A Motion Design Primer

So, it’s pretty obvious. Motion Graphics are EVERYWHERE.  You can’t see a movie, turn on your television, browse the web, or glance at your mobile phone without being treated to an onslaught of moving graphics.  The most amazing thing is how rapidly new design trends develop.  In only 15 years we’ve been treated to photorealistic CGI, dramatic stop-motion, bold kinetic text, playful cardboard cutouts, and mind-blowing visual effects.  New techniques are developing so fast that it can be pretty hard to keep up.  But as groundbreaking ideas eventually become fads, and one fad replaces the other, here’s a succint term that describes the current design trend: synthesis.  And a sweet synthesis it is.  There is no more exciting time to work in the industry, because ALL the lines are blurring.

No longer are clients adamant about the use of a certain technique or style, but rather, they simply want a compelling visual story.  Live action, hand-drawn animation, 3D effects – it’s all up for grabs.  And one has to be uber sensitive about how these pieces come together.

A TON of tools exist for creating this new media – revolutionary camera systems and lighting rigs, cheap 3d software and intuitive animation packages.  Yet, the MOST important tool is a pencil in the hands of a fresh thinker.  Because at this point in time, we are only limited by our imaginations.  If one can draw the idea, actually realizing it is becoming more and more straightforward.  So let’s relish the possibilities, but be mindful of the need for clear messaging, intuitive iconogoraphy, and deft motion – all expertly crafted to transport viewers out of their seats.

If you want to get your creative juices flowing with the possibilities of motion design, then checkout this video.  Compiled by a talented troupe of Parisian designers and teachers, it’s a compendium of great work from the dawn of filmic time to today.  Each artist is credited at the end.

Lenticu-What?

By Keith Johnson & Shane Seley

So, we got this call from the Virginia Historical Society.  The Virginia Sesquicentennial of the American Civil War Commission had funded a traveling exhibit to commemorate the 150th Anniversary of the American Civil War.  After a nine-month process, we had been selected to produce a few of their exhibits!

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First Conference Call

They’ve got a five-minute film project that they’d like done entirely with high-definition motion graphics, stereo audio and displayed vertically on a high-definition monitor.  Piece of cake.  We do it all the time.

Then, they begin to describe their next project… and in the process, threw us a wicked screwball.

As one of their components, they’d like to produce an exhibit that shows visitors via still images and 5.1 surround sound what it was like to be amidst a Civil War battle.  And one more thing, they want to make it a giant lenticular wall.  We immediately asked them to repeat and spell the word – lenticular – as we Googled a definition.

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Now, to back up, one of Wide Awake Films’ concentrations (or…obsessions) is recreating Civil War combat for film.  In fact, there are few teams on the planet with as much experience in this niche as ours.  Since 1991, we’ve done it for the big screen (NatGeo, PBS, History, Discovery, A&E) and for a multitude of museum projects across the country.  Here’s some of our work.

Our other niche is successfully executing technically demanding projects such as creating a moving train experience via synched high-definition “windows” for Nortel and pioneering Blu-Ray Disc authoring in early 2006 for use at a European trade show, well ahead of any facility in the Midwest.

Lenticular couldn’t be THAT hard.  It’s just a still print.

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Lenticular 101

We immediately called our Emmy-award winning friend and uber-techy KC Art Institute Professor, Richard Welnowski.  We’ve won a few regional Emmys for our PBS documentary work.  But as Richard likes to remind us, his national Emmy is bigger than ours.

For the next two months through his contacts and others we developed, we talked to everyone we could who had experience in lenticular design and printing.  Our best advice came from a printer who intoned, “With lenticular, if you don’t know what you’re doing, you’ll do more than stub your toe, you’ll shoot yourself in the foot and then bleed to death.”  Encouraging advice!

Once we’d finally gotten enough information to begin pre-production, we blazed our own technical trail.  Keith, our 3D animation/compositing guru, utilized his toolset for creating moving images to pave a new way to combine multiple still images to create the three-dimensions of true lenticular.  Here are his early workflow findings.

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3D Mockup

Then we worked to develop the context of the exhibit space.  Utilizing CAD files provided by the exhibit designer, we built a scale 3D model of the entire exhibit that allowed us to try out various design solutions.  We temporarily comped in some great Don Troiani paintings which captured the scale and energy we were after.  These served as stand-ins for our mural as we explored the space.  Here are some of the early 3D renderings of the exhibit.

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The 1864 Battle of Kernstown

As all of this was underway, our production team worked with the client to specify what we would actually be shooting for the lenticular graphics.   Exhibit Coordinator, Andy Talkov, directed us to use the 1864 Battle of Kernstown, Virginia as the basis for our content.

