Help creating an animated company logo / scene (production company). (1 Viewer)

[Mike~Sileck]

Hi everyone!

(First, mods, if this is in the wrong place, please feel free to move it. We have a photography area, but we don't have a film area, so I wasn't sure where to put it! Thanks!)

On to my question and my badly worded title.

Okay so you know when movies open up, they often have the 2-5 second clip showing the studio who made the movie (or produced it, etc.).

I am starting a very very small "production" company. I just bought a new Sony HDR-SR7 and the full version of Sony Vegas to edit videos in. However, I want to create a professional looking logo and opening scene to place in front of all my videos. The look I am going for is something along the lines of Lions Gate Films, or "Twisted Pictures". Something darker than say, Universal Studios or 20th Century Fox.

So the question is how do I create something like that? Would a 3D editing program be my best bet? Do you have any suggestions?

Seriously any help is appreciated. Once I get off the ground and have some footage to share you can bet I'll be posting it here!

Thanks again and I'm really looking forward to suggestions!

 

[Mike~Sileck]

Any help guys?

 

[Andrew Chong]

My suggestion is to first develop a specific idea of what you want to see happen in your few seconds; hopefully in keeping with your company's name or what you do.

Again, depending on what you want to convey, you may need to next create whatever elements you'll need.

If, when you mention "very, very small" you mean yourself and one or two others and none of you have experience with, say, After Effects or other compositing tool, you might want to find someone to do that for you unless you're willing to buy other software and take the time to get trained on it.

Good luck!

 

[Will_B]

You might have better luck asking over at the DeviantArt site, deviantart.com

Or maybe not. I just named them because they seem to have lots of creativity over there.

 

[Keith Paynter]

Dumb suggestion #1 - hire an ad agency. They'll have things like this in place.

Make sure that your logo/animation is friendly if you're going for cinema work. Essientially the logo has to be frameable to all the most common theatrical and television ratios. (1.33:1, 1.66:1, 1.78:1, 1.85:1, 2.35:1)

 

[Darcy Hunter]

Usually this type of work is done with Adobe After Effects in combination with other Adobe products such as Photoshop and Illustrator. Sometimes you can use a 3D software package such as 3D Studio Max or Cinema 4-D in addition to Affter Effects, but if you have no experience with these applications the learning curve is quite steep (not to mention these are not cheap programs).

Mograph.net is a great industry forum for this type of animation, and if your willing to pay someone to do it, there are a lot of freelance artists who might help you out. Just don't ask HOW to animate you logo on that forum as you will be heckled back to the stone age.

 

[Mike~Sileck]

Wow thanks for all the responses guys.

It's gonna be me and a few buddies of mine putting together some short films (45-60 minutes). I'm not looking to be going to the movies or anything (although I guess I can always dream!!!). I'm using just that one HD Camcorder so I guess I'll create it to be mainly 16x9 friendly.

I'll look into maybe using 3D studio max or potential Maya. I know the costs are high but I'm still young and I'd rather take the time to learn these things now so I know how to do them in the future.


Thanks again for all of the ideas. I think Im gonna spend some time storyboarding what I wanna create, and then go from there.

Thanks!

Mike

 

[Brian W. Ralston]

This is exactly the kind of thing Apple's Motion software was created for. This and DVD menus, etc...