A little earlier tonight I sat through a number of motion graphics examples.. I was expecting to get a lot of eye candy wow-ness.. and while I got a bit of that.. I was left with a feeling of.. being utterly unimpressed with much of what I saw, which probably relates to the problems and issues I’ve been talking about, in my last 2 posts, on the subject of digital story telling. That said.. I did come away rather inspired.

I feel like.. as far as creative possibilities are concerned, the medium of 3D and motion graphics.. is powerful as all hell… The trouble, at least as near as I can tell.. is nobody is really doing it right..  Wow, what an arrogant statement.. well forgive me.. if you’re one of the folks doing it right.. I know.. it’s a little bit of an over statement.

But.. I’m also talking as a fine artist.. I’m also talking about the potential of the medium.. at least as I see it.. and anyway, I wanted to start to talk about some of what has me inspired.. talk about what I’m dreaming in this moment.. that kinda thing.

Dreams

The cost of the dreams 

It strikes me that anything is possible. In this simple statement.. in this feeling that anything is possible.. in there.. the god’s sing.. the music of the spheres.. just waiting for an artist to hear.. and there tail to be retold. Can you hear it?

When we talk about film making.. when the conversation turns to special effects, 3D graphics, motion graphics.. we often talk about how expensive it is. That expense would, at least in large measure, seem to be an effect of what the designers in this area are able to command salary wise.. even with a lot of work being outsourced to India.

Of all the art forms I’m interested in, there is no doubt that 3D and motion graphics is the most expensive areas. Cinema 4D, which I’m using.. retails for between $3 and $4K… After Effects is now going for around $1K, Final Cut Studio is around $1.3K, last I checked.. and there are many other tools.. plus one needs a super fast and powerful computer.. and having many computers to form a render farm.. is a nice idea..  If one is shooting video as a part of it.. pro cameras are several grand.. lighting rigs probably start at around a grand.. MoCap is more then I even want to start thinking about.. the gear to pull keys is more money… 

So just to get the tools to start learning the stuff is like.. prohibitively expensive..  or at the very least, investing in them takes a major commitment.. and then you’ll be faced with a ridiculously steep learning curve! So all of this “might” have something to do with why it’s as expensive as it is…

But lets just say you’re crazy like Matt.. and you’re like “screw it, I’ll invest in it cause I have a big dream,” now the economics are a little different. Now the economics are.. well once you’ve bought the equipment, the only real expense is the time you have to put into the work.. and arguably the regular expense of upgrades.

Of course Matt is even madder then all that! Cause I mean.. I’m also doing the sound studio stuff! The web design stuff? Yeah.. I have issues!

Ok, so implications of these here economics

So.. much like the lizard king, you can do anything..

A bit latter:

Anything seems like a worthwhile topic for meditation.. though anything might not be real. The topic of technical limitations comes to mind… limitations of skills.. as well as limitations of time… and there are still some limitations to my studio… but.. there is still, given all that, many vectors of limitlessness… 

There are lots of little ideas.. many of which have been formed over the course of.. well many years really. I have all sorts of “strategic communications” ideas… relative to the question of how to relate to the market place.. well, lets explore these..

A few days latter:

Little ideas

I think what I really want to do is create “audio visual experiences.” I put it this way because putting it any other way seem to have a certain amount of bagged to it.. it suggests certain things… that “audio visual experience” does not. 

I, of course, am a sound artist.. I kind of think being a sound artist is a huge advantage for a digital film maker.. type.. because you’re able to think holistically.. sound could be central, visual aesthetics could be central, the “art-ness” could be central, dialog could be central, a plot could be central.. and what is central, at any given moment, could shift.. and you really only have the ability to work this way if you are fluent in all these parts..

So audio wise I want to create an experience. There’s a lot of ideas I have that are unlike anything I’ve ever heard before, as a part of some sort of film.. so all these things must be explored.. along with.. just creating an amazing sonic experience.

3D

The impression I’m getting about 3D is that It’s really more about design then production. Every element.. it pays to do research for.. and its all about paying a serious amount of attention to detail.. and it might even be that I can get great results.. nearly coming out of the gate.. if I’m willing to put in the work on the research and design front.. along with a little exploration here and there…

Planning

It’s all about planning! My way of thinking about it is.. you start out with an idea and you develop the hell out of it… work everything out.. from how the sound might work, to how the plot works, the story…. all this stuff, and really refine it.. take it to an extreme.. but then, at that point.. well at a certain point.. be willing to just improvise and explore.. 