Now we were cooking…doing what we love to do as a design/production team – researching the history and gathering the pieces to bring it back to life.

Hailing from Kansas City, Missouri, we were delighted to find that the Union commander at this battle, who was mortally wounded at Kernstown, is none other than Colonel James Mulligan, the same flamboyant commander who earlier in the war commanded the U.S. troops at the Battle of the Hemp Bales at Lexington, just 45 minutes east of us.

To gather our information we consulted the National Archives to get information regarding equipment and clothing issued to each of the Civil War regiments we intended to feature.  As content reference, our client provided specific works from famed historical artist, Don Troiani.  We put the wheels in motion to generate interest for our upcoming shoot amongst some of the best Civil War living historians in our region.  These are the “scratch golfers” of the reenacting community and we’re honored that they lend their talents to our projects.

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Setting the Stage

We also turned to our good friend and National Geographic still photographer, Robert Szabo.  We’re video geeks not still photogs.  Working with Andy and the Kernstown Battlefield Association, Bob immediately went to work to capture an empty panoramic background, sometimes referred to as a “clean-plate” that all of the actors and talent would be inserted into.

Bob visited the Kernstown battlefield, armed with our research.  We had found a moment in the battle we wanted to recreate for the exhibit.  Due to the large-scale nature of the lenticular mural, Bob took a series of images that we then stitched together.

With the proper background established, we were ready to fill it in with hordes of battling soldiers.  We turned to  our friend Robbie Maupin, who runs The Big River Ranch in nearby Lexington.  With a portable greenscreen in tow and our crack team of Civil War reenactors, we trekked over to the ranch to capture some carnage, but not without some serious pre-planning.  Here is the graphic we developed which clearly shows the poses we needed to photograph.  And with only 14 reenactors, it meant we needed to be very mindful of wardrobe changes to create the ultimate sensation of thousands of soldiers.

We proceeded to shoot away, gathering hundreds of shots of our reenactors in pose after pose – some on horseback, some in the midst of a charge, others taking fatal hits to the chest, all the while being mindful of how each pose would add to the total effect of our composition.

  

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Assembling the Puzzle Pieces

Keying, scaling, placing, retouching…more keying, more retouching.  As the massive process of building up the composition was underway, we could all begin to see the final impact of the image, and we started to get excited!  Before our eyes, the Kernstown battlefield was being transformed from an empty historic site into a depiction of mass mayhem.  Here is a brief run-down of the compositing process.

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The Sound of Battle

In addition, we set out to create a 5.1 audio mix which would accompany the exhibit.  We were able to source most of the battlefield sounds from our extensive library here at Wide Awake, however we recreated the famed “rebel yell” from 1920′s recordings of actual Confederate veterans, sourced from the archives of the Museum of the Confederacy and layered to sound like an onslaught of wailing soldiers.  Here is a motion preview of the lenticular, along with the audio mix.

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Making the Print

With our digital work essentially complete, we turned the reigns over to Tom Saville and his team at Big3D, an amazing lenticular printing house in Sacramento, CA.  We supplied them with “frames” of animation, which they then interlaced and sandwiched under a lenticular lens.  Each image in the 16-frame sequence was subtly unique in order to create the impression of depth and motion when viewed through the lenticular lens (See motion preview from previous video clip).  And here’s an example of  what the interlaced image looks like.

Needless to say, we were a bit nervous leading up to this next important step.  Our massive mural was to be printed at 8 feet tall, over a total width of 26 feet, which meant Tom and his team needed to create 11 individual lenticular panels which would be seamlessly joined together to create the final installation.  We were told by other potential print vendors that seaming multiple lenticular panels could NOT be done.  The images would be out of phase and almost certainly never line up.  Tom reassured us on the phone that it was indeed possible and proceeded to ship out a physical test sample to us.  When we opened the package and placed the two panels side-by-side, it was evident we found the right printer.  The alignment was flawless!

With our confidence building, we shipped off all of the final digital files to Big3D and they worked their magic to print the final panels in a matter of a few weeks.  The panels were shipped down to Virginia and assembled by the VHS staff without a hitch.   Many thanks go to Dale and Andy & the rest of the VHS team for their amazing collaboration and patience with this project.   Since this time, Wide Awake Films has produced lenticular for Vegas-bound trade show exhibits, in-store point of purchase displays and will be working on a lenticular depicting the battle of Shiloh in anticipation of its upcoming 150th anniversary.

And there you have it!  The exhibit will be on display at the Virginia Historical Society through the rest of this year.  After that it will travel the state of Virginia through the end of the 150th Anniversary (2015).   So if you’re in the area, drop by and take a look at the battle of 2nd Kernstown, in eye-popping lenticular!

Here are a few links to the press coverage generated by the exhibit:

• Virginia Historical Society