The best kinetic typography animation I've ever seen! Please check this out before it gets deleted for corporate trademark abuse
Posted Dec 1, 2010, 4:12 PM UTC
1.5K374
I think it's good because it's as much a music video as anything and has a lot more going on than just the writing.
Lots of the kinetic typography stuff seems to be randomly attached to some speech and is often more distracting than helpful, interesting or entertaining.
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Thank you, sir :)
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nows the part where you tell everyone you need a job and we pimp this thing to the frontpage and you become yet another reddit success story.
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I'm gainfully employed at the moment, but if a Pixar recruiter is watching, I'd be happy to consider an offer. I don't live far from Emeryville.
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Where are you employed? Did you start this from a hobby?
I never pray. But, Reddit, I pray you, please get this guy up there.
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Omigosh that animation is awesome!
Did anyone else notice the reddit alien cameo?
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No, where?
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1:58
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For the lazy. Look at the iphone.
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Unless you watched that frame by frame, I don't see how you would have caught that.
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That's the iReddit app for the record.
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Efficiency != Laziness. But, thank you.
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No, but I did notice the A113 in the diagrams.
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That was really impressive. It's not too often that I hear a song about sexually abusing a shop vac?
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I don't think Mr Coulton would agree with your interpretation of the song.
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He's Drunk! He doesn't know what he's saying!
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His confusion enhardenates me.
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Could be worse. He could've said that the song was about sexually abusing someone while the shop vac was on.
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I really don't think that's what JoCo was going for.
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First thing I thought of - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OL1lGgpVgys
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It's, uh, actually about how depressing suburbia is, but that interpretation is valid, too, I guess..
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I had to go turn off my shop vac so I could hear the song, it's really loud with my shop vac on.
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For heaven's sake.
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re: corporate takedown: JoCo's song are licensed Creative Common (Non-Commercial), so this kind of music video is ok. In fact JoCo probably loves it already.
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In fact JoCo probably loves it already.
I don't know if he's seen it as yet, but I'm anxious to find out what he thinks.
I've met Mr Coulton on several occasions. He's a genuinely awesome guy. If you have the chance to see a JoCoSho, I can't recommend it highly enough.
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I met him during the Rifftrax live show last year, and when he opened for They Might Be Giants.. you're right, he's a freaking cool guy.
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That sounds like the greatest experience ever.
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So, I guess I have been out of the loop and haven't heard of "JoCo." This is clearly a shame because I found the song quite pleasing. Right from the beginning I couldn't help but imagine John L singing it so it's good to hear they have been associated.
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Hahaha. Jonathan Coulton is the artist's name. Not sure why his fans started calling him JoCo, but he's pretty big on the nerd media circuit.
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Where.. Where do these geekgasm inducing events occur? I would supremely love to see one of these.
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Nashville, Tennessee!
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I think the poster was talking about the TV Guide, Wal-mart etc, logos
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Yep, hence the "corporate trademark abuse".
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This is the truth.
JoCo always loves when his fans use his music.
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Shop Vac is trademarked. At least, that's what I gathered from the video and OP's title.
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Trademark != copyright.
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Did anybody say it was?
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As awesome as this song is... it sounds as if it's about a troubled marriage...
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I think it is, but those two things are unrelated. Like: As awesome as this song is, it's raining outside. Ok, well maybe it's not exactly like that, but you get my point. Right?
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As much as I appreciate your comment... I am eating Doritos... :-)
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I'm sorry for your keyboard
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It's JoCo! A lot of his songs are about depressing topics, but I think he manages to make them all funny. You should hear the one about his baby titled "You Ruined Everything", or how he is on every medicine possible ("I Feel Fantastic"), or the first Russian dog in space that died ("Space Doggity"), or how life as a clown sucks ("Bozo's Lament"), or...etc. :)
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Barenaked Ladies and Ben Folds both write songs similar to that style. They're peppy and sound fun but when you actually listen to the lyrics, shit's all messed up and depressing.
Personally, I love that juxtaposition.
