The Genesis Project » Tutorials

Adobe Beginner Classes Episodes #39-44 are live

Dennis Radeke — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 15:59:30 +0000

I’ve started a couple of ‘sub-series’ in this group: Premiere Pro Basics and Photoshop Basics. I’ve found that many people are still just getting started and are at a lost for where to get some foundational knowledge. Hopefully, some of these episodes will help.

I’m also kind of excited about #44 which is about some hidden gems (at least in my mind) about Adobe Media Encoder. In this one, I show some real workflow productivity within an application that doesn’t have the sex appeal of After Effects, Photoshop or Adobe Premiere Pro.

As you might expect, I’ve also posted the episodes to Vimeo and they’ll be up on the Adobe Beginner Classes podcast soon as well. Always looking for feedback and suggestions for other episodes. I’ve tried to incorporate some of the past suggestions into this batch, so keep them coming!

Dennis

Adobe Beginner Classes Episode #38 is live!

Dennis Radeke — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 13:48:07 +0000

This one is another one of those catch up kinds of episodes – something I had developed some time ago for a seminar or what not and didn’t have time to record until recently. This is a great tutorial for getting a grip on the basics of After Effects.

During this 20 minute tutorial, we cover a decent amount of ground and it helps give you a basic understanding of such things as ramps (gradients), layers, 3D position, null objects, parenting, nesting and several more things. As always, I love to hear from people who view it for ideas on other episodes or questions.

Adobe Beginner Class #36 is live on Adobe TV!

Dennis Radeke — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 10:33:47 +0000

(UPDATE – The episode is temporarily in limbo as i return from vacation and the Adobe TV team is presumably at Adobe MAX. I’ll get it back up on Adobe TV soon. Until then, check it out on Vimeo!)

This episode is about animating a still, a classic, timeless look. With CS5, we have some new tools that make this work much easier than in times past. To that end, I developed a tutorial in two parts to cover it.

In this part, we dive into the Photoshop aspect to create our separate and distinct layers for animating in After Effects. As always, rate the video via Adobe TV and feel free to make lengthy (or pithy!) comments at the blog here.

Adobe Beginner Classes – methodology on publishing

Dennis Radeke — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 12:20:42 +0000

I’ve been cranking away at some new episodes and while I will soon be on vacation (hurray!), I wanted to let everyone know about my new thoughts on publishing to the three mediums I use.

Vimeo.com is the first place where I will publish. If you want to see the tuts as quickly as possible, this is the place to go. My channel is Adobe Beginner Classes

Adobe TV is a scheduled link where I will post one episode about every week or so. There’s always a lot of content there, so it’s good to space it out.

itunes is constrained based on upload size and cost, so my podcast will generally be the last place to get it, but obviously it’s a convenient way to view and take it with you.

That being said, here’s two episodes that are currently only on vimeo:

Episode 36 – Animating a still Part 1

Episode 36 - Animating a still (Part 1) from Dennis Radeke on Vimeo.

Episode 37 – Animating a still Part 2

Episode 37 - Animating a still (Part 2) from Dennis Radeke on Vimeo.

Adobe Beginner Classes Episode #35 is live! (and has been for a while)

Dennis Radeke — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 23:40:27 +0000

Well, I’ve pontificated about the ongoing work of the blog revamp and all of that. Well, I’ve also been working on tutorials and so now the two have collided, I think.…When last we saw our intrepid tutorializer, he was busy trying to finish an episode on animating an Encore menu inside of After Effects… Well, nearly a year later (10 months to be exact) I’ve finally come back to finish what I’ve started. The fruit of that labor is below:

One of the coolest things about this episode after the long hiatus is that it is now HD. Most likely you will see the stream as MED for medium when you view it at Adobe TV. You can change it to HD and it’s at 2MB/s or so. Sweet! Here’s the link: ABC Episode 35

You can also check out the same thing at Vimeo.

Let me know what you think – I’ve already got a few more in the pipeline as a kind of mental catch up…

Cheers,
Dennis

fxphd is now teaching Premiere Pro

Dennis Radeke — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 08:55:49 +0000

When you talk about training, I’m very happy to say that there is vast universe of training available for all things Adobe – from free to paid, from online to DVD and everything in between. That’s obviously great for users and potential users.

One of the sites that I really appreciate is fxphd.com Their focus has been about advanced training and focusing on things that you wouldn’t normally find elsewhere. Lets face it, there is a lot of focus on certain products or certain techniques, but fxphd has generally tried to carve out a niche with advanced topics and a college semester approach.

Among the very best Premiere Pro editors around is Tim Kolb. In addition to being a former Creative Cow contributor, he has been a long time Premiere Pro user who really knows the product and has helped the community with training from Class on Demand and online via the forums. Tim has lent his expertise to fxphd and is now teaching Premiere Pro on the site.

