Companies that do Motion Graphics

In this blog post, I'll be talking about five companies who produce motion graphic animations for businesses, groups, industries and other companies.

Scorch London 

Scorch London is a video production agency that does Motion Graphics animations, Character animations and Live action footage. They animate and film adverts or documentaries for other companies. Below are links to one advert and one documentary that they have animated.

http://www.scorchlondon.com/portfolio/hsbc-2/  HSBC Advert
http://www.scorchlondon.com/portfolio/bbc/ BBC Documentary

Looking at Scorch, they have animated mostly in 3D and only some in 2D flash. In their HSBC advert, they have incorporated two of media: Live footage and animation, which blend together well. The animation is done in 3D and displays facts and figures on simple primitive objects like cubes or cuboids. As well as displaying text, it also has splines that form other shapes in a snake like way to represent the main theme of the advert.
For the BBC documentary, it has facts and figures again but displayed as text primitives instead of materials. The camera swoops by them as it zooms out and even some text appears one letter at a time too. It also shows images of satellites that are possibly placed on a plane. These are then either placed near the camera, animated to fly by or stay still whilst the camera pans left or right.

Simple Show

http://simpleshow.com/uk-en/?_bt=29120146732&_bk=motion%20graphics&_bm=p&gclid=CIKAu8mRmr0CFa3LtAodZ1oAfw 

Simple Show are a company who specialize in explainer videos to help clients make presentation videos in their business, group, charity, cause and tutorial. As well as making video presentations simpler, they do animate motion graphics to help make it more appealing. Their style is quick and simple to follow using basic shapes, and 2D planes with texts. This makes it suitable for clients who need an explainer video quickly and efficiently.

Lumiere Studios

http://www.lumierestudios.co.uk/lumiere_site_v3/Motion-Graphics-Reel/ 

Lumiere Stuidos is an animation company who make animations for TV channels like ITV and Kix! as well as typography in music videos and advertisements for products. Their animation styles are in 3D, 2D, Motion Graphics, Visual Effects and Character animation. Their style is very fluid and smooth, possibly using all principles of animation when it comes to their work. Compared to industries like Disney, Lumiere is probably close to technique and style.

Hurricane Media

http://www.hurricanemedia.co.uk/case_study/asda-sharesave 

Hurricane Media are a company that do 3D animation, 3D steroscopic, digital singage, live action filming, video editing and motion graphics. They are situated in Bristol and were formed together from two people working with BBC, ITV and Channel 4 who wanted to create their own group.

Creative Motion 

http://www.creativemotion.co.uk/portfolio/creative-motion-epic-opener.html

Creative Motion are an animation company who produce 3D animations and motion graphics. They are based in Kent and have been making animations for small companies and groups that need help to advertise their company. Like Simple Show, they are only making animations and motion graphics for small clients.

Between each of these five companies that made motion graphics, each of them bear their own style; either it is fast, simple and effective like Simple Show or a huge effort has been poured into their work and using many principles of animation like Lumiere.

The Matrix's Intro

Finally, I am going to talk about a classic use of Motion Graphics used in the intro of the film "The Matrix".

After it shows the title of the film, the next part it shows is the words "Call Trans opt" and "Trace programming running" then a bunch of numbers changing in each row. When numbers start to appear, the camera starts zooming in where the numbers "5" and "2" appear then some other numbers too. Once the camera zooms in nearer to the number "5" and also a number "6", we can see faint gaps in between the primitive of the numbers and as soon as the number "0" appears, the screen changes and a digital sound effect is played and the camera zooms in through the gap in the "0", showing it is made up of strange objects that have green electricity pulsating off.
I found this interesting to watch because of the effects that 3D animation had when done in the early 2000s that it was brightly coloured and the easing in action after the digital sound effect plays was very well done.

Tick Tick Boom Motion Graphics Typography project

This time, I am looking at how someone not in the industry (possibly another student) did a motion graphics animation in time with the song "Tick Tick Boom by The Hives".

The animation is of the beginning of the song and follows a man on a bicycle going over some hills until the lyrics are sung. When the words "Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!" are shown, the second "Yeah!" bumps into the first at the bottom and the third hits the first from the top with a lot of secondary motion displayed with a good use of timing. The part of the song saying "I was right all along" has them all typed out aligned to the left and then slowly spinning ninety degrees counter-clockwise and the words "Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!" appear again, but on strings that fall down from the shape.
The next part of the lyrics "You came tagging along" push the whole lot out of the way but it is rotated 90 degrees counter-clockwise too (so it is facing from left to right is if the words were top to bottom) and a line appears to which the camera follows.
When the lyrics "Back in your place" appear with their secondary motions, the words "Place" is said for a brief second and the secondary motion repeats itself over (like the word is buzzing).
This method repeats when it reaches the words "So what you waiting for" with the word "For" being focused on for that brief second again.
This next part becomes interesting as it now shows 3D perspective of the words. "Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! appears again but instead of being placed on top of each other, they are spread out from Z axis distances and the lyrics "I was right all along" are now on what seems to be a primitive (possibly a cuboid) and a totally transparent texture placed with the animated lyrics placed in another texture.
Then finally the "Tick tick tick tick tick tick BOOM!" lyrics are shown in time with the song and explodes at the right time too with a egg timer.
I thought this to be a really well planned animation with very good timing, secondary motion and use of primitives where 3D can be seen.

