Selections from the DVD releases
Illuminated Manuscripts, Ritual Path,
Nature's Journey and other projects
Ritual Path Trailer for the follow up DVD to Illuminated Manuscripts.
Music by Fritz Heede with a guest appearance by Jon Anderson (Yes)
From the Illuminated Manuscripts DVD Images & Animation John S. Banks, Music Fritz Heede.
This is the last piece in the Journey Cycle section. It’s my favorite music on the project. I think Fritz exactly captured the feeling I was looking for in exploring not only places, but different types of memories and experiences of those places.
Nature's Journey Blu-ray trailer.
Original soundtrack by Michael Stearns (Baraka, Samsara).
Processed nature arranged to align with the concepts of The Heroes Journey by Joseph Campbell. I though of nature moving through the same phases as the monomyth.
However, when this was released, that idea was completely overlooked and presented solely as an example of quality encoding in the early days of Blu-ray.
The trailer is a selection of bits from the main section and the eight other animations based on seasons and elements.
From the Ritual Path DVD by John Banks & Fritz Heede
A fantasy journey through dreamlike lands that are a mix of nature and computer graphics. Scenes from travel in New Zealand and England
From the Ritual Path DVD by John Banks & Fritz Heede
HD version of a 4k slowly evolving seamless loop from a recent show at the Pop-Up Museum in Burlington, VT. The scene is meant for ambient play on a 4k screen more than for focused "entertainment". I have found that the ability to look at a 4k screen up close, like we would a computer screen, allows for images that are enjoyed like a photograph or a print. The tree and many aspects of the scene are rendered fractal flames. Composite built in After Effects
HD (4K original) Mandulbulb 3D animation composite with texture and fx. I have taken to likening this process to searching through a forest as a photographer, but in this case we are searching the forest of math. I'm looking to create slowly evolving digital imagery for home atmospheres. View on Vimeo for HD
Rendered environment created in Vue. Just making a peaceful space. This is just a segment of a longer loop. Michael Sterns made a beautiful piece of music but I don’t have a version with the audio anymore.
Free flowing experimental After Effects piece created with composer Noa Winter Lazerus. Featured on the Ritual Path DVD. I started with a flower and kept working around the center and building out and on top of it with particles, electricity and fractal flames. This was made as a bonus piece and has a kind of kitchen sink approach to the layering. There are some 3d Knots created with Knotplot and rendered in Cinema 4D.
Filmed in one day in the woods around the Indiana Dunes, this work strives to visualize all the interior energy and forms that I sense while experiencing the forest at the peak of Fall. I was not thinking this when making it, but it owes a nod to graphic novel techniques for showing energy as light and lines coming off of objects. I try to utilize the technologies in a way that brings out the character of a scene. It's obvious, but I like to visualize that essence that I feel in a place. There is a sense of being inside a cathedral or an old castle when walking deep in the Autumn woods. The addition of those elements reveals this connection to me. The scenes are treated as fluid pieces of a continuum. A side note is that this started as a very ambient piece and I expected my composer pal Fritz Heede to come up with something minimal and peaceful. Instead, Fritz came back and said that the bright color and energy of the scenes made him think back to his flamenco roots. His resulting track pushed me to go back and adorn his guitar playing with new visual flourishes.
This is the middle section of a slowly evolving museum installation that I worked on for the Paschke Foundation and Marc Paschke. The project was to complete two unfinished black & white canvases by celebrated artist Ed Paschke. We chose to create a moving continuum of Ed's styles over the years instead of single images. The installation was on 2 vertically placed HD screens adjacent to the original unfinished paintings. John Manning was the project lead along with Marc. The images I used were a mix of actual Paschke bits (mostly textures) and me trying to emulate his style. I'm pretty familiar with trippy imagery so this was not out of my comfort zone. Making images to represent a truly great artist was way outside of that zone though.
Please see the project page for more details.