We learn from a lot of people on the internet, but a lot of us don't really know WHO they actually are. I have been fortunate enough to befriend some of the aforementioned members of my list, but just for you, now you know who is filling your brains with all that AE-goodness.
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Andrew Kramer
Basically everyone in the After Effects world has heard of Video Copilot. If you haven't... well, then you are missing out. It is quite possibly the most popular After Effects training site out there. Andrew Kramer has built an amazing business and community from what the website was just 4 years or so ago, and it is growing every day. You have probably heard of Action Essentials 2 or Riot Gear before. Those are a few of VC's many products, which help you to enhance your visual effects and motion graphics endeavors. Andrew was recently interviewed on Unlplugged, John Dickinson's (below) skype-based talkshow. Visit Video Copilot
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John Dickinson
Host of Motinworks.com.au, Unplugged, The Business of Design, and the mastermind behind the Making It Look Great training series, John is a 14 year veteran of the AE world. He currently works at Foxtel in Australia, but also hosts online e-seminars for Adobe, along with running his multitude of shows. In between tips and tutorials, John is always posting presets, progress and inspiration for you to learn from and use to better your own work. Visit Motionworks
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Aharon Rabinowitz
You might know of Aharon from hosting the Creative Cow After Effects podcast for the longest time, but he has since moved on from that position to become marketing director for Red Giant Software. His (sorta) newly launched line of pre-keyed stock footage, Crowd Control has been a huge hit, along with his tutorials that he continues to produce. He now hosts Red Giant TV, along with developing plugins and being a regular presenter at AENY. Visit All Bets Are Off Productions
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Jerzy Drozda Jr.
George, Malty, Jerzy, Jersey, Maltaannon, he has many different names, but there is only one man. Jerzy (yuhr-shah) is a phenomonal After Effects teacher, and one of the leading names in the AE world. He has a boatload of tutorials, pixel bender plugins, Custom Effects, and has been featured on different After Effects blogs as a contributor to the community. Host of Making It Look Great 5, his first training DVD, as well as a Polish Basic Training series, You can expect a lot more from Maltaannon in the next year. He also has a Live show hosted on Ustream that you can check out and link from his site. Visit Maltaannon
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Eran Stern
Eran is another one of the Creative Cow Podcast leaders, taking over for Aharon Rabinowitz, and cohosting with Carl Larsen (below). Eran is located in Israel and his website, SternFX.com is available in English as well as Hebrew. He also has a few DVDs available from the Creative Cow Master Series, "Motion Design with After Effects", and the newly released "A New Solid". His dvds are mostly the full size versions of the Creative Cow Podcast, but there are usually about 2 hours worth of never before seen goodness. Eran is a very accomplished trainer with a nice fluid style, and easy to follow pace. Visit SternFX
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Carl Larsen
Like I said above, Carl cohosts the Creative Cow Podcast with Eran, and together they make a great team. Carl's business with his wife Angel, is Telescope Media Group, which specializes in every aspect of production. Along with cohosting the Podcast, Carl has proved himself quite skilled with Imagineer's Mocha and MochaAE, with a few tutorials for their products as well. Carl is very clear, pronounced, and after watching his tutorials, it is quite obvious that he really knows his stuff. Visit Telescope Media Group
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Lloyd Alvarez
Ahh, good ol' Lloyd. Our former editor... what to say? Well for one thing, he is probably one of the most popular scripts developers in the After Effects world, running AEScripts.com and all that. Lloyd is an amazing VFX Supervisor as well as a compositor, art director, animator, among many other roles. Most people just look at AEScripts.com and think that's it. Nope... head over to lloydalvarez.com to see what I am talking about. Visit LloydAlvarez.com Visit AEScripts.com
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Harry Frank
Harry's freelance website, and alias per se, Graymachine, is the source for some great tutorials using Particular & Form, and expression-filled goodness. Harry actually has quite a few products, being a fellow author of Making It Look Great (volume 3), as well as 2 Expressions training packs and the Complete Training for Trapcode Particular from Class on Demand. Harry has been around for a while and always stays quite busy, and participates in some amazing projects... make sure you check out his newly updated demo reel. Visit Graymachine
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Ko Maruyama
Ko sometimes stays quieter than he should, but his blog NinjaCrayon is on top of everything in the motion graphics and vfx industry. Ko specializes in After Effects and Cinema 4D training, in fact you might have seen his 300+ Free After Effects Tutorials a while back. Ko also runs Mac Animation Pro (found at the previous link), and is always getting great coverage of events such as NAB and IBC. Visit Ninja Crayon
