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August 24, 2009
Vintage Mograph: After Effects 1.1 demo reel
In 1993, my freshman year in college, I attended a meeting of the Notre Dame MadMacs user group. I can't tell you a single other thing about that evening, but I remember that they played a video (on a computer! no way!!) from a company I'd never heard of. On screen an animation depicted a hand opening up to reveal (as I remember) an eye on its palm. "Imagine what you can create," read an arcing line of text above the hand. And below, "Create what you can imagine. Adobe." Whoever these guys are, I thought, I have to know more.
I don't know whether that piece was done in After Effects*, but there's a good chance it was. Now Todd Kopriva from the AE team has posted an AE 1.1 demo reel from '93:
You've come a long way, baby. [Via]
* AE became an Adobe product the following year
June 24, 2009
Assorted Pixar Awesomeness
- Former Pixar production artist Lou Romano has posted a wealth of materials (videos, photos, paintings, and more) showing how the art of UP came to be. He shows how everything from gouache & miniatures to Photoshop & After Effects come together to explore & prototype the work.
- In a follow-up post, Lou has shared higher-res images of the complete color script for UP. [Via]
- The Art of the Title Sequence celebrates the wonderful end titles from WALL-E, interviewing director Jim Capobianco and animator Alexander Woo. [Via]
- Amazon lists Tim Hauser's The Art of UP and The Art of WALL-E.
June 21, 2009
Flash for AE, and AE for Flash
For years and years I've wanted the After Effects team to promote AE as the next logical step for Flash animators wanting to go to the next level. (Once you're freed from having to render everything on the fly on who-knows-what machine, the sky's the limit.) That's why I've been so excited by steps like XFL export from AE CS4.
Now authors Richard Harrington and Marcus Geduld have created Flash for After Effects and After Effects for Flash. You can check out a couple of chapters online for free:
Happy keyframing & expression-slinging & precomping and all that.
June 10, 2009
Roll your own After Effects plug-ins, sans coding
I'm always intrigued by visual tools that let non-coders assemble their own filter effects.
If this sort of thing is up your alley & if you use After Effects, check out Effect Builder AE. It's "a development kit for building Adobe After Effects plug-ins from Quartz Compositions on Mac OS X. With Effect Builder AE and Quartz Composer, you can quickly create your own effects like generators, filters, and transitions without programming knowledge." [Via]
Previously:
- Filter Forge is a Photoshop plug-in used for creating your own filters.
- Conduit for Pixel Bender lets you Lego together PB filters for Photoshop, Flash, and AE.
May 9, 2009
Le Sens Propre: A new short film shot with RED + CS4
Working on a commission from Adobe, Brazilian director Cisma* recently created "Le Sens Propre," rather surreal story about “a dream-like voyage in the universe of a little girl." Cisma & team used a RED camera followed by an exclusive Adobe CS4 Production Premium workflow (no non-Adobe products touched the film--no 3D software, etc.).
Adobe's Scott Morris writes,
Several high-profile artists have been commissioned by Adobe to do work using the various CS4 toolsets, to really show off what the products can do. Le Sens Proper now joins work from other artists and graphic designers including John Kelly, Nando Costa, Genevieve Gauckler, and Erik Natzke.Check out their work on the new AdobeArtists.com. For a Q&A with the director plus production stills, check out this piece from Motionographer.
* According to the Adobe Artists site, "Cisma" (aka Denis Kamioka) took his name from the Portuguese word for "strong and irrational conviction." My kind of guy.
April 30, 2009
Recent motion goodness, part 1
- Honda Insight Let it Shine turns hundreds of cars into a giant LED-style display. [Via] The making-of piece is just as interesting, as is the excellent browser integration on the Vimeo site. (Man, years ago I used to dream about doing stuff like this in a browser. Glad to see it in action.)
