Sunday, July 27, 2008

3-D Objects in Photoshop Part 1 - Photoshop for Video #85

Richard Harrington | 07/27- 08:27 AM

Instructor Richard Harrington how to work with 3-D objects in Photoshop CS3. Part 1 of 2.

Saturday, July 26, 2008

Avoid Import Blues for After Effects

Richard Harrington | 07/26- 08:30 PM

It’s very common to use Photoshop and Illustrator to prepare content for import into Adobe After Effects.  Here are some practical tips to avoid problems when merging the software.
Import Tips

• Double-Click in the AE Project Window
• Shift-Click Multiple Items
• Organize in Folder and Option+Drag (Alt+Drag) from Desktop
• Keep file names less than 27 characters long

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Focus On Design

Chris and Trish Meyer | 07/15- 02:54 PM

We plan to cover the art, as well as the science and business, of motion graphics.

One of our plans for this blog going forward is to not only cover gear, techniques, and business issues, but also motion graphics artists and their art. If you’ve done a cool project recently, and are willing to share inside information on the design as well as how you executed those design challenges, please get in touch with us so that we can potentially cover you here - send email to either one of our first names at cybmotion.com.

In that vein, we thought it would be fun to dust off an extensive article we wrote back in 1999 (the previous century!) that covered designers and design trends at the 1999 BDA Conference. In 1999, grunge type treatments were still all the rage (think “Seven"); it’s fun to look back now and see what from those designs still looks fresh and relevant, and which ones might not have survived the test of time.

Click here to read the main article, which discussed several important design trends including typography, 2D vs. 3D, and the emergence of the desktop-based studio which we now take for granted.

Click here to read a companion article which focused on nine studios, and recent projects they had executed back then (lots of eye candy!).

Sunday, July 13, 2008

Layer Styles in After Effects

Chris Meyer | 07/13- 08:03 PM

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.

Saturday, July 12, 2008

Why QuickTime is the US Dollar of Digital Video

Mark Christiansen | 07/12- 09:00 AM

As the standard is devalued, the world undertakes a slow-motion search for an alternative. What can be done for QuickTime?

How bad are things for the US Dollar these days? So bad that, as reported by the BBC and mentioned recently on This Week in Tech, Gisele Bundchen no longer accepts modeling pay in dollars, nor apparently do many high-end boutiques in the capital of U.S. commerce, New York City. European travel is effectively twice as expensive as it was just a few years ago simply because of the exchange rate. So it may come as a surprise how familiar the situation of the world economy in regards to the dollar is if you’re a video professional using QuickTime.

I’m not actually joking.

Friday, July 11, 2008

Leaving Los Angeles

Chris and Trish Meyer | 07/11- 10:06 PM

Trading Hollywood for The Land of Enchantment.

Our former studio in Los Angeles, circa a few years ago.

The reason we haven’t been posting up here for the past couple of weeks is because we’ve been packing up our home/office/studio and putting it into storage while we buy a new home in the East Mountains section of Albuquerque, just down the Turquoise Trail from Santa Fe. There are many reasons we’re undergoing this major life change, several of which we’ll be elaborating upon in the upcoming weeks and months. If you’re curious, here’s a few of the reasons why:

Page 4 of 18 pages « First  <  2 3 4 5 6 >  Last »