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Moonee Valley City Council

W.I.W.O: Week 35 & 36 – Melbourne Zoo Underwater Exhibit

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I’m creating 3D animated content for an exhibit at the Melbourne Zoo! Reel Pictures & Mal Padgett design are putting together an update for a 6 minute large-screen video about Australia’s coast and recycling. I’m helping to create 2 minutes of animation for the exhibit.

The video must go live on the first week of school holidays (very, very soon!) but we are confident we will finish the content in time. I’ve spent the last week or so creating the underwater environment.

I have saved a lot of time thanks to a tutorial created by Michael McCarthy- 2011 Autodesk 3DS Max master and one of my many heroes in this industry. For a recent tutorial, he created an underwater enivornment that looks fantastic and renders extremely quickly using Mental Ray. I have used this idea as my starting point for our underwater scene. It’s my first project using Mental ray in a very long time, and i’ve been reminded how good mental ray actually is. It hasn’t been developed properly in a few years (though that may change over the next couple of months), and I still believe vray is far better, but mental ray is proving to be a much better solution for this particular job.

 

I’ve also spent a few days over these last 2 week helping Alf Kuhlmann put together a new website for Reel Pictures, the first update in a few years. The new Reel Pictures folio is only just started, with many more projects to be added and finished, but already there is so much awesome work on there.

I’ve also created an updated poster design for Moonee Valley City Council’s Fling Fest Event.

[image title=”Fling Fest 2012 Poster Design by Michael Wentworth-Bell” width=”544″ height=”757″ align=”center” lightbox=”true” group=”wiwo2012week35″ icon=”zoom”] http://thelode.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Fling-Fest-2012-Poster-Design-Michael-Wentworth-Bell.jpg [/image]

I created the artwork for this poster in Photoshop and 3DS max and rendered it with Vray and After Effects. It was a lot of fun and i’m going to create a new page on my portfolio for this project soon.

The next 2 weeks will be quite busy with the Underwater animation job, but it’s a lot of fun (lots and lots of Particle Flow Simulations) and I can’t wait to see how it turns out!

[divider_line_padding] I try to create a quick journal entry at the end of each week that covers the projects, events and highlights of the past 7 days. These weekly blog posts are known as the ‘WIWO’ Series
(What I’m Working On).
[divider_line]

 

September 8, 2012
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W.I.W.O: Week 29 – Poster Designs & trying out Element3D

By Current Projects, What I'm Working on (WIWO)4 Comments

Had a lot of fun this week! I finished up 2 projects for Moonee Valley City council; promotional material for the Push Start Battle of the bands & Fling Fest short film festival.

Here’s a quick preview of the Battle of the 60’s themed bands poster!

[image title=”Battle of the Bands Poster Design by Michael Wentworth-Bell” width=”544″ height=”765″ align=”center” lightbox=”true” group=”wiwo2012-29″ icon=”zoom”] http://thelode.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/BOB2012_Poster_Preview.jpg [/image]

The poster was finished in photoshop, using smart objects to link with Illustrator. It was a very helpful and powerful technique. I hope to write a quick tutorial about the workflow I used to create this poster, because it was very flexible, and a lot of fun!

This is how the Fling Fest poster turned out.

[image title=”Fling Fest Poster Design by Michael Wentworth-Bell” width=”544″ height=”765″ align=”center” lightbox=”true” group=”wiwo2012-29″ icon=”zoom”] http://thelode.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Fling-Fest-Purple.jpg [/image]

This poster was the first time I used After Effects to generate images for Print. The Lens flare, light rays and glows were all created in After Effects, and rendered out at 16bit for A2 Print resolution, over 700MB a frame!
I usually create 3D imagery for motion, so it’s a lot of fun to actually create 3D for stills. You can ‘cheat’ a whole lot more – creating effects, textures, shadows, light and other details in the compositing stage instead of having to do them in a 3D program so they will render and move correctly.

