This is a selection of shots that I treated for Sky HD using extreme slow motion and time distortion techniques which are part of their ongoing promotional campaign.
The technique involves manipulating time by accelerating and decelerating speeds in various ways on specific bits of footage. The shots here are unedited and I’ve just included various clips that I liked. Obviously these were rendered in high definition and are meant to be viewed on a large HDTV screen and not in a miniscule browser window, but you get the idea.
Sadly there’s no way of actually slowing down time in real life.
Goal line technology is a hot topic in sports circles as accuracy in goal decisions is vital. This simple animation illustrates a not-so-simple piece of electronic gadgetry that could make any such difficult decisions a thing of the past.
Bob Jamieson developed the ‘Superpuck’, an ice hockey puck with a tiny electronic chip inside (currently shortlisted for a John Logie Baird Award for innovation). The technology clearly had implications for other sports and is now attracting interest from FIFA, the international governing body of football. See the Superpuck website for the full story on Goal Line Technology.
The idea of the 3d animation was to show in under a minute what it could take ten minutes to communicate verbally, and to a potentially non-English speaking audience. The three elements involved are clear - the electronic chip, the sensor strip around the goal and the decoder box. Watch this space.
Edinburgh-based production company LA Media asked me to produce an animated ident for their video creations and this extended version above is what I delivered.
They had fairly set ideas about the design style - that it should be monochromatic, gritty and urban - and even had some animation examples to show me. This was a bit unusual, but what was more unusual was that they didn’t want me to use their existing logo.
An ident without a logo was not something I was sure I could do, but I enjoy a challenge. Like other idents, you only use around 5-10 seconds worth but when they gave me the music they were using - by Mike Jameson - I kind of liked looking at the whole thing.
Scottish painter Alan Macdonald asked me to design the catalogue for his current exhibition, now on show in Amsterdam, entitled ‘Message From The Dark Side’.
Alan’s paintings show bishops on mopeds, Dutch masters drinking Coke and all manner of other surreal juxtapositions. I’m a big fan. One of my favourites is called ‘Windbag’ and shows a classical landscape with a Tesco bag blowing freely in the centre.
The catalogue was an exercise in graphic design restraint. The images are so strong, they need a lot of space and as little interference from other design elements as possible. I kept it really simple. I’m not normally known for my restraint.
These are examples of scenes that I created for the History of the Devil a while back. The idea was to show little stylised vignettes of various demons, angels and fairies as they were discussed. The documentary used a toy theatre theme throughout so it made sense to put the characters within the theatre.
We used front and back projection screens to create the effect, combining live actors with virtual sets. The 3d graphic theatre backdrops were designed and animated then back projected from a dvd onto an enormous screen behind the performers (Lauren Lamarr and Mark Donnelly).
We also placed a second mesh screen between the camera and the performers and used front projection to cast another layer of motion graphics onto. The set looked amazing. What you see here are the basic rushes, there’s nothing added, and the overall effect is a bit like moving 3d stills.
Blink and you’ll miss it, but this is the little ident I produced for STV’s (Scottish Television) hogmanay show ‘The Scots That Rocked.’ The interesting thing about this one is that this was not the original sequence or title that I was commissioned to produce.
Producer/director Dani Carlaw was making a documentary about how Scottish people seem to excel on talent shows such as the X Factor, what with Susan Boyle having recently cracked the American market. The programme was to be called ‘The Scots Factor’ and the opening titles were to parody the glitzy, light-entertainment look of the X Factor, using the cross of the saltire in place of the X.
However, I had no sooner finished this sequence just before Christmas when I was told that it was unlikely to be used - ITV, which licences STV for central and northern Scotland, was threatening STV with legal action over the show.
I didn’t see the problem myself - it wasn’t a talent show, it was a documentary and it’s in the nature of parody to mimic the look of the thing being parodied. But STV and ITV have ongoing legal wrangles and this just seemed to make everyone nervous. Poor Dani had a very hard time keeping the legal department happy.
But what do I care. I liked the original sequence too so I include it here for your delectation and delight. Unless Simon Cowell gets litigious.
Around this time last year I was approached by Ampersand, the Edinburgh based stable of advocates, to tackle their search engine optimisation (SEO). They had a very attractive website that did everything they needed and everyone was very proud of. There was only one problem - it was very hard to find in the search engines.
Having a great website is one thing but unless you’re getting a reasonably high ranking in Google and the other search engines, it might not do you much good. You can pay Google for a sponsored listing, but who really wants to pay Google? That’s where SEO comes in.
I ripped through the Ampersand site applying a wide range of ‘white hat’ SEO techniques (i.e. no dirty tricks) and put a number of measures in place that would, given time, boost their rankings considerably. After a month we were beginning to see a marked improvement - I kept a log of the progress being made on individual search terms. Later I was delighted to be able to tell them they had a page one ranking for virtually all the terms they were interested in.
Anyone who says they can guarantee a top position ranking is not really telling the truth. There are too many factors that are taken into account in Google’s massively complex number crunching. Also I wouldn’t believe anyone who says they can fix this for you overnight. It’s a slow process, but as long as you’re not a fly by nighter and are in business for the right reasons, it’s a job that’s well worth doing.
My number one tip for anyone looking to boost their website ranking would be - have a website with interesting and unique content. And if you’re interested in taking the next step and finding an SEO company in Scotland, give me a call.
This is a compilation of 3d graphics that I created for the insurance giant Aegon. The individual clips were spread throughout a dvd which detailed the company’s employee pension scheme and explained its finer points.
I tried to make the images as engaging as possible whilst remaining close to their branding and getting their sober message across clearly.
The pig may have been a step too far in the other direction. Although they had a piggy bank just like this one in their printed materials, I don’t think they used it in the dvd.
After we created the original Battlefield documentary series and then Battlefield Vietnam in the 90’s, producer Dave Flitton was asked to give the Battlefield treatment to the Korean War. The result was this 2-hour documentary which sadly doesn’t seem to have been as widely seen as its predecessors. I say ’sadly’ because I remember it being really good. It also seems to have been renamed a couple of times - I’ve seen it advertised as ‘Battlezone Korea’ and others.
Like the previous series, this was entirely made up of archive footage and graphics, so for the title sequence I created this montage of treated shots and animated text, and built it around the theme music.
As my postcard for its premiere shows, it went out on PBS on August 1st 2001.
I'm Greg Moodie and I've been making things look good since 1993. Whether it's 3d design and animation, television graphics, web design or corporate presentations, “Funhouse Graphics will add value to your business."
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