Monday, August 04, 2008

Fractal Noise Tutorial

Chris and Trish Meyer | 08/04- 10:38 AM

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.

Sunday, August 03, 2008

Spotlight: Nordisk Panorama Filmfestival 2008

Chris Meyer | 08/03- 07:35 PM

Silhouettes and particles are two main features of this film festival promo.

Nordisk Panorama Filmfestival 2008 from André Hedetoft on Vimeo.

As we mentioned in a recent post, we’d like to start featuring projects by other motion graphics artists, including some background on what went into their creation. First up is a promo for the Nordisk Panorama 5 Cities Film Festival 2008 created by André Hedetoft. Two of the components of this promo that particularly caught our eye were the use of silhouetted figures, and the lovely particle effects.

Thursday, July 31, 2008

Adobe will support RED

Chris Meyer | 07/31- 10:50 AM

The news many of us have been waiting for…

Sorry for the short post, but I know this is news many of us have been waiting to hear (and sooner than some of us thought):

“Within a week, RED R3D files will open natively in CS3 Premiere Pro and After Effects.” On both Mac and Windows.

This is not a rumor; this is the real deal.

Here is the thread on Reduser.net.

Monday, July 28, 2008

Ten Reasons To Switch To Final Cut Studio

Kevin P. McAuliffe | 07/28- 02:15 PM

With all the editing programs and packages on the market today, deciding on which one is right for you can be difficult and confusing.  I thought I would take a look and list my top ten reasons why you should either switch to Final Cut Studio 2 or make it your first choice when buying for the first time!

10. SMOOTHCAM AND THE INTRODUCTION OF BACKGROUND PROCESSING

Anyone who has used Shake will be familiar with SmoothCam.  It was designed to, as the name says, smooth out camera bumps and shakes in your footage.  Most people might look at this and think that it is not really that big a deal, but believe me, it is.  Why you ask?  SmoothCam not only lets you smooth your footage out, but it introduces a new feature to Final Cut Pro that let’s you process the effect “live” in the background.  The way the effect works is that once you add it to your timeline, FCP immediately starts analyzing the original clip to see what is happening inside the frame.  Keep in mind, if the shot you captured was an hour long, it will process the whole hour long clip.  In most cases, with anything that needs processing or analyzing, you would need to stop and wait for it to finish.  Not anymore!  Now, Final Cut Pro will analyze while you are working.  Once you hit play on your timeline to see what you are working on, the analyzing will pause, and once you stop playing to do effects work, titles, etc, it will keep processing until it is done.

Monday, July 28, 2008

Mobile Animation for Comics

Chris Meyer | 07/28- 12:58 PM

Is this the next big flash in the pan?

We wake up most mornings listening to the new on NPR (National Public Radio). This morning, after a story on Comic-con (the huge annual comic book convention), there was a piece on the boom in “mobile animation” in Japan. Japan is a big market for comic books (”manga”), as well as a big market for mobile phones and new trends in mobile media. The story indicated that distributing comics through mobile phones had become The Next Big Thing over there. Some advancements include touch-interface phones such as the iPhone, which allows a tactile turning-the-page experience. But also of interest is animating the comics for delivery over cell phones and other mobile players.

If you’re looking for new niches or market opportunities, it may be time to brush up on the subjects of converting drawn art to vectors (time to crack open that copy of Adobe Illustrator which came free with your After Effects or Photoshop bundle), creating vector artwork (especially comics), and - most important of all - animating that artwork. This last skill is what can set you, a motion graphics artist, apart from other more conventional illustrators in the field, or make yourself an important partner for them. Adobe Flash is obviously the big dog in this field, but there are also a couple of other solutions out there worth exploring, such as Anime Studio Pro which allows you to add “bones” to vector or even hand-drawn artwork, and the Puppet Tools in Adobe After Effects CS3 and later.

By the way, another news item this morning concerned a new search engine called Cuil ("an old Irish word for knowledge") started by a bunch of ex-Googlites. A search for “mobile animation” on Cuil returned a subjectively more useful result (arranged in a far more visually useful fashion) than a standard Google search. Keep an eye on them.

Monday, July 28, 2008

3-D Objects in Photoshop Part 2 - Photoshop for Video #86

Richard Harrington | 07/28- 08:29 AM

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

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