The original special, Titled ‘Dive Of Death’, was 2 hours long and aired on NBC. It is currently being shown on Travel channel. Oddly enough, people still recognize us when watching.


I edited a quick 2min montage:

TMG, has the unique position of bringing the spirit of the frontier into a restaurant concept. Backed by the credibility that their co-founder is literally the largest private American land owner and bison rancher. This ‘sizzle’ video is designed to be shown for an internal meeting — to rally franchisees around brand positioning. Immediately following the video, guests enjoy a keynote PowerPoint Presentation, which we also designed art for.

By the small scale nature of the project, our budget limited us to still images. Being limited to stills tends to be a common challenge — that you too may have already encountered. Here were some of the techniques used to add depth to the project. In other words — doing more with less.

(1) Create a narrative. My co-worker Matt wrote out a script based on the creative brief. I then designed all the images to relate in an airy way with the script. (i.e. an image of a house with text about family, an intimate close-up image of an animal with text about spirit, and an image of a herd with text about coming together) My goal is to loosely relate image and type, but not resort to literal ‘see-and-say’.

(2) Create Visual Interest. How can you create a cinematic-quality from still images? The first step was the Ken Burn’s effect. Stills are paned across, zoomed into and out of, and cross dissolved. This is obviously nothing original. In the landscape shots, I animated the cloud backgrounds. Also, not ground breaking. For the first round, I revealed all the type using a brush animation mask that I created in Corel Painter X (see round 1 video below) — which ended up getting cut by the client. Something special was the subtle animation I did using the After Effects Puppet Tool. The eye of the buffalo blinks and the buffalo and horse heads subtly rise. After effects was also utilized to create lighting effects for the final scene, which leads us into transitions…

(2a) Creative Transitions. The first thing I brainstormed on this project was creative transitions. A sun sets over a mountain and takes us to black. From black a neon sign flickers on to transport us to a modern store location. Both animated using After Effects. The opening transition was an animated smoke screen (this tutorial might be helpful). Going in and out of smoke is a pretty sweet transition. A very subtle but intentional transition was cross-fading between a circular basket of potatoes and a circular buffalo eye. From the close-up shot of buffalo we keep zooming out and transition to a mid-range shot, and then transition to a long-range herd shot. Had this been a broadcast spot, the zoom out scene would have utilized cranes and helicopters!

animation + art direction: stephen jackson
script: matt bergeson

On a totally different note — this is my 1 year blogging anniversary! So far, I’ve added a new post every other month. Not a very high frequency. But, that’s because I only want to post thoughtful, original, and relevant-to-you content. If your part of my ‘Friends & Family’ crowd — welcome. You probably visit because you have no idea what it is I, a graphic designer, do all day. Hopefully this helps us share these works with which I put so much of my energy into. If your a contemporary of mine checking out my work — thanks. Hopefully you learn a little/get inspired/get impressed.

I was asked to create a video slideshow for the annual ‘PCA’ fundraising dinner. The major challenge was creating something compelling, using only still images. Being limited to stills tends to be a common problem – that you too may have already encountered. Here were some of the techniques used to add depth to the project.

(1) Create a narrative. My co-worker Matt, who is very familiar with the school’s mission, wrote out a script. That script was later used to record Voice Over (VO). All the images and animations were designed to support the narrative.

(2) Set the mood. I choose a track, from Bibio, that starts off inquisitive & classical. And later builds to finish up-beat. The VO talent also helped convey a youthful spirit.

(3) Utilize visual connotations. For instance, what visuals can you think of that relate to schools? I came up with ideas like yearbook photos, chalkboards, and doodling.

(4) Think about transitions. How can you transition between images in a way that relates to the mood, theme, and pace of your video? I incorporated elements from the chalk board frame as borders. Sliding quickly between images helped to keep an up-beat pace. Varying the direction of the slide helped keep visual interest.

Thanks to Jane, for contributing the chalk writing.

This video from ‘QBF’, sports some very interesting transitions
and rack focusing.



Here are a couple links to block animations that inspired the
first section of my video.

Chatroulette has certainly brought out its share of crazies, creeps
and c–k. Seriously. If you haven’t visited yet you will see d–k.
Lots of d–k. But there’s also a lot of creativity. A new social media
application barely out of the box with plenty of people bumbling
around trying to figure out just what to do with it. Even if it’s just
simply being goofy.

It’s no secret that dogs make people happy. Most people anyway. Especially old dogs with narcoleptic tendencies and silly props.
We took screen shots of the different reactions Roxy elicited from
strangers and created a still-frame animation. Think of it as a time-lapse window into a Chatroulette session.

We said that Chatroullete was new, and people are still trying to figure out what to do with it. But thankfully, it hasn’t taken long for creative types to get their hands all over it and start doing funny stuff!

ben folds improvises to chatroullete in front of an audience.

Chatroulette was launched in 2009 by a 17 year old. It gained exposure in
February 2010 after being featured on “Good Morning America”. [source:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatroulette] We have experienced traffic
of anywhere from 60,000 to 30,000 visitors.