Logos don't tend to move around a lot. They just kind of sit at the top of your site or at the beginning/end of a video. But, why have that, when you could have a motion graphic of your logo instead?!
Here's the logo for our video production company, Media Melt.
It's fantastic, sure. BUT, as you can probably tell, it's not moving... not even a little bit. However, with a little "motion graphic-ing" we can take that still logo and make it do THIS!
Woah! Now that'sa lotta pizazz!
As with the Explainer Video Blog, this process is basically just about moving things in a pleasing-to-the-eye way. Easing is your best friend when making motion graphics. If any movement isn't fluid than it's not going to look good and if it's not going to look good what are you even doing with your life?!
This motion graphic is fairly self explanatory. I had the "Melt" part of Media Melt, melt into shot and then shoot back up into the word.
I also decided to make this a looping motion graphic so in order to do that I had to reset the scene at the end. I did this by having the logo shoot off screen to the right because the motion graphic starts with the M coming on to screen from the left. This helps make the loop more seamless and pleasing to the eyeballs.
Here's an example of a still logo turned motion graphic that doesn't loop.
Still... as the setting sun on a calm autumn ocean. Until!
BAM! So, as incredible and simple as this looks, a lot of thought went into the movement and timing of this motion graphic.
As this is a logo for a building company, I decided that I wanted the words to "build" up. I broke the words up and had them build up separately to emphasise the name of the company. I didn't want them to come up together as I wanted the second word's momentum to shoot the roof part of the logo up and over to it's final position. This just makes the motion more seamless.
You may have noticed I chose to have the chimney come up after the roof had landed and not with the roof from the beginning. This was a small detail but chimneys usually go up through the house and, seeing as this is a building company, I wanted to add something to make the logo look like it was being... built. Having the words at the bottom come up with the chimney just looks good so that's the secret reason behind that creative decision, you're welcome.
There was also a version of this where I had dust and debris shoot up with the words "Build" and "Smart" however, I felt this was a little overkill. You don't want anything in your motion graphic to distract from the overall point, which is the logo for the company looking super cool.
Here's another kind of motion graphic you can do.
So, this one doesn't have the logo move as such, but more the background and the focus are what is animated. For this effect, I've used a 3D camera to focus pull from the background to the foreground (where the Logo's 3D layer was situated.) and then just moved the background up to add a little bit of motion to the focus pull. I've also added a slight flickering glow to the logo but that's neither here nor there.
Now, I've used a 3D camera to achieve this but the same could have been done by just key framing blur to both layers, I just wanted to be all fancy about it.
If you have any questions about motion graphics feel free to leave a comment and I'll do my best to answer your questions.
Cheers
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Media Melt is a Video Production Company based in Dunedin, New Zealand. If you have any enquires about a motion graphic for your company or logo, feel free to contact us here