After 8 years with Foxtel Design, I recently accepted the position of Senior Designer at Foxtel Box Office – On Demand Movies, here at Foxtel in Sydney. Together with Gareth Chang and Brett Morris, both talented young designers, we get to flex our After Effects and Cinema 4D skills working on a wide range of movie graphic styles across various genres.

Over the coming months I’ll be showcasing graphics created using After Effects, Cinema 4D and a variety of plug-ins, by the team, some original and others influenced by existing spots. Read more…

Just completed, Foxtel Box Office’s (FBO) winter campaign in Cinema 4D.

With a Stars theme, the campaign includes a competition to win a trip for 2 to Cannes Film Festival. Given the theme, I suggested we use the tagline “follow the stars”. This has the dual meaning of following the logo stars throughout the promo (which represent FBO), and mingling with movie stars on the red carpet in Cannes. Read more…

Generally, when creating a boxing promo, we are given between two and five days. This project was different, or at least appeared to be different at first. My colleague Brett Morris and I, were given two weeks to design and produce a promo for the upcoming Green V Jones Jr fight here in Sydney. However, after the first two days of work the deadline was cut Read more…

For this promo for W Channel, my client suggested this beautiful HBO promo as a guide. I only had 3 days so a full 3D look was out of the question. Instead I turned to the ultra-useful Adobe After Effects plug-in - Trapcode Form. Form was used to transition between shots and text, with the footage itself used as a layer map to colorize the particles and control Read more…

While researching for this teaser spot for Women’s Murder Club, I noticed that police tape was a common theme throughout existing graphics. My suggestion to the client was to construct a simple crime scene in 3D where the camera pulls back, revealing evidence and resolving in the title on police tape, with the channel identity and times below. Read more…

Recently I posted a 3 part series of tutorials on creating a shattering glass effect using Maxon Cinema 4D and Adobe After Effects. This is the project that inspired that tutorial. The brief was to animate promotional key art of a person with bloodied hands holding a brief case and finish with a glass shatter effect to reveal the name of the series, followed by the channel logo. Read more…

For this Quantum Of Solace promo I once again turned to Trapcode Form. Form was used to create the grids in the background, on the actors faces and the main title. The face grids were created by customizing the MILG 5 Form Face tutorial, which you can grab for free over at Red Giant Software. The smokey look of the background was created using Read more…

Recently I was asked to come up with an idea for a show and as seems to be the case lately, had very little time to develop it. Click on the thumbnail and the first picture you’ll see are my initial ideas created in Illustrator. The second one is better than the first but simply making the T and A capitals in a script font (Scriptina) wasn’t working, Read more…

I had to whip up some quick supers last week and turned to Trapcode Form. Form was used to create the gaseous elements that sit behind the text. The font is Univers Black Oblique;  using the oblique face adds a dynamic feel. The lighting was faked using a solid with the Circle effect applied and a high feather value, rotated in z-space to act as a floor. Read more…

Recently I watched a  tutorial by Lloyd Alvarez  at AETUTS showing how to take control of After Effects’ Shatter effect. I’ve been using this effect for 10 years but never needed to use a shatter map layer to control where and how a layer shatters, and that’s just what Lloyd’s tutorial demonstrates. This week, after researching Dark Knight graphics Read more…

For this shot my client wanted to place a logo in the path of the actor and have it appear as if she trips over it. The shot was tracked using SynthEyes with the 3D tracking data then transfered to Maya where the logo was positioned and rendered into the scene. These steps were completed by my co-worker Michael Tiong. I then rotoscoped the original shot over Read more…

This project for a Summer campaign on Foxtel Box Office was created using a combination of Maxon Cinema 4D and Adobe After Effects with Zaxwerks ProAnimator and Knoll Light Factory. The simple 3D text supers were created using ProAnimator inside After Effects and the supers with characters were created in Cinema 4D and finished in After Effects. Read more…

This project is another good example of taking poor quality 4:3 vision, making it 16:9 and giving it some polish. The tools included Adobe After Effects, Zaxwerks ProAnimator, Trapcode Horizon and Shine, and Maltaannon’s Screenify effect (featured in MILG 5). The vision was treated with the Screenify effect— which adds a realistic jumbotron Read more…

Fox Classics is always a great client to work for simply because I get to work with some great movie footage. This project completed by myself and Dan Creighton was created completely in After Effects and took us about 8 days. As usual when I’m approached to undertake this type of project which – required a deal of rotoscoping, I request an edited base from Read more…

This look is based on graphics from the original trailer for “Untraceable”. The base is a simple static fractal noise layer and scan lines created using the Venetian Blinds effect. The binary code is a field of custom Particular particles with a camera fly through. A nice addition – courtesy of a funky Maltaannon expression – cycles the one’s and zero’s randomly. Read more…

Lately I seem to be doing plenty of grunge-style graphics, the most recent of which is the promo graphics for Rambo. If you’ve seen the film or even the trailer you’ll know that it’s ultra-violent; and it would have been easy to do something blood-soaked but I decided on a more subtle approach. The online trailers for the film feature different styles, one Read more…

Another boxing promo created using Adobe After Effects, Illustrator and Photoshop. For this 3 day job I wanted to create a scene reminiscent of a boxing gym wall with old posters and banners. These fighters are up and coming but quite low in the rankings and this will be a battle of brawlers, so this gritty, unpolished look fits nicely. The basic idea and color palette Read more…

Here’s the 90 second promo for Bond. Classic Bond. on Fox Classics, edited by Ryan Watson, with the graphics designed by myself and Dan Creighton (who did much of the roto work). All graphics were created in Adobe After Effects with Trapcode Form used throughout to create the fire and smoke elements, and I must say this is the first time I’ve had a chance to use Form Read more…

Here’s the last of the 4 Bond teasers for Fox Classics channel. This one took longer than the other three, for obvious reasons. We did a green screen shoot with models then keyed/rotoed the footage and vectorized it using the Adobe Illustrator Live Trace batch feature in Adobe Bridge. All animation was done in Adobe After Effects. To make the spot flow seamlessly, Read more…

Fox Classics channel will be screening a series of James Bond films over the next few months and one of my roles has been to create 4 teasers which will be screening over the next few weeks. All created in Adobe After Effects of course.

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