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Shoaib Khan
Relatively new to the After Effects scene, Shoaib and his website, MaxAfter.com, have really managed to come up with some spectacular tutorials the last year or so. Shoaib shares his knowledge with the world by producing these killer VFX shots and complex 3D and AE scenes to really capture the attention of the viewer. Visit MaxAfter.com
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Michele Yamazaki
If you know Toolfarm or AEFreemart, you know Michele Yamazaki. She is the mastermind behind the popular After Effects Freebies website, as well as one of the head honchos making Toolfarm the number one plugin reseller in the world. She contributes to the community by developing training put out by Toolfarm with industry experts such as Harry Frank, Rob Birnholz and Angie Mistretta. She also has done a fair share of speaking engagements, such as a popular one at MGFest last year. Her and Jeremy Hanke also have co-written a book called Greenscreen Made Easy, which gives you the primer and how-to on anything and everything greenscreen and keying. Visit AEFreemart Visit Greenscreen Made Easy
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Nick Campbell
The Gorilla of GreyscaleGorilla.com, Nick is possibly one of my favorite on the entertainment side of the motion design industry. He is the creator of 5 Second Projects that inspire you to "Make Cool S**t" as Nick likes to put it, using a bi weekly theme. Nick also creates lots of tutorial based in Photoshop, Cinema 4D and of course After Effects, as well as hosting an online GSG Live show on Ustream every week. Nick's How to be a Motion Designer and Get Paid got a ton of attention and really gave him the push to be the entertainer/educator he is now. Visit the Greyscale Gorilla
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Chris & Trish Meyer
Chris and Trish Meyer are popular over at ProVideo Coalition, running two channels: Creating Motion Graphics & Keyframes, as well as writing the book After Effects Apprentice collaboratively together. They have been around for quite a while and are veterans in the motion graphics industry, and with their company CyberMotion, they have made quite a name for themselves. They also occasionally host lessons for Lynda.com as well. Visit CyberMotion
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Todd Kopriva
Todd is basically the Einstein of how After Effects works. He wrote the manual... literally. Check out adobe.com/support/aftereffects... that's all him. His Adobe blog, The After Effects Region of Interest reports on some of the news from within Adobe itself, as well as interesting stuff such as the After Effects 1.1 demo reel or some sweet tutorials worth mentioning from around the web. Visit The After Effects Region of Interest
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Rich Young
Lastly, we have Rich Young. Now a lot of you might not know very much about him, like me, because he stays very under the radar. What we do know about this mysterious After Effects aficionado, is he runs the famed AEportal. Quite possibly my favorite After Effects reporting website, he is almost first to the punch every time something new happens that deals with or a part of After Effects, or even motion graphics or vfx for that matter. Visit AEPortal
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User Comments
( ADD YOURS )BAD GHOST September 18th
nice collection i love them all
( )EffectsGroup September 18th
awesome
( )Satya Meka September 18th
I would add Dan Ebberts too..his motionscript resource is priceless and he always solves problems at Creative Cow!
( )Rev65 September 18th
I concur…
Nice job, Topher.
( )Bubunya September 21st
Agreed
( )List is incomplete without Dan Ebberts and his motionscript
david chong September 18th
wow gracias a todos ustedes, miren mi canal de youtube, he logrado algunas cosas… “gracias a ustedes”
( )mil gracias, ustes son la neta, gracias y les juro que yo tambien le enseñare a las personas a hacer cosas fantastricas como las que hacen algun dia…
Lawrence September 18th
Hey! Where am I on the list?… Only kidding, I’m a douche.
( )Aido September 18th
nice to finally put some names to faces.
( )Aharon Rabinowitz September 18th
Satya – you beat me to the punch. Most of us would be too busy keyframing to make tutorials if it weren’t for Dan’s work.
Thanks for the shoutout. Topher.
( )Abe September 18th
So true.
( )VIJAY September 18th
MY GURUS
( )THESE GUYS ARE REALLY AWESOME!
Todd Kopriva September 18th
That’s a picture of Michael Coleman.
Here’s a picture of me:
( )http://www.adobe.com/devnet/video/articles/video_audio_resources.html
Aharon Rabinowitz September 18th
And, here, I was thinking – Man, Todd Looks a lot like Michael!
( )Topher Welsh September 18th
haha sorry Todd! I googled your name, and found a link to a post, for some reason I thought it was you…
Its always hard to be sure, I would have emailed you, but it was late when I turned this in…
John September 18th
Uhhh how can you forget Mark Christiansen??? He should be on the top and even Stu Maschwitz?
( )IANH - BR September 18th
Love it!
( )thaks very much, this post is very very usefull!!
Keitto September 18th
All this guys rock!! I’m doing my best to be among them
( )Keitto September 18th
*these, sorry
( )underpk September 18th
You miss Mark Christiansen the author of After Effects CS4 Visual Effects and Compositing Studio Techniques
( )Topher Welsh September 18th
I agree, I did miss a few like Stu and Mark, among some others that I wish I would have entered in… Perhaps a Who’s Who Volume II?
( )underpk September 19th
That would be great!
