3-Layered Computer Lock Screen

this is a concept that have been planned for over 1 month,
a computer lock screen, concept similar to iron man. you have interactive interface and multiple password to unlock the computer.

i hope you enjoy this video

Harry Potter Teleportation

A few days ago i was watching Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 1 and saw this awesome scene when they went to Ministry of Magic and escape from there, the special effect just blow me off.

here is the preview of the scene and the special effect is on the end of the video:

and here is my attempt to make Harry Potter Ministry of Magic Escape Special Effect Teleportation:

Freezing Touch Tutorial

Hi everyone, at last i got the will power to make this tutorial, it is very tricky to make, but it is easy enough that in 30 minutes you can get this effect.

please enjoy this video and if you have any question, just comment

Color Correction

color correction always been my problem when editing video, because you have to be consistent through out the entire film. i just watch this video from film riot about color grading, it is great!, you should watch it too

Practical Special Effect

a week ago i want to enter a contest for practical special effect held by film riot. so i made a poltergeist kind of effect where object are moving itself. even though i didn't even mentioned, i'm glad that i can make it.

too bad the time was tight when making this, thus no one was shooting the making of this effect. i hope i can make another video to make a tutorial for it. and i will give you 1 hint, its all done using strings.

in the mean time, please enjoy this short video.

Summer TIME!

just recently i got a big project that make me forget to write weekly post. it was really intense weekend.
I happen to be going to bandung and take a lot of great picture. it was a very bright day, clear sky, and a lot of thing happen.

this photo is already cropped to full hd resolution, feel free to download it at my deviant art for full resolution file. because i want to reduce loading time in this post.

please enjoy these photo, maybe next time i will talk about how to take great picture and how to edit it to become more awesome!

i already make the link to open in new tab, so it will save time!

Download Here Number 1

 

Download Here Number 2

Download Here Number 3

Download Here Number 4

Download Here Number 5

What a CG Artist need to do.

This is the answer: do a lot and a lot of modeling and simulation.

have you guys watch the amazing spiderman yet? at first i don't want to because spiderman from toby is great. then i just try it and got me thinking that spiderman is a happy hero and very athletic, so this new film is more suitable to be called spiderman, only a few character development is at missing, like how is not open to his girlfriend. overall, it is very entertaining and awesome.

i am very amaze to the technology today that we have, we can make any impossible visual that very imaginative to our eye and brain. thanks to the power of computer graphic. that's why james cameron wait for several years before making his avatar film.

i found this very great video about what is it about being a Computer Graphic Artist and Visual Effect Artist do, this video really explaining it well.

motion capture on kinect

i want to apologize that this week, i haven't think of another tutorial, for the moment.
so i want to share something for you.

remember when i say that motion capture is one of  my favorite topic? probably don't
anyway, since i like assassin's creed, this is a big announcement to make.


 
too funny! i hope i can find a team to make this kind of video. people that can share and make the same crazy idea as mine.

until then, see you, thank you for reading.

creating a reflection for your photo in photoshop

today, i want to talk about making a reflection on a product that have been my recent project. what i make here is not a simple reflection, it is a realistic reflection, not some icon reflection.

here what i'm talking about

a lot of people will make a reflection like this,

and they happy about it….. don't know why
for me, that is the most unrealistic thing ever…obviously,

there is a great website that talk about this and they are great!
http://phlearn.com/how-to-make-a-very-hard-reflection-in-photoshop

i am too want to give you some tips to create a reflection like this this product is very easy because of
1 thing: it touch the ground. because we don't have the information beneath the product, it will have a hard time creating the reflection, since this thing is on the ground, you only have to worry about making front reflection.

make a selection with rectangle marquee tool, but only select half of the corner of the box, use layer via copy to make a duplicate using that selection only.

do the same for the small side

so you got separate sides

select both of them, please remember to place them below the original picture (layer 0), and use free transform (ctrl + T), and select flip vertical.

place the reflection on the lowest point of the picture.

select 1 half of the picture, free transform, right click and select skew

drag the left side to make a perspective and align the picture bottom to bottom, repeat the process for the other.

