I´m an animator!
I grew up in the late 80´s practically with a TV attached to me. I could spent my mornings watching re-runs from shows like Gilligan´s Island, Lost in Space and Batman. Animation was a big part too, my favorite shows were The Muppets Babies, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Real Ghostbusters, The Snorkels and The Flinstone Kids. Movies like Robin Hood(animation), Dumbo and Winnie the Pooh were my favorites and I think I saw them 1000 times or more, what I really enjoyed from watching those cartoons is that they left me thinking, how is it possible that the drawings come to life? When I grew up my favorite shows were still animation: Batman the animated series, The Simpsons, Duckman, Ren & Stimpy, South Park, Family Guy, Dexter´s lab, Samurai Jack, and Powerpuff Girls. I´ve always been a day dreamer and back in the...
Logo design 2000 – 2010
One of my favorite things to illustrate are logos, I think they are really important because it´s one of the first things you see from a brand, a company or a person. It tells a lot about them, there are many types of logos and the rules for logos were meant to be broken, but If you want to design a good logo just take in mind this quote that the great Saul Bass used to say: “Symbolize and summarize.” My very first approach for logos was through Soccer, in elementary school every one was crazy about the sport. When we play I´ve always had the position of defense, I was not that good but that didn´t stopped me to enjoy it. In 1994 the World Cup was held in United States, for me it was the first time I was immersed in the hype of a World Cup. Every thing was moving around that event....
Google & Hooli Doodles Mashup / animation
I´ve always admire the team behind the Google Doodles, there are so simple and so magnificent that everybody in the world can enjoy them by opening their search engine. You don´t know what is celebrated today? If it´s important then you hit the principal Google website and you can watch or play with their homage of that day´s celebration. Working at a place like Google is a dream and I think that working on the Google Doodle team specifically is more than a dream, maybe a dream within a dream for the people that know how to animate, illustrate and design (interactive). That being said, many people included myself have seen the TV show Silicon Valley from HBO. If you haven´t then you are missing a great comedy show on topics related to technology, innovation, disruption and entrepreneurship. One company that is referenced (A lot) on the show is...
My life as a web designer / interactive
Most of my life I've been close to technology, either in the form of a walkman, a video game or a computer. I remember very well my first week of school, there were a bunch of kids my age that seemed to enjoy everything from it, not me frankly. Most of the time I was scared of being bullied or something, the toilettes there didn't have doors at first so that was horrible, I couldn't go. But the best thing of elementary school and high school for me was the "Computer class". By the end of the 90´s my school got their first computers, a bunch of brand new Apple III´s. I could not understand how it worked but you were able to control the interface and interact with the machine. Those computers were there not for so long. The next set of computers were IBM running either...
Danseuse au bouquet / interactive
When I started teaching, I was teaching a course called Virtual Environments. It was a really complex course for the students and for me. The people taking that course were people in their 7th semester of the Digital Arts program, so they were more advanced in areas of animation, design and programming. The expectation was high, specially because Augmented Reality was getting a lot of attention and part of the topics in the course was oriented to that. My previous knowledge of augmented reality was very little. I once did this experiment with my business card: You can see a black image (marker) that helps your webcam with the help of a .swf file process the coordinates of the business card and in real time display either a video or a 3D model or some sort of interaction. Mine displayed my demo reel. At that...
Quadrophenia / motion graphics design
Quadrophenia is a 1979 British film, loosely based around the 1973 rock opera of the same name by The Who. The film stars Phil Daniels as Jimmy, a Mod. It was directed by Franc Roddam in his feature directing début. Unlike the film adaptation of Tommy, Quadrophenia is not a musical film. This animated piece is an alternative title sequence for the movie Quadrophenia. This video is part of an assignment from the Typography II course that I took while studying my MA at SCAD. Quadrophenia is a very interesting film that depicts the Mod counter culture. The objective of the assignment was this: Design an opening film title using After Effects. The title can include the use of any colors or textural elements, typogra- phy, still photography, vector graphics, stock or original video (optional), and stock or original audio. This is part of my brainstorm I did for developing this piece: An image of the...
