AE + Simple Shapes + 1000 Keyframes = CRAZY ENOUGH

June 25, 2009

Proof that all you need are simple shapes (and some great animation chops) to make an incredible animation. Check out this Student-made Title Sequence. It was animated in After Effects using thousands of keyframes. Notice how the shapes look alive. It’s like a Bugs Bunny cartoon with squares and circles! Great work.

UPDATE:
Jr Canest was nice enough to share some screenshots of his AE comp with us. Check out all those keyframes! That’s what it takes to get that level of animation. It’s not scripts, nor expressions, nor plugins. It’s raw keyframe talent.

imagen-1
keyframecloseup
keyframecloseup2

29 Comments

Get your own thumbnail at Gravatar.
  1. galen frazer on June 25, 2009 said...

    wow. that was awesome. love the music.

  2. Richard Cave on June 25, 2009 said...

    Amazing, keep it simple and keep it stupid is all I can say,

    Rich

  3. jrxingram@gmail.com on June 25, 2009 said...

    LOVE IT.

    We need a tutorial on this…

    Nick A

    Just a quick note because I have seen these kind of comments A LOT on here. Nothing personal against you, jrxingram, but I just thought this was a perfect video to point this out.

    A lot of people confuses the learning purpose of a tutorial with a quick way to get shit done and move on. Tutorials are to get you started. To imagine the possibilities. However, if you always count on tutorials to achieve something then you are always depending on somebody else.

    90% of the technical knowledge you need to build this can be learned in nick’s tutorial about keyframes. But creativity, time, and taste is what really makes this animation a great piece of work.

    keyframe tut:
    http://greyscalegorilla.com/blog/2009/03/23/guide-to-keyframes-in-after-effects/

    Jeremy Ian Thomas

    wise words!!!

    jason

    i can’t tell you how many demo reels i have seen in the past year alone that are comprised of nothing but andrew kramer tutorials in their entirety. what’s more depressing than that is these kids looking for the “cool shit tutorials” suddenly think they’re hot shit and subsequently underbid the jobs away from the real creatives who are now struggling to make ends meet. i’ve been working with after effects for over 10 years and dabbled with various 3d softwares. i eat, breath and shit visual arts and it sickens me to death that the market is flooded with these little piss-ants wanting someone to do the work for them.

    i applaud you, nick, for calling this twerp out.

    Matt Ciaglia

    thegorilla

    Well put Nick. It’s animation skill that makes this video stand out. Study a book on cartoon animation. Learn about squash and stretch and anticipation. These are the things that will help push your animation skills to the next level.

    jr

    Completely agree with ^above comments after reading them and thinking about what you’ve said. Regardless, great work, and great feedback!

    sawa

    Any particular books that you’d recommend? Nn animator’s bookshelf essentials?

    Anders Hattne

    I’ll have to watch and analyse this video a bunch of times: I’ve got the technical skills to do this video (I think) but if I did it myself … the outcome would be dull.
    I guess there are subtle details like the anticipation as you said – and the slight textures.

    Practise practise..
    Cool to see something impressive without particles and 3d motion!!

    Awesome video!!

  4. mike on June 25, 2009 said...

    hey,that`s great.
    I`m from china shanghai

  5. Arvin on June 25, 2009 said...

    Ha, somewhere maltaanon’s throwing chairs out windows with that many keyframes

    Morten Christensen

    hehe, that is so true!

    Thanks for posting this video! I saw his work on the VFS competition wich he won, and his skills has really envolved since!

    Nice one!

  6. Lotenna Enwonwu on June 25, 2009 said...

    This kid is good. His work is really presented well and I like his music selection. I might have to feature it on http://lostringsattached.com/

  7. Lotenna Enwonwu on June 25, 2009 said...

    This kid is good. His work is really presented well and I like his music selection. I might have to feature it.

  8. elena on June 25, 2009 said...

    Hey Nick.. this is that just amazing. Did you know that the boy who made this was the one that win the vfs scholarship last year?. his entry for the scholarship: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KExoP97KUnY
    enjoy..
    big fan of you!
    cheers.

    Brian

    The piece Nick posted was great. This other one however…not feelin it.

    thegorilla

    True, but keep in mind that those two pieces are separated by a full year of learning and making mistakes. It’s actually nice to see such great progress in a year. You can tell he has been working his ASS off.

    Luispsotfx

    What are u talking about???
    That one was good too…
    in its own way…

  9. Jeremy Ian Thomas on June 25, 2009 said...

    THIS GUY IS R-A-W!!!!

    Inspirational.

  10. John Waddington on June 25, 2009 said...

    Anticipation and Overlap!! Best animation principles that exist. It really makes the elasticity in this project great.

  11. brice dupuy on June 25, 2009 said...

    guess he went over the limit of the “Circle vs. Square” 5 second project and decided to turn it into a title sequence. Credits to Nick for the idea. :)

  12. Onskin on June 25, 2009 said...

    Yeah it’s greattt ;)

  13. Vit on June 25, 2009 said...

    thank you nick for posting! great one to make a like at vimeo :-) and to get inspired for today! totally!

