Growing-up as a child of the '70s, and something of a train-nerd, I loved these books, especially the rich and detailed illustrations. Long after I'd 'grown-up', Thomas the Tank Engine (and his friends) came to television and then became something of a merchandizing phenomenon too.
And now Thomas comes to the interwebs. Commissioned by Hit Entertainment and Produced by Spider Eye Ltd. , a new series of 'comic book' episodes is now arriving at platform YouTube.
I'm pleased to say I was asked to make the title sequence for this series (The first 20 seconds!) back in December and am now engaged in some background artworking for a few of the later episodes too. The first of the new webisodes 'Thomas Goes to New York' is online now, so I'm sharing a link to it here.
My bit is the motion graphics title sequence up until 0:20. Happy Birthday Thomas (& Friends).
I'm proud to now reveal the four product videos I have just made for new client Nevion which the company have just published on their YouTube channel. It was also great to be working again with my old colleague Philip Pepper as my Agent/Producer on these.
Nevion produces tech equipment for the TV & Broadcast industry. Nevion's innovative systems are used by content broadcasters worldwide to transport media streams from one location to another and to ensure the quality and reliability of such links.
I was asked to make four product videos highlighting key features for three hardware products and one software product in the Nevion range.
First up, here's the Nevion Sublime X2 Router for switching audio and video signals in tight situations...
For these videos the client had already written the Voice-Over Script. I sourced suitable VO recordings, and meanwhile set-about storyboarding the visuals for each video.
This is the TNS4200 Monitoring Probe for ensuring the quality of video streams...
I presented the client with a fairly thorough storyboard for each video within the first four days of each production to enable discussion and feedback.
This is the NX4600 Media Gateway for encoding and decoding media streams across IP networks...
This is the VideoIPath software solution for monitoring and controlling video networks including Nevion's hardware and 3rd party products too...
I particularly enjoyed making these videos and always love the challenge of presenting complex or highly technical subject matter with maximum precision and clarity.
The Nevion team are showing their products from their booth at the NAB Show for the TV industry in Las Vegas this week. I wish them an enjoyable and productive time at the show.
I worked with the book's author Maryam Khosrowshahi and publisher (Hali Publishing Ltd.) to create two videos to play continuously for the guests. Sofreh is the art of table presentation for celebratory occasions and practiced in Iran and by Persian communities elsewhere around the world too.
The book is presented in two sumptuously bound volumes; book one 'Nowruz' details Persian New Year celebrations whilst Book two 'Aqd' explores the use of Sofreh displays in Persian weddings. The book explores Sofreh as an artform, including detailed studies of its historical and cultural roles.
Find out more about this fine publication at the book's website here.
Here's a new app demo / promo video I have just delivered for Phonebook.club. The video is now being used online to promote the new smartphone app and raise awareness for a crowd-funding campaign now taking place on Indiegogo here.
The video is quite a mixed media piece, combining footage, photography and a little stop-motion and CG work too. I wrote the script and completed all of the video production work on this one. The video was delivered in around a four week turnaround from initial briefing.
For anyone interested in how I create this kind of work, the client has also uploaded my rough animatic to Vimeo. This is a very crude version of the video I made early on in the development process. So in the interests of 'showing the workings' here is my animatic (rough version) of the same video.
Here's the latest video I made for Simon's Cat Ltd. It was uploaded to the Simon's Cat YouTube channel just before Christmas and has clocked-up over 500,000 views already. In this video we follow Simon Tofield on a reserch visit to the UK headquarters of the Cats Protection charity in Sussex.
This could be a long and possibly fruitless endeavor, but I'm making a start on it. This time I'm thinking about making a film gate with a claw action to pull the film strip through one frame at a time. As before, I'll probably use my DSLR camera with some macro rings to re-photograph the frames as digital stills.
First of all I found the specifactions for 16mm movie film online, here's the dimensions I am working with.
Here's a first look at my prototype film gate mechanism. I'm designing this in Cinema 4D, outputting .stl files and sending these off to Shapeways to have them 3D printed from black 'detail' plastic.
This version of the mechanism is made of 3 parts, a film channel (shown in yellow), a moving bar with two claw teeth (grey) and a top plate (green) to apply some downward pressure to the film. This is probably the simplest kind of mechanism to go for, although more complicated (and precise) mechanisms than this tend to be used in proper film equipment.
I've already got the first couple of parts back from Shapeways (from a slightly earlier design), Here they are.
These parts do seem to fit the film quite well which is encouraging. As I've found before, getting things 3D printed is very much an iterative process, you design, you make you test; then you do it all again... it's not exactly cheap either.
I've now ordered some more parts to make the mechanism shown above, so maybe in a couple of weeks time when the parts come back I'll have a little more to show here.
Here are a few still images from the film...
Just released online, here's the new video I made for Simon's Cat Ltd. In this film we see Simon's Cat creator Simon Tofield going on a day-trip to the UK Headquarters of the Cats Protection charity in Sussex. I wrote a short blog post about the trip here.
I shot this video using the Canon C100, Canon 24-105 f4 lens and Senheiser G3 lav radio mic. kit. For support I used my Manfrotto monopod.
You can read more about the visit on the Cats Protection blog here or at the Simon's Cat website here.
The BBC website article goes on to cite the Bob Ross painting tutorials as an example of ASMR-rich video content. Here in the UK, I don't remember seeing Bob Ross, but we did have Tony Hart. As a child of the 70s/80s I lapped-up Tony Hart's art shows and yes, these were certainly something of an inspiration for the Simon Draws format.
In the Simon Draws videos, Simon Tofield draws various characters from his popular Simon's Cat cartoons whilst simultaneously dispensing his drawing tips and wildlife wisdom along the way.
Over the last few years for I have recorded twelve episodes of the Simon Draws for Simon's Cat Ltd. I had no idea these would score highly as ASMR video content but they were intended to provide an informative and relaxing viewing experience. If these videos appeal to a new audience seeking an ASMR video experience (whatever that really is) then ... welcome aboard ; )
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| Vet Emily Billings, Simon Tofield and me (Chris Gavin) with the C100 camera. Photo by Emma Burch. |
Well, in my 'spare' time I'm continuing to find my way around Cinema 4D. Keen readers will remember I bought the full 'Studio' edition earlier in the year and that I recently upgraded to the latest r16 version too.
As for the subject matter: I was playing around with this Digitoids concept a few years back, possibly as a stop motion / After Effects hybrid, but I'm now trying out this CGI / After Effects technique instead.
Just to try something new, I decided I would post updates of this project from time to time as I go along. So once evry few days I am replacing the file on Vimeo to show a continually evolving 'Work in Progress.' For anyone that wants to see how the work is progressing, click by here again soon and hopefully you will see the clip move on a little.