then create a group, place both of them inside, make a mask, and use gradient to fade out, play with the opacity to make more transparent

that's it, i hope you enjoy it, and again, here is the result, see you next week

Exporting or Save only the inside of Artboard or Canvas in Illustrator

did you know that i am currently on some random post streak? i didn't stick to 1 particular topic in this blog, what i want is to share as much information and help to other as many as possible and this was my problem in the past that i think worth sharing. haha

how many of you have been stuck with this kind of problem. even i am one of you before. now i know how to handle this kind of trouble, so i will share it with you.

take example that you have a design that goes beyond the canvas / artboard border like this, and you want to export the exact size like this.

the very basic thing you do if you want to make a jpg or png from illustrator is go to file > export, but the result is always like this:

notice that what's inside the preview is not what you want, it will become like this when exported

so to solve this problem, all you have to do is notice the little checkbox on the bottom of the format called "use artboard", this will make sure that only inside the artboard or canvas that will be exported. 

some people give the solution by using file > save for web & device, that solution can also be use, so you can use to what you like, i just preferred this method (because there's no huge preview popup)

you can choose all to export all artboard (more than 1), or you can choose specific artboard number, you can check this by going to file > document setup, then choose edit artboard, or just press shift+O (not zero)

see the preview window to check if your design was properly cropped

you can also do this to the design that was smaller than the artboard / canvas, usually if you don't check the "use artboard", illustrator will crop it to every object inside, just repeat the process and you are the master of the artboard!

that's it for now, i hope this can help your problem and help brighten your day.

common search keyword (to help people find the solution here)

1 how to save canvas only in illustrator

2 how to save only what's inside canvas

3 how to export the artboard in illustrator

4 exporting canvas in illustrator

5 save within artboard/canvas

6 save as cropped image

7 save illustrator as jpg/png

Take Picture of White Object on White Background

today's post is a bit tricky to make, because what i am shooting today is white object on white background. there's only one that i found that was talking about this and he use studio lamp and some setup.
but, i have a different setup here, in my office, there's literally none, no studio nor space available to make that setup. so don't be discourage, i'm here to help for those who have trouble taking product photography indoor, office or home.

please read the post well, there's something that i need to talk about and i promise i'll be funny :).

so, what am i looking for? product photography that like stock photography, plain white background and an object, specifically feather (in this post). when i search "feather photography" all the result were artistic shot of a feather, so i'm search "white feather on white background" and found several photo that actually darken the feather.

white object is not really "white", it's our eyes that "think" that it is white. because our eye use "average metering" :), in term of dslr.
we calculate the surrounding color and light to make the color for the object we focus on. this calculation is actually use in some eye optical illusion, it think it's called chess board / shade color illusion. in case you doesn't want to go to youtube and search, here's the video


what the heaven and earth are you talking about? yes, i'm getting there about photo, just understand this concept for a moment and read again, the white object you see is not really "white", it's our eyes that "think" that it is white.

so, if you take a picture of a white object, don't be afraid to make it a little bit "grey", why? because that's how you can see and read the shape of white object.

white on computer (for me) is absolute pure white (maybe purest), so if you still insist on making you object white, you won't be able to compete with the white (like fighting the god of white).

taking a white object is best use a back lighting, so camera will read as it is and make fore object a bit darker (like making a sunset silhouette).

ok, enough talk, i think it's time to me to introduce the object i need to shot.

 

yes! it's a hair pin, cute product, isn't it? and my problem is the background cannot be move or using a back light. so my solution was:

take multiple exposure photo, then edit later. this will be hard to trace or mask. you can overlap the photo, place the brighter photo on top and add mask, then erase the feather part to reveal the darker photo, this will make the feather a little bit shown.

you can use other method such as level with mask, first is use mask on top, make the background white and erase parts that need to be darken.

here are other example when i only have 1 photo (different than taking multiple photo with different exposure), as you can see here, i use level for whitening the background, because it is necessary to have white background.

 red circle means that the details on that area is lost because it is too bright.

so you want to do is erase the level adjustment layer only a bit, with 10% brush opacity on the edge of the feathers.

 below is another example of using this method, this is different items.

 

this is not perfect, because we use manipulation software to achieve this, the best method is use the right equipment to take this kind of picture. and i don't have any of it. maybe this was for emergency use only...

that's for now, i hope you like this post.

Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon

this is so crazy and awesome! i just love this style when i first watch it.
i know its a bit late for that, because i just watch it a few days ago.

i personally don't like fps game, because of the limitation of field of view, but i play some fps before like counter strike, call of duty: modern warfare 1-3 (i just want to know what the hype with 3, then want to know the storyline, so i play 1-2).

what i want to discuss here is the use of neon style graphic as well as presentation for an old tv and old advertisement style. i think our are is coming back to the 80's-90's

i just want to learn how to make that kind of retro style, because it is very classic! i think this game is interesting, maybe I will watch the play-through.

Hold for a week

i am sorry, this week is very busy, and i won't type anything long or even whine about how busy i am.
just to let you know, i am in progress of making a new tutorial. it's just that i need some time to experiment more.

well, i have to update once in a week, better something than nothing. i will make it on time next week. until then, please wait and enjoy your life.

Optical Illusion

not really how-to video this week, i am having trouble as electricity in my house have some problem, thus affecting internet connection and upload process is a bit delayed.

I'm always like and interested in creating optical illusion, so I just started one on my home. i think this is a great practical art, i hope this can last.

I am taking a time lapse photo of the process, really had fun making this. I am using duct tape that i haven't use a lot, and this take about 30 minutes to make.

I hope you enjoy it.

Journey mountain matte painting tutorial

at last, i finish this tutorial. i think that it is better to make a real time tutorial than pre-recorded than speak into it.
maybe because i am still learning to make tutorial that i have some difficulties making one.
what i learn was i mumble a lot when talking and working at the same time, haha.

well, in this tutorial, i want to show you how to make a painting out of a movie, then import to photoshop, then import back to after effect.
and some idea to make this mountain look epic. please enjoy.

Mountain Matte Painting

i was going for holiday at ciawi, indonesia yesterday and found this cool looking mountain (the real one of course).
after saw this incredible mountain, i remember the mountain from journey game which make me feel awesome when remembering it!
so i decided to record and make a matte painting out of it.

this turn out to be very great, i just love the looking of this mountain.

for the time being, tutorial coming 1-2 weeks from post time, hopefully i can make it just 1 week.

I will cover step by step to draw the mountain and setting up the lighting (hope you are interested in this),
please wait for me and keep checking this blog. thank you

Favorite + Favorite = EPIC

well, i cannot think of any other title for this post. i do want to share something related to the title.

i always a big fan of motion capture and i wish i can be one of the actor someday.
my another favorite is game, i love playing video games and so 1 of many is assassin's creed series.

what happen when assassin's creed meet with motion capture (shorten mocap)?
i'll say its EPIC! super awesome and not to mention the fluidity of animation inside assassin's creed game.

please see it:
sadly, embed is disabled, so i can only give you the link.
http://youtu.be/IxJrhnynlN8

i also like and enjoy watching the making of avatar from james cameron, its just so awesome that those people can make that kind of creation with that kind of technology. what's more stunning is the person who is making the technology itself. it sure is a game changing era!

Super Slow Motion in After Effect

at last, this video is finished, wow. another great job done.
this is really need a lot of will power, but it's all for sharing.

this is a video of how i can make the effect like in the previous post. i hope that you can learn something or two from this video. in the previous post i mention that this effect was creating a still animation, but the more i think about it, this is more of a super slow motion effect. its still basically a still animation, it is depend how you will use it or how you will call it.

i am creating this super slow motion from still image using after effect and puppet warp, and a little bit of cropping with photoshop. this video is not really beginner as i am not mentioning any detail step on creating this effect.


if you are interested in learning some of the basic, this list will help you to learn what is nessecary (this is just a list, not a link)
1. introduction and concept behind puppet warp
2. how to crop your image using photoshop
3. fill feature in photoshop cs5
4. keyframing and animating in after effect

thank you for watching this video, i hope i can make more tutorial in the future.

Creating Still Animation

Still animation, or you can say create an animation from a photo.
yes, you can create an animation from a photo, beware that it is easier to have multiple photo of the subject and the background separated.

have you ever heard of still animation, yes? maybe? because videocopilot.net have 1 similar tutorial to make animation from still.

maybe it is the same principal, but my inspiration is come from this:


if you curious about how he achieve such beautiful effect, you should check him out.

and this is my version using same method with different application, because why not? people love inspiration.
i have done those 3 example for this past 2 weeks because things suddenly become busy lately, so please wait for me and stay updated!

