Mattes and luna things... and other things!

Getting Closer from Joe Choe on Vimeo.

No idea what my inspiration was for this one... just wanted something creepy. I think I used this as an excuse to test out a lot of the effects/filters of Photoshop. The character is from a Castlevania game, the castle is just something I found and warped. Almost everything else you see was done with effects from After Effects. The keyed out animation part is a 3-d black and white cartoon I got off the internet.

Piano FILTERED! from Joe Choe on Vimeo.

I wasn't really satisifed with the first one, so I started to play around a bit more to get the animation part looking a bit better. I felt like it had no purpose in the first one and was covering up a lot of the cooler stuff.

Interestingly, this project let me play around with some of the differences between CS3 and CS4. It's a bit different, nothing too mindblowing... improvement? I don't know, I don't use them enough to know if it is or not.

Edit:

After rewatching the two videos above, I think I know exactly why I'm not satisfied with them. The animation in the front is actually distracting and I don't think it really adds anything, but rather, detracts. I know how to fix the first one... I'm not sure when I'll get around to it, but I think what I can do is matte it again? and have a totally different scene going on during the black parts of that swirly moving thing. I can't really think of a convenient way to do it though since that swirl thing moves so fast and constantly changes shape. I'll figure it out... OFFICE HOURS NEXT MONDAY! YAY!

Also, I saw Push this last weekend... seriously... Dakota Fanning was the only redeeming quality in that movie. So, basically... the last two movies I saw in theatres were Push and Underworld: Rise of the Lycans................................

Not only that, but I was sitting in a barnes and noble, reading a film magazine and a gay vietnamese man who runs a social networking site started to hit on me. This was peculiar for a couple reasons: 1. I'm not gay. 2. He was creeping me out(The guy would NOT go away... he was like the old man from Family Guy).

So, a fair warning to everyone... if a skinny vietnamese man walks up to you and asks you, "are you open-minded?" Don't be like me and naively answer, "Yeah, I'm pretty open-minded." Look at the underlying message of his question, then stare at him until he goes away and if he doesn't go away, go straight LA gangsta m**** f**** on his a**.

"YO HOMES, I'M READING A MAGAZINE. WHY YOU GOTTA BE SO CRAZY?! HUH?!"

(Story behind the quote: I'm from Southern California... and my childhood friend was telling me a story a month back...

He was chilling with his cousin in a sunglasses hut when a fight broke out between two mexican guys right outside.

Ironically, the one mexican guy doing all of the shoving was the one yelling, "WHY YOU GOTTA BE SO CRAZY HOMES?!"

So, in short... it was like a guy stabbing you and screaming, "YOU HOMICIDAL LOON!"

So, let's try and make this a new catchphrase:

"why you gotta be so crazy... homes?")