On December 11, 2018, The Smithsonian Institute and the National Cathedral partnered to present The Spirit of Apollo, a 50th anniversary celebration of the Apollo 8 mission. For the event, I had the distinct honor of directing an animated piece of the Cathedral's stained glass Space Window. In many ways, the window represents the harmony of science and faith, and I wanted the animation to convey that concept. The idea was to show the window slowly glowing to life, the bits of stained glass blossoming as planets appear within the frame, a reference to both the Big Bang and the creation story of Genesis. What starts in darkness, ends with radiating light; faith amidst doubt, enlightenment amidst ignorance.
A more detailed write up can be found here: https://www.behance.net/gallery/74363013/The-Spirit-of-Apollo?
Super fun project for the National Cathedral's Lego model fundraiser. People who donated to the fundraiser were able to add a set amount of bricks to a Lego model of the cathedral itself. I was responsible for creating a video to share on social to raise awareness of the fundraiser. My goal was to not just make something visually interesting and inspiring, but also tell the story of the fundraiser itself: thousands of people coming together to create something beautiful, just like each tiny piece in the animation snaps together to form a glowing rose window.
Making this happen meant I needed to grab raw .ldr files of the bricks, and then convert them to a usable .3ds format, setting up instance objects in Cinema 4D for every unique brick type to improve performance. After hand animating each piece, I worked on the compositing in After effects for the finished project. It was all rendered using Octane, which is an amazing solution for the realism that I was going for.
As a lifelong fan of Lego, this project is one of my favorites to this day. The build is still going, and you can check out progress here: https://cathedral.org/discover/lego-cathedral/
Special thanks to The Chicken (www.thechicken.net) for the beautiful music and tactile clicky sound design.
You can't go to Blendfest without being struck by the need to create.
Quick bit in celebration of another amazing year. Sound by thechicken.net
“Each cipherglyph would take a tremendous amount of processing power, tying up an entire workstation. Those who were desperate enough would daisychain office machines together in secret to run after their neighboring of cubicles vacated.
The encryptions ran through the buzzing night for hours on end, greeted by cold footsteps and hurried, sweaty hands; their plugs pulled before the morning shift arrived.
These obsolete ciphers and encryptions still run, decades later, in scantly lit rooms, lost in the basements of yesteryear.”
A short animation for 2018’s Summer Loops, hosted by Duke & The Duck. Summer loops was a collaboration to represent summer through animated loops. For me, that's fireworks and fireflies on a warm summer evening at the DC Arboretum.
Music by Joe Basile of The Chicken https://www.thechicken.net/
A collection of animated birds for Steam’s Point Shop to celebrate the biggest games of 2020.
Artwork by Eric Nyffeler (https://ericnyffeler.bigcartel.com/)
An animated explainer video made for Service Year’s latest venture, Service + Tech. Service + Tech is a new program for recent college grads that teach tech skills and provide hands-on tech experience during their service year.
Sound Design and Music by Joe Basile (www.thechicken.net)
Ubiquity 6 is a tech company working on developing aumented reality for massively multiplayer, persistent applications. They aim to unlock new ways for people to interact with each other and the world around them, using their smartphones.
Ubiquity 6 reached out to me to help them develop isometric vignettes to display on their website. Using their brand colors and lovable, low-poly bunny mascot, we developed quick looping animations to illustrate their core concepts in a playful way.
Ever have one of those days?
A collection of cube animations, mostly created while on travel.
Mix of low poly and high poly design.
I've been doodling patterns like this in my notebooks since high school-- first time actually animating them.
Music by Doyle Maurer: doylemaurer.com
This was actually made before 2020 to celebrate the new year, but after having survived the year, i recommend you take this more sarcastically.
Below are some bonus behind-the-scenes shots.
Frames of Fear returned in 2018-- this time with a theme of 'Trick'. The only trick better than the ol' snake-in-a-can-of-peanuts is a massive basilisk in a halloween bucket.
Spooky song and creepy sounds by Joe Basile (https://www.thechicken.net/)
DC Motion Co’s Frames of Fear is back again in 2019, this time with a Monster Mash theme. Animators submitted different guests at a Halloween monster party.
Sometimes you’re not that social and you get stuck at a party with someone you you really, really don’t like.
A collection of looping animations made with Huge Inc. for Eli Lilly. These soothing loops are used to aid patients in clearing their mind and for meditating.
Once-Predator, now prey... becomes predator once again.
Or:
You can take the meat out of the bull, but you can’t take the bull out of the… meat?
