Creating Motion Graphics

As expected, NAB 2008 did not reveal any major new software releases for motion graphic designers, but it did showcase a number of interesting new plug-ins. We’d like to give you a quick round-up of our favorites here; we’re arranging to give many of these more in-depth reviews up here on PVC over the next several months. We also were very interested in with what The Foundry has done with the high-end compositing application Nuke (which they acquired from Digital Domain), and came away with the impression that in this slow economy, training has become more important again.

The American Film Institute (AFI) has just launched a beta version of a new website dedicated to teen filmmakers: ScreenNation. To quote from their About page:

AFI ScreenNation is an online video posting-and-sharing community from the AFI Screen Education Center, targeted at middle- and high-school students.

Young people aged 13-18 produce and post their own videos, made in the classroom, in clubs and after-school programs, and beyond. Links for these videos will be posted all over the web, including social network pages, blogs, websites, emails and instant messages. AFI ScreenNation users can browse and view, forward, rate and tag and post comments.

AFI ScreenNation will showcase work produced by students in classrooms utilizing the AFI Screen Education filmmaking process, proven to help kids master core curriculum subjects, excel in 21st Century skills, and learn how to learn. In addition, the site launched with videos posted by students involved with a host of featured partner programs, organizations, schools, districts and festivals --- a veritable portal for video as a tool for learning and personal expression.

The site will include tutorials and video challenges in addition to content from teenage filmmakers.

It is easy to think this is just a late attempt by an old-media stalwart to act hip, but in reality, AFI has been on the cutting edge of technology for ages. When QuickTime 1.0 came into being, Sony and Apple helped form the Advanced Technology Program at AFI Hollywood, which is where the two of us were originally introduced into this field. Their “The Cutting Edge” salons hosted by Scott Billups is where we learned techniques and formed our chops, and was the inspiration for Motion Graphics Los Angeles (MGLA). Lately, they’ve been the host of an interactive media incubator which has been very active, the Digital Content Lab. And there’s nothing like having “AFI” on your resume inside Hollywood. So if you know (or are!) a teenage aspiring filmmaker, hook them up.

We have long been fans of Cinema 4D as a 3D package for motion graphics artists, both for its feature set (including the powerful MoGraph module) and its very tight integration with After Effects. We focused on this integration in Chapter 38 of Creating Motion Graphics 4th Edition (an excerpt from that chapter can be downloaded here ).

Last year Adobe and Maxon did a joint tour touting this integration. They had so much fun, they’’re doing it again this year. The first event was at the January 2008 DMA/LA meeting; the tour proper kicks off February 26 in San Francisco - see the full list of cities and dates below.

Sorry for the blatant plug, but there’s a payoff: A free week of as much online video training as you can watch!

We’ve been getting into creating online video training, focusing on specific topics and techniques rather than creating long-form courses (that’s what our books are for). Our current titles are available either pay-as-you-go through Toolfarm or to subscribers of the Lynda.com Online Training Library.

If you’re not currently a Lynda.com subscriber, and are curious to check them out before signing up, you can try them out for free for seven days by clicking here. Feel free to pass this link around. In addition to After Effects, they offer training on a variety of 3D, DVD authoring, NLE, and business applications - even tutorials on operating systems.

For those who are considering creating their own tutorials that they’d like to make money off of, we’ve been testing the waters for the past year trying out a couple pay-as-you-go services in addition to Lynda.com’s subscription model, and - with all due respect to the excellent folks at Toolfarm and other places - Lynda.com has been the hands-down winner from the content creator side. We’ve found them to be a great company to work with, and we plan to be doing a lot more with them in the future. We’ll keep you apprised as we release more titles, or if our opinion changes.