 Day latter:

 I’m thinking I need to just post this so I can go on to the next post.. I’m thinking this should be called memoirs of a meditation on digital story telling.. for the simple reason that it seems more like a record of a meditation then anything… 

I’m in this strange mode of meditations on digital story telling… I am driving into this arena after all…

I’m a strange bird, for this there can be no doubt, and so it is that when I approach anything, seems to not matter what, I can’t seem to escape a certain contrarianism.. This is apparently my little cross to bare.. as it seems to have been an issue for me, at least.. since the age of 3… So it’s hard not to think “well, I guess this was God’s idea of a joke on the world” or at the very least it’s sorta a “vocational” thing, maybe.. You ever feel this way? Well… lets explore this as it pertains to story telling.

I have this strange belief that we are all in a constant process of having these little unconscious conversations with each other.. or that there is constant unconscious communication going on.. If you don’t quite believe me.. try taking LSD sometime.. err, I better explain that one, ha?

LSD has a way of giving everything a luminous, numinous, glow. As near as I can gather, from my limited knowledge of neuroscience, psychedelics like LSD essentially create a kind of state of “brain damage,” inside of which the.. lets call it cognitive process.. of attributing causation to stuff..  produces a kind of meta consciousness experience. This, of course, would seem to expose certain structural elements of the psyche to the conscious mind.. so that we have a kind of waking dream experience.. inside of which we can explore our subjective relationship to empirical reality. LOL, boy, doesn’t that sound technical?

Reality.. well it’s something we “experience.” In philosophy and science we often try to understand reality in a way that is like a god’s eye view.. it is a way of looking that is in search of objectivity.. of verifiability.. a way of looking that would seem to be emancipated from human experience.. at least in it’s goals.. The troubles with this are many fold.. not the least of which is that we never experience reality without our “experience” of it. Inside this experience.. is our own “subjective” view point. Here in lys the value of some understanding of psychology in.. well life. 

One idea I developed once upon the time was an idea I called “the order of revelation.” The idea is.. in a world of infinite facts.. infinite ways one could come to understand something.. we only experience a limited portion of that totality.. and the “order of revelation” has to do with the order in which this stuff dawns on the conscious mind. The “order” determines “the shape” of our understanding. The order of revelation is thus the expression of the subjective on our experience of objective reality.

What shapes this order of relations is a complex of factors.. we can influence the order by means of prayer, ritual, and “magick.” Archtypes, as we learn from Jungian psychology, are what makes up the structure of consciousness and the psyche… and so the meta consciousness experience of psychedelics.. the numinous nature of them.. is about this.. and thus the connection to the order of revelation.. and the reason why so many people associate psychedelics with notions of enlightenment.

Ok.. enough of this craziness, how does this relate to the subject of digital story telling?

As I was saying before.. there is this thing I’m terming “unconscious communication.” In my last post.. (which as of this writing I haven’t posted) I spoke of the notion of “ambient story telling” which.. essentially points to this concept. We could look at this simply on the level of “what are the unconscious cues” we get as we go about.. life, from our experience of… whatever. When we get “a feeling in our gut” or.. have a feeling about something that we are unable to quite articulate.. simply have a feeling about something.. or… perhaps an intuition.. this is what we are reacting to.

The lie detector test.. which measures biometrics in relationship to questions, is a means of detecting certain types of unconscious communications… The conscious mind is giving you one story, while the biometrics is giving you another. And so it is that the world of “non verbal communication” is an incredibly nuanced world. There are simple things about.. how you’re talking.. word choices, spaces between words.. tempo of words, pitch of words, varying amplitude and volume between words.. words, phrases, sentences.. the body language as this happens.. where the eyes move.. all sorts of little, itty bitty things… are expressing stuff.

Inside of this expression, interestingly enough.. we find the imprint, on everything, of the shape of that there order of revelation…

So, before.. in that last post.. talking about a painter versus design approach to media arts.. in talking about communications versus expression.. perhaps art versus design.. all of this kind of thing.. is about this sorta thing.

So.. that 3D graphics.. and motion graphics, is largely dominated by the design process.. as a pose to a painters process.. that what we are seeing is so much about conscious design.. means that the story telling of medium are more limited to the surface then.. might be.. ideal.

Next day sometime:

Hmm, perhaps I should post this.. and skip on to the next entry on this subject.