Anyway, music by Peter Kerr: https://soundcloud.com/kephas-1
I’m a sucker for heavy line work in design. Here’s a few of my faves.
Nothing like sitting in front of a toasty fire once the weather starts getting cold.
A little Yule Log for the Christmas season. Happy Holidays!
Don't know what this thing is, but I had fun making it. A spinoff of my 9 squares animation.
For what it's worth, I don't even like peaches.
Explainer animation for Singapore Exchange’s Daily Leverage Certificates. Made in collaboration with the guy awesome team over at Thinkmojo.
Client: Singapore Exchange
Studio: Thinkmojo
Director: Andrew Embury
Designer: Ron Ferree
Animation: Mike Mirandi + Andrew Embury
Script: Brendan Carty
Music & Sound: Daruma Audio
Took the ol’ Rough Animator out for a spin, was not disappointed.
Neither was this guy.
My submission for Duke and the Duck's Frames of Fear Haloween collaboration. Each artist animated a fear of theirs for Halloween... like the uncomfortable feeling I get around large bodies of still, dark water.
Music by doylemaurer.com/
Check out others as they’re added over the next few days at frames-of-fear.com.
Back in the day, there was this awesome collaborative animation project called 9 Squares, where once a month, 9 different animators would create a looping animation that would be put in a video mosaic on Tumblr. This is my entry.
The full mosaic: 9-squares.tumblr.com/image/126996764385
And 9 Squares itself: 9-squares.tumblr.com.
Some work for the guys over at Thinkmojo for Samsung’s new Quantum Dot technology.
Client: Forbes & Samsung
Studio: Thinkmojo
Director: Sebastien Lhomme
Designer: Adrien Kulig
Animation: Sebastien Lhomme, Mike Mirandi
Script: Brendan Carty
Music & Sound: Daruma Audio
One of my old projects from Booz Allen, highlighting their DEXI products that allow for personalization over a variety of applications.
The ol’ Dribbble logo, bouncin’ away.
You ever stare at a digital clock when you can’t sleep and start to….. see things?
Yeah, I do too.
I was part of a great collection of animated loops curated by Jerry Liu— Back to Bits, a celebration of the games of our youth. I chose Chrono Trigger, one of my faves. I wanted to take the low frame rate animate sprites and update them with a more modern approach— the specific animations are of Crono and Frog’s Critical hits.
Check out the rest here: https://www.backtobits.com/#/
One of my old projects from Booz Allen, for the Tennessee Valley authority’s privacy program,
Animation of the biblical gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh for the Art of Advent, an Advent Calendar for each day of December.
Advocacy explainer for National Crop Insurance Services explaining the importance of crop insurance and where voters stand on the issue..
Animation for the Consulting challenges for Booz Allen's Summer Games. The Summer Games are an internship program for college students. Over the course of the summer, teams compete to find the best solutions to real-world problems.
Bit left on the cutting room floor tht was highlighting the use of voice activation in an app
Intro animation for Booz Allen's Summer Games. The Summer Games are an internship program for college students. Over the course of the summer, teams compete to find the best solutions to real-world problems.
Ball on a wire…. or two. Or three.
A wise-men style Christmas star.
Explainer animation for Singapore Exchange’s Daily Leverage Certificates. Made in collaboration with the guy awesome team over at Thinkmojo.
Client: Singapore Exchange
Studio: Thinkmojo
Director: Andrew Embury
Designer: Ron Ferree
Animation: Mike Mirandi + Andrew Embury
Script: Brendan Carty
Music & Sound: Daruma Audio
Animated promo GIF for King & Union’s Avalon product.
Lock it up!
A quick exploration in abstract 3D just for fun.
Animation for Humana showing the range of services they assist with-- from medication to meditation.
A bunch of springs animated for an education video about physics.
Off to the stars…
A quick exploration in abstract 3D just for fun.
Quick animation of a heart and a star.
Cartoon rocket blasting off into cartoon outer space.
A member of the wonderful world of microbes.
Animated image for our wedding website in 2018
Just flowing through all kinds of different modern workspaces.
The ol’ Dribbble logo, bouncin’ away.
Just flowing through all kinds of different modern workspaces.
A little piece of a larger group collaboration.
Some of the lighting work I did on The Ottoman, a diesel-punk style short film, taking place in an alternate reality ottoman empire.
Video made for Booz Allen's data science team to showcase the work they've been doing for major league sports franchises.
We’ve all been there.
Some animated bits explaining the importance of UX/UI design when building apps for disaster relief.
