Sunday January 20th 2008, 2:18 am
Filed under: On the Road
I’m heading out to Orlando in the morning for the 4Ever Group Video08, I hope to see many of you out there. Don’t miss my seminar on creative DVD techniques Wednesday afternoon. It should be really good for those of you wanting to make cool hoolywood style motion menu’s for your video productions and learn some creative tricks using the entire Adobe Creative Suite.
4Ever Group’s annual conference is always a good time to recharge your batteries with fresh new creative ideas and reconnect with your colleges across the nation. I especially like the closeness of the group, where I feel more of a member than just a number. So if your not planning on coming, it’s not too late
Well, I better head to bed… early flight tomorrow.
See ya!
PS: I snuck out another template to the store, but haven’t announced it yet. Let’s just say, I’m saving up for one big release in the next week or so.
I will be presenting an advanced DVD menu seminar at the upcoming Video08 in January. We’ll walkthrough the whole process from idea to final output using Adobe Encore, Photoshop and, of course, After Effects. Here is the full spiel from the program guide:
Menu Magic
Advanced DVD Authoring and Creativity
Take your DVD productions to the next level by learning advanced and creative authoring techniques! Josh Fozzard will showcase the possibilities for the newest and coolest features for your next DVD’s. Learn the step-by-step process of how to create Hollywood-quality motion backgrounds, first-play videos, and inter-menu motion that immerses the viewer into the DVD experience.
Explore the possibilities of Next Generation HD Blu-Ray formats and delivering your DVD experience to the web. Josh will showcase many samples of his most creative menus, while teaching the many merits of advanced DVD’s. You’ll also discover his techniques for getting ideas and inspiration, how to use storyboards, and how to best use Photoshop and After Effects.
aeMENTALS: Time Remapping is the first in a series of tutorials focusing of the fundamentals of Adobe After Effects. Download this tutorial video and learn how to Time Remap layers and control time with keyframes. You will also learn a special technique for working with video layers while using your favorite AEProjects.com template.
Learn the basics of Time Remapping in After Effects
Create slow/fast motion, freeze frames, and variable motion with keyframes
Control video layers in AEProjects.com templates with amazing ease
Follow along on your computer in this 15 minute downloadable tutorial video
AEProjects.com is proud to announce our newest template, Ring Around - HD.
The Ring Around - HD After Effects template will knock your productions through the roof and blow your clients away in stunning high definition. If you are looking to save money and time yet still produce amazing After Effects projects, this is the template for you. Add your own images/videos to quickly create an amazing video that will impress your clients, speed up your workflow, and increase your profits. Supports up to 32 photos/videos within the template and outputs both HD and SD in NTSC and PAL flavors. Click here to see more at AEProjects.com
NOTE: Fonts and Audio are not included in the template.
If you have ever received this type of error while working with your templates, here is the problem and solution.
By default Adobe After Effects imports a sequentially numbered set of images as a “sequence” or movie where each frame is a separate file. If there is one or more frames missing you will get this error.
The simple solution is to deselect the “Import as Sequence” checkbox in the lower left corner of the replace/import dialog box as seen below. This will allow you to import one single image file.
Wednesday May 30th 2007, 5:41 pm
Filed under: Off the Wall
Google Maps has opened a new door to viewing our world with Street View. Now you can view an area from street level and even interact with it by moving the camera. It is limited right now to 5 cities (San Francisco, New York, Denver, Las Vegas and Miami). I wonder how long it will take them to get the rest of the world?
Saturday May 19th 2007, 11:54 am
Filed under: Off the Wall
I stumbled across this fun little web diversion that lets you draw a character and then it automatically animates into a little dance. Very fun and entertaining, give it a try. Here is my creation: Bender from one of my favorite TV shows, Futurama.
If you make one, be sure to post the link in the comments. My son and I are having fun making them together. Let’s see what you can do!
Over 30 After Effects Presets to quickly and efficiently enhance your images and videos. Get creative with your images by applying many styles including Bleach Bypass, Movie looks, high contrast images and much more. All presets are completely customizable and can be deconstructed to learn how to create your own effects. View the different AELooks presets at AEProjects.com
The Ink Splatter Pack contains 60 After Effects Presets that instantly create high impact ink-shaped masks on any layer in Adobe After Effects. Use these presets to create grungy backgrounds, ink splatters, blood drippings or animate them for stylized compositions. These vector mask shapes can be scaled to any size without loss of resolution.
In addition to the After Effects Presets, you also receive 60 High Resolution Ink Splatter brushes for Adobe Photoshop, which allow you to create amazing designs or grunge border effects. The possibilities are endless with these creative tools.
The Illinois Videographers Association (based in the Chicagoland area) will be hosting the first IVA Midwest Expo on Tuesday, May 15, 2007. I will be presenting a seminar titled “After Effects: Easy, Creative Templates” where we will delve into the creation and usage of re-usable templates in Adobe After Effects.
You can also catch the great presentations of the Pixelpops dudes (Lance Gray and Brian Gunn), Kris Malandruccolo, Keith Kelly, and Chris Chibucos. They are all amazing videographers and have wonderful techniques and ideas for you to learn from. Check out the IVA’s website for more details. http://www.ivavideo.com
Wednesday April 25th 2007, 9:24 am
Filed under: Off the Wall
Now I don’t have a TiVo, but I just stumbled across a new program called One True Media that allows you to create videos and share them with your family and friends straight to their TiVo. The program is still in beta and they allow you to upload 5 videos during this trial. I don’t know how much it will cost when final, but this just goes along with what I was talking about in yesterday’s post about digital delivery.