Few days latter:

Ok, I’m really going to post this 

I like the idea of trying to get into the habit of posting everyday.. so lets see if we can’t get back into that swing.

Today I was contacted by a PR women. I had mentioned After Effects in a tweet… which was enough for her to go to the trouble of getting my email from the background image.. and message me about a PR campaign she was doing for Intel, which looks to be an ongoing series of.. kinda like motion graphics contests… and she wanted to know if I was interested, or if I might pass it on to others.

If you’re a regular reader you no doubt know that right now I’m focused on trying to develop some proficiency with with Cinema 4D… which is to say fairly high end ish 3D graphics. While I have other projects to attend to.. in general.. it would seem to me that to participate in the Intel project would require a shift of focus… which is a bit like.. you get the ball rolling and then you leave it.. and now how long is it going to take you to get that back in motion?

That said.. what I’m really looking to develop is a whole set of skills.. you render stuff out of Cinema.. you bring it into After Effects or Motion.. where you perhaps have other assets.. eventually this probably ends up in Final Cut.. and eventually render out as a final project. Inside of this scheme you might shoot video.. you might do a lot of things.. So.. moving from a pure 3D focus to a motion graphics focus.. where 3D is but one element.. doesn’t really seem like that bad an idea.

In any event I was inspired enough to go visit my local book store and pick up a couple of magazines I’d been eyeing: A UK digital arts type magazine has a motion graphics special edition this month.. and this month we also see the first launch issue of a magazine called gomotion. I didn’t buy these magazines before on account of how pricy they are.. the total was $34, but.. with all this on my mind.. it seemed like the thing to do.

Gomotion

Gomotion costs $20.. which seems to me outrageously over priced..  but, at least superficially, I must say it’s a very impressive magazine. A lot of 3D magazines are over priced.. and there’s a general feeling of immaturity about them.. or.. there not quite big enough.. but Gomotion is, in fact, rather kick ass…

What I’m digging about Gomotion is as follows: I’m in the process of giving myself a basic 3D education.. at the moment this is via the DVD based video tutorials that came with Cinema 4D. These tutorials don’t really cover all the bases of the software.. they’re basically enough to get you going… I’m only about half way through the main general course.. I’ve learned about modeling, I’m on to pre texture mapping stuff..

Bouncing around in the back of my head is past information I’ve gathered on the subject of 3D.. at one point I read a mega huge book on 3D Studio Max.. from time to time I pick up copies of special effects trade magazines.. and who knows what.. Most of this information exists in my brain on an almost unconscious level, and reflects a state of technology that is.. old fashion compared to where stuff is at today… which I’m only now getting to appreciate.

Gomotion.. has a lot of articles that are.. actually probably not bad for someone as clueless as I am.. I just read an article on character creation.. and strangely enough it conformed perfectly to certain preconceptions I’m starting to evolve as I try and work out what I want to do.. and when you see what other 3D artists wrestle with.. hear what a more advanced person perceives as the challenges.. it gives you a lot of perspective on how to approach your forward movement..  

The Current State of Matt’s 3D Plans:

There is, of course, the basic business of getting up to speed on the basics… which is really nothing more then the 101 of the tools.. the projects will take us to the next level in the other areas..  

The real project is to come up with some ideas for animated shorts.. What kind of stories do I want to tell? What kind of a challenge is it going to be to develop really good craft when it comes to story telling? I’m not totally sure what my story telling process will look like.. as I have influences coming from strange directions.. But I suppose the first thing is simply to work out what I want to explore.. write something like a script.. and then work out story boards… and from there..

Well we need to embark on a project of designing characters, sets, objects, and what have you.. that make sense for the story we want to tell…

The trouble, as I see it.. are two fold.. or perhaps one fold: There are two viable approaches as I conceive of it… one is that of the painter, the other is that of the designer. The painter process is exploratory.. it’s an adventure.. we perhaps don’t even bother with starting with a script.. we’ll find the story as we go along.. The designer process is the one where we start with a script and move onto story boards….  and blah blah blah.

So there’s a tension between these two approaches.. and the question really is.. how do we integrate them… and I think the question becomes most significant when we look at questions like.. what might we do in a 3D graphics program versus what we might do in a program like After Effects.

Indeed After effects is an interesting problem.. in that it offers the possibility of very strange work flows.. where in 3D we are purely dealing with the 3D world.. in After Effects we can deal with anything.. from photographs, still images, the rendered 3D stuff, 2D computer graphics, video… various sorts of special effects.. compositing… etc. Stuff is fairly endless.

