The image used for the header of this article is not a CAD rendering. Neither is it a fragment of a 3D model wireframe. It is a detail from the image mask I had to produce today in order to adapt a stock image into usable element for a motion graphics project I am currently working on.

Masking, matting, rotoscoping, keying… you name it – not exactly the favorite task for most designers, yet a necessary one. But does it have to be? In this article I would like to propose a solution that could potentially free the artists from the labor of building alpha channels for their images, earn freelancers some money and help the big stock providers expand their offering.

It is 2010 and today, more than ever, web is about collaboration. Musicians release their tracks online and offer them as multi-channel files for remixing. Google Wave is slowly changing the way we communicate and edit documents. Facebook allows us to upload, share, comment, organize, tag and re-post text, images and video. Social bookmarking sites such as Stumble Upon or Digg let us share our web discoveries, review and recommend content.

Isn’t it time for professional stock image sites to get similar treatment?

What I envision is plain and simple:

Allow users to share their vector and raster masks of the images (and possibly videos) over the same system that is used to sell them the original content.

Windmill Mask (created in approximately 90 minutes)

Above is the windmill mask that inspired this idea. I have spent approximately 1.5 hours creating it. (The entire project will use many more images and I estimate spending 2 days in a two-person team on creating masks for all of them.) Wouldn’t it be great if I could save the time by purchasing the mask together with the image? Or perhaps if I would be able to help others save the time they may spend repeating my chore by being able to upload the result back to the image bank?

Currently I have no such option. Every single designer who wants to have the cutout of this particular windmill will need to mask the image in their own time. I am convinced most of them would gladly pay a little extra fee to have the work completed for them.

It is worth noting here that some stock images do come with either alpha channel or a vector mask embedded in the file. Unfortunately, these are usually photographs of simple items on a studio backdrop – not that difficult to mask to begin with. When it comes to images captured outside of the studio – clipping path is a true rarity.

Here’s how the system could work:

When purchasing the stock images, the client is offered an option to also purchase the vector/raster mask for the image. The alpha image can be previewed on the site to ensure that it masks the objects client is interested in.

If the given image does not currently have mask available, the client is able to request one while browsing the images. Requests can also be made by either the photographer selling the image to the site or by the site’s own staff, browsing the library “behind the scenes” and identifying potential candidate images. If we go one step further, the mask request applet can feature a small drawing application where one is able to identify areas of the image that need to be separated using a simple highlighter.

Marked images are then listed in a separate section of the site, where freelancers, studios and rotoscoping artists are able to browse through them and fill the requests. The image queue can be sorted according to the demand to ensure quick delivery of the most requested masks.

Additionally, a client who purchased an unmatted image is able to sell the mask back to the stock site, ideally returning the cost of the image with some extra profit.

The entire system would, of course, need proper human supervision. Submitted masks would be tested to assure accuracy and quality. Mask requests would be screened to avoid spam and trolling. Finally the value of each mask would need to be individually determined for each image (a photograph of an apple on a white background is, after all, significantly easier to mask than, say, Taj Mahal).

A rating system for sold masks could also be implemented in order to promote the best authors and discredit slackers who managed to slip through the first level of verification.

Everybody wins (well, almost).

As a result of implementing such system, the stock image sites will expand their offering and generate greater profit. The (disturbed?) individuals who actually enjoy creating masks will be able to turn their skills into income. Designers will save time and be able to concentrate on creating better content, rather than manual labor. Finally, the pointless repetition of work will be eliminated, as designers will no longer need to create their own alpha channels for the very same images others already did.

The only losing party are the companies producing masking software… but let’s be honest. While these programs simplify the process of creating masks, there isn’t any one-click solution that would work for every image. Then again, perhaps the introduction of masking as a profitable profession could increase sales of such programs as freelances and new businesses open to supply the demand.

So, let’s see what tomorrow brings. Maybe in the near future we will actually hear the unthinkable words coming out of mouths of designers around the world: “I’ve finished early.”

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Ever since we produced “Snow Valentines” back in 2005, we’ve been wondering about creating other atmospheric effects in our pieces. With the set of Autumn fillers for S’NEK, the opportunity finally presented itself.

We generated rain maps (for both distant rain and the drops on the glass) using particle systems and then fed the information to a variety of distortion plugins to create a realistic drops of water on the window.

The project was fun to work on, but complete pain to compute – over 25 layers of intense particle effects is something our 2006 render computers hated us for.

The project was executed on such tight schedule, there was practically no time for a photo shoot. The photos used were taken in the middle of summer, in full sun and then color-corrected. The photograph for the “French Street” has all the people photoshopped out of it – the place is always crowded, day and night.

Rain: Bosphorus

Rain: Galata

Rain: French Street

Extras:

Client: S’NEK
Photography & Animation: Quba Michalski
Music: Dağhan Kök (Retronic)
Tools: Photoshop, After Effects

Original post on imago website:
http://www.imagonewmedia.com/project.php?code=RAIN

This piece is a part of several fillers commissioned by S’NEK channel for their Autumn line-up.

S’NEK’s programming director was quite fond of one of our older pieces, “Nonesensuality” and asked us to develop an animation similar to the scene with wooden planks featured there.

We populated the wooden fence with alien creatures designed using basic geometric forms and had them travel around as a shadow theatre. Color-wise, we continued exploring the desaturated hues of Istanbul Autumn.