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See also: They Might Be Giants
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I could picture John L singing this the whole way. I had not been introduced to JoCo however. Don't know how I had missed it as aparently he has opened for TMBG at points in time.
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Oh God, so many of BNL's peppiest songs are just tragic.
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Ohmyohmyohmygod that's the first time I've ever heard somebody else mention BNL. And that would explain why I find JoCo so incredibly catchy... I grew up on BNL, Ben Folds, and TMBG.
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Don't forget that one song about an AI happily singing about a human test subject being killed while it secretly survived.
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"Still Alive", yep. He has too many amazing depressing songs to list! :)
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First of May is not a depressing song in the slightest.
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Unless you don't have anyone to go outside with. ;)
Quite a few of his songs are not about sad topics - Ikea, Re: Your Brains, and until recently, Mandelbrot Set (sob). I just meant in general, many of his songs are depressing in nature, but I feel they all take a positive spin regarding the unfortunate topic.
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Except for 'When you go' - that song is just depressing. Good though.
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You should check out this guy's piano + vocals rendition of "When You Go". I like it a bit more than the original acapella version.
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Subtle plug, upvoted for awesomeness.
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I just listened to that song. Like 20 seconds ago. Absolutely love it.
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In fairness, You ruined everything is actually about how great things are now that everything is "ruined". I crush everything on the other hand :(
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Darn giant squid. :(
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This is what weezer should sound like these days...
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Good job, you understood the subtext!
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Good job, you understood the s
ubtext
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That's exactly what it's about. Suburban depression. Like 90% of the Barenaked Ladies' early work.
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It's an awesome song about a trouble marriage
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Definately is. A troubled marriage in a culture of getting married, moving to the suburbs, buying lots of crap you don't need, having kids, and officially becoming boring.
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Pretty much ....in the video someone took of him performing in LA, he says it's about "suburban angst."
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Code Monkey think this was triumph and huge success.
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Have an upvote for a reference to my favorite Jonathan Coulton song! :-)
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Code Monkey or Still Alive?
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Or My Monkey?
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upvotes for all three of you for letting me know about those songs (and consequently do you wanna date my avatar which was one of the links on the page) :)
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But that's a Felicia Day song, not a JoCo song :P
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Code Monkey I didn't know that Jonathan Coulton wrote Still Alive! :-) :-) :-)
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From someone who dabbles in each of those programs... Wow. That's amazing. I'd love to see an interview or an article about how this was made in more detail.
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Believe it or not this is the first thing I ever did with After Effects.
I decided to teach myself the software, so I watched a bunch of YouTube videos. There are a ton of tutorials out there for the "kinetic typography" style of animation.
I did the first verse back in summer of '09. After I was satisfied that I could use AE competently, I moved on to other paying animation projects, but I always wanted to go back and finish this. So after setting this aside for more than a year, I finally got around to working on Shop Vac again. I spent the last three months animating this in my free time.
If you have any specific questions, I'd be more than happy to answer them.
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First time using it?!?!? BRB, suicide.
That is fucking phenomenal MrHeather! I know a lot of people piss on kinetic typography, but I love it in applications like this.
p.s. Awesome hidden reddit alien, too... you sly so and so.
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Well, I've used other animation apps before, and I've been a fan of animation all my life. While this is my first After Effects project, I have thousands of hours of Flash work under my belt.
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Thanks for making me feel better.
Realizing they're completely different animals, which do you feel is more intuitive?
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What is your workflow like between the various programs? For example, I usually design something in Illustrator, and then bring it in as layers to an AFX project, then do all my animation. Lastly, I usually bring the rendered assets into Premiere Pro to do the final editing. Is this kind of what you do, or is it much more complicated?
I'd just love to know how the various programs work together to achieve something like this. Thanks for commenting!
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I usually design something in Illustrator, and then bring it in as layers to an AFX project, then do all my animation. Lastly, I usually bring the rendered assets into Premiere Pro to do the final editing. Is this kind of what you do, or is it much more complicated?
That's not kind of what I do... it's exactly what I do. GET OUT OF MY BRAIN PSYCHO SID.
For the chorus, though, I started with storyboard sketches in Photoshop before drawing the final designs in Illustrator. Those comps are pretty complicated (big canvas with lots of layers), so I wanted to have a very clear vision before I started the illustrations.
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Haha... Awesome! Sorry to bug you again, but I have another question.
I seem to have a hard time manipulating cameras in AFX to get them to do what I want. Do you create a huge canvas in Illustrator and then animate it around using the cameras, or do you actually move the elements themselves?
If you use cameras, any tricks of the trade you could share? As soon as I start trying to animate the camera location and point of interest, things just get mangled up in a hurry.
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In case you haven't discovered the treasure that is Video Copilot, I highly recommend it. The tutorials are amazing and funny, but the real secret sauce is the plugins. Many are free, but so much of his (Andrew Kramer) stuff is worth purchasing.
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That's even more awesome that it's your first project of its kind; like the OP said, it's better than any others I've seen. I fucking love seeing things that people have obviously put in work perfecting.
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very cool. it reminds me of the Justice DVNO video
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exactly my thoughts when i first started watching. I have yet to see someone top DVNO's music video, it's simply stunning :D
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Don't know how I hadn't seen that yet, but thank you for pointing me to it.
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Word. Smoother transitions, too. I actually prefer it to the video featured in this thread. Both visually and aurally.
"Because it's loud with the shop va--GUNSHOT"
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reaches for the downvote button, remembers post about it a few days ago....decides not to
Ill probably get downvoted for this for having an unpopular opinion but the bass seemed too punchy for me and obscured the lyrics....couldton's video is much cleaner both visually and musically, so it's easier to understand and watch...the actual typography may have been better in DVNO's, but the above things lessened the effect it could have had, which coulton's video delivered...
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reaches for the downvote button, remembers post about it a few days ago....decides not to
Ill probably get downvoted for this for having an unpopular opinion but the bass seemed too punchy for me and obscured the lyrics....couldton's video is much cleaner both visually and musically, so it's easier to understand and watch...the actual typography may have been better in DVNO's, but the above things lessened the effect it could have had, which coulton's video delivered...
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I think trademark "abuse" requires duplicity in industry and dilution. None of which that exist here. While not necessarily a parody, I doubt they can touch it.
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Shhh! This is an animation THEY DON'T WANT YOU TO SEE, and therefore you should share it with everyone you know.
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I don't think YouTube even checks ownership to copyright complaints, they just yank shit to be safe.
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Pretty much.
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Internet lawyers are the best, because they never cite relevant law to make arguments.
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This is awesome. I tried kinetic typography for a news promo I did a while back. It's a sad effort compared to the this music vid, but I was going for something more simple and not 3D. Nonetheless, I can tell you it's very tedious and time-consuming to make [especially on a laptop]. They have some plugins available through VideoCopilot now that are supposed to make it a lot easier, but I didn't use them.
Here's my vid in case anyone wants to see... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wo4QuDc1BIA
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Great work!
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That's really great! Do you work at the station or were you hired just for that job? I'm a graphic artist a tv station in a small market, it'd be nice to shoot the shit with you some time.
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Ford needs to hire this dude and stop with the shitty, "SO YOU'RE DRIVING DOWN THE HIGHWAY HAULIN' DEAD HOOKERS, WHEN YOU REALIZE YOUR TRUCK SUCKS" commercials voiced by Dennis Leary, with the text jumping all over the screen, saying exactly the same shit as the voiceover.
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Jonathan Coulton is an awesome song writer
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AKA fuck suburban life.
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This is clearly Fair-Use. No trademarks are infringed upon, and only a couple are even referenced (shop.vac and starbucks?)
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Shop Vac, Wal-mart, Mrs. Fields, Macy's, Whole Foods Market, Facebook, Applebees, and Starbucks.
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Wal Mart was parodied, so was Macy's Whole Foods, Facebook and Applebees. The only two real trademarks I saw were Shop Vac and Starbucks, and they seemed to be Fair-Use.
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Applebees, too.
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Fan of Jonathan Coulton here.
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"All I want to do is eat your brains"...
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Merry Christmas from Chiron Beta Prime,
where we're working in a mine for our robot overlords.
Did I say overlords? I meant protectors.
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Looks more like fair use then trademark abuse imo. :)
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Anyone try to call the number in the video? 968.226.2255, I'll give it a whirl.
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And what happened?
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"Your call cannot be completed as dialed, blah blah blah."
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968 is not a valid area code, but the numbers spell out YOU-CAN-CALL on the telepad.
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I'm sorry, but had enough of kinetic typography when Denis Leary was doing it on commercials.
Sorry. This I guess is impressive work but kinetic typography is done.
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I'm quite pleased to see this getting attention on Reddit!
If anyone has any questions about how I made this video I would be more than happy to answer them.
How long did it take you to make this? Also, the kinetic guitar solo was excellent!
Because I worked on it so sporadically, it's hard to estimate exactly how many hours went into the project. It's somewhere between 500-1000. I could do it faster now that I'm more familiar with the tools, but animation is extremely tedious work.
Reading this and seeing you mention that you work on web design and graphic design.. was this your first serious foray into video animation? I see nothing similar on Youtube channel, so it seems like you just up and said "I'm making a music video."
EDIT: Also you should set up a way to download a good quality copy of the file. Not that it matters much since I already got the 720p .mp4 off of Youtube, but I know other people might want to save this so they can watch it later.
Yup. I've done lots of animation for Flash interfaces, but you can only get so creative with sliding menus and interactive charts. This is the first meaningful animation project that I ever worked on.
That's basically how it went down.
I've been designing web sites for 13 years. I decided it was time to try something different. I don't know if I'll be starting a new career in the animation field anytime soon, but I really, really, really loved working on this movie.
Agreed. This was wonderful. Are you a JoCo fan already?
500-100 what? units?
I know, reading a whole sentence of around 20 words is hard work ;)
Hours perhaps?
I assume this was mostly After Effects, right?
The animation was mostly done in After Effects, using assets created in Illustrator and Photoshop.
The JoCo-playing-guitar bit was animated with Toon Boom Animate, which is the software they use to make most TV cartoons.
The first draft of the guitar solo was entirely a flipbook animation of the guitar player, but it wasn't really working so I came up with the "kinetic sheet music engraving" idea instead. I transcribed the guitar solo myself and used LilyPond to engrave a PDF that was imported into Illustrator and split into layers for animation.
You should be in Pixar.
That's more than flattering. My above comment about getting the attention of Pixar recruiters was entirely tongue-in-cheek, like a Little League player trying to get the attention of the New York Yankees.
He definitely should be in Pixar.
You should do the credits for Pixar.
The video is nice, but your assertion is a stretch.
Magic, got it.
He wrote up the song as music notes using notation software, then imported it into Illustrator and then animated it from there.
What kind of hardware did you do it on?
I recently got to work on an 8 core/64bit/3Ghz with 8gb of memory and a raid 64gb SSD, and I have to honestly say: I have never animated with such fluidity before. Can't help but wonder what you're using.
Great big compliments on the animation by the way, it looks absolutely terrific!
My main working/gaming computer is aging and fought against me every step of the way. It's a 2.4Ghz dual-core with 4Gb of RAM, but I'm using a 32-bit OS, so I'm not sure Windows can access all of the available memory. Rendering the 30-second chorus at full resolution takes about 2-3 hours.
I have a Cintiq 12wx, which I only used to draw the guitarist animation and the map used in the bridge. Just that damn map took more than 10 hours of tracing Google Maps screenshots into vectors in Illustrator.
Everything else was done with a mouse and keyboard.
Woah, I just watched a few videos on that Toon Boom program, now I know how cartoons are made :)
Great work btw.
I'm impressed you transcribed that solo yourself. It's not easy. I know the whole video wasn't easy, but I'll go with what I know. I know nothing about animation, but good job.
The transcription wasn't that much of a challenge, to be honest. I'm a huge fan of all of JoCo's music. I know every note of his songs forward and backward.
Here's a little Shop Vac on piano. I used the MIDI file from this performance to guide my transcription.
Fantastic, I can't stand when I see horribly fake musical notation on TV or in movies. And wow, not only can you do killer animations you can also read/write music!? You deserve an Emmy.
Thanks for that link to lilypond - that workflow through to animated score is excellent, I'll definitely be, ahem, 'borrowing' that idea for some work of my own.
In return I'll let you in on the little gem of a facial animation program perfect for aftereffects peeps - have you tried Crazytalk yet?
I came when I saw the guitar score note animation.
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Awesome awesome work. Did you collaborate with Coulton in any way? Or hasn't he seen it yet? If I was Coulton I would be thrilled to find such a professional video made for on of my songs
No, Mr Coulton was not involved in the project whatsoever. I don't know if he's seen it yet, but I emailed him the link.
I hope he was kind enough to reply.
Today is his 40th birthday, so he might be busy. He's been pretty good about replying to my emails in the past.
Coulton does all of his songs under the Creative Commons license and has expressed interest and gratitude for people doing creative stuff with his work that is nowhere near as awesome as this, so I'm sure he will be thrilled.
I love it! You really put a lot of effort in it and that shows. I'm really into typography animations, made one myself once, never finished it though (for 11 sec club) but it doesn't come near yours. If you'd have any advice for me, I'd gladly take it (destroy me if you want :p ): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1460y14jrVc The biggest issue I have with it, is that the theme doesn't fit the lines.
Great stuff, very impressive. One question, was the reddit alien cameo on purpose?
and no fibbing;)Absolutely. Every pixel of this movie was on purpose.
In that case, extra kudos to go with the kudos for the excellent vid. Nice one!
I have watched it 5 times now, and still haven't found it. I'm ashamed.
It's around 1:58, it's a widget thing on the iphone :)
so i looked at your portfolio. you designed the livejournal logo? No. Way. Great job!
the golden gateway animation was also really nice. I understand the basic concept of 2d layer placement in 3d space to give the images that 3d look, but did you do anything else fancy besides that? (Some of the ground looks really 3d!)
I did. It's far and away the most seen piece of art I've created. Seeing it pop up in movies like The Social Network makes me especially proud. I've made my tiny mark on the world :)
The technique is difficult to explain. The horizontal planes were cut out of the photograph and then distorted to remove the perspective. This is tricky because it increases the resolution of the image exponentially, and the occluded areas that need to be painted in are huge. Then the plane is rotated 90 degrees to match the original perspective.
Have you encountered any claims of 'corporate trademark abuse' since uploading this video?
Not as yet. JokeExplainer's fears are most likely unfounded. I think I may have broken some rules about when you're allowed to use (R) marks, but hopefully it's obvious to our litigous corporate overlords that they are part of the parody. I chose to play on the ubiquity of trademark identifiers in order to reinforce the feeling of sterility and uniformity in the suburban setting. Here's hoping that doesn't get me in any trouble.
you will almost definitely get a cease and desist request from someone's corporate counsel. Don't be intimidated, claim parody, and if they actually sue you...then roll over.
Too many people do the rolling over the first time they get a letter from a lawyer. But too many people try to fight corporate counsel who has all the time and money on their side.
about how long to complete? I've done some kinetic stuff before, 15 second animation, and it took me forever.
I'm guessing somewhere between 500-1000 hours.
That's a pretty solid guess
What is this for? Just for fun? It's really great, either way. I will be showing this to my friends, only I'll take all the credit for finding it.
Edit: The song/video combination is so good, it kind of makes me wish that someone would make a good sitcom starring a shopvac, just so this could be used as the theme.
It started as just a learning project to figure out the ins and outs of After Effects. I didn't intend to finish it, but after I showed a few people the original 20 seconds of animation, they urged me to complete the project.
I, for one, am glad that you finished it.
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The chalkboard animation video for Mandelbrot Set is so iconic it would be difficult to bring original ideas to the project that are more effective than what has been done. If I do another JoCo video, it will probably be Space Doggity.
After I get some character animation under my belt I might talk to some animation shops.
Wonderful video! I really liked when you pen-drew over the shop-vac guy to give him a mustache, beard, and eye patch. Very subtle!
Haha, yes. I noticed that... Subtle indeed :)
I was enjoying this great video when I noticed the guitar solo transcription. I thought to myself Hmm, either this guy found an accurate transcription somewhere (unlikely) or he was able to make it himself. So I did some internet detective work. ;)
My internet detective work tells me you're the guy who made the two awesome JoCo piano medleys and the Still Alive keyboard cover. I've spent some time on the JoCo forums and have seen you around. Didn't you write a musical analysis of this very song?
If you ask me, I'd say there aren't enough talented musicians like yourself covering Jonathan Coulton. In case you're interested, here's a medley of three JoCo songs I made in a punk rock style, using his vocal tracks from Looks Back:
http://www.tshaddox.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/jocopunk-06.mp3
http://www.tshaddox.com/?p=173 (for flash streaming)
Punk rock shop vac was awesome, be good to hear the full song in that style.
Just want to say well done. That was excellent!
What I really appreciate is how the animation ties into the subject matter.
It's not a Ford commercial with text flying around FOR NO REASON.
The car headlight/tailight section, the free way graphic, swing set, dog, it goes on.
Very excellent effort.
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I'm an aspiring After Effects guy and I have no idea where to start... I can do the text and some of the animations, but how do you make it look so organic? Where do I start? Great job.
I'm not graphically capable by any means, but out of curiousity, what is the effect called (and overall purpose) where the screen seems to shake constantly but very discretely?
This is fantastic, I've had to watch this at least 3 times today, as everytime I check reddit, it seems to be on the front page begging for another go. I would like to present you with 47 internets!
I don't have a question, I just wanted to say that this video made my day and you are awesome. Thanks for working so hard to make it, I loved every moment.
Especially the (perfectly transcribed) guitar solo, that was brilliant. Congrats on your well-deserved attention :)
I love how the video thread instantly turns into an AMA.
Brilliant work, and also, I believe this is the first time a JoCo-related thing has ever gotten onto the front page of reddit. [/me is a 5 year redditor and JoCo fan]
Also it's his best song.
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Teach me!
I'm just a dabbler with no talent and no money. Are there any freeware programs for kinetic typography?
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Incredible work! Every single frame in that video would make a great wallpaper!
Is the basic workflow to export Illustrator lines to a 3D program? And then animate from there?
This is awesome!
So this was your first animation project? Damn man. Awesome job.
My favorite parts are the little nuances with each successive view of the chorus, but the real part that made me smile was the sheet music of the song we were listening to with an animated pen drawing of Jonathan. :D This whole video made me smile. Thanks for brightening my day.
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Friggin' amazing! Very well done! Two or three man-months though? Ouch.
I think your knowledge of and fondness for music in general and this song/musician really comes through in the animation. I'm guessing if Souless Record Label contracted out Random Commercial Animator Co. to do something similar they wouldn't end up with a product nearly this well done.
That was badass. Excellent job! I have a slew of motion graphics videos to produce in the next month and this is a great inspiration and reference. Keep 'em coming!
Would you be interested in creating a music video for either of Dan Dectis/Mulsanne's albums? He expressed interest in gaining more YouTube presence in this thread and I'm sure that many of us (myself included) would like to see his work visualized artistically. :)
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Your video oozes quality. And this is one of my favorite songs of his...excellent choice!
Would love to see some others. Perhaps you should collaborate with him to make many more?
Can you make a "making of" video?
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This is all kinds of awesome. Thanks for sharing it.
So, whose phone number is 968-226-2255 ?
How long would something like this take? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3kYfeP76hA
Amazing animation, but kind of a waste on a very mediocre song.