Trish & Chris, Unplugged

We recently had the pleasure of being interviewed via Skype by John Dickinson of Motionworks for his excellent Unplugged series, where he chats with people who either create After Effects plug-ins (such as Peter Norrby of Trapcode or Zax Dow of Zaxwerks) or training (such as Brian Maffitt of Total Training or Andrew Kramer of Video Copilot). It was a freewheeling affair - we thought he was going to cut out that intro when we were making faces at him, and yes, those are margaritas we’re drinking - and we covered a lot of ground, including the early days of After Effects, how we got started in the industry, what we do for inspiration, our opinions on the training market, and our philosophy of learning a complex program such as After Effects for motion graphics production. We hope you enjoy it.

• cllck here for Part 1 on the early days, and breaking in
• click here for Part 2 on the training landscape, and what we do for inspiration

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

Canon 5D Mark II + 2010 = 24, 25 fps

I like my Canon 5D Mark II - it shoots great stills, and it also shoots more than passable HD video. I’m personally a fan of working at frame rate of 30p, so I didn’t even mind this limitation all that much, but I have to admit I was irked when the 7D - and then the 1D Mark IV - were announced with a much wider range of frame rates (and frame sizes). So I was feeling considerably better about my purchase after Canon Europe, UK, and Australia announced a firmware update for the 5D that will support 24 and 25 fps HD capture (as of the time I write this, a search does not turn up a similar announcement on the Canon USA site - thus my delay in learning about it).

Painting with Light

This past week, I was back in Los Angeles briefly on business, and spent what little free time I had getting my art fix at LACMA. While there, I was enthralled to encounter Thomas Wilfred‘s last piece, Luccata - Opus 162. Unlike the normal still artwork you would expect to find in an art museum, Opus 162 is a “Lumia” - an animated light display created by a complex mechanism of lights, painted glass, mirrors, and the such, which plays back a long, slowly evolving composition that is back-projected into a screen. (I could imagine someone creating animations in a similar spirit today using tools such as Trapcode Form.) It was really quite beautiful, and very peaceful after a hectic day of travel and meetings.

Review: After Effects Camera Training

Motion graphics artists used to animating in 2D in After Effects will find that working in 3D space takes a lot more patience. You need to consider how to set up the 3D views, move layers in 3D, and animate cameras and lights. Rob Birnholz’ training series tackles the camera portion of the equation (watch a free sample and the Table of Contents here). (If you’ve already purchased this training series, don’t go just yet; I promise to share some personal tips and advice as I go…)

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