Renaissance Hotels / animation
Back in 2009, our friends of MOFILM launched a contest for the Renaissance Hotels. Renaissance Hotels is a worldwide brand of hotels and resorts. The brand is owned by Marriott International and many Renaissance Hotels are managed by Marriott; however, some are operated under a franchise license. I developed a short animated piece for this contest with an idea of showing the type of visitor these hotels mainly have. Which are the people travelling for business but that they might as well visit or do something that is a common spot in the city. This case being New York. This was my description back in the day: Business Holiday This video shows the juxtapose for the words business and holiday. Some people in their jobs need to travel constantly, but at the same time they need fun and excitement, these are archived by getting to learn, unlearn and relearn new experiences in the cities where they need to travel. The inspiration comes from...
Nestlé Rolo / animation proposal
I was part of this small animation project for a contest done by our friends at MOFILM for the brand Nestle Rolo. Rolo ("Row-low") is a brand of chocolates with a caramel centre. It was first manufactured in the United Kingdom by Mackintosh's in 1937, they are made by Nestlé, except in the United States where production has been under licence by The Hershey Company since 1969. (thanks Wikipedia) The brief was a little bit like this: We would give our last ROLO to you, but who would you give yours too? ROLO is looking to bring back to life their iconic advertising campaign “Do you love anyone enough to give them your last ROLO?” and give you the chance to create the next ROLO advert. We develop an idea of a couple going to the cinema and one of them was going to ask for the last ROLO. But how?There are many times that...
Tú muy fit / logo design
Everybody is happy nowadays by the Buzzcocks I think everybody is happy nowadays... doing excercise and taking care of their bodies. I was invited to design the logo of the website #tumuyfit. Which is a blog that brings you tips, tricks and articles to help you with your routines and making your sports life easier. I develop two proposals but I think I sketched more than 10 different ones (I'm sorry but that sketch book was stolen). The first you see is a design focused on the concept of moving. You see legs and arms interlacing and I just love how these extremities of the body cross each other to form a "t", an "m" in the middle and an "f" (tu - muy - fit). In this second proposal (The chosen one), I decided to focus on the letters as characters doing excercise. You can see one of them jumping...
FLATBRO / logo design
Flatbro is an upcoming company that wants to attract visiting foreign students to use their platform (app and website) to easily rent a flat/apartment in the city where they might be going to live for a short term. I designed this piece for them using simple elements to create a look and feel for the brand that could be simple. There are 3 variations of this logo. Because it´s a monochromatic logo, they can use it in numerous colourful ways. This is a test of an application as decoration for their office space. ...
Winner Stays / interactive
Winner Stays is a video game developed for iOS and Android The FIFA World Cup 2014 was approaching really fast so we started developing (Mogmua Interactive) an idea for a video game where the player was going to be in charge of the soccer ball on a field. The goal of the player in this video game was to control this ball by tapping on the screen of a smart phone or tablet. By tapping on the screen you can control the jumps of the ball and you will be able to give this ball a path. We then thought that the most skill full players were going to control this very easy so then we came with an idea of having tokens that would serve as the stamina for the ball. As long as you avoid obstacles and collect the stamina the longer you will travel. The type of art we wanted...
Champions League Champions / motion graphics design
I was studying the Master of Arts in Motion Media Design in Savannah College of Art and Design, and my final project for this program was a motion graphics piece about the football teams that had won over the past 60 years the European Cup (now the Champions League). I choose this idea because for some reason I'm not an avid fan of watching the games but I've always loved the colors of the teams and the uniforms they use to play. I don't have a favorite team but I love the claret and blue of Aston Villa. At SCAD what made me more nervous is that they wanted this project to be original and unique. By that time I discovered that the paths made with Adobe Illustrator could be copied directly to a shape layer in Adobe After Effects, I thought that was a unique way of building this animation. I've never seen a piece that focused on the patterns on...
Pepsi / interactive
One of the most memorable moments in my life was produced by The Simpsons trading cards made by Skybox in the 90´s. There was this special type of card that included some sort of magic or trickery. You obviously can´t see the effect but the image could move! It was a very simple movement (of 3 or 4 frames) but it was so amazing that you could watch it for hours, no kidding. Many years passed and I still was intrigued, I started searching on the internet and I discovered how this was achieved: Lenticular printing is a technology in which lenticular lenses (a technology that is also used for 3D displays) are used to produce printed images with an illusion of depth, or the ability to change or move as the image is viewed from different angles. I discovered a book named Magic Moving Images that used a very similar process in which...