Still Animation

Yeah, next week i will be making still animation tutorial.

what is still animation? it is an animation base on still images, for example when you jump and someone took a photo of you, then you animate it to look like a slow motion video, or you can check what this is about:

this example was from my proposal to make a video, the special effect was like diablo 3 cinematic when everything was freeze in time, but the situation around them is moving really tense.
well, it was time freeze effect, in my case it was "still animation". you can call whatever you like or whatever you learn.

i am sorry that the tutorial have to be push to next week, because i have some busy week. i hope you want to wait for next week, because i have to write this blog and update every saturday or sunday.

Disco Finally here

Few weeks ago, i was showing an after effect project about disco floor. so this time, i am going to give you a tutorial on how to make one.

i tried to make this a short as possible, but it wasn't possible, this project took me around 1 to 1 and half hour and compressing it to 15 minutes maybe seems utterly impossible for me at the moment.

final result is 32 minutes even when i'm already skip some part but i still think i was carried away until it reach 30 minutes. I decided to split the video in half  because i don't have a super internet connection speed for uploading files and to make sure you won't bored to death.

I have make a time skip indicator so in case you only want to know certain part of the tutorial, you can skip ahead and learn that part in particular.

before you start watching, please read the description o the video or just read it down below to know what part is covered in which part. i thank you if you watch the whole video, i really appreciate it.

what covered in part 1
creating floor panel

creating blinking effect on the floor panel
arranging floor panel and glow

creating wall reflection


what covered in part 2

creating 3d text

creating light bounce on the text

creating 3d camera movement

some idea of what this project can be used.


that's all, enjoy my video. if you have any question, please email me or comment below or on youtube. i am planning on making more tutorial in a few days so please look forward to it.

Take a Product Photography Indoor with Limited Space

a few days ago, my company got a list of new product that the owner bought (i don't know where).
then he said to me to take a picture of all of the items, which is around 82 with 1-4 variant each.

so roughly around 200+ items, i would say it was very interesting and fun, also frustrated because i just got a pile of items without names on it, so me and my colleague have to figure out which are which and belong to which category.

fortunately, i was the only designer with photography background (and have a decent camera and tripod). so as i was mentioning before, i was in responsible for taking all of the picture (without any order in particular) so i just take random stuff with random photo name (IMG_numbers.JPG) while my friend there figure out and check any items that already been photograph.

there are a lot of items to take picture of and i was happen to found this interesting item, which is a miniature or a small model version of a violin or a cello (i think its cello because the strings is the same size as the instrument.

while i was at it, i was thinking that it s nice to take a behind look at the photo shoot, so i took this picture with my phone camera. quite nice and can be very informative. there was no light set up, it's all from the office's ceiling lights.

this is the set up that i use, it was at the middle of a pathway in my office because the lighting its very nice and i don't have any space available specifically for photo shooting, the company just say to take picture anywhere you can, but at least, the provided me with a large white cloth with a bunch of papers.

i prefer to use paper rather than that cloth because i want to reduce the amount of texture in the background. i place paper in a curve state so it create a nice seamless background.

so it's always nice to have a white paper ready if you want to take a product photography and you don't have a proper space and equipment for that.

a look at the view finder, you can see what angle i was taking the picture. you could see that i have very nice soft shadow. if i increase the exposure, it's close to white.

there was around 4 light sources from the ceiling, around 45-50 degree up and front. (like this \ from the object), then there around 4 more a little bit far so in total of 8 light sources. so all of this light is base on indoor ceiling lights.

this is the original photo, which was +1 exposure, my camera setting was in iso 100, f/5, 0.8 seconds shutter.

even if its looks good on the camera LCD, i still got grey area in the photo. so i need to edit some of them, bring up the white into pure white, enhance the color and added back the string. (upper part of the string was blend in with the background, so i have to darken the string so people can see the string.)

look very nice and professional, but if you look at the set up, it was weird.
so the basic principal of photograph is light, so look around your space if there some place with even lighting, place your object there with a plain background. increase the exposure to make it easier to edit later.

in case you don't know what increase exposure mean (i should said this earlier), what you do is increase the amount of light that enter the sensor, so the image look brighter.

you can increase the time of the shutter speed or open up the aperture but since my object is small, i want to minimize the depth of field, so i stay with f/5 and increase the shutter speed. use a tripod and use timer to minimize shake and motion blur in the image.

here are other photo from different angle, maybe the object can looks nicer this way.

so that conclude my blog update and some tips that i want to share to you, hope you like it.
if you have any question, just write at the comment or email me at petkanna@gmail.com. thanks

My Video Reel

I really want to become a video editor someday and i think that video reel are crucial.
so i decided to make one for me, i took a lot of reference for video reel and i succeeded in making one.

here it is, i hope you enjoy my video reel.



