Whether you ever owned an Amiga or not, you can’t help but be impressed at this wonderful animation that is sure to bring a tear to the eye of many 20-30something bedroom designers/gamers/coders.  Enjoy!

Does this signal the death of print? Not just yet, however the boundaries of graphic design and communication are pulling away from the printed page and embracing new technologies and the moving image. No longer the domain of large companies with huge budgets and production teams making footage for the big screen and television, motion graphics are now a viable and affordable option for anyone wanting to promote their business in a different way and excite their clients using rich broadcast quality visuals and presentation. More accessible high quality DV cameras and applications such as Adobe’s After Effects, Premier, and Apple’s Final Cut allow designers to explore this area without the need for separate editing and post production departments, allowing work to be fully created in house, with special effects added and editing done on the desktop. Looking to slick television title sequences, opening film credits, dvd menus or music videos will give an idea of what is currently possible.

With this new media, high quality video can be shot and treated, edited and mixed with animated elements, 3d, typography and special effects to create engaging and visually resonant footage. With these techniques, a business can not only add narrative and energy to their promotional material, but place their message in a multitude of areas alongside their print or web campaign. Consider creating titles for a trade show, dvd menus, sending dvd video alongside existing brochures, or spicing up a corporate sales presentation. Why settle for a poor Powerpoint presentation or drab display boards when you can capture your clients imagination with well designed and slick motion graphics?

Technology is rapidly evolving and providing access to increasingly cheaper display devices, be it mobile or in the home. With internet bandwidth increasing exponentially, rich, high definition streaming video content will become a serious option for those who wish to add real impact to their web presence. With Macromedia’s Flash application already making streaming audio and animation possible over the internet, it can be safely assumed that designers will start to push the boundaries of multimedia web content with high resolution video and motion graphics.

Looking further to the future, with integrative technologies merging television, the internet and communication, well produced motion and video will be an unavoidable area for those who wish to be promoted and noticed.

If you’d like to find out more about how motion graphics could help your business reach a new and wider audience, get in touch with Fluid Creativity today!

Fluid Creativity Showcase 2009

Nails were bitten and the tension was high as we awaited our judgement in the “Best Use of Animation” category for our self initiated video project. Unfortunately – this year we didn’t walk away with any shiny new perspex to add to the trophy shelf, but we feel it is a great achievement just to be shortlisted alongside such talent as The Neighborhood and Ian Hogg (who was a well deserved winner for his stunning viral for AHD Imaging – and was the stand out piece of work on the night).

Other entries we loved included the great work produced by Love Creative on the Dr Martens campaign, and the fresh and tasty website produced for Original Source that features some cracking flash work.

As we nurse our hangovers we are already looking forward to next year, and hopefully getting some of our spanking new projects shortlisted.

So here they are, in no particular order (but starting with some of my favourites):

CODE COMPUTERLOVE: UMBRO EVOLUTION X

Things that I am looking at in this video:

• The little graphic elements that appear throughout, their motion, and how they’ve been used in 3D space. I’ve been making/experimenting with animated graphic devices that are similar in style to some of the graphics in this video
• The clean white background, minimal colour usage that is easy on the eyes, especially when working with fast paced images.
• How 2D/still images have been used effectively. Particularly in the ‘monitor’ styles that have been used.
• How text has been incorporated to help get a message across.
• Styling/grading – for those who aren’t so familiar with the style that I’ve adopted over the years I’ve always been a fan of blurring imagery so that people can’t quite see things in their full glory, sometimes I do it to add depth to an image or scene, sometimes I do it to draw attention to a particular area of an image, but most of the time I do it just out of instinct! So the blurring and flickering effects in this video really appeal to me.
• I recently bought the Twitch plugin that I had a play around with in the Us3 video and I’m looking forward to trying some more of the effects out. Putting together something like this would be a good opportunity to do that and create some amazing glitchy effects.

MARK COLERAN: SHOWREEL 08.06

Without a shadow of a doubt the best screen designer in the business, you only need watch his showreel to see the high profile projects he’s worked on and his work is inspiring beyond belief, although maybe the technology used may be slightly more advanced and out of most peoples budget this is an excellent benchmark for designers to be aiming for. It’s a fantastic video to watch for graphic and interface ideas.

Things that I am looking at in this video:

• Graphic elements and the way things move.
• Typography, fonts and layouts.
• The way that statistics, charts, graphic equalisers and information is displayed along with 2D imagery.

DANNY YOUNT: SHOWREEL 2007:

http://www.joshchilders.com/shwrl_09.html

• Nice sound and some nice colour grading and typographic styles.

RHINO FX: SHOWREEL:

http://www.rhinofx.com/

• Nice sound syncing and 3D work, especially the ‘transformation’ part close to the end, which works in a similar way to The Neighbourhood’s ‘TBWA Showreel’ – which is currently offline unfortunately.

ONESIZE: SHOWREEL 2008:

http://www.onesize.nl/projects/Showreel-2008

• At 32-40 seconds there is a part that is also similar to the ‘TWBA Showreel’, if not better. It uses a 3D object that appears to open up and unfold and reveal images, info and graphics in 3D space – very nice.
• At 1:58-2:00 I like the movement as the branding unfolds and appears to wiggle the camera.
• And I like the OneSize branding how they’ve used some sort of 3D ‘fluid’ using particles. Particle systems are difficult to get your head around, but a few tutorials should sort it.

JOSH CHILDERS: SHOWREEL 2009:

http://www.joshchilders.com/shwrl_09.html

• Nice movement, graphics, sound and 2D imagery in 3D space – particularly the way the Jeep appears as if it’s coming out of the photograph, nice!

WHO’S GOT BARS:

• I like the 3D graphic interface style which has been made using flat 2D graphics am think it works really well.

TOCH STUDIO // IF YOU WANT BLOOD (TOCH REEL 2009)

So there you have it. If you’ve got any motion graphics demos you’re particularly fond of, leave us a link in a comment.

There’s lots of photography and fashion work, some nice graphic design in places that’s appeared in Computer Arts Magazine, but not much else really, I was hoping to see more of those fancy motion graphics but no joy. I wonder if these guys even did the motion work?

This ad makes us want to buy play doh more than it does an xbox360, but what the hey, we still really like it. If (like us) you decide that play doh is the way forward then you can get a great big tub of it here.

Saturn – The history of technology. It reminds us slightly of the Guinness ad where everything goes back in time, only everything is going forward.

We’ve got time for this French motion graphics piece, it was spotted by that merry bunch called makecurves. It makes us feel all warm and fuzzy…Make Curves have got a great website with plenty of decent content Check them out.

This isn’t exactly a graphic design piece, but it’s about graphic design. If you’re not into swearing, I would probably avoid watching it. If you’re into swearing then sit back, relax, and watch the fat man get angry. Graphic design is only noticed when it’s bad, here at fluid we don’t let that happen.

If graphic design is dead in America it certainly isn’t dying here in the UK. How could we go a post without mentioning our very own motion graphics DJ Scott Green. This is one example of his work, check out more of his stuff at http://vimeo.com/splurj or follow him on twitter.

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I hope you enjoy this as much as I did.