Quba HQ

Everything Tastes Better in Slow Motion (part 1)

Among many other projects completed last year, Olivari’s Everything Tastes Better in Slow Motion, also known as minimOilisms was probably one of the most fun to create. We were tasked with exploring the world of slow motion macro photography of our client’s olive oil interacting with various substances and objects. In other words, we spent 2 weeks armed with a Phantom camera, splashing galons of oil all over the studio and making everyone hungry with the smell of oil heating up in thousands of Watts of light.

As a result we produced nearly 70 pieces of short, 10 second vignettes – first five of which I can share with you now. More of these will be coming up throughout 2013, as the campaign releases individual “episodes”.
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Behind Keyframes

It’s no secret I am a big fan of infographics, graphs and other behind-the-scenes visuals related to vfx. You might have seen my own captures of various projects, crazy layer stacks or full blown composition graphs on MotionGraphs.

Sander seems to share the same interest and his blog Behind Keyframes now features quite a few of these from various artists, including yours truly. Check it out at http://behindkeyframes.tumblr.com/

Bowerbirds: April

One of the ongoing projects I am working on at Autofuss is a “One Year of Little” campaign for Olivari. Throughout 2013, the brand publishes small, cute, often quirky pieces of media through their social channels.

I have creative directed a number if programs for them (more on that soon) – the latest of which is a series of small music vignettes for the band Bowerbirds.

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Nexus Q: Sweet, Smart

It’s been a long while since I updated this site. Way too long. I will try to rectify this by uploading some of the videos I have been working on at Autofuss. There’s a lot of super secret stuff going on that I can’t share with you, but some is free to publish.

Nexus Q: Sweet, Smart is a little something something I cooked up a while ago for the launch of Google’s new media player. The product has been shelved, the video never produced, but I still have this kickass test.

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Autofuss

OK, so the entire Creative Free Agent initiative did not have a chance to last for long. Before I knew it, I was on the plane to the US, ready to begin a new, exciting chapter in my life. It is my pleasure to announce that as of now I am the new Creative Director at Autofuss – a studio I have been a huge fan of for many years.

What does that mean?

First of all, we have decided to shut down imago studios as a commercial endeavor. We had a good run for nearly a decade, but it is time to move on. Cigdem is focussing on her art while I have my hands full with all the exciting projects here, at Autofuss.

Second – no more freelance gigs from me. That goes without saying. Expect tons of new, exciting content coming out in the weeks, months and years to follow. I now have a great team of animators, artists, cameramen, designers and engineers working with me, not to mention all the awesome IRIS motion control robots of our sister company Bot&Dolly.

As for the AE tutorials – I’m sure that after a bit of a hiatus I will be able to come back to recording some new content for QubaHQ Tuts. It may take a while as a permanent move across the pond is not something you do everyday. Before flying here I have sold my rig to a very talented 3D artist, so it is in good hands. Sometime soon I will probably be building a new PC here and getting back on track with the site.

imago reel 2012

Here’s a long-delayed new imago studios reel for 2012. It includes commercial and independent pieces completed both in-house and as a collaboration with various production companies.

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Dear Esther

Dear Esther. I sometimes feel as if I’ve given birth to this island. Somewhere, between the longitude and latitude a split opened up and it beached remotely here. No matter how hard I correlate, it remains a singularity, an alpha point in my life that refuses all hypothesis. I return each time leaving fresh markers that I hope, in the full glare of my hopelessness, will have blossomed into fresh insight in the interim.

Dear Esther is one of these titles that defy our common conceptions about what video games should be. It can be considered an anti-game, or perhaps a game that transcends the genre. Personally I perceive it as an amazing experiment in interactive storytelling.

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PixelJunk Eden now on PC!

Around a year ago I published a Gotta Play article about PixelJunk Eden. It is a game that provided me with incredible amount of inspiration in my work, as well as hours of fun in my free time. A brainchild of Japan-based independent studio Q-Games and art director/DJ/multimedia artist Baiyon, Eden features possibly the most contemporary design I have ever seen in a video game.

Until yesterday, the game was exclusive to the PS3 platform, but now is available for all PC users through Steam. As a designer you owe it to yourself to check it out!

Check out and purchase Eden on Steam:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/105800/

Read my review of PixelJunk Eden here:
http://qubahq.com/2010/02/gotta-play-pixeljunk-eden/

For the first week, the game is offered at a 20% discount, bringing it to ridiculously low price of $7.99. You can also purchase the soundtrack. It’s well worth it.

AE64

Similarly to my 2005 piece entitled Demographix, AE64 is a tribute to the demoscene and to the legacy of world’s most popular microcomputer: Commodore 64.

While this video was created using the typical contemporary arsenal of tools (mainly After Effects and Cinema 4D), it conforms to most of the basic graphical limitations of the C64 such as a limited 16-color palette, low resolution, use of the overscan area etc. To maintain the spirit of the demo, I also created most of the effects using various scripts and code snippets, procedurally automating many of the tasks typically animated using keyframes.

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MotionGraphs

I would like to invite you to visit http://motiongraphs.qubahq.com/ – an online version of an exhibition by Quba Michalski, celebrating over a decade of his work in the field of motion design. Throughout this period Quba created several hundred of videos ranging from small independent pieces to massive visual extravaganzas for some of the world’s most well-known brands. MotionGraphs gives you a rare chance to gaze into the inner workings of his projects and examine in detail the way these selected works were constructed.

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