So, for my most recent motion design class, we had to take on some aspect of climate change. I decided an explanation of the hydrogen fuel cell was in order. I think it works pretty well, even if some of the writing gets a bit muddied. This project was pretty fascinating as I didn't know much about the hydrogen fuel cell prior to researching this topic. I knew it was a way to power an automobile, but how it actually worked I wasn't aware of until I chose this as my topic.

All of the graphics were created in either Illustrator or Photoshop, except for the subtly undulating background - that was created via a simple layering of a couple of different effects in After Effects. All of the animation also took place in After Effects.

The music is "So Low, So High" by the band Maps. Check 'em out, the whole album is amazing and is on iTunes in a DRM-free format (which means the songs can be brought into After Effects easily for student projects like this).

A little over a year ago, in one of my motion design classes, we were asked to create an animation that would convey the lyrics and meaning of a song. We were given a list of songs by Regina Spektor. I chose the song "Us" and, in my analysis of the song, decided that instead of representing the obvious meaning (a love song of sorts), I would, instead, follow a more...obscure meaning. That meaning turned out to be a story about the rise and fall of the Soviet Union during the time of Stalin and then its rise again as a historical tourist destination. I know, I know. It's a stretch, but I think it worked out pretty well.

The intent, then, was to treat the subject as though you were flying through a child's diorama, but the diorama came to life.

This piece was created with several pieces of software. The clouds were drawn with a tablet in Corel Painter, the photos were colorized and the cutout borders around all of the elements were added with Adobe Photoshop, and all of the animation was, well, animated using Adobe After Effects.

This project deals solely with typography. We were asked to animate the text of an argument between several differing voices. I was fortuitous enough to participate in a relatively petty argument about a missing Milky Way bar the very same week this assignment was given to us. And so, that argument became the basis for this project. There are four different voices in this argument, which was quite a challenge, deciding on how to differentiate one voice from the other.

All animation created using After Effects.