So, if you’re ready to take your editing to the next level or find out what the hub bub is about Premiere Pro CS5, then you might consider a small investment in taking the course that is being taught now.

ABC is a podcast

Dennis Radeke — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 06:20:39 +0000

Adobe Beginner Classes is up as a podcast. I’m having to slowly upload episodes from the first to the most current which will take a little while, but if i could ask you to subscribe and give me your comments, it is always appreciated.

To get started, click this link

Adobe Beginner Classes,podcasts,tutorials,Creative Suite,Production Premium

Adobe Beginner Classes Episode 34 is live!

Dennis Radeke — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 05:50:42 +0000

As many of you probably know, I’m pretty big into After Effects tutorials, so it’s been surprising to have me sitting in front of Encore and trying out new stuff. Part of the motivation for me starts in Photoshop (probably my other favorite application) and I was making some little images for Christmas this year when I thought of an idea.

Encore,Photoshop,Production Premium,CS3,CS4,DVD,Menus

…That’s usually how it begins for me and so as Adobe goes into hibernation for the next week – I hope you enjoy this episode on how to make Encore menus for DVD and Blu-ray from scratch.

One special word of thanks to the Telestream folks – I made this tutorial using their ScreenFlow 2.0 software and not only is it a breeze to use, it made nice tiny FLV files in the end! Check it out.

Oi! I forgot to post 2012 project files (ABC Episodes #29-32)

Dennis Radeke — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 10:25:36 +0000

I always promise to post the project files, but it seems that I’ve been a bit lax in actually following thru. My apologies! Read on to view the embedded episodes to create the final 2012 animation as well as the project files.

Adobe,Production Premium,After Effects,Motion Graphics,Animation,Project,Tutorials

Without further ado, here are the four parts for the project that you can find on Adobe TV. The project file is below. Please note, that I’ve trimmed out the audio, the clouds and the brushed metal background out of respect for download size and copyrights.

Download the AE project file

Adobe Beginner Classes #33 is live!

Dennis Radeke — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 09:34:06 +0000

This project focuses on how to create some depth on motion graphics and all through using one basic element. I’m a big proponent of reusing elements and nesting. Read on to get the details, watch the tutorial and download the project file.

Adobe,CS3,CS4,After Effects,Photoshop,motion graphics,Production Premium,tutorial,project

As I’ve said before, nesting comps is the best way to make something ‘bigger’. If you take a good looking composition, drop two iterations of it into a new comp and change one thing on one of the versions, you’ve generally got something even more detailed.

As always, comments, critiques etc are always welcome. Be sure to subscribe to Adobe Beginner Classes and/or download it via the Adobe Media Player.

Here’s the link to download the project file

Adobe Beginner Classes #30 is live!

Dennis Radeke — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 18:09:39 +0000

and really, the only thing I can say about this one is FINALLY…

I had some trouble with our web system and so this should have been posted a week ago.

In this episode, I dive into the technique for creating the smoky look of the text disappearing. It’s not entirely intuitive at first, but once you get it, it rocks! Hat tip (and big thank you) to Andrew Kramer for this technique. Read on to view the tutorial and/or see a short clip with the finished animation.

Here’s the tutorial:

…And here’s the animation itself.

Adobe Beginner Classes #29 is live!

Dennis Radeke — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 16:16:19 +0000

This looks to be another four part series. The first part here is covering some of the building blocks, but trust me they are still very interesting! Click Play below and view the final composition and then read on for some more detail.

I have to say that I am really bummed that my screen recording did such a horrible job of capturing the actual playing of the QuickTime file. However, I put it up on YouTube and hopefully you get a sense of what we’re trying to do. Let me know what you think as always.

I’ve been blessed to hear that a lot of big companies have said that they’ve watched the videos and it’s always gratifying to learn that your work is being consumed and appreciated. No, this isn’t a call for compliments – rather a chance for me to say thank you for watching.

Adobe Beginner Classes #28 is live!

Dennis Radeke — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 05:59:46 +0000

…it’s been online for a while and I’m rather proud of this one…

I enjoy all of the content creation I get to do – from Twitter, to this blog to Adobe TV. Yet, some bits are just more memorable to you than others and Episode #28 is one of those for me.

Adobe,After Effects,Broadcast,Motion Graphics,CS4,Compound Blur,Nesting

I like it for two basic reasons. First, it’s decent looking and when you know as many great AE artists as I do, it’s hard for you to call anything you do even ‘decent.’ Second, it’s a good tutorial that represents what I hope to accomplish with viewers – it teaches them something useful about After Effects and yet is not so crazy as to scare people off.

