More tests. Yeah they're cool, I guess.

Did another thing on Trapcode Particular. Woah. Super duper cool. I'd say this is probably the most complex thing I did so far with this set of plug-ins in the Trapcode Suite. I did some stuff I haven't done before. Liked the look of it., but it's somewhat difficult to tell it's an audio reactor until later...I'll learn eventually.

Well alright. The list on this one might take a while. After all, the tutorial in itself was 40 minutes so...

(Simplified)
-Make a new comp
-Choose background color, add a ramp effect (the darkening color from top to bottom)
-Add a vignette
-Make a new comp
-Add soundtrack/song
-Duplicate twice, add High-Low Pass effect (seperates track into the high and frequencies)
-Add Trapcode Particular effect to High Pass or Low Pass (can't remember)
-Adjust settings so there are more particles so it looks like a line
-Change colors of particles
-Adjust velocity of particles with expresssions
-Adjust x and y rotation of particles with expressions-Duplicate entire Trapcode Particular
-Adjust duplicate so it's opposite of first one.
-Add lights to cause shadows on the particles
-Export
-Upload

and yeah. That's about it. Satisfied with the result. It'd be cool to actually use this for something, not just a test. I have a friend that's learning to make dubstep that might be able to use this for his songs he says. Other than that, I don't know where to go with all these...oh well.

Meh. Music.

Found this song recently. It's not often you find rap songs that spread positive messages, or at least according to the stereotype. This song seems to be one of the few that straight up address issues and say they're bad. I'm not strictly against a lot of issues brought up my rap and hip hop music. But sometimes it's good to see someone change it up a bit. An occasional reminder is necessary.

It's shows and speaks about the consequences of drugs, gangs, etc.
The music video shows what happens to a boy named Jake who, with a friends, tries to get some weed, but then there's an initiation that forces him to beat up his friend.
It uses a lot of good figurative language (yes, I did just make this post dull and educational). Lots of metaphors, diction,etc.
It also uses propaganda like the snowball effect.

Alright, basically, I just felt like posting something. I'll make something more interesting over Thanksgiving break I suppose. Apologies. Check out the song anyway. Has Tim Shieff in it, so can't hate really.

Trapcode Form Audio React

A test of another After Effects plug-in, Trapcode Form. People must be getting bored by now. wow. But they're fun. So put up with it.

I chose a track I liked to make an audio reactor to, and boom. Made this with the influence of a tutorial.

- Choose a track: "Take A Walk" by Passion Pit (The M Machine Remix)
- Make a background, add a bit of clouds, lower they're opacity.
- Make a sphere, customize it.
- Set sphere's audio reactors (disperse, sphere size, etc.).
- Duplicate layer, shrink it a bit.
- Add an effect to make the particles in the sphere look a bit liquidy.
- Add Trapcode Shine effect to make spheres have a blue-ish aura thing. To, well...make them shine.
- Make particles using Trapcode Particular that go up.
- Make particles that go sideways that are different color.

And that's it I believe. Cool story, right? Totally.

Oh, watch in HD, otherwise, it's dumb.

Logo Animation Test

So, as usual, I was messing around on After Effects recently (today) and decided to do something new. I made a title sequence after going through a huge list of tutorials. I found an interesting one, and attempted to create something similar. I added the logo of a great company (that's run by people i know in real life) and here's how it turned out! I sent it to the head of the company, and he said he'd use it in the intro of their videos.

I made this all in After Effects and used the plug-in Trapcode Form (a great set of plug-ins the Trapcode Suite is). I had to make about 10 layers:

- vignette layer for background

- particle layer

- layer with text "Amiercan"

- layer with text "Parkour"
- layer with logo "APK" with string dissolve
- layer with logo "APK" with particle dissolve
- solid white layer with a wipe
- another layer with a wipe
- and a few more that I forgot

Check out that channel here: http://www.youtube.com/user/AmericanParkour

Plexus Test

Oh yeah. I did another test of a plug-in for After Effects. It's called Plexus.

It connects dots and lines. "Wow. Stupid." you might say.

FALSE. It's so cool. Just look at it. Look.

So basically. i made a circle shape. Added a fractal reaction. Messed with that to make it look cool. Duplicated it, made it smaller. And then made it spin along the x-axis for the whole video. Woah.

Then, I added two audio reactors. Made them into circle point things. (Didn't know I could do that.)

Lastly, I made some small thing on Trapcode Mir (last week's test) and used Trapcode Shine to make it shiny and bright. I think that spins too. Maybe. Not sure. Did it a few days ago.

Here it is.

Capture the Fall - Autumn Leaves

Let me start with exporting takes forever. And you have to do it nearly a dozen times before you figure out the right settings so you're video doesn't look like five pixels. Oh HD, how dearly I need you. Yeah, so. I've been trying to export this for about an hour now. Still working on finding the right format. Then comes uploading. And because I don't have FiOS Quantum, it'll be awhile. Because any video less than 100 mb is gonna look terrible. And upload speeds are extremely slow.

Finally, It's done. Free at last. Free of the terrors of all these dumb formats! Oh why can't it just be simple. .avi or .mov formats that aren't over 5 gigabytes, impossible.

Here it is. I did this one day with a friend and a neighbor (remember him from Senseless?)

Just some shots of us raking the yard, creatively.

Put in a awesomely pointless time-lapse. and voila.
(Yay for free intervalometers in hacked firmware that broke sister's $1000 camera. Woop woop. But it's all good. We got that insurance. #magiclantern)

Put on some color correction. Boom. Wonderful.

Next: Add a tilt-shift effect cause I felt like it, and who spends $2000 on a single-purpose lens anyway. Fools.

Next: Add some of that good music and titles. Yeah, they're cool. I guess.

Export. Reference first paragraph. and Upload. Oh, THE TERROR!

Official Dystopian Trailer - Senseless

This is my group's dystopian trailer, Senseless. It was a long and tedious process to release, but a new, fun experience. In the end, I'd say I'm satisfied with the outcome. I know certain parts could've been better, but for the first real project of the year, it's decent.

Process:
Pre-Production
- Create a dystopain premise and start to develop a plot
- Start writing a scipt for the movie
- Make a storyboard to visualize the shots
- Make production schedule, scout locations, find actors
Production
- Get to locations, set up shots
- Film shots
- Review shots to see if they need to be reshot
- Redo shots if need be
Post-Production
- Import shots into computer
- Edit shots into composition, in right order, not too long, etc.
- Color correct shots
- Add Effects
- Add titles and credits
- Export video
- Upload to YouTube

Video Graphics Test

I've recently discovered many plug-ins for the editing program Adobe After Effects. A lot of them are really interesting, but also complex. Today, I decided to mess around with a plug-in called Trapcode Mir. It generates these 3D geometric designs that you can animate in many ways. You can color/texturize it with a random picture or video. It's pretty insane. Here's a video of what I came up with in an hour or two after the first time I forgot to save it even once and the program crashed. Editing is quite RAM and computer memory intensive, and at timse can slow your computer to the speed of a sloth.

To do this entire thing I had to:
- Install plug-in to After Effects
- Make a new project
- Make a new composition
- Add different layers
- Find a color gradient/texture
- Find a song
- Apply the effect
- Mess around with settings for a while to learn what they do
- Keyframe settings to animate the design
- Export from After Effects
- Upload to Youtube
- Find out the audio is too low and HD is amazing
so...yeah. I'll test a few more plug-ins when I have the time. Which means the end of the school year because CAP is a load of work at times.

Here it is: