youtube intro video

While I was combing the web for inspiration I came across some interesting videos on YouTube.  I found some pretty entertaining YouTube channels with a lot of good content and thought that instead of just rating and ‘favoriting’ them, I could give something back to the people who make them.  So on a whim I decided to create a little Promo/Intro video for one of my favorite YouTubers, ‘BrentalFloss’.  I sent him the video, and he liked it so much he posted it on his channel.  Since he posted my video, it has recieved over 18,000 views, and I have already been getting requests from others who would like similar videos.

Check out the video here: Unofficial Brentalfloss Intro

-Michael Williamson

Kwakatu

I was hired to create a website for an online store that sells spiritual and joyful T-Shirts. I designed and created the site and also worked with advertising for the website. I went with a minimalistic approach to the website. I felt that customers might feel overwhelmed if they saw a bunch of images and links to things. So I only kept the basics: a page for Shirts, a page for Company Info/Contact, and a page for the Shopping Cart. Here is a link to Kwakatu, tell your friends and order a few shirts.

-Michael Williamson

After Effects Practice Ad

I’ve been trying to keep my After Effects skills fresh, so about every day I will try to mess around a bit to see what kind of things I can come up. I have posted a few clips I have done in the past, but I realized I never really kept up with that. So I’m posting a new one today.

This is a little ad I was inspired to create after watching the season premiere of Heroes. I wanted to experiment with using Depth of Field with a camera, and I was pretty pleased with the effect. The actually content (font, style, and camera movement) could use some tweaking, but I liked the effect of the text blurring. I will definitely be revisiting this piece and trying to give it a bit more ‘pop’ and ‘umph’ (as they say). But for now:

Next

-Michael Williamson

New Logo Idea #1

As a person who has grown up with cable television, video games, and the internet, I have always had a short attention span. So naturally, when I look at the main logo for my website I can’t help but think, “it’s over 3 months old!”. So I’ve started designing some new logos for my website. Tonight I bring you the first of these designs. It started as something to do during the commercial breaks of The Office season premiere, but turned into something I was pretty proud of. So take a look and let me know what you think.

I also created an icon based on a design my friend Matt created. I was trying to create a “2.0″ style icon, with a shiny look to it. Then I decided to make a similar icon for my new Logo Design to see if it could work as a favicon for the website.

-Michael Williamson

YouTube

During the summer when I was working on my Demo Reel I posted a lot of test movies on YouTube to get feedback from friends. Some of the movies I posted never ended up making it into my demo reel, or my website, but they are still available for viewing on YouTube.

Also included on my YouTube page are some tutorials I completed from VideoCopilot, some of which even made it into my Demo Reel (with some modifications).  For anyone who doesn’t know, VideoCopilot is one of the best resources for free After Effects tutorials.  I’ve probably gone through each tutorial at least twice.  They are very informative, and teach you hotkeys, technique, styles, and much much more.  Check out VideoCopilot for more.  They have helped me infinitely and I highly recommend them.

Here is a link to my YouTube account where you can see these movies, as well as full length versions of some of the movies found on my website.

-Michael Williamson

Grunge

Now-a-days the grunge look is in style, and since I’m so stylish I thought I better make some kind of grungy graphic of myself.  Like a lot of the stuff on this blog, I only spend a few minutes on it, but I thought it turned out pretty coo looking.  I used a crumpled piece of paper for the background and some brick textures and went crazy with the Multiply filter.

-Mike Williamson

Ride the Bus

I felt like I haven’t done much in After Effects recently, so to refresh my skills I decided to work a bit with masking. I found stock footage of a bus driving down a city street (original footage) and added some text to the street which the bus drives over. I then did some color correction and adjusted the contrast. Below you can see a before and after (or in this case, after and before).

Ride the Bus

-Mike Williamson

Downtown Records Fliers

My friend works for a local record store that also hosts concerts. Last month I was asked to design a flier for an upcoming show. Here is what I came up with:

-Mike Williamson

Stuck at Home

I was stuck at home and bored, so I used my iSight camera on my Macbook to record this short clip. I then used After Effects to jazz up the video a bit. Here are the fruits of my 15 minutes of labor:

-Mike Williamson

Baseball Card Design (Part 2)

I just completed the back of my Baseball Card Design with information from my resume. I still might make some slight changes to it and the front, but this is the basic layout so far:

-Mike Williamson