Steve Jobs Typography

In this post, I am going to talk about how well the animation flowed for this Motion Graphic. 

I am focusing more on the use of typography on this motion graphic piece because I felt that it was timed right with the speech in the background. When the beginning part says "No one wants to die," there is some secondary motion with "No one" and the rest of the words "wants to die" and afterwards, it follows up with the rest of the speech with "even people who want". The way that this is portrayed is each word is shown in time with the corresponding words spoken and followed up with the same method on the words "to go to" and finally a colour change as well as a size of type change too with "Heaven", changing the colour from grey to white. All of this continues with the rest of the speech until finally it gets to the point where it says "single best invention" where three triangles drop down on each of those words when they appear and a final triangle which drops down in the middle, making a star shape from all four triangles and then zooming in on the big purple triangle and having that as a coloured background with the words appearing "of life."
The next interesting part of this animation is when it says "It clears out the old" and the screen wipes from right to left with the colours going from purple to white again with the words saying "to make way for the" and finally three circles with two floating around one in the middle with word "New" above it.
Another interesting point in this sequence is when the word "Courage" is shown in a different colour and it follows on from one key frame to the next, going from a black background with a turquoise type colour and switching around.
I felt that the timing in this was very snappy, but necessary and that the secondary motion from some words landing in was very well done too.

PlayStation Vita Advert

In 2011, Sony PlayStation released an advert at E3 2011 for their handheld console, the PlayStation Vita.

This advert displayed motion graphics with the "PS VITA" title name spinning around and a string of blue lines hitting the console itself and spinning that around too. It also previews all the games that are available on the platform too by using primitives and animated textures, most likely placed on the Vita console too. After the games have been shown, it shows the "PS VITA" logo and the blue lines again but this time they pass the logo. The blue lines used were more than likely MoSplines to create a ribbon like effect and the Tracer tool and the Text for the "PS VITA" logo was possibly MoText used in Cinema 4D. I thought the timing was quite effective in this whole animation because it gave the viewers enough time to see a short preview of each game and that not many other things were needed to advertise this console, possibly overcrowding it.

Assassin's Creed III Title Screen

Because recently, Ubisoft released Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag for PlayStation, Xbox and PC, I thought of talking about a different type of MoGraph used in the title screen of Assassin's Creed III. 

This is the video I am going to talk about. 

This type of Motion Graphics I want to talk about this week is the Cloner, or the illusion of bricks flying in and out and how it has been used in the Assassin's Creed III title screen. 

When we pass the Ubisoft logo and Assassin's Creed III logo, we come to the start screen where it asks you to press start to continue and whilst it waits for you to make that decision, the logo seems to peel away and fly off for a short second to which it then falls back into the same place it did before. 

This is a Cloner technique which I have used before in Cinema 4D; I made some bricks fly in from all around and place themselves into a wall and showing the Cinema 4D logo. How this may have been done in the start screen is that the logo isn't made from bricks cloned, but maybe several tiny triangular segments and cloned each of those. It was probably then placed with two random effectors, one to make it fly away and one to make it fall back in. 

When the logo flies away, it begins from the top and makes its way down to the bottom and then forming itself back from the top down to the bottom again. This could possibly be done with Poly FX, timing it from the top to the bottom for both the logo to fly out and fly in. 

After experimenting, I found that the cloner was not used for this. I used an Explosion FX with a plane primitive and the AC:III logo placed on it. My theory of the tiny triangular segments being cut into pieces however was correct. 

Direct Line Pet Insurance advertisement with Motion Graphics

This week, I am going to analyse the Direct Line advert where Motion Graphics has been used in it. Last week, I mentioned in my Batman: Arkham City blog post on it's use in Motion Graphics that they are normally used in advertisements and thought it suitable to talk about one advert I've seen recently.

To start off, this is the advert I am going to talk about.

The use of Motion Graphics in this links to the name of the company (Direct Line) where a red line wanders around near the pets, being direct to the point about pet insurance. The interaction in this advert is interesting as the cat follows it to their food and the Jack Russell trying to catch it too. Later on, the red line turns into letters saying "12 for 9". This was most likely done using the MoSpline option in MoGraph on Cinema 4D. To get live action and animation together, this was most likely produced together in Adobe After Effects, combining the two together.