So if anyone has a TiVo give this a try and let all of us know how it works. This could be a good reason to get a TiVo, imagine having basically your own channel to put all of your video samples or even deliver the final product to client who have TiVO…. Interesting times!
Tuesday April 24th 2007, 11:52 pm
Filed under: General
One of new features that has really caught my attention in the upcoming Adobe Encore CS3 is the ability to output your DVD projects to a webpage with embedded Flash video, complete with all the interactivity of a standard DVD. So basically you create your DVD in Encore and then, in addition to a Blu-ray or DVD, you can output it to a webpage where the user can interact with the video just as if they were watching it in a DVD player. Pretty cool stuff right there! I totally support all these new digital delivery options and think that this is the way of the future. Microsoft is even developing a new software that will allow the playback of HD video in a webpage! (Microsoft Silverlight) Pretty soon all of the format wars of Blu-ray and HD DVD will be a thing of the past because you can distribute your videos on the web in SD or HD.
Speaking of HD and digital delivery, I’ve been playing around with my Xbox 360 and I have discovered that it can stream HD content from your PC to the Xbox 360 and display it on your HDTV!! I have even been backing up my DVDs to my PC and now I can watch them anytime right from the Xbox. I’m telling you this is difinately the way to do it.
I have lots of ideas and products planned from AEProjects.com and would like to get an idea of what you want the most. If there is something not on the poll, just leave a comment with your suggestion.
I downloaded the preview version of After Effects CS3 yesterday and spent a couple hours playing around with the new tools and features. I think Adobe has added some great tools to After Effects and I can’t wait for all the new CS3 releases. I wanted to share a couple quick impressions of my favorite new features in Adobe AE CS3.
My favorite new feature, surprisingly, is the new shapes layer. I know when I first read about it, I was like, “Meh, who cares about shape layers, I can just make a shape with a mask”, but after playing with it I can honestly say, that this is the feature I will use the most often. Basically you can now create a shape layer with embedded effects for stroke, fill, gradients, pucker/bloat, repeater, rounded corners, twist, wiggle, etc and they can all be stacked for endless variety. You can animate any of the properties and change blending modes of individual effects. It has an amazing amount of depth and reminds me of the new text animation engine that was introduced back in AE6. To the right you can see a simple star with several shape effects applied that I created in about 2 minutes.
The next feature that really caught my eye was the ability to create layer styles directly in After Effects, just like Photoshop. Everything from drop shadows, bevels, gradients, glows, strokes, etc. The only layer style missing from Photoshop is Pattern Overlay, although there may be a way to accomplish the same thing. And, of course, you can import PSD files with all the Layer Styles intact and then edit them further in AE.
The third feature that will really help get your creative juices flowing is the new Brainstorm function which allows you to easily preview variations on your animation. Simply select all the properties you would like variations on and After Effecs will randomly generate different versions of those properties. This will work wonders when you get stuck or just need some variations on a certain element. To the left you can see the Brainstorm window with variations on the star animation I created with the shape layer.
The most fun feature is the new Puppet Tool, which easily allows you to give a layer control points to move and distort an image like a puppet. It works brilliantly and has more depth and complexity than I initially thought it would. Even my six-year old son had a blast making an image of Buzz Lightyear dance around the composition.
There is another feature that I was really looking forward to that involves importing Photoshop’s Vanishing Point data as a 3D model into After Effects, but I don’t have Photoshop CS3 yet, so I’ll have to wait to give that a try. That should be really cool and I look forward to trying all of the new CS3 software and experience how Adobe continues to raise the bar with their applications.
I’m heading out to Orlando in the morning for the 4Ever Group Video08, I hope to see many of you out there. Don’t miss my seminar on creative DVD techniques Wednesday afternoon. It should be really good for those of you wanting to make cool hoolywood style motion menu’s for your video productions and learn some creative tricks using the entire Adobe Creative Suite.
The Ink Splatter Pack contains 60 After Effects Presets that instantly create high impact ink-shaped masks on any layer in Adobe After Effects. Use these presets to create grungy backgrounds, ink splatters, blood drippings or animate them for stylized compositions. These vector mask shapes can be scaled to any size without loss of resolution.
One of new features that has really caught my attention in the upcoming Adobe Encore CS3 is the ability to output your DVD projects to a webpage with embedded Flash video, complete with all the interactivity of a standard DVD. So basically you create your DVD in Encore and then, in addition to a Blu-ray or DVD, you can output it to a webpage where the user can interact with the video just as if they were watching it in a DVD player. Pretty cool stuff right there! I totally support all these new digital delivery options and think that this is the way of the future. Microsoft is even developing a new software that will allow the playback of HD video in a webpage! (
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My favorite new feature, surprisingly, is the new shapes layer. I know when I first read about it, I was like, “Meh, who cares about shape layers, I can just make a shape with a mask”, but after playing with it I can honestly say, that this is the feature I will use the most often. Basically you can now create a shape layer with embedded effects for stroke, fill, gradients, pucker/bloat, repeater, rounded corners, twist, wiggle, etc and they can all be stacked for endless variety. You can animate any of the properties and change blending modes of individual effects. It has an amazing amount of depth and reminds me of the new text animation engine that was introduced back in AE6. To the right you can see a simple star with several shape effects applied that I created in about 2 minutes.
The third feature that will really help get your creative juices flowing is the new Brainstorm function which allows you to easily preview variations on your animation. Simply select all the properties you would like variations on and After Effecs will randomly generate different versions of those properties. This will work wonders when you get stuck or just need some variations on a certain element. To the left you can see the Brainstorm window with variations on the star animation I created with the shape layer.