The Production Process

 For the most part I had full artistic freedom, so I chose a 3D/CG type video. I didn’t have much time (this was only about a week long project) to spend creating all the individual pieces, and thought I’d give Marvelous Designer a try. For anyone who may not know, Marvelous Designer is a software made especially for clothing and clothing based simulations. I’ve seen plenty other people do some cool stuff with it but I hadn’t much experience.

I found the actual creation of clothing in the program to be fantastic (for the most part). Simulations are smooth, and the interface is rather easy to understand. It doesn’t take long to get started and really make something, plus there’s a decent size amount of tutorials out there. BUT-

Transferring files out of Marvelous Designer is so painful. If you use a Mac I have no idea how to transfer simulations over to blender any kind of easy way. It seems easier on a windows computer, but I haven’t tried. Struggling I managed to get the hoodie over to Blender without simulations, and did the rest there.

 I don’t want to get too much into tech speak here, but essentially my next steps were as follows. I created roughly 8-10 different sets inspired by various Roman/Greek motifs which served as the basis for the idea of a fraternity. I placed the character in each of these sets and played around with some minimal animation to hold interest. I think the biggest character in this music video is the camera. People often forget how important camera movement is to any type of visual piece, and in this case I think it was pivotal to the success of this project. Good camera movement that can flow well into the next scene not only saves you time, but also makes tiny productions look way bigger than they actually are. After setting up each scene, I rendered and exported each as an image sequence and composited them together using a mix of Adobe Premiere and After Effects. The project was full of late nights and mental challenges, but it’s definitely one of the pieces I’m most proud of.