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Broadcast Design Revolution
Hi Everyone,
I’m helping out a student who is doing an internship with our company, with her final year thesis. Basically she was going to do something that examined the whole digital desktop video revolution of the “90’s” but I advised her that that subject was a little “last week” and many people have written about it extensively. What I thought might be interesting and something that is a little more “fresh” is the motion graphics renaissance that I see happening now. I have observed over the past 10 years a significant change of guard, per say, from broadcast motion graphics that is executed by “technicians” to motion graphics executed by designers.
Clear as mud. Let me explain.
When I started in the industry back in 1996, if you where a designer and needed motion graphics done for a commercial or promo you had to rely on visual effects technicians that knew how to use the tools of that time. Flame, Paintbox, SoftImage, if I remember correctly, all needed trained techs to operate – like a colorists – and most designers did not have the training, nor the time to learn, these systems.
The inherent nature of this designer+technician workflow produced some great work when the 2 people clicked but it also lead to a lot tug-and-war where a designer wanted something that the technician could not deliver – sometimes because of the tools at hand but also, sometimes because technicians just did not want to “experiment” with their “very expensive” systems. I don’t want to offend anyone here but from my experience (and the reason I made a point of learning After Effects) many technicians trained to use any of those systems at the time, used them like they were driving a train. They could go amazingly fast as long as you stayed on the tracks. No deviation.Cut to 10 years later where you have a proliferation of cool desktop tools like After Effects, Motion, Combustion and tons of easy to learn 3D programs and all of a sudden you have the motion graphics ‘execution’ work not being done by technicians but by the designers themselves. And, I would argue, that since most designers’ mandate is to be creative and constantly explore the edge, those programs are being used and pushed in ways that even the programmers of the software did not anticipate. This change over from technician to designer, I believe, is the reason why we are seeing an explosion of amazing new work.
Controversial opinion? Of course.
Some, I think, would argue that the current motion graphic renaissance is due to the technology getting better and cheaper. The programs are better, the plug-ins are better and the computers are faster & cheaper. This is true. But you could also argue that better software and faster computers did not make a better Star Wars Trilogy.
You could also argue that a digital artist like Takagi Masakatsu would be incapable of producing the amazing work that he does if he had to go into an Inferno suite every time he wanted to make a video. You need that time alone, with your tools, to experiment and be truly creative.
So,.. I’d like your opinion.
Do you think that the current work from designers like Psyop, Lobo, Zeitguised, Giraffentoast, Impactist, Tronic, I Am Always Hungry, Onesize, Jewboy Corporation – just to name drop a few – is the result of:
a) Better software tools & cheaper computers
b) Natural evolution of digital desktop revolution
c) Designers jumping into the drivers seat of motion graphics programs
d) None of the above – something else
e) None of the above – you’re full of ……Thanks in advance to anyone who has the time to respond.
Ian
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4 Replies
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Ian –
I think it’s a combination of the above three, with item “a” being the prime motivator. After Effects, Combustion, Illusion, and a raft of other desktop driven effects and compositing software have given the user a wealth of tools at a cheap price. All the above come with the caveat “talent not included”, so some of the looks that have become the hip styles have only to do with the designer not knowing what’s “wrong”, or not caring, and shooting from the hip. It’s much the way the desktop publishing revolution took off in the 90’s: you had the people with talent and no money enabled to do great things, while at the same time you had people with no talent and the software making circus posters with all 36 fonts on one page.I would say the second mover would be item “c”. Designers have been forced to jump into the driver’s seat to some extent. In the past, much of the process was done with a producer, artist, and editor. Depending on the chemistry, the artist and editor were either just button pushers (if the producer knew what he/she wanted), or actually were producing the project, with the producer as onlooker/approver. That changed to a great extent when you became able to do the same project on a ten thousand dollar setup that you could only do ten years earlier on a half a million dollar setup. The designers saw that they could take the project out of house, or work as a freelancer, and make more money than being on salary at an effects house. This move, after a while, turned the freelancers into the new post houses, as they realized that they could make even more money by hiring their own freelancers and billing at the principle’s rate, the same way ad agencies have gotten rich for years (the cub writer writes the spot for 10 bucks an hour, and the project gets billed at 100 bucks an hour). There’s also the issue that the consolidation of ownership in the big media market has cut a lot of jobs, and forced people into the positions of driving the creative software, with no training or preparation for the job.
Item “b” doesn’t have much weight, in my opinion, since the desktop revolution has less to do with a revolution than with competition among the top-heavy hardware makers (AVID, Sony, Thompson, etc.), who are desperately trying to keep up with the shrinking market for big boxes, by buying out the guys who are really making the mind-blowing advances in technology. “If you can’t compete in your own right, buy the company with the good ideas” seems to be the mantra of late. That’s great if you’re also selling plenty of your own ideas, but companies like AVID are learning (check their stock price since last November) that you also have to still be selling your big boxes in order to survive. You’ve got to sell an awful lot of Pinnacle cards to make up for the loss in Media Composer sales.
Anyway…these are just my thoughts on it, maybe not as clear as they should be, since I haven’t had my first cup of coffee yet. Good luck with the project.
Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV -
Thanks so much Joe. I wasn’t even thinking about the “bigger” industry perspective and how this has had a huge impact on the way motion graphics work is produced.
Thanks again for your insight.
One more question that we’ve been throwing around – Are the sparks for ideas moving from the humans to the computers?
Now that the tools for creating motion graphics are becoming so sophisticated, is the software creating the ideas or is it the designers. Well, really, is it the programmers or the designers.
Do the plug-ins in AE or Photoshop create the spark for an idea or does the designer create the spark and the plug-ins help execute?
Is it the tool or the artist?Ian
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they feed on each other with talented artist being the prime mover. The artist might get an idea from someone else’s work (as often happens) but then use the great tools to go off in a completely different tangent to create a project that has no relationship the inspiring work’s idea, other than that initial spark it put into the artist’s mind. Idea’s come from the artists and the great work comes from their knowledge of and ability to use the tools.
Del
fire*, smoke*, photoshopCS2
Charlotte Public Television -
I think it’s a little bit of both: a prime example of the software driving the creative would be the overuse of the 3D Stroke plugin from Trapcode. You didn’t see a whole lot of burning 3D swooshes around (now they’re everywhere, prime example being the ABC on-air look) until they became easy to do. I’ve been making them for several years in 3D Studio using an animated texture map, but it takes a lot longer to make them. Now I have to be really careful when using them, because everybody and his brother is using them.
This, to me, is a case of the software driving the creative. The other side of this is that many of the developers of third-party plugins ARE artists, and they learn the AE Software Developement Kit in order to facilitate their own visions. Trapcode’s Shine is another example of an overused look, although it’s beautiful (and it can be easily done with the native plugin set with After Effects – although it takes longer) it’s any easy way around real work. As a regular user of the Cow’s AE forum, I see on a daily basis people requesting the easy way out. “Is there a plugin that does realistic 3D clouds?”, for example. There probably is, but the real challenge to the artist is to find a way to get the image from the brain to the pixel WITHOUT the plugin, or with a workaround that realizes the concept.
I am amazed on a daily basis by the toolset I have to work with now, compared with how I had to do things just a few years ago. Clients now expect the director’s cut of Apocalypse Now for the price of a local cable spot, so we graphic artists are pushed to the limit and forced to find the easiest way to achieve a look, often with a plugin. If we had more time for experimentation (who has gone through the entire plugin set that comes with After Effects? – not I), I’m sure there would be more creativity in our field, and fewer repeats of the raining letters from Matrix that are such a visual cliche now.
Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV
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