Music by Kezia - Walking Forward (Band Version)
they are awesome, you should check them.
http://www.myspace.com/keziaprincezz
http://keziamini.wordpress.com/
http://keziaprincezz.ning.com/
http://japanmusicweekartists.ning.com/pr...
http://www.youtube.com/user/keziaprincezz
http://www.facebook.com/KEZIAPRINCEZZ/info

Great day + disco

today is a very great day, why? because it's sunday. there is rain over this week and make a lot of people crazy, but today seems to be fine.

yesterday i was looking for something fun and thought about searching for old material that i did before. i was surprised that i have an after effect project that i was making and left just like that. it is finish and ready to be rendered, so all i have to do is render this and upload to youtube.



i can't believe that i can make such a thing in 2011, if i remember correctly, i am learning after effect in 2008, so it's been almost 5 years. what a surprise even when i am typing this. :)

wow, i just won't realize that i have 4+ years experience in after effect if i don't write this post for you. so i thank you for visiting this blog.

tutorial coming next week, and i was thinking about making a post once a week in sunday.
because i am short in topic and material lately. so please subscribe and email me if you have any question at petkanna@gmail.com.

Ironman hud and ui

Hi, how are you today? me? i'm just gonna go to my computer and program some user interface (UI) for my cool looking iron man helmet!

actually, it's a lie, accept for the cool user interface and ironman.

i record and edit this some months ago, but i just never finished it, because i have some consideration to make. add this, remove this, add some more, there's no end. and finally i abandon this project.

today while i was looking for a topic to this blog, i though about going and finish every video that i haven't finished, so here's one of them.

back a while, i was wondering what if i get to see some cool info (ui) like iron man (tony stark) does?
because i cannot act in front of a camera, my movement would be funny and i decided to go with tony's point of view, but now it's my (or your) point of view.

i was watching some iron man film to get a good reference what it feel like when the helmet is not yet turn on. i got some of it here: (it's actually a very small hole to see through)

all of the image above is from flight test scene.

mostly my hud inspiration is from this scene, it is shown most of it's UI and feature of his hud.

this is my test to create iron man HUD (heads-up display).
some info for you guys: HUD is the info you have on your screen when you play some video game, either first or third person, like ammo, health, mini-map, and so on.

as always, if you have any question about this effect, you can email me at petkanna@gmail.com.

Some Tips on Time Lapse

At last i got some time to record a tips video on time lapse topic. actually i am already planning to publish this post yesterday, but suddenly i have a power short (or outbreak or cut or whatever you like to call. in my language, it will be light dead, just like that.), so after that i just forget what i want to do, so it continue until now :).

there will be a lot of how to in the internet, if you just search how to make time lapse, how to shoot time lapse. there will be a lot more great tutorial on how to do just that.
the question is, what to do after that? after you shoot that hundreds of photos? how do you process that into a video? here i just share my method that you can use for your project.


if you have something that i miss, please let me know,
if you have some question, please email me at: petkanna@gmail.com
i will be happy to answer that.

wow, my voice feels funny :) and a little bit echo, because i record this on a small and bouncy walls

Another Cloudy, with time lapse

Before i was giving you the picture of some cloud at my country, some of the picture was taken for a time lapse video, time lapse is very interesting and i am still in progress to get some more pictures for the future.

here is some preview of my time lapse (24fps), it's not perfect, but pretty decent.

please let me know if you have any question about time lapse, you can email me at petkanna@gmail.com. i'm answer your question the best i could.

Cloudy, with no chance of rain

it is cloudy and bright day at the same time, there is no chance of rain because it is building up rain for tomorrow. "not today!"

there are a lot of cloud for this past few days, i'm very happy with it, very beautiful clouds there. Best of all, i can make it a stock photo!, yeah (but this have no selling point), instead of charging you a dollar, i just gonna share this for free.

if i do remember correctly, i took it for 3 days, if you like it please share with your friends.