It’s not often that a small project can turn into a big break, but if you work on your craft everyday like graphic designer Mike Winkelmann has, you just might get to work with big name musicians like Flying Lotus, deadmau5, Tiësto and Zedd. Inspired by a fellow artist in May 2007, Mike set out to create a new piece of art every day – aptly named “Everydays” – for his website Beeple, an online wonderland filled with what he calls “art crap” (and for the record, we disagree). Today, Mike has over 3,000 days worth of art up on his website, not to mention a bunch of new skills on his resume.
“I started out doing drawings with paper and pencil, but I saw that the ‘Everydays’ were a good way to learn new skills,” Mike says. “I wanted to learn about digital photography and Adobe Illustrator, so I started doing more of that, and somewhere along the way, I taught myself how to use CINEMA 4D.”
CINEMA 4D is a 3D modeling and animation package. With it, Mike is able to model characters or scenes and incorporate them into short videos, a medium which he has become particularly good at. So good, his films have been screened at onedotzero, Prix Ars Electronica, the Sydney Biennale and other festivals. But before Mike could teach himself how to use CINEMA 4D, he first had to discover his passion for video.
Mike’s fascination began in college after goofing around on a couple of short films with his friends; he found that he really enjoyed postproduction work. His personal style led him to the abstract, weird, 3D-animation-type projects that were more computer-oriented as opposed to live action. Learning how to use CINEMA 4D through his “Everyday” creations and short videos proved to be invaluable. His work began to take on a unique look that caught people’s attention – and not just anyone.
When Mike began releasing VJ clips about five years ago, or source material in the public domain for other motion graphics designers to use, it became one of his primary projects alongside his “Everydays” and short videos. His VJ clips are short – 10 to 30-second long pieces of video that anyone can download and use for any project, commercial or non-commercial. If Mike had been on the map before, his VJ clips put him in Times Square.
“People started finding me through the internet and asking me to make customized VJ clips,” he says. “They were like, ‘Okay, look. The free clips are cool but we’d rather have something that’s a little more branded toward us.’ That’s how some of the bigger artists found me.”
Enter chart-topping electronic artists like Skrillex, Avicii, Taio Cruz and many, many more. When Mike started getting calls from big stars wanting customized Beeple graphics for their shows and music videos, he got to break out the big guns. Although he still keeps up with his personal creative work (when Mike says “everyday,” he means it), much of his time is now spent on these larger projects. And because time is hard to come by, Mike swears by Red Giant plugins to push quality content out faster.
Going 3D with FlyLo
Mike uses a number of tools to get the perfect look, and many times, working in post is his chance to let his creative juices flow. For his videos, he says that he can get 80% of the way there in CINEMA 4D, but because it is so time consuming to tweak, process the file and re-tweak, he tends to do the last 20% in After Effects using Red Giant plugins.
Red Giant’s Magic Bullet Looks is one of Mike’s favorite plugins to give footage that final touch it needs to be truly great. He benefits from all of its options and presets, and he likes working off of them to create his own presets, which he saves for later projects. This way he can quickly scan the list and see if one of his presets would be perfect for upping the look of his graphics to the next level.
“The interface is super simple,” he says. “That’s one of the reasons I like it so much. It offers many different looks, and now I actually use it quite a bit in Photoshop to do post stuff on my ‘Everydays’ because it’s such a powerful and intuitive tool.”
A simple interface in post color correction gives Mike a lot more time to work on the graphics in CINEMA 4D. That way, he can use color to emphasize a graphic rather than overwhelm it. For EDM artist Flying Lotus’s song “Kill Your Co-Workers,” Mike created a music video that put his best 3D skills to the test. Color was important to sharpen this project’s visuals, giving it an enchanting effect that pulls the viewer into the graphical world of make-believe.
“Everything you see in 3D has been through Magic Bullet color production in After Effects,” he says. “Everybody does post color correction, and among those people using After Effects, almost everyone uses Magic Bullet Looks and other Red Giant plugins. As soon as you start using AE, you’ll run into Red Giant plugins because they’re extremely popular. They’re so engrained in how I use AE now that sometimes I forget they’re even plugins.”
Of Trapcode Particular, Red Giant’s organic 3D particle generator, Mike says there is no substitute. For example, he uses it when he is doing a fly-through in an environment. Usually, he will draw out the basic geometry in CINEMA 4D and then take it into After Effects, using Trapcode Particular to perfect the look of the particles. Because Particles can be tweaked and re-rendered in After Effects a lot faster than in CINEMA 4D, Mike doesn’t have to spend hours rendering video and can cut down an incredible amount of time for an essential look.
Preparing for the Sound Check
Mike loves creating concert visuals, and he enjoys the challenge of creating a unique look and feel for each music genre that will sync up and make a high impact in a live setting. Many times, he has to work with interesting aspect ratios or different requirements depending on how the stage will be set up, so each project is a completely different experience for him. Recently, Mike has been hard at work on Russian-German DJ Zedd’s upcoming fall tour promoting his newest album. He even got to listen to the fresher than fresh tracks from Zedd before its release date, allowing him to conceive the perfect graphics to parallel the beats.
“We’re building all these worlds for the tour, and I don’t think there’s a single clip that I didn’t use Magic Bullet Looks on to do color correction, if not other Red Giant plugins as well,” Mike says. “In a huge portion of them I use Particular for particle effects, as well as Denoiser.”
Because of its ultra fast rendering capabilities, Denoiser is helping Mike more than ever with the video for Zedd’s tour. Typically, it can take ages to render even a second of footage – just one seven-second clip can take four or five days to process on a computer. For a project like this, rendering alone could take weeks.
“The longer I render clips out of CINEMA 4D, the less noisy they’ll be in terms of graininess, so it makes it clearer the longer you wait,” Mike says. “Unfortunately, I just don’t have that kind of time. Denoiser is amazing at getting rid of that grain. I’ve used it on the majority of clips so the render times aren’t absolutely crushing.” This allows Mike to cut CINEMA 4D render times shorter, without sacrificing quality of video. “I don’t even know how much time it’s saved me. Not even just days of rendering – it’s been more like weeks.”
When it comes time for Zedd’s tour, the graphics will be so out of this world that the audience will be on a different wavelength altogether. Mike is thankful that he not only has the opportunity to make striking effects with Red Giant plugins, but that he has plenty of time to perfect them, as well.
“I’m such a huge fan of Red Giant products,” Mike says. “They’ve got so many fast, easy-to-use plugins. I’m just a super, super huge fan. I can’t say it enough.”
For more on Mike’s projects, check out his website at http://www.beeple-crap.com/.