these robots.

 

The ad agency that developed the Idea was BBDO in Toronto and the visual effects were done by The Mill.

I have not located the whereabouts of any basketball-playing-robots generator/plugins that I can get for Cinema 4D, have any of you?

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Tags: Check This Out, Goods Ads, Work that I wish was mine, wow, yea I don't know how to do that

I recently stumbled upon a useful tool in Cinema 4D on how to keep cameras (or any object for that matter) locked in the same position.Quite often I mistakenly moved my camera in the viewer window, and Cinema 4D doesn’t allow you to revert back to the view you just had, so essentially your perhaps perfect camera angle is gone. The only solution  was to add only one set of keyframes to the position values at a specific frame. But their has to be another way…. 

And there is. I stumbled upon the “Protection” tag in the Cinema 4D tags menu.

So in the Object Manager ->Tags -> Cinema 4D Tags -> Protection.It works for anything else too, its the equivalent to locking something in Photoshop and After Effects.

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Tags: Check This Out, Cinema 4D, how to

Judging by the date of my last post, I really haven’t done much on here lately. I have been doing plenty of motion graphics work while I’m actually at work, so I haven’t been chomping at the bit to work on extra stuff for this site when I get home. I’ve been playing plenty of Grand Theft Auto IV instead.

A demo reel update is in order…soon.

Anyway… I recently did this in a commercial for a company that builds swimming pools. I used Trapcode Form and this preset by Harry Frank. I tweaked a few things and thought it came out pretty cool. Swimming Pool Commercial Clip from Michael Szabo on Vimeo

I added the ripple transition using the aptly named “Ripple” effect in After Effects. By masking on and off the titles along with animating the width, height, and radius of the Ripple, the water appears to wash the titles away.

I like the widescreen shape I made, the slight bend in it is something a little different, and the spark that traces along the edge adds a little something to it. Expect me to use this element entirely in too much of my work.  

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Tags: Look what I made, My Work, Where am I?

It took me awhile to come up with exactly what I wanted to do for this contest. The theme was Compose an engaging animation or motion graphic video incorporating the Photoshop brand logo that illustrates the theme of “See What’s Possible.”  I ended up taking the design of my web site and animating it, hence the similar look of the random elements coming out of the computer.

 “See What’s Possible” Contest Entry from Michael Szabo on Vimeo.

 

The bulk of the work was done in After Effects, with some Photoshop, and I even managed to use a little CInema 4D in there, I couldn’t resist. The color spectrum look comes from the “Color” blending mode (shocker). The steps are shown after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: adobe, After Effects, animation, My Work, Photoshop, see what's possible