MotionPirate.com | Tim Coleman

I’ve been having trouble with my vimeo links so I am posting my old reel here until I can get a new site and reel up.

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Vimeo -

I miss working with my hands, creating a physical piece.  These are some of my recent attempts to get back into working with traditional media.  Charcoal pencil and oils on board.  I love creating portraits.  It’s amazing, the human eye is so sensitive to the slightest variations of the human face.  For the most part we all have two eyes a nose and a mouth, but the smallest change can make a huge difference in the way we look.  It’s intimidating but a great adventure to try and capture the story.

Here’s a little test I did using mocha. I had the shape layers animated and prepped from a previous project and shot a quick footage plate from my apartment. I had never opened up mocha but after a quick youtube search I found several video covering the basics. Within minutes I had a solid track and was back in after effects. Mocha is a separate program but ships and installs with newer versions of After Effects (cs4 and up I think). With Mocha it’s incredibly fast and easy to get a decent track from poor footage. Check out Video Co-pilot’s tutorial for workflow tips and a trick for getting some faux 3d tracking data.

Here’s a development image from a currently “sidelined” project. This is just one of the design explorations, trying to get a feel for what translucent skin would look like on a dinosaur.

Just a little video playing around with the footage from the Fluids/Logo tutorial from yesterday. Tweaked in After effects.
You can find the tutorial here

Maya 2011 – Create a smoking Logo with Maya’s 2D Fluid simulations

I came across this technique the other day while searching for way to produce smoke originating from a texture map.  After a little trial and error and a few frustrating moments everything came together.   The actual process is fairly straightforward, there are just a few bumps that you might hit along the way.  Hope this helps and if you find a faster/better/more impressive way to produce the effect please let me know!

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Earlier in the year I had the chance to work with Media Grabbers on some popup style animations for a book release promotion and tour. I had fun exploring some different styles and looks. The cartoony B&W outlines were a favorite, but the client ended up going a more realistic route.

Modeled and rendered in Maya(most of the shapes are extruded planes), textured in photoshop, and the animation was done in C4D by the amazing Mike Morris.   And Compositing and AFX for the Project was done by the unstoppable Matt McLelland. Check out their sites for some awesome work and the finished animations.

Final Textures:

I’d heard the Tsunami was going to create some large waves on the west coast so I grabbed my little G12 and headed to Manhattan beach hoping to see some huge waves.  Unfortunately I got there to early or too late, the surf looked pretty standard.  It was however a beautiful day so I took the chance to play around with my new camera.  I found out it’s got a in camera filter that fakes a tilt shift effect.  It works so-so depending on the composition of the shot.  Check out some of my favorite shots- straight out of camera.