Motion Graphics

Projection Mapping Feat

Directed by Filip Sterckx for a Belgian band named Willow, this music video for the song “Sweater” is a tour-de-force in 3-D projection mapping. Three projectors were used to beam backgrounds onto the floor and two blank walls, while the singer feigned movement by “strolling” on a treadmill. The video seamlessly takes the guy through multiple settings, down an escalator, across a park, on a boat and into the water with air bubbles rising from his scuba diving gear. Great concept, optical illusions and execution.

Technology

iPad Magic Convergence

German magician Simon Pierro reviews the iPad iOS, demonstrating feats through sleight-of-hand and digital illusions. Aside from the fact that Pierro is an awesome performance artist, you have to admire his code-writing genius. He had to have spent hours designing apps and editing video and then working out split-second timing to have the image on the screen materialize seamlessly as a real object in hand. It used to be that magicians worked with smoke and mirrors, now the act is man and machine. Although this is entertainment masquerading as product demo, it is a clever sales pitch for iPad engineering – color clarity, speed, multi-screen patterns, instantaneous rotation of images so they can enter screen right and exit screen left or the other way around. At a trade show, Pierro’s act is sure to stop passersby in their tracks, and leave people marveling not only over what a great magician can do, but the iPad too.

Motion Graphics

CCTV Ad Makes Ink Painting in Liquid Animation

For a Central China Television (CCTV) promotional commercial, Chinese ad agency, MMIA, undertook to retrace the history of China in an animated version of a traditional Chinese ink-and-wash landscape painting. Ink-and-wash is an art style that developed thousands of years ago and is noted for brush strokes that range from bold forms to faint ink washes that render scenes in a dreamlike mist. To simulate this liquid effect, MMIA turned to Troublemakers.tv, a production company based in Paris, and German director Niko Tziopanos of weareflink. The result is mesmerizing, a merging of design, computer graphics, visual effects and live action blending seamlessly together to appear that an ancient ink painting has come to life.

Read More »