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Chris & Trish Meyer
Creating Motion Graphics is the blog for award-winning motion graphic designers Chris and Trish Meyer of Crish Design (formerly CyberMotion). Here is where they share not just their latest tips, tricks, and gotchas for the tools they use, but also discoveries that help them run their business, sources that inspire their designs, and musings on the future of the motion graphics industry. Chris & Trish Meyer founded Crish Design (formerly known as CyberMotion) in the very earliest days of the desktop motion graphics industry. Their design and animation work has appeared on shows and promos for CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox, HBO, PBS, and TLC; in opening titles for several movies including Cold Mountain and The Talented Mr. Ripley; at trade shows and press events for corporate clients ranging from Apple to Xerox; and in special venues encompassing IMAX, CircleVision, the NBC AstroVision sign in Times Square, and the four-block-long Fremont Street Experience in Las Vegas. They were among the original users of CoSA (now Adobe) After Effects, and have written the numerous books including "Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects" and "After Effects Apprentice" both published by Focal Press. Both Chris and Trish have backgrounds as musicians, and are currently fascinated with exploring fine art and mixed media in addition to their normal commercial design work. They have recently relocated from Los Angeles to the mountains near Albuquerque and Santa Fe, New Mexico. CMG KeyframesAfter Effects Apprentice Free Video: Exploring Shape EffectsAfter Effects Apprentice Free Video: Drawing Parametric ShapesAfter Effects Apprentice Free Video: The Puppet Starch ToolAfter Effects Apprentice Free Video: Eraser Tool ModesAfter Effects Apprentice Free Video: Tracking with mochaAEAfter Effects Apprentice Free Video: Performing a Motion TrackAfter Effects Apprentice Free Video: Creating 3D Objects using Adobe RepousséAfter Effects Apprentice Free Video: Understanding Axis ModesUsing After Effects as an Advanced Titler for Premiere ProAfter Effects Apprentice Free Video: Creating an Orbit Camera Rig
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Too Much of a Good ThingHow you can help improve Adobe’s Help.
I know - no one reads the manual, and no one uses the Help file. But in reality, Help has been undergoing a major overhaul in Adobe applications, and is now a very useful resource. The problem is, Adobe has gotten a bit overenthused in their attempts to broaden it, and as a result has made it less useful in some circumstances. But you can help turn that around. more »Kensington Mice and After Effects CS4The secret settings to get the Unified Camera Tool to work.
After Effects CS4 has added a “Unified” camera tool to aid navigation in 3D space. Instead of having to scroll through three separate camera tools - Orbit, Track XY, and Track Z - to reposition an active camera or reframe an alternate view, users can now use a three-button mouse to quickly switch between these three tools. All of our computers here have Kensington mice that include a clickable scroll wheel as the third (middle) mouse button. And lo and behold, they don’t work out of the box with AE CS4; the clickable scroll wheel defaults to toggling between horizontal and vertical scrolling. But a couple of settings tweaks will make your mouse behave the way you want: more »ProcessingUnleash the ghost in the machine by programming your own animations.
After you master shooting footage, applying effects, and keyframing animation, what’s next? Some like to explore having animations driven by sound and music, using tools such as Trapcode’s Sound Keys and Form for After Effects, or the Audio Behaviors in Motion 3. Others have mastered Expressions in After Effects to create code-driven animations. And a few hard-core After Effects user lament the passing of Useful Things. But if you really want to take it to the next level, you might want to explore the open source Processing programming language. Processing, to quote the official web site, is “for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions. It is used by students, artists, designers, researchers, and hobbyists for learning, prototyping, and production. It is created to teach fundamentals of computer programming within a visual context and to serve as a software sketchbook and professional production tool.” It is free (running on Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows) and is supported by an active user and developer community. There are a large number of books available on Processing. There’s even a mobile version of Processing for Java-powered devices. And to feed the other side of your brain, there is an online exhibition gallery showing what others are doing with Processing (the image at the top of this blog entry is from that site). Check it out. (A tip of the hat to fellow PVC poster Mark Spencer for turning me onto Processing.) Page 1 of 1 pages Advertisement |
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Keyframe Stretching in Motion
Scaling Keyframes to Retime Your Animation
So you’ve created a great animation in Motion. You’ve tweaked every motion path, set each keyframe interpolation, and pulled and pushed on every bezier handle to get the timing and flow just right. Then your client tells you they love it but it needs to last 2 seconds longer. Before you pull your hair repositioning hundreds of keyframes by hand, check out this video for a quick tip on a handy keyframe editing tool that could save you load of time - and hair.
Business slow?
It’s time to get busy.
So the bursting of the housing bubble that led to the credit freeze that led to the stock market sell-off that led to companies cutting back on spending that led to the recession has now trickled down to freelancers like us. Which means you may have noticed your invoices are getting paid later, your projects are being downsized or cancelled, and client requests for proposals for new work are slowing to a trickle.
What a great opportunity.
Economic downturns come and go - and when they come, it’s a great time to finally take care of all those things you were putting off when you were busy making money. So, here are my three recommendations for how you can prepare for the next big upswing. When the phone starts ringing once again, you’ll be ready.
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