PORTFOLIO NATHAN VAN KAN
Who am I?
Hi! My name is Nathan van Kan, I'm 23 years old and I live in Utrecht, the Netherlands.
In the summer of 2021 I graduated in Communication and Multimedia Design at Avans University of Applied sciences in 's-Hertogenbosch. Shortly after I started freelancing as a Music Producer and Multimedia Designer. My biggest passion is working on music, video's and audiovisual productions. Besides that I love making all sorts of creative designs, animations and photo's.
On this portfolio website you will find a collection of my best work from the past 5+ years
and some of the stories behind my work.
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Music & audio production
Since I was 4 years old I have been inspired by music. I started playing violin at the age of 4. Around the age of 16 I got inspired by electronic music and since then I have been producing music and audio for all kinds of purposes and occasions. In 2017 I did a pre-course for the rockacademie where I got classes in music production and music theory.
I also met a dutch rapper named Jelle Verse during that course and since then I've been the main producer of Jelle Verse, having produced his whole debut album as well as over 10 other songs. Besides producing for Jelle Verse I love to produce all sorts of electronic music. In januari 2020 I started a new artist brand for myself called 'NXTHING', where I focus on creating innovative electronic dance music. Besides this I've also produced audio for other project such as a festival trailer, various commercials and for an audio visual experience for 'de cultuurnacht 2016' in Breda. I use Ableton Live 10 and Logic pro X to produce my music.
My hiphop/urban productions
These are some of the most recent productions I have made for Jelle Verse.
When I started working with Jelle had no experience in producing urban & hip hop beats, I only made dance music. The first beats I made for him had a lot of dance influences but it worked well and had something new and refreshing. You can still hear a lot of influence from dance genres in the beats I make for him today, it's something that makes our music stand out from other artists.
My 'NXTHING' productions
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With my artist brand 'NXTHING' I like to experiment with different genres and i'm trying to find my own sound within electronic dance music. So far i'm doing everything myself. Making the music of course, but I also create my cover art, logo's and promotional content myself. Most of the music is still unreleased on Soundcloud as of now, but I plan to officially release some of my songs in the near future on Spotify and other streaming platforms.
Dreamvillage 2018 Fesival trailer
In the summer of 2018 I got the opportunity to compose music for the trailer of DreamVillage festival 2018. I worked together with Stagekings, a company that focusses on stagedesign, decoration and organisation of festivals. The footage and editing of this trailer was all done by others, I only worked on the music for this trailer. Till this date this is one of the biggest projects i've worked on and one that i'm very proud of still.
Sound Design & Audio Visual Design
Projects where I can combine audio and video some are my favorite projects to work on. In these projects I tend to merely focus on the audio / sound design aspect, but I also love to shoot and edit some video's every now and then. One of my favorite things to do is giving more meaning and emotion to a video by producing music / audio that perfectly matches the video footage.
Sock&Sock commercial
In the summer of 2020 I got asked to compose music for a social media commercial by Sock&Sock. I composed a happy uplifting tune with a bit of an old school vibe to it.
I'm very happy with how the music & audio turned out and how it matches with the video.
Kan Creations
promotion video
Recently my older brother started his own company called KAN Creations. He wanted to create a promotion video to show some of his work and to introduce his company and his abilties as a designer. He asked me to create an euphoric musical composition. After a lot of versions and matching the music to the video and adding sound FX we were both very statisfied with the result.
NOVA CULTUURNACHT
In the eind of 2016 I got the honor of composing the sound for NOVA, an audiovisual installation at the Cultuurnacht in Breda. NOVA is a huge installation of big interactive balls that lighted up by shining at them with flashlights. I produced sounds that would play every time a ball was lightened. After a few minutes the balls would start lighting up on their own more and eventually the visitors would have no control over the light in the balls anymore. NOVA represented a universe and wanted to show it's visitors how small we actually are in this universe. Towards the end of the light show the music got more intense and built up to a big bang "the explosion of the universe" which marked the end of the light show.
