I spent the day putting together a DVD to be played in the about-to-open Kamloops Children’s Museum. Local artist/designer Vaughn Warren and his team have done an amazing job redesigning a few sections of the Kamloops Archives Museum upstairs, including the Secwepemc First Nations section and the Kamloops Victorian section, and in addition creating the new children’s museum in the basement. A puppet theatre has been made in the basement with a background of clouds painted on the walls. They’ve installed a projector mount from the ceiling and I was asked to provide a background visual DVD with a variety of loops, basically a demo of what might be possible or to get some ideas flowing. So, I dug through a lot of the content that comes with the Motion software by Apple (comes with the Final Cut Studio suite) and pulled out loops for things like potential magic shows or outer-space themed puppet shows, as well as lots of clouds.
I dropped by the museum and took a few photos, some around the puppet space, and then a few shots of the museum floor, which doubles as a game-board (for a fur-trading game) and an area map:

Kamlooops Childrens Museum puppet booth

I also did a set of motion-screensaver type things, animating the museum logo. I really like how it sets up so well for stained-glass-type effects once you start playing with the blend layers. My favorite logo animation is the one where it looks like the logos are spread out like leaves on a tree, and the sun appears to be shining through them.
If you’re passing through Kamloops, be sure to check it out.
My animation skills are pretty minimal, but I did make a simple cloud loop animation which I embedded below. To do this, I created a blue-gradient background in the Motion software, used the bezier tool to draw the hills, give them a radial gradient and a drop-shadow, and then using the bezier-tool, again, drew the clouds. I added a wriggle effect to the clouds to give them the feeling of movement and shifting. Simple stuff, but fun.