DAZ Bumpers 2022 - Intro and Outro (Patreon)

I'm currently working on a mini series for official DAZ channel, in which I'm explaining how to create a Genesis figure morph from a body scan provided. It's some serious magic, and I can't wait to share it with you. We're planning more collaborative content, and as such I needed an animated DAZ branding. In the broadcast world, we call these things bumpers, station idents or simply intro/outro. 

Premise

These bumpers need to be short, fast and snappy to look their best, especially when you see them several times over the course of a video series. At first I was considering something in 3D, but I felt it would need at least 5 seconds of viewing time to establish, perhaps more, which would have been too long. 

I decided to do a 2D animation instead using Techsmith's Camtasia. Here are the results of my labour, made from colourful shapes and sweet transition effects: https://vimeo.com/662453182/324bb27e6c 

The outro is essentially the intro played backwards, which worked well as a video then starts from black and ends in black with the purple dot "switching the old style CRT TV" on and off. Remember those days when you had tubes in consumer electronics?

Sound Design

An integral part in most animations is audio. As you may know, good music and/or sound effects that can be used commercially are difficult to come by. Sure, there are plenty of royalty free sources, I even subscribe to some of the licensing services for a better commercial choice, but I didn't find anything I liked. 

I wanted to bring something special to these new videos, so I got in touch with one of my friend Oliver, a professional drummer with over 20 years of recording and stage experience. He was delighted to take a stab and putting some grooves together, and what you hear is the first idea he came up with. Those are real drums by the way! I trimmed the beats just a tad to make them work better with the graphics, and I think it's a winning combination. 

I'm looking forward to more such collaborations in the future. Oliver and I are currently working on replacing the music for both the DAZ live titles as well as my Jay Plays titles respectively. 

Sneak Peek in context

I've put the finishing touches on the 4 part series today, but because it needs to be approved by all parties involved, I can't share the full series with you here yet. However, to see the bumpers in context, I'm sure it'll be OK to give you a little sneak peek at the introduction I've made. This explains what we're doing and shows a time-lapse of the process: https://vimeo.com/661640106/faa7bcec07 

Many thanks to Brian for working out how to make R3DS Wrap work! Without you and your knowledge/patience/determination, this series wouldn't have happened. 

Let me leave you with this render I've made from the custom character we're building. I'll put her on my Artstation page soon after release:

I took this opportunity to test out a hair shader by SloshWerks that I picked up recently. It rocks!

See you next time 👋