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