Remedy Drive: Hope EPK

This past September, I had a the privilege of directing the 2009 LifeLight Music festival in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. It’s the largest outdoor Christian music festival in the nation – and a highlight of my summer each year.

This time, we also had the opportunity to partner with Remedy Drive, a festival favorite, and record content for their Hope EPK. All together we covered the show with 10 ISO’s – 6 of which were part of the hardlined IMAG feed – and it was a glorious experience.

Of course, you can’t do this sort of thing without an amazing crew and a lot of teamwork. My deep, deep thanks go to Tim, Karsten, Dan, Cody, Justin, Sam, Scott, Rob, Luke, Seth, Micah, Isaiah, Theo and Amy (The only female I know who is brave enough to spend a weekend working with so many guys) for working to make the festival a success. Thanks team!

Anyway, check out the link and enjoy the show. And next year – plan on being there. It’s even better in person.

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Latest Project: Redeemer City to City

I recently had the opportunity to do an animation project for Redeemer City to City – a phenomenal church planting and content resource organization based in New York City – and I had a great time working on the project. More importantly, they were really happy with the final result and how it represented their identity. Check out the video below to view the final animation.

Redeemer City to City from Redeemer City to City on Vimeo.

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Meet Jack.

Check out my latest project:

Born 1/5/2009
8lbs. 13 oz.
20 in.
Beautiful
Strong
Loved
And created to know God.

I’ll be out of contact for a couple days as we get to know him. Thanks for stopping by.

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Free Looping Background

As I posted yesterday, I think it is critical for every motion graphic designer to constantly be learning. And it’s even better when that learning yields tangible results. Although work and learning can be separate endeavors, they shouldn’t always be mutually exclusive. Which means, if you’re taking time away from paying work to learn something new, that new knowledge should eventually show up in your projects in order to make it profitable.

This whole personal learning diversion started with an actual paying job. I’m currently working on a logo identity piece where the client asked me to make the logo look less like plastic – roughen it up just a bit – and at the time I didn’t know how to achieve what they were asking for. So, armed with a manual, Google, and couple tutorial sites, I got to work and was able to create the results they desired. And now that I know what I’m doing, I can get back to the real job, finish up my project, and make my discoveries pay for themselves.

On top of that, I thought I should make my discoveries profitable to you as well. So I’m offering my test scene from yesterday as a free looping background for use in your own work. Feel free to use it as an animated background in a project, use it as a displacement map, put it in your worship software, or use it for whatever else you come up with – and if you end up with something you are really proud of, I’d love to see what you did. After all, we’re all supposed to be learning.

Stats: TMG Cube Loop

Frame Dimensions: 720 x 1280
Duration: 3600 frames, 2:30 @ 24fps
Number of Cubes: 50 x 50 grid array; 2500 – Render Instances
Render Time: 19.45 hours – C4DR11.5, Mac OS 10.5.8, 2 x 3 Ghz Quad Core Intel Xeon, 10 GB

Download the Full Resolution Cube Loop here or click the banner for a preview.

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Learning

I am a firm believer that leaders are always supposed to be learning. Not only because you can’t take others where you’ve never been, but because that’s the nature of being in the motion design business.

To get into the industry you have to do a lot of learning. And I’m not just talking about the technical side of things – although there’s no argument that this is critical.

But to stay in the industry you have to learn even more and at a much quicker pace. There’s new versions, new app’s, new gear, new territory, new techniques, new clients. new jobs, new plugins, new business angles and more. So instead of just doing your full-time production job to pay the bills, You always have to be learning as well to keep up with your clients and your own personal goals.

As a father of five with our sixth on the way, it’s sometimes difficult to find a balance between work (paying gigs) and play (non-paying, or for hire learning opportunities), but both are required for a business to succeed. If I get too unbalanced in either category, the business will fail.

So today was a day for learning. I’ve been receiving more frequent requests for 3D work in the past quarter, and actually done a few jobs dabbling in Cinema4D, but now it’s time to get serious. I have so much to learn – and it’s a great reminder of what it is like to be a student after spending some time being the teacher.

All in all, i think it was a day well spent. I’ll be back on the other side of the business model tomorrow.

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