The sound for this piece was designed using exclusively wooden objects hitting one another and acoustic tribal instruments.

Client: S’NEK
Design & Animation: Quba Michalski
Music: Dağhan Kök (Retronic)
Tools: Illustrator, Corel Draw, Photoshop, After Effects

Original post on imago website:
http://www.imagonewmedia.com/project.php?code=WOOD

Istanbul, where we are located, is a crazy place. Over 16 Million people (excluding ever-present tourists) live, work and party in this enormous city. Crowded streets and insane road traffic are everywhere.

For this video, created as a Spring filler for S’NEK, we decided to virtually empty one of the most congested areas of the city. We took photos of Tünel district, cleaned the crowds out of them and re-created the environment giving is a slow, lazy, summer mood.

The cloaked S’NEK spaceships came to life as a result of us watching too many episodes of Star Trek.

Client: S’NEK
Concept, Design & Animation: Quba Michalski
Music: Dağhan Kök (Retronic)
Tools: Photoshop, After Effects

Original post on imago website:
http://www.imagonewmedia.com/project.php?code=TUNE

This 15-second Spring filler created for S’NEK channel is one of most well-known pieces of we made. It has been featured on several motion graphics festivals and magazines around the world. It also opens the 2006-2007 edition of Adobe’s Customer Reel DVD.

The concept behind the piece was to show how diverse are the people who tune into and watch S’NEK.

We started with a self-imposed design boundary: All of the characters were to be created based on a very simple geometric template – the same approach we took when designing the identity for the channel itself. By adding simple elements, we started transforming the original template character into a variety of individuals from different walks of life.

We came close to a hundred characters (including adults, children and even animals) during the design process. Some of them can be seen in the extras section below. Six groups made it to the final piece – mainly due to the 15-second time limit we had. We never got around to doing a sequel, but we have enough materials for several or them.

The animation was inspired by the mechanical schedule boards still present in some of the older airports. We have just completed the identity package for the channel, and after several months of non-stop work we were really itching to go on holiday.

Extras:

Client: S’NEK
Concept & Character Design: Çiğdem Keresteci
Animation: Quba Michalski
Music & SFX: Dağhan Kök (Retronic)
Tools: Photoshop, Corel Draw, Illustrator, After Effects

Original post on imago website:
http://www.imagonewmedia.com/project.php?code=EPPL

Other works of Çiğdem Keresteci:
http://chichiland.com/

The re-design of channel identity for S’NEK was one of the largest projects imago undertook. S’NEK (Turkish for “Fly”) is a youth-oriented digital satellite channel owned and produced by Digiturk – Turkey’s largest satellite TV operator. Since its launch, the channel’s image suffered from poor identity package, bad logo, and inconsistent on-air graphics, created in-house on minimal budget.

In a quest for better ratings and overall improvement of the channel, imago was commissioned to completely re-design the look and feel of S’NEK and to give it a new identity.

We started with the channel logo. The old one (author unknown) had several serious problems; It was very detailed (more of an illustration, rather than a logo), did not convey any message, had poor color choices and overall “cheap” feel to it. Since the channel existed for several months we could not completely break away from its current look. The new logo had to preserve the continuity in the channel ID and to build upon already established image.

Our main objective was to create a symbol which would be memorable, energetic, modern, and yet simple enough for anyone to remember and draw. Secondary concern was to allow the fly image in the logo to morph into different shapes, representing various thematic blocks of programming. After several iterations, we arrived at the final version, featuring a tri-color (black, white and red) emblem built from basic geometric forms and a bold logotype. While the symbol is based on round shapes, the type we picked is highly angular, strong and striking. Through the contrast between the two the logo gains internal energy and power.

S’NEK: Bumps (logo morphs)

A week before the new identity went on-air, all Digiturk channels started airing promotional teaser videos. Meanwhile, the stickers with logo morphs were planted around the city of Istanbul and S’NEK website fell under (a fake) hacker attack. Giving the audience enough clues to wonder, but not revealing what’s coming, generated a lot of buzz and attention.

S’NEK: Teaser Videos

Creating line-up and promo templates was one of the most difficult aspects of the entire project. Since S’NEK did not have software and hardware supporting complex on-air, template-based live renders, we needed to design the whole thing using After Effects. At the time, S’NEK did not have operators skilled enough to entrust with modifying relatively complex compositions. We had to find a solution for that as well.

We developed a drag-and-drop system in which the After Effects operator neededs to simply import necessary footage, type in the text in several boxes and adjust a number of sliders. The program takes care of the rest through series of complex expression scripts reading the data from the “Edit” composition and applying necessary changes to the “Render” part of the project. All the crucial animation elements are locked and hidden away from the operator. Once the information is typed in, text layers adjust their content, background boxes change the length accordingly, clocks animate into correct digits, etc. The entire final animation is generated procedurally, based on the basic initial input.

S’NEK: Line-Up: “Today” Template

S’NEK: Line-Up: “Weekdays” Template

S’NEK: Line-Up: “Weekends” Template

Client: S’NEK
Identity Design: Quba Michalski
Design, Scripting & Animation: Quba Michalski
Music & SFX (Stage 1): Ferit Özgüner
Music & SFX (Stage 2): Dağhan Kök (Retronic)
Tools: Photoshop, Illustrator, Corel Draw, After Effects

Original post on imago website:
http://www.imagonewmedia.com/project.php?code=SNEK