Videography and Animation

a collection of various videos and animations

These videos/animations span both school and personal projects. I really enjoy video work - the impact it has on people is extremely gratifying as a creator, and it's just plain cool to make something people "watch".

Run Boy Run

This group project was kind of wild - it was the final project for a Visual Effects class. Our prompt was to make something "crazy" and incorporate techniques we'd learned, and that's all we were given. To create this video, we filmed a mannequin (that we put antlers on) in different positions stop-motion style, in front of a green screen. I then keyed out the green screen and manipulated the footage. I was solely responsible for the creation of this video inside After Effects, including the audio visual effect. At the time I was also playing around with making audio visual effects in my free time.

Adobe After Effects

"fuhgeddaboudit"

For this sophomore year Studio project, we were told to pick a quote from a movie to make a kinetic typography animation of. I chose a quote from Donnie Brasco in which Johnny Depp's character (Donnie Brasco) explains the meaning of "fuhgeddaboudit". Everything in this animation was created from scratch, including the countdown intro. I chose to use the phonetic spelling of "forget about it" because a) that's the entire joke in the film, and b) the actual spelling doesn't convey any of the unwritten meaning behind the phrase. Johnny Depp delivers this quote rather quickly, and I regret that some of my animations move faster than the viewer can really digest them. This was a project I devoted a lot of time to - I'm still proud of the result.

Adobe Illustrator, Adobe After Effects

The Leading Strand: Dark matter

My senior year, I participated in a nationwide project called The Leading Strand as an independent study. The purpose of Leading Strand, according to their website (www.theleadingstrand.org) and mission statement, is to bring together scientists and designers to revitalize science and serve the greater good. Six teams were formed of design students and NC State faculty, from both the College of Sciences and the College of Design, in order to create six compelling exhibits that each tackle a different scientific concept. My team, paired with astrophysicist Katie Mack, sought to tackle dark matter. What is dark matter, you might ask? First, watch the video! Trying to create a visual exhibit that explains dark matter proved to be a tough challenge - dark matter doesn't interact with light, so we can't see it. Instead, scientists and astrophysicists use indirect methods of observation to record dark matter's effect on the universe.

I was involved in the development of our exhibit concept, but my primary role was to produce the above video, which would be seen before interacting with our exhibit. In order for the viewer to understand the exhibit, the video would prime them with the necessary information and give them a basis for understanding dark matter, which is neither a common or well-understood topic. The final exhibit was displayed in Transfer Co. Food Hall for a month. All of the visual material used in the video was created entirely by me in After Effects, with the exception of the Earth model and the space photograph (taken from NASA).

Adobe Illustrator, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Premiere

The Ties that bind

In between my sophomore and junior year, I briefly did contract work for a small startup called Madspring Marketing. I created the above animation for a local documentary, "The Ties That Bind", by scanning a child's drawing, separating the elements in Photoshop, and animating them in After Effects and Premiere. Every visual asset came in some way from the original drawing - there are several instances where I created effects, such as the action lines when Lee steps on his dad's toes, out of existing lines from the characters in the drawing.

Adobe Photoshop, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Premiere

particle fun/the fish market gallery

I created this project in my free time for an open call at the Fish Market Gallery in Downtown Raleigh. I only knew about the event a couple days before, so I made this video at short notice. The event was one night only. I really enjoy making particle effects/systems and experimenting with them, even though I was slightly limited by my toolset - I only had After Effects' native particle systems. This was displayed via projector on a large wall, with the music being run through a large external speaker. It was the only work in the room, and had a curtain to block external light, so the experience was mostly private and limited to a couple viewers at a time. Set to music, particles have an entirely different effect on people - they become alive, meditative, and soothing, and such was the purpose of this project. As a result, some of the animations drag on a little long, so while I certainly recommend the whole experience, feel free to skip around the video to see each set of particle systems.

Adobe Photoshop, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Premiere