****To vote please paste the following address into your web browser****
Calling all Youtubers and those that would like to help out one of their own. My name is Riki Russell a local resident of Palm City, Father of 3 and devoted Husband
for the past couple ofweeks I have been involved in a competition to create and upload the best Lip-sync video for SAMSUNG on YOUTUBE,
Well an update for those that do not know. I made the top 20 in the contest and I am in 3rd position right now, pulling evercloser to 1st place,
What separates me? VOTES. The contest is structured around a voting system
I am putting fourth my campaign, to help me secure votes to get me to the top and I could use your help in doing that. But please, don't take my word for it, view the other videos and if you think theirs to be better please vote for them.
I want to win because my vision was the best, the most unique and met all the requirements of the contest.
That being said. Let me give you the information on how to find the contest and place your votes. Oh, I almost forgot,
The votes are counted one vote per user account per hour and you may come back to vote as many times as you can stand it up until the 8th of July.
Here are the web pages and info: web-pages
vote with this one...
http://www.youtube.com/ranker?name=samsungranker
You must register for your vote to count. it is simple and fast.
View the video and comments with this one...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Go1vChPnhZQ
No account needed to see the videos only to rank and vote.
So Please tell your friends and neighbors about the contest and let them know that rikarama in Palm City is counting on their votes.
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Now For those who would like to see how the magic was made read on:
I use a Mac for all of my work it is the creative tool of choice for most in the graphics world.The programs: a virtual toolbox of toys and plugins and they are:
Photoshop - for editing images
Electric Image - for all the 3D elements you see in the video
After Effects - a compositing package that animates and applies effects to each element of video and images.
After Effects is a video fx and compositor made by Adobe corporation. They have been in the business for years and have a ton of programs all geared toward the creation of digital content. If you have watched any movies, commercials orTV programs you have seen this program in action. Most of the textures and all of the still elements in the video were made with Photoshop. I would take my images and manipulate them in thesoftware, editing them as needed. I would then include with the element an ALPHA channel.The Alpha channel is a special layer within the image that tells other programs to exclude content it can be as simple as ablack and white shape or in the case of the space suit scene in my video, it can be a grey scale image. It just tells After effects that I want that section to have a fading area of transparency.
Under normalcircumstances each portion of the After Effects project will have a unique name and color assigned this helps me tell what portion of the video I am working on and gives asemblance of order. That is how it was supposed to work.... I ended up copying layers and makingduplicate layers,think of it as a deck of cardsspread out on a card table each card represents a section or element within the program. Nowarrange them in alinearfashion like a music scale to the right and going down. Places of over lap allow some items to be covered while others are exposed.There were well over 100 layers used to create my video andamong them were nested layerswhich open up new project windows where moreelements were composited andadded to the master project.
All the timing as well as the soundmatching was done in After effects. When you drag the cursor across the time line within the program and hold down a special key on the keyboard you can hear the sound and see the animation in real time. This is called scrubbing. I t is a very useful tool when trying to sync up sound for a video.Make a mistake and you can go back and fix it pushing and pulling the time line to make it work for you.
Some of the video was shot on location then edited with the program toincorporate my smilingbug-eyed face.
FYI that is me, well actually, it was my chin shot with the camera upside down and the masked off so only a circle around my chin was visible. I shot this video of me singing the song aloud. very embracing...Cuz I can't sing :O) Then Ire-shot the video with Just my eyes reacting to the music and then brought those two elements into after effectsblurred the edgesa bit and put the face together.
MONKEY MAN WAS BORN!
I had to do this step for each unique part of the song when ever thechorus broke or the I am I am part came in. Then I started the process all over again.
The 3d shots of the phone an Samsung logo were done using Electric Image for animating the 3D objects and I used a program Called Form Z to build the wire frame models.The textures were made using real photos of the phone scanned into the computerthen the information was edited in Photoshop.Then brought into After effects for animating the screens and then exported to my 3D program for texturing. After I added the Textures then I rendered the scene out with all the movement programed into the 3d program. For those that do not know what rendering is. It is a term used to describe a computer as it draws each image line by line. giving reflections opacity and other information to the image. It does this frame by frame. this is when I catch a breather because it can take severalminutes to several hours depending on how complex the model and textures.This is when I check on mywife to make sure she's not too mad at me.
Once rendering is done I then take all those elements andarrange them within After effects in theirperspective time lines.
and Repeat! for each 3d animation.
Fun yes? You bet it is! I love creating things out of nothing the real kicker is at the end of the Day I stilldon't have anything that can be touched or felt. But it does move you when you see the Kids smile and say DADDY that's awesome!!! "in stereo" one in my lap two in either arms.They are mylitmus test if they don't like something they will be the first to tell me.
All in all this project took a week of nights tocomplete and a few days to shoot. Planning? well lets just say the story kind of wrote itself with input from my family.
I hope you enjoyed my video. Thanks for taking the time to read my very first BLOG and please be sure to vote for my video once every hour or as often as you can.
One last thing I was self taught on these programs so anyone with alittle time and a bit of study can do this. After a while all programs kind of run the same so you can take what you learned in one and apply it to another. Sometimes...
http://www.youtube.com/ranker?name=samsungranker
Thanks,
Riki Russell "rikarama"
it's a collage nick name...