This is the final post of our series highlighting the amazing work done by some of the industry’s best motion graphics and VFX artists using Adobe After Effects in a few of this summer's blockbusters.

The motion graphics and VFX community just celebrated the 20th anniversary of After Effects. At Adobe, we pride ourselves on making great software in collaboration with exceptional filmmakers and artists. It’s hard not to gush about a piece of software that has so fundamentally transformed an industry by equipping motion graphics and VFX artists around the world with inexpensive, flexible tools for masking, layering, animating and more.

The other day, I was re-reading an article from TIME magazine “A Brief History of Visual Effects,” and was astonished all over again how VFX—many created using After Effects—have matured.

The article is a pretty fascinating read, covering VFX from the time in the early 1900s when effects were made using single frames projected at a high volume of frames per second to more recently, when movies like Avatar take us deep into surreal worlds. We’re proud to have been part of helping make these advancements possible.

This summer, we saw many fantastic blockbusters released with incredible motion graphics and VFX generated in After Effects. This week, we talked with a team of world-class interface designers, graphic artists, and animators who used After Effects, Illustrator, and Photoshop to create elegant, crisp motion graphics for Joseph Kosinski’s futuristic sci-fi film Oblivion. We learned how Cantina Creative played a pivotal role in bringing Marvel’s Iron Man 3 to the big screen and raising the bar on heads-up displays (HUDs) used in the studio’s latest superhero hit. And we got a view into how VFX and motion graphics experts, including Andrew Kramer of Bad Robot and author/owner of Video Copilot, as well as artists from OOOii, used After Effects on the titles and motion graphics for Star Trek Into Darkness.

In a world where technology prevails, we still manage to be surprised, delighted and in a state of wonder by the ingenuity and breakthroughs today’s directors and artists are making. Even at Adobe, where we have the honor of being in close collaboration with talented artists, we stand in awe.

So what will the future bring? I’m not sure. But I do know that Adobe will continue to bring on the new features moviemakers of all kinds need to raise the bar on their wizardry. So meet me at the theater—the popcorn’s on me!

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