Exciting times, and the recent rise of Bitcoin, with all the talk about going to the moon inspired me to my first piece with the cryptocurrency as the theme.
I love mechanics. Stories by authors like Jules Verne, Stanisław Lem and the like always inspired me to create my own fantastic vehicles.
This one seemed the perfect fit to haul around a giant bitcoin:
It is based on a drawing made on glass several years ago, so the first task was to "extract" the vehicle from the painting:
Like I said, the original, now in a private collection, is on glass. On the backside to be precise, done in my special Hinterglas technique. I also made the frame with doors you can close... just in case one would get tired of looking at it 😉 This is also a feature I originally used to protect my glass paintings during transport to shows far away. With time the protective aspect became more and more of a decorative element like in this work for instance:
Ok, back to the drawing. I used a scan of the original and in Photoshop I masked off the parts I didn't need. For that I put a layer of solid green underneath it, to see exactly how the elements will get cut out.
The job is quite tedious, particularly when there are many small details to take care of.
The scan wasn't the best, so the drawing needed some cleaning up too. Plus I put certain parts on their own layers for more control. Ok, this is a bit like watching paint dry... and the video is already 6 times faster than the original speed!
For the bitcoin I purchased a file from Adobe Stock and the moon is from Pexels on Pixabay. I reworked both files to match the look of my drawing. Once I had prepared all my pieces, I put them together in Photoshop as usual. Each element on its own layer. The vehicle and the moon also got a thick stroke of orange around them. I also added a drop shadow to the vehicle to bring it forward a bit.
For the background I created a layer with an orangish gold color and added a subtle texture. Once all the elements are prepared and after a final color correction, I put each of them on its own layer and have my file ready to export to After Effects:
The propeller I wanted to be 3d, so I created and animated it in Blender and exported it as a sequence of images to be used in After Effects:
Finally, all the parts were ready to be imported in After Effects to be animated. I created a sort of bumpy ride for my bitcoin transporter, while I made the coin itself and the wheels turn, each at its own speed.
Then I created the smoke to come out from the chimney with the "Particle Playground" effect in After Effects. It can take quite a bit of twitching to get movement and color right.
The background consists of 3 layers woven together to create an upward movement in the upper area.
The fire coming from the little jet in the back was created with the saber plugin.
Once all the parts were playing together nicely, I exported the file as a lossless avi to add the sounds in Adobe Premiere.
There it played back as a perfect loop. But since I wanted to make it a video, not an animated gif, I tested it in several players first. Problem is, that all of them hesitate just a moment before playing the clip again and that tiny break, no matter how short, is very annoying. For me the only solution was to create a clip that starts and ends with a still image and no sound. That way, the interruption is not noticeable.
So, I thought, why not move it all onto a kind of stage and have doors open and close at the beginning and end. I created those doors in Illustrator and Photoshop based on the background of my clip. I left a hole in the middle for the moon, which plays an important role after all. In addition, I made it disappear and come back in a way that resembles the moon phases. Together with the doors opening and closing I had a sort of story line that starts and ends and then starts again without the ugly break.
Back in Premiere I was finally ready to finish the micro movie.
The underlying music was created in garageband, and then I arranged it with some sound files from zapsplat.com. Their library is huge, and it takes quite a while to find what you are looking for, particularly when you have a certain sound in your head. To get exactly what I wanted, I edited some sound files in Adobe Audition and then arranged them on individual tracks in Premiere.
The clip was played countless times for tweaking, rearranging and matching the sounds with the movement of the video track. When everything felt right in the end, I created my final video file, which was then tokenized on Makersplace.
Enjoy the video at https://makersplace.com/reinhardschmid/to-the-moon-1-of-1-43994
I enjoy reading your comments!
❤
If you like my work, of course I appreciate your upvotes and reblogs
See more of my work on BeScouted
My tokenized collectible art at
MakersPlace and Superrare
Videos are linked to YouTube. Please understand, that I can take no responsibility for additional links they provide.
Nicely animated!
Thank you :-)
Suberb job! Really amazing!
Thank you! Your work looks very interesting. Hope to see some here on Hive soon!
As usual incredible piece. It is nice to see that you returned here.
Thanks a lot! With growing skills, particularly in digital work, my style has changed a bit. So, I'm glad you like my new creation :-)
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STOP!discovery 40
Haha, yes :-)
Tolle Sache Reinhard, ein Upvote von mir! Die orginal Hinterglasmalerei gefällt mir natürlich auch sehr!
Eine Frage: nimmst du Acrylglas oder richtiges Glas, ferner, muß es irgendwie beschichtet werden, damit der Graphitstift hällt?
Danke, freut mich sehr. Ich arbeite auf richtigem Glas. Wie es genau geht möchte ich nicht verraten ;-)
Schade, ich dachte, wir sind hier open source.
Naja, ich bekomme es auch anders heraus. Denke in dem Buch von Kurt Wehlte steht was über Hinterglas.
Übrigens, Makersplace ist ne feine Sache, aber die hohen ETH Gebühren verleiden einem den Kunstgenuß: Warum bist du nicht hier auf der Hivechain bei NFT Showroom? Wir haben das Problem hier nicht.
Bin auf mehreren Plattformen für Cryptokunst angemeldet aber ich verbringe viel Zeit mit jedem Stück und muss mich einfach einschränken, wo ich meine NFT anbiete. Bin von Anfang an bei MP dabei und fühle mich dort wohl. Bin es gewohnt, dass ich erst mal insvestieren muß, sei es in einen teuren Rahmen oder für Dienstleistungen einer Galerie...
Muß man bei Makersplace investieren? Wusste ich gar nicht, bei NFT Showroom jedenfalls nicht, wenn man mit Reflink reinkommt.
Was hältst du von Jägers Kronen ExquisitLack? Geht das?
Mit der "Investition" meinte ich die ETH Gebühren die Du angesprochen hattest. Den Lack kenne ich nicht.
Übrigens kenne ich Julia schon sehr lange und sie hat mich gleich am Anfang zu NFT Showroom eingeladen... hab sogar einen Account. Aber eben nichts anzubieten :-(
Gebühren sind keine Investition! Sie gehen dir oder dem Kunden einfach verloren Aufgrund der Fehler im Netzwerk, wofür #Makersplace gar nichts kann!
Es ist Schade, sowas großartiges mit viel Herzblut aufzubauen um dann für die Fehler anderer zu bezahlen.
Das ist #Perlen vor die Säue!
Der Lack wird hier empfohlen, aber jeder andere Klarlack wird wohl auch gehen: https://www.teddys-handarbeiten.de/xhgm-work-grundlagen.htm
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