Expert Series: Constructing Motion Graphics with GeoBeats

Screenshot: Graphics Intro (2-3 seconds)

World's Most Unusual Hotels: Constructing Motion Graphics with GeoBeats

Over these past few months, I've been working on design and motion graphics for a new travel and lifestyle client. I hope December and January are a good indication of the year to come but I need some time to post all the fun new projects I've been working on! That said, starting this February, I want to start anew with a series of blog posts based on my experience designing and animating motion graphics packages for GeoBeats. Each week, I will feature one new series on graphics and design topics ranging from Unusual Travel Spots, bizarre sightings, tackling foreign languages and Exotic Cocktails! You can also browse their extensive collection of short-format video series on the GeoBeats YouTube channel

This week's featured Series The World's Most Unusual..., showcases interesting places to visit and unique hotel concepts from around the world.



For all you book worm, romance novel lovers... A Library Hotel in New York City!

For the love of WordPress!

I'm probably a little late to the party on this one, but look out blogspot...I just fell in love with WordPress! A few months back Genevieve Gorder of the HGTV series Design Star and Dear Genevieve contacted me about creating a unique travel site for her own design firm GG Studio. Ever the progressive media talent, Genevieve was searching for a way to reach and interact with her audience through other mediums in addition to television. Along came WordPress. From a web design and developer prospective Wordpress gave us every thing we needed. A snap to install, it allows for the flexibility and full control over design and layout with all the ability to build a dynamic site that will let visitors share and interact with Gen in a way that she could not do through television alone. What I enjoy about Wordpress is that you can customize every little thing. You can choose a theme that some one else has already developed or if you're more comfortable with CSS and PHP (as I am) you can build your very own theme from scratch based on the whims of your client. Then, you create your pages and "widget ready" areas allowing dynamic buttons (widgets) and plugins, to further increase functionality to the site. Now my client has a brand new web site that not only looks exactly the way she wants but will never stay static as one pretty page. It is now a vehicle, a fully functional tool that she can use to express herself, hear from her audience and continue to build relationships with on a new level.

This month Genevieve and her awesome assistant designer Jessica are traveling to Norway to explore the roots of her family heritage and gather new design inspiration. To read more go to: www.genevievegorderhome.com

Set me freelance.com logo development continued...

This is the final logo design on the Coming Soon page. We ultimately agreed that the characters should look a little more universal and office friendly. Right now the site is going to be developed for the New York City freelance network, but eventually will be used for other cities as well and we didn't want to pigeon-hole our look to New York alone. Coming soon setmefreelance.com is set to launch in the coming months!

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While designing the initial logo for setmefreelance.com, there was a lot of fun to be had with the supporting creative elements during which the logo went through a couple phases. We all put our heads together to try and develop a group of characters that would best represent the freelance professional and it brought around a good conversation... How should these ruffian creative types look? The first visual that popped into my head was the image of every day young people I used to see on the NY subway system in the early mornings commuting from Brooklyn to Manhattan. The hipsters! Oh what fun I had drawing up this cast of characters and we laughed and laughed. Then they were like, no but seriously... how should they look?

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Set me Free!

This is the beginning launch of a brand new web development and creative branding project I have been working on for quite a few weeks and excited to share with you now. Coming soon setmefreelance.com, a concept created by Ali Mansfield and Brad Yankus will be a social networking site designed to help freelance artists and creative professionals stay in touch with employers and entertainment producers in the NYC area. Working closely with a great set of talented people, I wanted to start building some hype around their idea by designing a unique and young graphics package advertising setmefreelance.com as the go-to place "where creative professionals connect".

"Fresh Delivery" for Plumtv.com

So this has been a really great week here at the H.macdo Studio. I've just completed a new spring promo for Plumtv.com in NYC. This was an incredibly fun project and client to work with. I'm happy to see it come into full fruition as Spring is certainly in full bloom this week! Stay tuned as I am excited to be working on several really cool new projects and commissions for later this Spring and Summer.

H.macdo Animation & Illustration Studio presents a brand new Spring 2010 motion graphics promo spot for client: Plumtv.com in New York City. All design elements, artwork, original concept development and animation created by H.macdo Animation & Illustration Studio for Plumtv.com. Original logo created by Plumtv.com

Tools used: Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, AfterEffects and Flash.

Music credit: audio track is "Fresh Delivery" off the Plumtv audiosocket library. The authors are Captain Planet off the Bastard Jazz Sync Disc 2.

Spring projects are in the air!

The art of becoming, being and continuing to work as a freelance artist is an endeavor that is never to be taken lightly. It is a 7AM-7PM affair and that's just on a good day. I am often tearing myself away from the computer at the pleas of a hungry cat and a hungrier boyfriend while asking myself the same question each time, "...but have I done enough for today?" The answer is always NO! To make it work, I must always muster as much energy and excitement for finding the business, planning the business, writing proposals, scheduling time-lines and invoices as I would for creating the actual artwork itself. It is a true full-time commitment... but you know what? ...I love it!

I have a bunch of new animation, graphic design and illustration projects that I'm really excited about for these up-coming spring months so I should be pretty busy here and I want to keep updating as much as possible. I'm working my way into the 6th full month of working as a completely independent artist and learning so much as I go along. Thus far, I've had as many bouts of bad days/weeks as I've had good days, but recently after securing work with a few newer clients, I'm starting to feel a sense of "this is really happening". I've got a lot of work ahead! Time for more coffee!

More Graphic Design projects for Bond

Above is a design I worked on for a water bottle used as a promotional device for Bond Edit. Below was another design concept I was working on for a DVD menu using Photoshop, Illustrator and C4D.