Hopkins Happenings » Design Work

A look back. A look forward.

mathagat — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 01:48:32 +0000

A little something from us to you our friends and family.
HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!

2008 is here! Matt and I are eagerly looking into the new year with excitement and anticipation of great things. We already have some wonderful big events on the calendar and know that the rest will quickly fill up.

2007 was a terrific year. Matt and I started the year in California and continued to experience all the state had to offer including an earthquake! We traveled to Southern California in April for a wonderful trip to Disney, LA, and to visit Mattâ€™s cousins. We also made several trips to Napa, and the cities surrounding the Bay Area and one trip to Indianapolis, Indiana to see Mattâ€™s cousins Ryan and Kiley get married. Traveling near and far was a highlight of 2007 that we hope to continue in 2008.

Matt was blessed with many great opportunities through Expression to showcase his work this past year and even win a couple of amazing awards. In addition, we were thrilled to see his work on the big screen when it appeared on MTV, VH1 and now on the NBC network. Matt is now freelancing in Fort Worth, TX with Artworks, an NBC company which creates graphics for NBC affiliate stations and other NBC owned companies.

I also had the opportunity to change my career slightly this past year. When I returned to Texas I shifted from working as a special education teacher to working as a school counselor at the same middle school I attended! Itâ€™s great to work with 11-14 year olds; they bring new challenges each day! I will begin my final semester of grad school this spring and plan to graduate in May. Matt and I are looking forward to a time when neither of us are students!

Half way through 2007 Matt and I also celebrated with my family the birth of our nephew and Godson, Logan. We have had a blast this year watching Morgan, Logan and Emma grow and change. We have enjoyed every minute of 2007 spent with them. In addition, Matt and I celebrated our 1st anniversary in June of 2007. We couldnâ€™t believe we had already been married a year!

So, we close the chapter of 2007 with great memories and look forward to 2008. Of course we have made our resolutions and have grand goals for the New Year but most of all weâ€™re looking forward to all the excitement itâ€™s going to bring. You know weâ€™ll be sharing it all with you here, so keep reading! Until then…

Oh, and if you didn’t click on the link at the top of the post, make sure you do before you leave.

Digital 4.4 & News RAW @ NBC ArtWorks

mathagat — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 22:40:58 +0000

Last week I wrapped up my first major project with ArtWorks, the NBC owned motion graphics company where I am freelancing right now. The project was a redesign and animation package for the online and soon to be on-air channel Digital 4.4 and their headlining news show News RAW. 4.4 is a part of KNBC, the NBC affiliate in Los Angeles.

Here’s NBC ArtWorks web site for more info on where I am:
http://www.nbcartworks.com

Here’s the web site for the News RAW online show:
http://www.knbc.com/newsraw/index.html

Here are the animations. There are 14 of them, so it may take a while to load. Click play and then pause until it has had a chance to load so it doesn’t stop on you.

Atrophy wins Video Makes the Radio Star music video contest!

mathagat — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 19:21:38 +0000

The music video Dean and I created for class a while back was 1 of 5 winners of The Owl Magazine’s contest. You can see the other 4 band’s videos and read a nice write up about it here: http://www.thebaybridged.com/2007/11/08/video-makes-the-radio-star/

With our video being one of the winners, the band got to play a show put on by The Owl Magazine, 7×7, SonicLiving, Pandora, Live 105 (San Francisco rock station) and Gibson. I’ve linked the YouTube version of the video as opposed to a better quality Flash version of my own. This is so it will load up and play faster for you. I figured you wouldn’t mind sacrificing a bit of quality for speed. If you’d like to see a cleaner, crisper version of the video you can check it out on my portfolio site here: http://matthopkins.tv. That one plays pretty fast too.

Another Hole in the Head, oh and I’m finished with school!!!

mathagat — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 02:05:40 +0000

Welp, I’m just wrapping up my last 2 days of school this week. Tonight we presented our campaign for the San Francisco Horror Film Festival, Another Hole in the Head, during the final meeting of the Creative Direction class. It was quite a group we presented in front of. About 30-40 other students, current and former, as well as a bunch of staff memebers from the school. It was a bit nerve-racking as it was an unexpected turnout! Dispite a few nerves, the presentation went great.

Here is the broadcast piece of the campaign. I played the role of Creative Director as well as Lead Animator. This was one of the most fun, and most challanging projects I’ve ever done here at Ex’pression. Enjoy!

Best in the SW

mathagat — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 02:08:04 +0000

Best in the SW

Here are some photos from my AMAZING trip to the Best in the SW – Animation and Motion Graphics conference in Albuquerque, NM a couple of weeks ago. Ex’pression College was so gracious to send myself and 11 other students on the trip. It was such a great educational and eye opening 3 days. What a great way to get motivated and inspired right before diving into my new career!

**Lindsey editing Matt’s entry – Oh and Matt would never tell you but he won an award at the conference!!!! I’m so proud of him and the work that he did. His award was for best movie title sequence. Way to go honey! ILU! ***

SWK 2.0

mathagat — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 16:05:23 +0000

While freelancing at Gunshop in SF I had the opportunity to work on the show package for MTV’s SWK 2.0. They used to have a show back in the day, Say What Karaoke; this is the new version of that show for this Summer.

My credits include rotoscope work on the karaoke singer as well as 2D animation.

Student film title sequence – PB3K

mathagat — Mon, 21 May 2007 00:21:42 +0000

This is the opening title sequence for a student film done by a group here at Ex’pression. The story was about paranoia and the false threat of zombies spawned from a virus.

The music track was created by my former roommate and good friend Ben Sandoval.

This is the poster that I designed for the film.

Motion Graphics II Final Project

mathagat — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 05:17:28 +0000

Last week we wrapped up Motion Graphics II. Our final project assignment was to create a television channel promo for a special event they were having. I chose to do a Mork and Mindy Mondays ad for TV Land. If you love Mork and Mindy, don’t go running to TV Land on Mondays…it’s an imaginary event.

Motion Graphics II Name Assignment

mathagat — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 21:26:04 +0000

This assignment was to create an animation based on our name where you were briefly inside the world of the objects that will eventually come together to form our name as the camera moves out to reveal the name. Think Lego meets Atari.

If the video has trouble playing smoothly from the start, press pause and let it load all the way before pressing play again. My host is “supposedly” working out apparent speed issuses with the servers on their end.

Ad Concepts II Project: Top Chef

mathagat — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 17:43:13 +0000

We did a show package for Bravo’s Top Chef reality show this past term. This video is a compilation of the show open, lower 3rds and bumpers out to and in from commercial that we designed. This was a group project that consisted of myself and 2 other guys from the class.