- "Carousel" for Philips Cinema is pretty amazing on every level. The short film works as an endless loop, and as Coloribus writes in its behind-the-scenes coverage, "Visitors to the microsite therefore have the option to ‘spin’ through the film’s single take shot repeatedly, to stop on a specific frame, or to watch it at the preordained speed. The film also contains embedded hotspots, which, when triggered, transport the viewer seamlessly from the heavily posted film to a behind-the-scenes version of the same shot." [Via Colin Macdonald]
- Jonathan Jarvis's The Crisis of Credit Visualized uses Illustrator & After Effects to great effect, explaining the chain reactions that inflated--then crippled--the world economy. [Via David Macy]
- No CGI, no wires needed: Danny MacAskill does some of the most incredible stunts (which just happen to involve a bike) I've ever seen. Great musical choice, too. [Via everyone ever]
December 28, 2008
"Star Wars, nothing but Staaar Waaars..."
Now that Flash CS4 offers "postcards in space"-style 3D transformations, you can do all sorts of simple, interesting things. On CreativePro.com Jeremy Schultz has posted a tutorial on creating a Star Wars-style text crawl using the new app.
Photoshop CS4 offers a couple of interesting new ways to do something similar. First, because Smart Objects in CS4 now support perspective transformations, you can create some text, then transform it non-destructively while keeping everything editable. Here's a quick recipe:
- Create your text. I suggest clicking & dragging out a rectangle using the text tool, then pasting in your text.
- Choose Layers->Smart Object->Convert to Smart Object.
- Hit Cmd-T/Ctrl-T to enter Free Transform mode.
- While hovering over one corner of the transform rectangle, hold Cmd-Opt-Shift/Ctrl-Alt-Shift, then start dragging. Hit Enter/Return when done.
- To change the perspective effect applied to the Smart Object, just hit Cmd-T/Ctrl-T again and you'll be right back where you were. To edit the text, double click the SO layer to edit the original content in its own window.
Photoshop CS4 Extended offers another cool option as well: turning the layer into a 3D postcard. Try this:
- Create the initial text layer as described above.
- Choose 3D->New 3D Postcard From Layer.
- Hit K on the keyboard to select the 3D Rotate Tool.
- Click and drag on the layer to rotate it in 3D space. Try holding Shift, then clicking and dragging vertically.
- Alternatively, use the on-canvas 3D manipulation widget and/or the other object/camera manipulation tools to rotate the 3D postcard layer.
- To edit the text, double click the name of the text layer listed in the Layers panel beneath Textures-Diffuse.
Is one method better than the other? Not necessarily. Going the Smart Object route, you can use regular Photoshop transformation options & directly apply filters non-destructively. (Plus, of course, you're not required to own Photoshop Extended.) The 3D postcard method offers much richer ways to manipulate the object using real 3D effects--for example, changing the focal length of the camera that's viewing the text. It also lets you apply 3D lights, etc. One other thing: After Effects has supported postcards in space for many years, and the Adobe Exchange features a downloadable template for AE that makes the Star Wars effect easy.
Thanks to Bill Murray for the title inspiration.
December 18, 2008
After Effects tutorial site AETUTS launches
I've really been enjoying the Photoshop tutorials and interview on PSDTUTS lately, so I'm very happy to see that the creators are extending their approach to After Effects. The AETUTS crew plans to publish 2 - 3 new tutorials each week.December 10, 2008
Motion Graphics: Gorillas & Guerrillas
- Poetry, motion graphics, and surprisingly little beer collide in this recent Guinness spot.
- Mo' tilt-shifting:
- Peep this miniature-looking monster truck rally
- Blake Garner used After Effects to simulate the effect on ski slope video.
September 28, 2008
"Dear After Effects..."
A few weeks back I noted that the Dear Adobe site had generated lots of discussion within the company. Now the After Effects team has worked with the site creators to address the top 25 comments posted there. If you're interested in AE, you might find the list a worthwhile read.July 27, 2008
Killer animations o' the day
- Despite finding it some time ago, I've been avoiding blog The Art of the Title Sequence, knowing that it would likely take over my life. Sure enough, it's loaded with good stuff. Check out the beautiful titles for El Don, whipped up by Santiago artists Smog. I saw motion graphics pioneer Kyle Cooper (SE7EN, etc.) speak years ago and remember him saying that every frame should hold up on its own as graphic design. This piece aces that test. (For unrelated goodness, see Smog's "monkey-headed dancing guy" (or whatever "un mono bailarín" is).)
