animation Company Logo

[Max Zyrix]

Hai peeps!
What I'm posting is an animation I'm doing for my own company's logo. It's a small company I'm starting with a friend as an associate and I took the initiative of animating its logo. This is still a WIP, but I'll let you peeps give me some advice and feedback on it so far. I'm also including a pic of the frame where the whole logo is completely visible, in the original size the animation is rendered (I heavily compressed the avi in order to upload it here without too much trouble).

Some specs: The animation is rendered with motion blur (configured to cover 12 frames of length), it uses video post effects such as Glow and Lens Flare, and volumetric lightning and a bit of particles systems (at the very beginning).

So, is there something you peeps can think of I could work on with it?

[Doofus]

Excellent job. The only things I can suggest is that the point where the whole logo is on screen should hold for a little. At the moment the actual time where you get to see the whole logo at once is just a fraction of a second. I had to play it a few times before I could piece it all together in my head.
Also I think the darker close up parts could maybe pan faster to accentuate the motion blur and also to get to the most important part quicker. The money shot (see above).
I think the sound will be fairly important with this type of logo too.

[Max Zyrix]

I was thinking exactly that. I should compress the time it takes the cam to pan away from the logo (while it gets illuminated) and make it last longer on the take of the logo itself.

Ummm... any particular ideas for the sound? I'm really clueless in that area.

[chickentech]

thats a great video for your logo. for the sound, humm, it sort of depends on what your company does. if its for some sort of media i would go with a really impresive sound of it swooshing by and maybe throw in some sparks and a big pound on metal sound. Sort of like many of these cool logos you see when you start a game, like halo or something. or just put some realy cool music to it and keep the sound fx to a min.

[Jelmer]

pretty nice, i like the lighting a lot which is important i think, as doofus already said, try to focus on the part showing the whole logo a bit more, i don't know a lot about sounds i'm afraid...

One thing i would change myself was the way you end it, now you zoom the camera into a black area, maybe it would be nice to increase the brightness of the light there and add some glow so it fades to white instead?

[Max Zyrix]

Thanx a lot to everyone who replied!
So, following the suggestions given here, I made the camera move around less and made it stay focused on the logo itself for longer. I also made the whole animation 100 frames shorter (so it moves faster after the initial 'explosion'). I made some changes on the glowing and configuration of the particle system on the start of the animation and, just for the kicks, added a depth-of-field effect (but I don't really like how it turned out and it'll be gone on future renders).

@Jelmer: I'm still working on the fading to white you suggested.

To view the new render of the animation, check this link.

So, what do you guys think of it now? What else could I be missing? This animation will be checked by my business associate as well, so it may undergo some changes in the near future.

Also, one last thing. I tried playing around with the 'Wind Strenght' parameter for the volumetric light, but it did nothing. I read on the help files that the value there is directly related to the value on another field (I forgot what's the name of it >_< ) so I played around with those values but I never got any results at all. The volumetric effect kept still no mather what I did. The question is: What's the proper usage of those fields to give the volumetric light some animation? (have the fog 'blobs' drift around and, maybe, change their shape over time).

Thanx in advance for any C&C, suggestions and advice!