  14. thilo on June 25, 2009 said...

    wow…

    thanx for this post, mr. gorilla

  15. Jek on June 25, 2009 said...

    Man this is great!!!AHHH so good! Anyways I have one question when u do an animation that is similar to this does one start out with the music in mind and the base the animation off of that or the animation first. I notice how well the animation fits in with the music. I am currently doing some animation but I think it would be hard to find a music that would fit well with it. I’m noob at this so yeah some advice would be appreciated.

  16. Charley on June 25, 2009 said...

    Can we get a tutorial on this one?

    Aaron

    check out jrxingram’s comment.

  17. Cam on June 25, 2009 said...

    Wonderful stuff. Nick, I realize that this uses many of the simple principles from your intro to keyframing tutorial, but maybe you could give us a short pep talk on anticipation, action, and reaction. I think it’s really fundamental and would be beneficial for everyone, novice to veteran.

  18. Aleksey on June 25, 2009 said...

    yeah, although i read all the comments. I still Reckon that a pep talk on the principles of animation from the Gorilla himself should be interesting, I’m sure you got your own take on it.

  19. Wyattstorch on June 26, 2009 said...

    Awesome stuff. The most important part of any FX work; PATIENCE. How long must this project have taken to complete. Imagine the amount of reworking that must have gone into this.

  20. Vit on June 26, 2009 said...

    totally great…thanks for posting nick!

  21. Vit on June 26, 2009 said...

    hey nick…
    nice new article category bar :-) i was checking which i casts i have already seen and done and noticed there’s one missing in category AE tutorials…so if you want to be super perfect correct :-) you can add there also the intro to 3D in AE…or am I wrong about it? :-)
    http://vimeo.com/3536691

  22. Chris Culp on June 26, 2009 said...

    I was super impressed by this and watched it at least 10 times.
    After that I realized it’s time for me to work my ass off too, every day. Get down and dirty and stop spending MORE time looking at cool stuff other people are creating, than creating cool stuff myself.

  23. Jr.canest on June 28, 2009 said...

    WOW! MAN! IM ON THE GEY SCALE GORILLA!!!
    :D
    thanks all for the comments, Its being all great since I won the scholarship, Thanks to God Ive learing a lot and its just amazing to read all the comments, thanks guys! thanks nick! keep it up!
    peace

    jordan crark

    you spelled gay wrong

  24. Jara on June 29, 2009 said...

    amazing, tutorial pls :)

  25. illd on June 29, 2009 said...

    Although I hate keyframes (at least that much ;) ) I applause this animation – Its perfect and it makes me feel good watching it…

  26. Kov on September 3, 2009 said...

    At 00:33 i think it would look better with one less keyframe….

    only kidding, very nice indeed. nothing stops moving, very alive and happy! good work

  27. Amr on December 17, 2009 said...

    defiantly crazy enough this is not real !

  28. Oliver on February 18, 2010 said...

    Superb. but still don´t get why people keep asking for a tutorial on this.

  29. Richard on March 3, 2010 said...

    YEAH!!!
    MASSIVE FRAMES
    IT ROCKS…I LOVE TO SEE SO MANY KEYFRAMES.
    That is called digital animation.
    Great Work!

6 Trackbacks

  1. [...] crap, I stumbled onto this via a tweet from Mr.Greyscalegorilla, and I must admit, I wish I knew how to do these types of things. I really like the colors in this [...]

  2. By Atmospheric Arts » CRAZY ENOUGH on June 28, 2009 at 4:59 am

    [...] ich diese unglaubeliche Title-Sequence, die aus 1000 Keyframes besteht. Glaubt ihr nicht? Es gibt Screenshoots, die es [...]

  3. By Twitted by TheRedOwl on June 29, 2009 at 12:15 pm

    [...] This post was Twitted by TheRedOwl [...]

  4. [...] Yesterday I was riffling through the archives over at GreyScaleGorilla (one of my fav design blogs – thanks Mancel) when I came across this energetic piece. What’s really special about this animation is that it was manually keyframed to give it some genuine personality. The music choice is excellent too. Check out the details over at GSG. [...]

  5. [...] is the link mentioned in the video: Crazy Enough by Jr.Canest Related posts:Learning Design: The Art Of Making Things Look Less Crappy Over TimeMaking Abstract [...]

  6. By theLager//dasBlog » Jr.Canest Showreel on December 15, 2009 at 12:55 pm

    [...] noch immer nicht genug hat kann sich hier Screenshots des entsprechenden After Effects Projekts anschauen. Eine einzige Keyframeschlacht… So, und jetzt hab ich mich mal ordentlich als Nerd geoutet, [...]

Your email is never published nor shared. Required fields are marked *

*
*

Search:
  • Learning Links

  • AE Tuts
  • PSD Tuts
  • CG Tuts
  • Motionworks
  • Pariah Studios
  • All Bets Are Off
  • FXPHD
  • Squeezeme.tv
  • C4D Cafe
  • cgpov
  • HelloLuxx
  • VisualFXTuts
  • Video Copilot
  • Digital Hitchhiker
  • Signup For The Newsletter

    Join the Greyscale Mail, an almost monthly newsletter about everything Gorilla. Sign up and get early invitations to contests and information about what I'm up to and in to. Just so you know... spam sucks, your email is never published nor shared.