This one is comparatively long – about 24 minutes, but I do think it worth it and I hope you’ll come along for the ride. Consider subscribing to my show on Adobe TV. Or via Adobe Media Player.

Download AE Project file

Adobe Beginner Classes #27 is live!

Dennis Radeke — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 09:45:32 +0000

The conclusion to several running episodes happens with #27. In this one, we take our painted box, our 3D cube and our fog and put it all together to do a quick animation. Anti-climatic? No way – watch the tutorial and download the project for yourself and play around with it.

After Effects,CS4,Adobe,Adobe Beginner Classes,Adobe TV,Photoshop

Below are both the link to download the project and all associated files (it’s about 12MB total – mostly the big PSD for the fog) and the link to episode #27. Be sure to check out the other Adobe TV episodes related to this project starting with episode #24.

The Bigger Project After Effects Project download

Adobe TV gets a new look

Dennis Radeke — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 07:46:25 +0000

Adobe TV has just updated their website and with all the changes, it’s a great time for me to shamelessly mention the best show on there for video, especially After Effects: Adobe Beginner Classes! Be sure to add me to your library and also do a roll over on the episode #’s to get a description of what you’ll get. I’ll be looking to change up the episodes names soon to be more descriptive. Regardless, give it a look and don’t forget about the Adobe Media Player as well.

Adobe Beginner Classes Episode #26 is live!

Dennis Radeke — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 15:56:50 +0000

I’ve been in a flurry of creative activity and hopefully, these are useful things to the community. In this episode, I’m continuing to build towards our finale, which I think is the next one. Read on to see the video and get the details…

I’ve not seen too many people work on creating semi-realistic fog inside of After Effects, but there are a lot of ways to do it. I’ve chosen to focus this episode on one of two main methods that I can think of. Fog adds dimension and depth to a composition and the element mystery. Creating it in After Effects is a snap, but you have to start (for this example) in Photoshop. Once you create it, you can use it again and again.

As always, let me know if you like , if you don’t and if you have suggestions for other topics.

Adobe Beginner Classes Episode #25 is live!

Dennis Radeke — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 13:49:42 +0000

Hey there everyone. Blogging away on supposed vacation time – I need some help. We’ll keep this one brief. Episode #25 is online and available for your perusal. It’s pretty short and to the point, so it’s easy to digest and consume. In it, I take our Photoshop texture and quickly create a 3D box by utilizing a script from AEScripts.com

From there, we’ll put it all together in the next episode and hopefully the result is something you like.

Read on for the embedded version of the tutorial.

Here you go…

Adobe Beginner Classes Episode #24 is live!

Dennis Radeke — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 10:34:07 +0000

If you’ve looked with envy at particular textures and wondered how they were created in Photoshop, then this is the episode for you!

Photoshop,Adobe TV,Painting,Brushes,Textures

When I started at Adobe, I certainly had that feeling that I needed to learn a lot about how to use Photoshop to create textures. Certainly, there are a lot of ways and to be honest, I’m only covering one in this episode, but I think it’s a great way to open the eyes of people to just how easy it really is.

During the tutorial, I mention MyPhotoshopBrushes.com so you may want to stop there first and grab a few of the ones that may interest you.

As always (and forever), please let me know what you think and offer up any ideas for other episodes…

Adobe Beginner Classes Episode #23 is live!

Dennis Radeke — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 09:23:28 +0000

I’ve held true to my promise to not do everything about After Effects! Huzzah!

In this one, I go in and show you how easy it is to create gradient wipes for use in Premiere Pro. We don’t always use transitions, but when we do, it’s nice to have something new and fresh. Custom gradient wipes can be the ticket! I hope you’ll give it a view and tell me what you think.

As always, I’ll mention that the Adobe Media Player is a free download and what’s better is that many of the tutorials you get (including mine) can be downloaded and played in an ‘offline’ mode whenever you want. I always think it’s cool to possibly be able to watch tutorials when you’re on the plane or whatever. Anyway, if you don’t have AMP, I would recommend getting it. Click on the link above.

Steve Holmes on Artbeats.com

Dennis Radeke — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 06:30:33 +0000

Steve Holmes has always been one of the more powerful AE artists who has been able to successfully marry great design in a fun tutorial and instructive setting. Steve build up his ‘brand’ by being one of the principal instructors for Total Training for several versions and now has turned up at Artbeats.

Artbeats and Mr. Holmes have already teamed up in several tutorials, so this probably isn’t totally new to many people. Nevertheless, click here for the link. From there you can subscribe via iTunes if you’re so inclined. I’ve watched a couple and they’re fantastic as you would expect. Good stuff – go get it.