At work we recently got some new custom memory sticks made. I’ve had the fun task of copying the showreel to all 50 of them, not once but twice! There was a amend to the video so they all needed doing again! They’re pretty cool though, you twist the top and the usb connection pops out!

Tribe Brand Communication Showreel 2011 from Tribe Brand Communication on Vimeo.

So I’ve been a busy bee the past 3 months, working on the tribe showreel. It’s finally complete and released into the wild..

I’m putting together a how it was made post soon..

A few months back Simon at Tribe came to me with a cool brief. It was basically to produce two lines that flow around in a 3D space. It would be used as the background on a holding page for the company Parallel Pictures.

Simon did the design and Ben sorted the code.

The site has recently gone live! Below is a screen grab of the finished holding page. Here’s a link to the site (It may have changed).

More on how this was done after the break…

I created the lines in 3Dsmax by first producing a spline then changing its angle so it created an interesting path. I then created a long cylinder and applied the path deform modifier and told it to follow the spline. I duplicated the cylinder and off set it slightly. I set up a camera and made it move forward to give the lines more depth. I played around with the rendering methods to get the desired effect.

Below is the first test where I added a slight transparency to the lines. The reason they are colourless is because I took the rendered images into After Effects and applied the colour then. This allowed for greater flexibility.

I also rendered out a z-depth pass that I originally planned to add to the above render for a depth of field effect. It ended up that I actually colourised the z-depth pass and used that as the final video.

I also added a slight blur and grain effect. I added a black vignette over the entire video so the edge of the flash movie could blend in with the black background of the website.

Below is the rendered video from After Effects.

Note: This is only an initial mock up..

I was briefed in on new project to create some Christmas trees that look like they are pealing out the page for an e-card.

This is what I did:

I created a spline in the shape of a xmas tree, then extruded it. I added a sub divide modifier so when the xmas tree bends it looks smooth and not made up of big polygons. I then added the bend modifier and animated the various properties until I got the desired look. I took a clone of the trees and used them to boolean out a hole in a plane. I put a orange coloured plane under the scene. I then set up the camera and lighting. Then rendered it out at 10fps (because its a gif and a high frame rate would mean big file size) and imported it into AE. In AE I animated the Logo and text transition. I then rendered it out from AE as a Quicktime file. I imported the video in to Photoshop where you can use the ‘Save for web & devices’ feature to save it out as a animated gif.

And there you have it a quick run down of how to create a animated gif. I’m really pleased that I now know this process because this technique can be used quite a lot in the web world.

 Last Thursday me and Kate from headed over to Kelham to check out the signage installation that Tribe had designed for the Kelham House rebrand. My job was to get some snaps. I’ve gotta say the sign looks pretty pro.

So now that Uni is well and truly over I was left thinking what do I do now! My Friend Alex is now working with a guy called Norm (aka Wasteyourself) They have set up their own little graphic design studio in Nottingham. Norm had sculpted this interesting character a few years ago and asked me whether I could create a 3D model of it.

So I got to work making this character. While I was making it Alex was doing some drawing on the studio walls at Tribe (A uber cool design and brand communication agency)…

When I sent him some test renders of the character Alex showed the people at Tribe. It just so happened they were looking for a 3D artist!

So we got in contact and I was briefed on my first project the following day! As of writing this I’m still involved in the first project. Tribe do a lot of work for Eon the power company. They wanted a interactive web based 3D visualization of a new smart network they are implementing in Milton Keynes. I completed the first stage of the modelling a week or so ago and they were so happy with the results they have given me 3 more major/minor projects including the production of their company show reel which will be great fun to make!

Last week marked Tribe’s 10th birthday so they celebrated by having a bit of a party in the studio. I was kindly invited along. Alex and Norm we doing a live drawing during the party… Here’s some photos of the studio and party..

There are more photos up on my Flickr…

I took this Stereographic Projection of the finished drawing..

Over all I’m really happy that Tribe have given me this opportunity to be working in such a good atmosphere with nice friendly people. I hope it leads on to other interesting and exiting things :)