 A few latter, now over tired, resigned to the fact that this wont get posted tonight:

Thoughts on story telling

Story telling strikes me as an amazingly rich and complex subject.. one that.. is no easy art to master.

Lets take the actor. What is good acting, or how does one act well? That’s a complex subject that can take a lifetime to master… Acting is, after all, story telling.. a part of how we tell stories.

I was trying to get to this idea of the tension between a painter versus a designer’s approach to media making.. I stepped away from writing to watch Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.. when I was struck by something..

3D Graphics is an amazingly formalist medium.. Everything in it.. was put there on purpose, consciously.. where as with film.. we are in the world of happy accidence… I’m reminded by something David Lynch said.. about how if you go in someone’s house.. say there bedroom.. you’re amazed at what you find.. because its nothing like anything any production designer could have ever thought of.. so here we see it again.. the difference between.. something like the conscious mind of design, versus the unconscious dialectics of painting.

And then I’m reminded of Tom Wolfe.. Mr Wolfe writes what he calls “new journalism” where in he goes out and makes fiction based off of a kind of journalistic process.. because.. how could you ever writet dialog like.. well like real people speak?

I keep thinking about this.. how does the way a real person speak.. what does this tell us about that person? What does the way a real bedroom looks.. what does that tell us about the person.. To some extent you might think of this as “ambient story telling” in the sense that we are talking about little nuances.. which somehow have something to do with something.. that could somehow be a part of how we might tell a story.. but they also contain a certain extraneous possibility… or at least in how we think of them.. how they might relate to our preconceptions.. which, of course, is the problem of formalism and communication type design. 

When I think of what I want to do.. a part of it is something formalistic.. always a synthesis of this with realism.. and always on the surrealistic side of things.. This idea that the unconscious is exactly what I’m after.. but not exactly as an end in it’s self.. which is perhaps what makes me interesting.. if contrasted with surrealism proper..

In my surrealist spirit.. I tend to think.. well what the hell.. do anything at anytime for any reason at all.. which is to take an anarchic approach, or attitude, towards traditional notions of structure.. and how might I weave such a thing into a story?

As you can no doubt gather.. I have some complex ideas about this subject.. which is perhaps atypical of someone in my beginner shoes..

A post ago I suggested that something like creative brilliance trumps what major studios have as there advantages.. and I suppose what it all comes down to is this.. and story telling.. and if I have brilliance in me.. I imagine it will come from an exploration of these kinds of ideas.. at least as it relates to story telling.. and this kind of animation motion graphics stuff. 

Day or two latter:

Ok, time to post. 

Since I got the new MacBook I’ve been obsessed with a new video blogging project. This seems to have come out of the blue.. not that I hadn’t been thinking about video a good deal prior.. but jumping into this like this.. The level of commitment I’m now feeling for it.. the excitement and passion I’m feeling for it.. The feeling of just being possessed by it… that is very surprising to me.

It’s as if God spoke to me and said “Matt, you must start video blogging, you must become a video blogger.” “Well God, that’s a little random, don’t you think?” Of course the trouble with God is.. there’s really no one to turn for for second opinions.. well I suppose there’s always Satan but…

It comes to me like a revelation.. like one day you wake up and you realize “this is what I’m supposed to do,” and though you had thought about it prior.. never did it command you.. . not like this.

What’s brought Matt to this new video blogging project? 

Ok, brace you’re self.. this could get long.

Somehow I always wanted to be a film maker.. since I was little kid… So it should be no surprise that I took some video and film making classes in college.. though.. the equipment at Mass Art, the only state art school in the US, was not capable of.. well I couldn’t do what I wanted to do with it.. so I never really got too into video or film making while there… really only dreamed about it.. though I did take a few film criticism type classes to kinda.. prepare I guess… 

But I can remember hanging out in the dorms.. getting high with some folks.. and telling them how in a few years anyone can own a video camera, the tools to edit it, and how we’d be distributing it via the internet.. imagining that world of possibilities.. and so.. I sorta went in that direction.. with my music, learning web design skills.. etc.

Somehow.. somewhere in there.. perhaps it was a result of my first “real job” as an interactive designer.. I was able to afford a video camera.. I also bought Premier and After Effects. I think I must have been on a G3 that could barely handle it.. it didn’t have a DVD burner, and the hard drive was tiny… so in practice I didn’t do much video.. just played around a bit.. shot video.

