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Tools of the Trade: Product Animations by Tom Murray

By Ray Hu - August 27, 2012

in Flotspotting | Hand Tools

Just as digital rendering is the evolution of drafting, CG animation might be considered as the next step up. Tom Murray of Columbus, OH, a Senior PRoduct Designer at Design Central, also publishes his rendering and animation work on his portfolio site, StudioClues. He's in the enviable position of designing the very products that makers are most familiar with: tools. I'm not familiar with Bunkspeed Move myself, but the results add a bit of dimension (pun intended) to the renderings.

Exploded views are great; an exploding view is even better...

Astute readers might recall that we recently posted about Black & Decker's forthcoming multitool; as commenter Dan Matarazzo pointed out, the model in the video below is currently available).

While the individual animations are appropriately short and sweet, Murray's sizzle reel seems just a tad repetitive.

See more at his Corefolio and StudioClues.com.

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Tom

12 years ago

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All the comments are good. I do not claim to be a cinematographer though. Animations are increasingly being useful in product design to help illustrate the concept or idea. I would love to learn finer points of this craft, but I am focused on animation as a supplement to the design process. It is another tool similar to sketching is.

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C Blanl

12 years ago

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Max you seem to take a direct crit a little too personal. Why would you use the excuse that he's a product designer so he doesn't have to learn how to utilize the most out of medium that he has chosen? That would be like saying if someone took a bad photo of their product, "oh it's cool he's not a photographer, it doesn't need to be that good."

Sean you wouldn't need to spend "hours and hours on each", just slightly tweak the time that certain actions take and put slight pauses between them, and change the movement of the camera slightly.

Animations are a means of visual communication just as a sketch or model is, and just like those the little things do make a big difference.
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Sean

12 years ago

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Agree with Max. The purpose of these animations was probably to explain to a client or marketing how the product functions or is assembled with a simple quick video. I am sure he could have spent hours and hours on each, but the point is to communicate quickly like most product designers are tasked to do. Nicely done Tom! I also use Bunkspeed and it is a great program that is quick to learn.
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Max

12 years ago

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Hey Blanl, he's a product designer not a cinematographer. He's just showing the benefits of a video assembly, not trying to win at the next sundance. If you want to swish a video around in your mouth and spit it out with a smug comment, you're at the wrong website.
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C Blanl

12 years ago

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Tom you might want to take some cinema and animation classes or really research/ study some good movies for how and why their shots are composed the way they are and why they have the movements they do.

A lot of your stuff is too fast, for example when the power screwdriver's case comes open it almost starts closing the instant that the case hits the apex of it's movement. Also very odd/ poor composition on some, for example in the multitool animation there is almost 2 seconds of not being able to see the main body on the tool when the sander head goes on.

That teaser vid is WAY too fast and busy, almost to the point I wouldn't show it to a friend who had epilepsy.
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Tom Murray

12 years ago

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Thanks. I used Bunkspeed Move for the animations. It is fairly low cost, has a low learning curve, and works well for product animation. For post processing, Adobe After Effects was used. It is a great piece of motion graphic software.
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Bobby Parker

12 years ago

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WOW... great work! Can you share with us, the software you use? You are talented!
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