Stu Maschwitz

The very popular author of The DV Rebel's Guide, and co-founder of the late Orphanage production facility, Stu now runs ProLost, his blog, and is also Creative Director for the Magic Bullet line of products for Red Giant. Stu is an accomplished filmmaker working on a bunch of huge movies to break out of the box office such as Iron Man, The Spirit, and Sin City as Visual Effects Supervisor and Senior Staff at the Orphange, playing many different roles in the process. Stu also teaches a DSLR Filmmaking class at FXphd.com, and continues to be a leader in the visual effects scene. Visit ProLost

Dan Ebberts

A lot of the After Effects community, or at least the noobs are scared to death of expressions. Personally, I find it hard to delve into them, probably because I failed math in college, but Dan Ebberts is the leading person to talk to about anything and everything expressions. He has been writing computer programs for 30 years, so it seems to come natural to him, and the things that seem impossible to us, can be solved in a matter of minutes with this guy. His website, Motionscript.com was down while I was writing this so I am going to direct you all to his Creative Cow profile. Visit Dan on Creative Cow

Mark Christiansen

Mark's book After Effects CS4 Visual Effects and Compositing Studio Techniques has become one of the standards on college classes for reading and study material, and really lays it all out for you to learn easily. On top of being an awesome author of one of the most popular AE books out there, Mark is also a training leader, skilled graphics and visual effects artist, working on numerous popular commercials and movies. He also takes part in plugin development such as the newly released Camera Mapper plugin from Digieffects. Visit Mark's Website

Brian Maffitt

Brian Maffitt is quite the legend in the AE realm, and we have probably all learned a bit from his website, Total Training where he has covered After Effects training from the very beginning. He has been around a long time, creating the huge site that is Total Training, providing an outlet for online training, and is a trainer in all kinds of different programs as well as After Effects.

Visit Total Training

Steve Holmes

Energi Design is Steve Holmes company name, but what most people know him from in the AE world is his contributions to places like Layers Magazine or the Artbeats Motion Graphics Podcast. Either way Steve has been around making tutorials and teaching everyone tons of awesome techniques and he is definitely a leading trainer in my book.

Visit Energi Design

Ayato Fujii

Ayato's work has inspired a bunch of people to create some awesome stuff, and if you have never checked out his site you are missing out. Although he doesn't provide project files for the massive amount of tutorials he has, it really makes you learn how to make the effect on your own without cheating your way through to the end... which all of us are guilty of once in a while. Ayato lives in Tokyo, Japan where he works as a motion graphics designer.

Visit Ayato's Website

Dean Velez

The Emmy Award winning, Dean Velez is an awesome trainer, and his website The Motion Graphics Lab has a bunch of free tutorials, as well as some cheap ones, along with projects files and animation elements for you to pick up along the way. Dean (aka The Anvel) has taught at colleges and institutes, as well as presented at a multitude of conventions, including NAB and SIGGRAPH.

Visit The Motion Graphics Lab

Dennis Radeke

Dennis is one of the inside guys in Adobe that throws us news as it happens along with updates of when videos like the Adobe Beginner Classes go live. Dennis also co-runs After Effects New York with Aharon Rabinowitz and Jim Geduldick. Most of the content on his blog is based in Adobe products such as Premiere, After Effects and Photoshop, with tons of tips, tutorials, news and whatever else he can wrangle in there.

Visit The Genesis Project

Richard Harrington

Rich has been in the business for a while, and as you can see after you click the link below, he has quite a few entries in his ever popular podcast at Creative Cow: Photoshop for Video. Rich has co-written many books in the production scene and is a regular contributor to Pro Video Coalition.

Visit Rich's COW Profile

Michael Coleman

Getting his first look at CoSA After Effects 1.0 back in 1993, Michael Coleman was instantly hooked. His love of the program eventually led him into his current position as the Product Manager for After Effects. His blog Keyframes, reports from the team, surveys, news on plugins, compatibility, and pretty much anything else you could think of.

Visit Keyframes

Tim Clapham

Tim's company HYPA is an Australian based motion graphics company that does phenomenal work, but Tim is a leader in the training scene for the classes and tutorials that he has put out the last few years, including his Making It Look Great 6 title and the classes he has hosted on FXphd.com. His blog, The HYPAblog, has tons of tips and tricks for AE and Cinema 4D alike.

Visit The HYPABlog

Chad Perkins

You might remember Chad from the ChadandToddcast a while back where they reported on all kinds of things Adobe, and had quite possibly one of the most popular "3D Text With Shatter" tutorials ever. Since then, Chad has been one of the leading trainers on Lynda.com for After Effects, and his DVDs continue to be a phenomenal outlet for learning the program.

Visit Chad's Site