Video & Animation
During my Communication and Multimedia Design study I developed my passion for making video's and animations. Especially during my graduation project at One50 and my intership at Sprinklr learned a lot about videography, video editing and animation. Below you'll find some of my favorite video's and animations I created over the past few years.
ONE50 LOGO ANIMATIONS
During my graduation project at One50 I worked on the brand identity of One50 within their video content.
I created a One50 Logo animation to be played at the end of all their video's and a logo wipe animation to be played within different sections of the video's. Both of these video's show a short but powerfull animation of the One50 logo.
ONE50 COMMERCIALS
I created two commercials for One50 during my graduation project. One to promote One50 itself and another one that focusses specifically on the ONE50 fitness challenge. The goal of these commercials was to show ONE50's potential audience what people can expect from One50 as a company and what people can expect from the One50 challenge. I learned a lot of new editing skills and text animations while working on these video's and I'm very happy with how they turned out.
ONE50 HOME WORKOUT VIDEO'S
During my graduation project for One50 I filmed and edited 4 different workout video's with a live hardstyle DJ and an instructor. These workouts were all part of the One50 fitness challenge. I learned a lot from filming and editing these video's and the reactions from the challenge participants were very positive.
Plantcare animation series
(Sprinklr)
In the video slider below you can view the series of short animated video's I made for Sprinklr.
One of Sprinklr's missions is to make sure the customers who buy their plants take good care of their plants. They often get questions about plant-problems or plant disease so I started a project to make short, informative video's with some humor in them to make it easy for customers to recognize their plant-problems and to solve them as well. Besides the information about plant diseases I was given by colleagues, I did everything in this project myself. From concepting to photography to editing and animating and also adding the music and sound effects. For me this was a really fun project to work on because I had a lot of freedom in it and I was able to express a lot of creativity in creating it.
Visual Design
During my study in Communication and Multimedia Design, visual design was almost a daily practise for me. Although I was primarily focussing on videography and audio visual design I also learned a lot about visual design and I also used visual design it a lot while creating video's and animations. During both my internships I also created quite a lot of designs, mostly for brand identity, promotion and social media content.
ONE50
Visual Designs
During my internship at One50 I made a lot of visual designs. I designed a visual style for the fitness challenge I worked on and also made a lot of designs for challenge content and promotional content for social media.
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On the left you'll see some designs I made using the visual style I created for the One50 challenge. These are two Emblems I created for the One50 challenge and the One50 alumni challenge and a thumbnail I created for one of the workouts within the challenge. All designs give out a clear message about what to expect visually and textually while staying clean and within the same visual style.
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Photography
I have had a passion for photography since I was 7 or 8 years old. At that age I got my brothers old digital camera which I started experimenting with. On vacations or trips I often took it with me and took lots of photo's of nature, landscapes and animals. When I was 14 years old I saved up for a Canon D1100 SLR Camera which allowed me to take even better pictures. I loved photographing nature and animals and I even won 2nd price on a young nature Photographers contest when I was 11 years old. Below this section you will see some of the favorite photo's I made in the past 10+ years.
In Iceland I went to a beach where pieces of ice float into the ocean and wash up on the shore, I took this close up photo of a piece of ice laying on the black sand of the beach
I was lukcy to see the fagradalsfjall eruption in Iceland at night and this is one of my favorite pictures I took there
This photo was taken in Thailand of a sleeping baby monkey resting by his mother.
I photographed this baby in Thailand at a family where we were guests for one day. He had such a deep and inspiring look in his eye. This is my favorite portrait picture I ever took.
For a school project I called "Life through a glass ball" I made about 100 pictures of a lot of different things through a glass ball. This gave a really cool effect and showed a lot of usual objects in a very special way.
This action photo of a lizard attacking a cat is one of my favorite pictures ever. It was taken on the streets in Ao Nang -Thailand.
For a school project I called "Life through a glass ball" I made about 100 pictures of a lot of different things through a glass ball. This gave a really cool effect and showed a lot of usual objects in a very special way.
Flower closeup in Iceland
For a school project I called "Life through a glass ball" I made about 100 pictures of a lot of different things through a glass ball. This gave a really cool effect and showed a lot of usual objects in a very special way.