Maxon

This month's meditative, repeating and almost zen-like song called for something slower and relaxing. Paint drying and grass growing felt too cliche, so we settled on having a mountain range erect over the course of the song. This was also the first Bowerbirds clip where I decided to take my hands off the keyboard and let my very talented team do some work.

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.

A program of choice to many motion artists, Cinema 4D has a rather counter-intuitive method of producing depth of field. Both the camera controls and the way in which C4D handles depth maps can be a cause of major headache, especially for the newcomers to this program.

With the coding support from German motion artist and art director Derya Ozturk, we have been able to construct an improved camera rig for Cinema 4D that should help you eliminate needless frustration, and get the results you need with just a few clicks.

This tutorial is a hybrid between the Automated Light Rig and Scrolling LED Text. We will be building an animated image map driven light array that can be used for for either cool light effects or easily controlled particle emission.

While the entire project can be completed within After Effects, I will also jump into Cinema 4D every now and then and show you a very easy way for creating quite complex light arrays and importing them back into AE.