- Motion artist PES creates incredible stop-motion films using found objects. KaBoom and Western Spaghetti are particularly great (c'mon, Candy Corn as flames?). Check out his work before People for the Ethical Treatment of Upholstery shut him down. [Via John Peterson & Maria Brenny, "Because (re: KaBoom) I know what you do in the desert"]
- My Drive Thru is a new stop-motion video for Converse, produced by the team at Psyop. Behind the scenes, Pharrell Williams talks about rescuing Chuck Taylors from the taint of Punky Brewster, and Glossy interviews the Psyop crew while posting some high-res stills. [Via]
- Superfad has kicked out a trio of stylish ads for Sprint. The Hurricane Katrina spot is particularly worth a look.
June 12, 2008
Recent motion graphics goodness
- Roi Sabarov's Typeflow animation is poetry in motion. ("That is awesome. That goes on the blog." --Margot, Licensed Nackwife.)
- Fatal Farm makes some super, ah, unique remixes of 80's TV themes. Knight Rider is brilliant, though be warned that you won't be getting the song out of your head. The rest are of mixed taste, so don't say I didn't warn you.
- Mato Atom's "Champions" probably won't change any hearts and minds about Bush, Blair, & Co., but it's impeccably executed. [Via Sebastian Meyer]
- I like the lo-fi stylings of these animated videos for Welsh band Los Campesinos!, created by Simon Ampel & Chris Seimasko.
- The Whitest Boy Alive is all about optical illusions. [Via]
By the way, if you're going to be in NYC in a couple of weeks & are interested in After Effects, you might want to check out the next AENY meeting. Jim Geduldick writes to say that the June 26th meeting will feature some cool speakers:
- Visual Designer Marc Coleran, whose work has been seen in films like The Bourne Ultimatum, Domino, Alien vs. Predator, The Bourne Identity, Blade II, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, The World Is Not Enough - just to name a few.
- Visual effects artist John Montgomery, co-founder of the online visual effects news site fxguide, as well as the training site fxphd. His Clients and Credits include Super Bowl commercials for McDonald's, Disney as well as work for Budweiser, Miller, Hallmark, Sears, Moen, Gatorade, Morgan Stanley, and the ESPN and CBS television networks.
Check out the AENY site for more details.
May 6, 2008
Technology sneak: Photoshop, AE, Flash
Last Thursday Adobe held a day-long event at which the execs briefed members of the financial community. A couple of us spear carriers (Steve Heintz, Karl Soule, and I) were recruited to help show off some new technology that's baking "in the labs" (i.e. none of this stuff is promised for a future version, your mileage my vary, void where prohibited, professional driver on a closed course, etc.).
Check out the Connect webcast to see the goods in action. (Scrub ahead to 18 minutes or so--about one third of the way through--to catch the demos.) I show off some new performance tuning in Photoshop by playing with a 650 megapixel image on a Mac Pro. It's too bad that the low frame rate of recording hides the fluidity of panning, zooming, and rotating via OpenGL hardware acceleration. I also demonstrate automated merging of images to extend depth of field, as well as a 360-degree panorama mapped onto an interactive 3D sphere on which I can paint directly. (Painting directly onto 3D models--mmm, yes.) Steve demos Adobe's new "Thermo" RIA design tool while Karl shows off inverse kinematics in Flash and more.
You can check out the rest of the executive presentations & their slides here.
April 11, 2008
Winners of the $20,000 Adobe design challenge announced
Congratulations to TJ Sochor of 3 Wagons Deep on winning the grand prize in Adobe's "See What's Possible" motion graphics contest: