The last minute realization is often one of chaos and disarray. With the right attitude though, I think any situation is salvageable under the right circumstances. In college I spent a great deal of time in the media studio, churning out all sorts of projects with graphics, animation, film editing, color correction, audio engineering, and production; in other words, last minute realizations were prevalent. Toward the beginning of my time there, one such realization was that the media studio did not have an acceptable logo and we had a video that needed to go out the next day. While we could have simply stuck the college’s logo on it, we wanted to promote our unique individuality in a way that had not been done before; it was a job for me. Our media specialist had created a logo of sorts, and he asked me to animate it. When I saw it, I realized that it was not the kind of logo that could easily be animated. I decided to use his font but create something completely different. Since time was a strong factor, I decided to do something I had not previously done and use a preset model instead of making one myself.
I made use of a studio light model that came with Cinema 4D to fill some of the space and convey some of meaning exhibited in the original logo. In every succeeding project I complete, I try to do something new—something I had not previously done. Here, this meant adding spark particles when the two pieces of metal hit together. While I was not completely pleased with its execution and could not seem to figure out how to get them to glow more, I think they serve their purpose and get the message across. As always, fighting a tight deadline like this caused me to give up certain luxuries, but I think the nature of this composition worked well with the simplicity of the resulting scene.
A rendered still from the beginning of the animation, highlighting the sense of ambiguity I treasure
A close look at the sparks I created for this project; their color variance and randomness was a consideration I think I solved, but their vibrant glow seems rather ineffective
The original logo by which my animation was loosely based; this logo’s busyness and low quality assets