Tuesday, November 12, 2013

How to Go Viral on YouTube - Anton Alfimenko shows how it's done


Anton Alfimenko is one of our talented freshmen students here at Bucks, having come all the way from Kazakhstan to study on our new Animation and Visual Effects course.

Anton impressed us at all his interview last Spring, for which we used Skype to reach him in distant Almaty. One of the most impressive parts of his digital portfolio was a short film he made titled "Super Fergie", a Nintendo games parody starring a digital Sir Alex Ferguson as a cartoon character winning endless football competitions and prizes. Needless to say, Anton is a huge Manchester United fan.

The film is very well done, executed in Photoshop and After Effects and it matches perfectly the style of retro video games like Super Mario. And, amazingly, the film has had almost 300,000 hits at YouTube - not bad for a first-time film-maker.



Anton describes Super Fergie as his "first real animation video" - which makes it all the more impressive.

So, what made him do it? Anton made the video after Sir Alex Ferguson earlier this year. He searched YouTube for different styles of videos, and eventually he got the idea to put Sir Alex in a Super Mario style animated video.

Next, he researched the motion of Mario, to get all the tiny details just right. Making the film took about 3 weeks - "and the animation was the hardest part". He did walk cycles, and then animated Sir Alex through the whole environment.

Anton got great feedback, and was surprised by the huge response. He even got interviewed on Norwegian TV.

---Alex

(Editor's Note: For more excellent work done by our students here at Bucks, check out our latest commercial project for Rocketseed, our short film done for a global aid agency, and take a look at the excellent work of some of our recent graduates, such as Monika Dzikowicz, Krsytof Michalski, Alex Whitfield and Mike Swan. )

No comments:

Post a Comment