I’ve also spent this week expermenting with the new Element3D plugin from Video Copilot. Want to reserve a whole blog post to this plugin, but in short, it’s the most revolutionary and powerful plugin to be released for After Effects. It makes the new CS6 3D engine completely reduntant. This plugin changes my workflow enourmously and gives a lot more creative freedom to all After Effects users. Been a very exciting week!

I’m looking forward to next week, where i’ll be visiting the Adobe Creative Suite Melbourne Roadshow and celebrating my birthday!

Until next time!

[divider_line_padding] I try to create a quick journal entry at the end of each week that covers the projects, events and highlights of the past 7 days. These weekly blog posts are known as the ‘WIWO’ Series
(What I’m Working On).
[divider_line]
July 22, 2012
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What i’m working on – 2012 – Week 28

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Another very busy week. Definitely one of the craziest this year. This week I helped Alf @ Reel Pictures finish the corporate video for Swisse. It ended up having a million changes that were all finished within the extremely tight deadline. Glad to finally see it finished. A lot of complex animations and effects were created for the video but subsequently removed as part of the changes. Very frustrating, but that’s the nature of the business!

This week I also finished the demo reel for Cole Ewing, which was quite fun!

I’ve been working on 3D artwork for the Fling Fest short film festival. I’m using 3DS max and Vray. Here’s a quick 3D render of the artwork so far:

[image title=”Fling Fest 2012 Artwork – Progress Render” width=”544″ height=”455″ lightbox=”true” group=”2012-wiwo-28″ icon=”zoom”] http://thelode.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/FlingFestRender.jpg [/image]

And here’s a screengrab of the 3DS max scene.

[image title=”Screengrab of the 3DS Max scene” width=”544″ height=”332″ lightbox=”true” group=”2012-wiwo-28″ icon=”zoom”] http://thelode.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Screengrab.jpg [/image]

The lighting in this project has been the most enjoyable part. It’s lit using a HDRI environment and a single Key light against an endless background. I’m rendering it at Alf’s studio in Footscray. We’ve set up Distributed rendering there, meaning around 7 PCs can work together to render a single frame; a big time saver.

[divider_line_padding] I try to create a quick journal entry at the end of each week that covers the projects, events and highlights of the past 7 days. These weekly blog posts are known as the ‘WIWO’ Series
(What I’m Working On).
[divider_line]
July 15, 2012
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What i’m working on – 2012 – Week 27

By Current Projects, What I'm Working on (WIWO)No Comments

It’s been an extremely hectic past few days! I’m unfortunately working through the weekend this week, which is never fun but made somewhat easier by the fantastic weather! I’ve spent most of the week powering through the SWISSE 3 (now closer to 4!) minute animation, working alongside Sam Van Ingen.

Alf has submitted a first draft of the entire animation, with the revised final draft due early next week. I’ve also signed onto 3 other contracts this week. I’m creating the promotional artwork for the Pushstart ‘Battle of the Bands’ event in Moonee Valley. This is the 3rd year i’ve worked on this project and it is always a lot of fun!

[image title=”Swisse Corporate Video” width=”544″ height=”306″] http://thelode.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Swisse_Ani1.jpg [/image]

I’m also creating a lot of content for the Moonee Valley ‘Fling Fest’ film festival, an event showcasing the best short films by VCE Media students in the community. I will first be working on the promotional materials (Posters, flyers, etc) which are due within a week. Later, I may work on the content for projecting the films on the night.
Finally, i’m cutting together a demo reel for budding Australian actor, Cole Ewing. Cole will be using the demoreel as he tries to get interest in Australia and L.A.

A lot of work to do this week, but the diversity of these projects makes it very fun! I love switching between Art Directing, Animation, Graphic Design for print & Video editing many times in the day, when I switch back to a project, I can look at it with new eyes and fresh ideas!

[divider_line_padding] I try to create a quick journal entry at the end of each week that covers the projects, events and highlights of the past 7 days. These weekly blog posts are known as the ‘WIWO’ Series
(What I’m Working On).
[divider_line]
July 8, 2012
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