The Second Revolution in Desktop Video

If you’re reading this blog hoping to learn - with post-humus apologies to Douglas Adams - The Answer to Life, The Universe, and Everything (view on Amazon), I’m afraid we may disappoint you from time to time: We don’t know all of the answers. But sometimes just asking questions is important, because it starts the discussions which eventually lead to the answers.

One question that’s floating around these days is “How the heck do I make money creating video content for the web, such as podcasts?” Indeed, it seems there is more money in teaching podcasting than in podcasting itself!

Motion Graphics concepts demonstrated…on a trampoline.

This isn’t new, but we just stumbled across it, and thought it would provide some comic relief going into the weekend. It’s a live, one-take, in-front-of-an-audience music video (for the song “zZz is playing: Grip”) that is also a demonstration of common motion graphics techniques and video transitions, performed by folks on a trampoline. Ya gotta watch it more than once to pick up all the details, like the musicians on the left and right (the drummer on the left is also the singer), and the person painting the progress bar in real time underneath. Hang around until the end to see that it was indeed in front of an audience.

Financial Advice for Small Businesses

Although you may aspire to be a motion graphics artist - with emphasis on the word “artist” - in reality, you also have to be a businessperson. Many overlook (or knowingly avoid) this little detail when they enter the field.

Today there was an excellent article in the Business section of the Los Angeles Times providing important cash flow tips for small businesses, including topics such as getting money up front, billing, and extending credit to your clients. You can read it here; you may need to register with the site to gain access.

Motion Blur Musings

A fellow user recently asked about problems he was having with motion stutter when slowing down 24p (24 frame per second, progressive scan) footage. This led to a series of musings about using motion blur - including some new options in After Effects CS3 - that we thought would be good to share.

Adobe/MAXON Power Integration Tour

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.

Pardon the Interruption: UPS Musings

We’re having the hardwood floors in the office refinished. They brought in a huge electric sander that didn’t even have a plug; they wired it straight into the circuit breaker panel. Needless to say, every time they turned it on, the lights dimmed.

This brings up the subject of battery backup power for your computer workstations, commonly known as a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply). In short, you should have one on each computer, keeping it and your drives alive when the power blips. You can’t work all day off of them (unless you have a truly huge one), but they’ll keep you up long enough to hit “save” - rather than suffer through a data loss.

We used to have UPSs in the 450 to 650 VA (volt-amp) range. They were fine for our Mac G3s and G4s. Things weren’t so rosy when we started getting multi-processor G5s a few years back: One power blip, and everyone was dead. We’ve had to move up to supplies with at least a 950 VA rating. Higher ratings mean longer running times, plus more future-proofing for when you buy an even more powerful (and power-hungry) computer in the future.

These beasts are a lot less expensive than they used to be, especially if you buy refurbished models. We get ours from UPS For Less, where used units are dirt cheap - roughly $100 for a 1000 VA unit (normally $500+) is a common price. Replacement batteries (which you will need every few years) can be had from a number of places; just Google them.

Here’s a dark secret about most UPS devices: The power they output is not as “clean” as the outlet on the wall; they fake the sine wave of the alternating current. This isn’t a problem with computers, but can cause noise in sensitive audio devices. If this is an issue for you, look for supplies that say they have a “true” rather than “simulated” sine wave output.

The content contained in our books, videos, blogs, and articles for other sites are all copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.

Welcome to Creating Motion Graphics

Welcome to the Creating Motion Graphics blog on ProVideo Coalition! We’re very happy to be here, and look forward to using this new forum to share with our fellow motion graphics artists tips and trends that we think might be useful or intriguing. We will also be posting an archive of many of our past articles and columns which contain a wealth of advice and techniques. And on occasion, we will be posting our musings on the state of the industry (such as in the rest of this entry, past the “more” jump).

Page 2 of 2 pages  <  1 2