I started creating a kind of video library of.. just raw footage.. some of it dating back to the collage years.. with the idea that I’d eventually do something with it.

Sometime latter.. still on that old G4.. I started dating this girl whom.. I fondly refer to as Sue of Zen. Sue was hard of hearing.. needed subtitles to watch tv or films. When she was thinking about getting HBO I saw my opportunity..  ”No, you should get Net Flicks I said… I was thinking “if she needs subtitles to watch films.. she probably will be fine with foreign films.” So.. I conned her into letting me pick the films.. all the great film makers of film history.. for the year or so that we were involved.. I’d see up to 8 films a week.

The effect of Sue of Zen and I watching so many films was.. I became a horrible film snob.. I mean when you watch that many films.. that many of the greatest films ever made.. it’s hard to tolerate the crap!  I haven’t watched films like that since.. and I’ve grown a little more forgiving of Hollywood.. 

Well there was one other effect.. I became a lot more sophisticated about film.

When it came time to buy my Mac Pro.. I was thinking Video Making when I bought it. 8 Cores, a better then standard graphics card, 1.7 or something or other terabytes of space.. go for the 2 24″ HD screens..  etc.. I was even budgeting in professional video cameras and lighting rigs.. . 

But the thing was.. I wasn’t really jumping in head first into the video production stuff.. Hell, I wasn’t doing much of anything.. well, that might be over stating it. 

A few latter: 

Anyway.. so a long story, right? I can’t really get into everything about what I’m up to.. so lets go into what I’m up to at the moment..

Adventures in Apple’s Motion 3D

Motion is a motion graphics program.. that’s sorta 2.5D-ish, that’s a part of Final Cut Studio.  Motion graphics is basically animation with tittle graphics for film and TV.. My approach is basically painting plus the dimension of time… 

So I don’t know Apple’s Motion..  And Apple hasn’t done a real good job with thinking through the learning process… as the manuel is rather sucky. They have a few training videos, but they don’t really get you up to speed.. they just kinda give you a few things.. and from there you just kind of fumble around.

For the last couple days now.. I’ve been doing these little motion graphics projects.. which are perhaps more about learning the software then it is about making great work.. I’m aiming for great work, but who knows if I’ll actually get there.

Still.. I can see the potential…   

A couple days latter (I think):

I’m slowly getting to the point that I kind of understand what’s going on in Motion.. It’s not really that hard to pick up.. though there’s a depth to it that still seems a little out of reach, maybe? Or maybe there’s just a lot of things I figure I ought to be able to do, that it should be able to do.. but I can’t figure out how to do it or even if you can do it.. but then I’m new to the case….I’ve rendered out a number of motion animations.. and.. I have mixed feelings on them.. of course there not exactly meant to stand on there own.. In any event, that I now feel like I’m getting a feel for the program.. my expectations for what I ought to be able to achieve.. is now to start really going up.My latest sets of projects have been to take stuff that I’ve designed in photoshop.. or created in photoshop. In Photoshop these images are constructed with lots of layers.. In motion I take the images of the different layers, and set them up in 3D space.. so the layers now have spatial relationships between them.. and I’ve got a few lights going.. and I’m goofing around with the cameras.. and everything is sorta moving around a little..This really does feel like painting plus the dimension of time… Painting in motion, if you will. Though using this kind of language to talk about it seems to overstate it a little.What I’m doing is very much in keeping with the kinds of stuff I was doing with After Effects those few years back. The After Effects CS4 upgrade is now on my “to get list”.. and I may likely get it rather shortly.. assuming that I continue my video commitment.. 

Motion Graphics / Animation Goals

My plan of attack, technology wise, is to start with Motion.. of course. Eventually I’ll jump into After Effects… of course.. And then, assuming I can get Cinema 4D to run on this computer, well.. there’s that. The first objective, I guess, is to obtain some serious competency with Motion.. and then into After Effects. Cinema 4D I expect to be a giant learning project, and for that.. the goal is simply to get to a point where I’m able to start creating stuff to integrate into this sort of motion graphics / animation pipeline.. as a pose to going all out into 3D animation. What I mean is.. I get the ball rolling with this stuff.. and then just add pieces to it.. a process by which I hope to develop competency with the other stuff.. but real competency with that stuff.. only needs to be at a level determined by this stuff.. if that all makes sense.

Conclusions

I don’t know what will come of all this stuff, but it’s a fun adventure to go on.. and I have laid down the ground work in many ways.. to hopefully do something great.. We’ll see what happens………..