Monday, September 08, 2008

Font Resources

A compendium of resources for finding, buying, using, and being inspired by fonts.

We love fonts. We rank font selection right up there with choice of music and color scheme when it comes time to design a spot. Therefore, we’ve amassed quite a large font library over the years. Which then begs the obvious questions:

• Where do you get your fonts?
• How do you keep them organized?
• What are some good design resources to inspire the use of fonts?

We’d like to share with you a few tools, links and lists we’ve found to be handy over the years.

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Friday, August 29, 2008

After Effects Tips - Installment 2

Learn something new everyday…

Here is a second installment of random tips for working more productively with Adobe After Effects CS3, including the best place to find Help information (surprise: It’s not the Help file installed on your hard drive alongside After Effects...). Please feel free to add your own questions and alternative solutions in the Comments field at the end.

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Sunday, August 17, 2008

After Effects Tips - Installment 1

Learn something new everyday…

In contrast to the columns and tutorials we’ve been posting so far in CMG Keyframes, we thought it would be useful to also post quick-hit random tips for working more productively with Adobe After Effects CS3. This is the first installment; hope you enjoy it. Please feel free to add your own questions and alternative solutions in the Comments field at the end.

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Monday, August 04, 2008

Fractal Noise Tutorial

Using the Fractal Noise effect to create seamless background textures.

The Fractal Noise effect in Adobe After Effects has to be one of the beloved plug-ins among power-users for its ability to create everything from abstract backgrounds to realistic natural phenomena. Here are a pair of ideas (from our After Effects in Production book) for creating the former: a blocky pattern, and a soft blurry pattern that we like to use for a “lighting” effect. In Part 1 of this bonus tutorial, you will learn how we created these layers, and in Part 2 we’ll offer some tips on making the Fractal Noise effect and other sources seamlessly loop.

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Monday, July 14, 2008

On Artbeats.com: Article on Mixing Audio

Keeping the viewer focused rather than confused when mixing voice, music, and sound effects.

As some of you know, both of us originally came from the music industry. Chris in particular still composes music and edits dialog for some of CyberMotion’s clients.

Every month, we write a Tips N Tricks article for our friends at Artbeats.com. This month we wrote about how mix audio effectively to ensure the listener can hear the dialog without becoming distracted by the music or sound effects. There’s only a few simple rules you need to learn to make a huge improvement in the quality of your soundtracks. Remember: Bad audio can really distract from good video!

Click here to download a PDF of “Clearly Mixed” from Artbeats.com. (This is an update of our classic 1995 article on mixing, On The Level.)

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Sunday, July 13, 2008

Layer Styles in After Effects

The secret to getting better shadows, bevels, and glows.

Adobe After Effects has long featured Drop Shadow, Bevel Alpha, and Glow effects, as well as various ways to fill layers with colors or gradients. However, they’re hardly the fanciest options available. Meanwhile, Adobe Photoshop has long featured a powerful Layer Styles module, which includes far fancier shadows, bevels, glows, and fills, which allow you to create more photorealistic effects such as the badge shown at left.

What not many users realize is that there has long been a back door to get some of those Photoshop layer effects into After Effects. And even fewer realize that After Effects CS3 includes support for virtually the entire Photoshop Layer Styles engine. We’d like to let you in on these well-kept secrets.

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Tuesday, June 10, 2008

On Artbeats.com: Article on Editing to Sound

Over on Artbeats.com, we’ve written an introduction to editing audio.

Every month, we write a Tips N Tricks article for our friends at Artbeats.com. This month we wrote a piece about spotting hit points in music and dialog, plus a series of pointers on how to place edit points, transitions, and animation keyframes based on these hit points. We strongly believe the tight integration between audio and video is a secret weapon that can be used to raise your productions above the rest; we hope you find this introduction worthwhile.

Click here to download a 333 KB PDF of “Editing to Sound” from Artbeats.com.

While we’re talking about Artbeats, Steve Holmes (formerly of Total Training) also just created for Artbeats a new video tutorial that shows you how to “step through time with an innovative look at the evolution of energy.” You can download the 36+ minute tutorial from Artbeats.com by clicking here.

By the way, if you’d like to share one of your own projects with Artbeats and their customers, email them - if they choose yours, you’ll get $1000 worth of free Artbeats footage of your choice!

Artbeats has a monthly email newsletter which contains links to each of our articles for them as they are released, plus a link for registered users to download a free full-size clip every month. Click here to register.

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Thursday, May 15, 2008

On Artbeats.com: Article on Frame Rates

Over on Artbeats.com, we’ve written a treatise on frame rates.

Every month, we write a Tips N Tricks article for our friends at Artbeats.com. This month we’ve written a brain dump on where those funky frame rates came from, and issues to watch out for as you get assets from 3D artists, stock footage libraries, film composers, and even well-meaning camera or tape operators that have frame rates that might be just slightly off from what you expect - and how to correct them.

Click here to download a 212 KB PDF of “Frame Rate Follies” from Artbeats.com.

Fellow PVC writer Mark Christiansen also recently wrote a piece for Artbeats’ NAB 2008 Show Guide on creating ramping speed effects in After Effects; click here to download the 1.1 MB PDF. In a similar vein, we also wrote an article for Artbeats on using the same underlying technique to bend the time of a clip to match a soundtrack; click here to download the 2.3 MB PDF of it.

By the way, Artbeats has a monthly email newsletter which contains links to each of our articles for them as they are released, plus a link for registered users to download a free full-size clip every month. Click here to register.

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