This is an old test, but I dug it out for the blog after my friend Kyriaki showed me this video of Athens, and I got all itchy to get cracking on something tilt-shifty of my own!

The above was shot in 2008 in Liverpool from the Radio City tower, looking down towards St. George’s Hall and the World Museum. The original purpose of the footage was to capture some snap-zooms into key landmarks around Liverpool, so the footage was barely steady for more than a few seconds at a time, hence the looping in this video. It was however it was the best footage I was likely able to get my hands on at the time to try out the effect!

Below are a few stills from some my initial animation and grading tests – I’m not sure about an end product yet but I very much enjoyed just seeing where the footage would lead me. More soon.

My role: Animation

Concept / Script / Design: Raw

I worked with Raw Design Studio in Manchester to animate the introduction video to their Think Green campaign for NHS Derbyshire.

From the Think Green website:

“Think Green is a four-year initiative to help you find out more about carbon reduction and the benefits of greener living. There are so many new and exciting ways to improve our environment and Think Green aims to give everyone the know-how and tools to make a lasting change. In five years’ time the aim is to have reduced carbon emissions by 25%, creating a greener environment for us all to enjoy.”

Produced at Splinter

Working with Splinter as part of their ongoing work with TravelWise, I animated this short promo to encourage the people of Merseyside to get involved and share their opinions on the proposed third Local Transport Plan.

I want to work on this a little more in the future as I’m sure there are better ways to create the geometry for the labyrinth – I used Illustrator to trace the maze from an image, and then used the paths as splines in Cinema 4D.

Check out Think Labyrinth for loads of info on the history of labyrinths and their designs. I used MazeMaker to generate the maze image that I traced into Illustrator.

Here’s my entry for the latest Greyscale Gorilla CMYK Five Second Project. This was the first Five Second Project I’ve participated in and will certainly be taking part in more! It’s a great way to experiment with new software, techniques and ideas, with the added incentive of a deadline to make sure you get something out there instead of endlessly tinkering!

There were over 200 entries into the CMYK theme – check out the winner and honorable mentions at Greyscale Gorilla.

I thought I’d share a bit of work in progress from my entry into this month’s GreyscaleGorilla Five Second Project. This month’s theme is CMYK. My original concept was based on an idea I had a while ago while playing around with MoDynamics and Destruction in Cinema 4D, where I would smash expensive looking sculptures into dust. In slow motion. I was planning on these scenes playing out in a gallery-esque white space, as well as the sculptures themselves being cast from a white material, but I thought the CMYK theme would be a nice way to add some overall punch to the concept.

I’m not sure how it’s going to play out yet but I’m glad to have come across this 1989 New Order album artwork while thumbing through my copy of Factory Records: The Complete Graphic Album. Admittedly I wasn’t a fan of these at first but I remembered them once I’d started putting my scene together and thought they might be of some use!

Finally, I’ve used David O’Reilly’s free Walt Disney’s Head On A Plate model as the doomed sculpture. Yep, it’s kind of weird. But it will do until I can find a more suitable model!

Cinema4D has been on my radar for about a year now as something I’ve wanted to get to grips with and finally start working 3D assets into my animation projects. Universal Everything’s Advanced Beauty collection made a big impression on me in 2009 and it was those films that really inspired me to get started with 3D animation.

But with infinite creative possibilities at your fingertips, where do you start? Lucky for me there is a great community of Cinema4D users out there who are more than willing to share their knowledge with other designers starting out with the software.

The renders below then are just a few of the things I’ve been exploring for starters, namely MoDynamics, the Hair module and subpolygon displacement. Nothing earth-shattering, but these first dabbles have been crucial in shedding light on how to start building more ambitious scenes.

Here are some links to great sites, forums and training that are invaluable to any designer working in Cinema4D:

Greyscalegorilla
HelloLuxx
Motionworks / MILG
mograph.net

It’s been a busy few months and last week saw a couple of big projects finally get out of the door, as well as a few things I’ve been cooking on the side. So, today I’m really excited to launch of one of those projects, rethunk.co.uk! Rethunk is home to my portfolio, where you can check out a selection of my design and motion graphics work, with a new reel of my latest output coming soon. I’m also launching a blog where I’ll be sharing my inspiration, processes, ideas, side projects any other creative bits and bobs that fit the bill. I’d love to hear feedback on my work and the site as a whole, as well as any questions you may have about anything you see here, so feel free drop me an email or leave a comment in a post. You can also follow @rethunk on Twitter for updates on new work and posts to the blog.

So, thanks for stopping by and see you back here soon!

Chris