Brad Chmielewski September 18th
I’ll have to work my way onto this at some point. =)
What an excellent list Topher!
( )Antônio September 18th
They rules!!!
( )thanks a lot
Hafeez September 18th
hey what about Mark Christiansen?
( )Brad September 18th
what about Brian Maffitt… the original guru.
( )naimalwan September 18th
Nick should be further up the list. but a good list.
( )Vik September 18th
Guys, what about Maltaannon? He’s also good with AE
( )David W. September 22nd
Jerzy Drozda Jr is Maltaannon.
Nice list Topher!
( )brian September 18th
Andrew Kramer has helped me so much in the world of AE. His tutorials are always on point and never boring.
( )Lyndon September 18th
Thx Topher, I always appreciate your links to various other sites. You’re awesome.
( )Kurt September 18th
This list is great but you forgot one of my favorites which is Steve Holmes who did the total training DVD
( )MovieMaker September 18th
Jeez, Shoib is so serious looking! I still can’t believe that guy agreed to narrate one of my shorts. Maybe when the day comes that he is super famous, I can have bragging rights
.
( )Spencer September 18th
I love guys all, Thanks Topher
( )Felipe September 18th
Very usefull, thx a lot.
( )Space Dave September 18th
Great teachers ,yes they are .
( )id September 19th
i think ayato is missing
( )Kasper Lau September 19th
Super collection, thx
( )Tobias September 19th
Interresting stuff!
( )Halex September 19th
You forgot Dean Velez from motiongraphicslab.com
( )Rob Hindley September 19th
Another leading light in the AE world is Fuji Ayato (or Ayato Fuji) from ayatoweb.com
His tutorials can be a bit hard to follow so I made a bunch of projects and uploaded them to the Adobe Exchange for free download.
( )Fernando September 19th
In my opinion the top 2 guys are Andrew Kramer and Aharon Rabinowitz.
These guys make amazing tutorials!
( )jim hines September 19th
All of these guys are super duper. Every last one of them. Many, many thanks a hundred times over and to all those that missed the list (this time).
Special mention to Carl Larsen who is an unsung hero.
( )joe sampson September 19th
Thanks Topher. Yeah it could have been a larger list, and still hard to find cut off point.
Hey, in addition to part 2, how about a short survey of forums. There’s a list but sorting out advantages and weaknesses is a bit confusing:
http://msp.sfsu.edu/Instructors/rey/aepage/aeonline0107.html
-j
( )Tony R. September 19th
Where is Stu? Stu? are you in there? no?
:sadface
LOL
I think Stu should have been like one of the top people on there. Out of all the freebies out there i use his Rebel CC the most even more than colorista or any other color grading tool. It really does help crunch through a lot of video. by color correcting pretty fast.
( )f1a5h84ck September 20th
You guys forgot to mention AYATO FUJII.
http://www.ayatoweb.com/
It’s hard to overestimate his contribution to AE world from my point of view…
( )maiellaro September 20th
where is Dan Ebbert….our script god!!
( )Zikani "Boywonda1" Mwase September 20th
Wow…this is a post both interesting and resourceful. I am just getting started in AE and its good that you put up this post. THANKS
( )kennytan September 20th
andrew is cute? then why he always shoot his fat friend! hehe
( )I’m not good on CG like them but my music is quite something,take a peep
friends
DatARobot September 21st
I would just like to add however you league these guys out, all have been equally essential, contributing to and amalgamating the after effects & 3D online communities. They have taken the timeout of busy schedules to share an amazing, broad range of knowledge and experience.
I would personally like to thank those who have emailed me back swiftly on issues i have had with projects on tight deadlines and would advise those learning any motion software to bookmark at least half, if not all of these resource sources. A special thank you to Andrew Kramer and Nick Campbell for all your help.
In particular Nick’s aspect of teaching [rambling, laughing, female stand-ins] offer you some interesting pointers into the more theoretical side to motion beyond making things move. I have found that learning motion is more than the movement, pace and syncopation. But the freedom of artistic licence and understanding the physics and dynamics of the real world, such as lighting, composition, form and space.
Many of these guys have contributed to this, alongside this great site.
Thanks Topher and all.
( )oketunde September 21st
Chronicle of great innovators! have being following up Nick Campbell of recent, his works are inspiring and he’s Five Second Projects are awesome.
If u’r a newbie or even pro with AE. i will advice u check his works out
http://greyscalegorilla.com/blog
he’s the GORILLA. is conform and non-comform is what am unveilng right now. Thanxs. Nick. for those post.
( )Federer September 21st
Hmm…this serves as a nice welcome-to-the-AE-world message to any newbie like me… A comprehensive coverage of all the gurus of AE is what we need to inspire us to glory, thanks.
( )maxdiamond September 22nd
I second that Brad,
if it werent for Brian Maffitt I would be lost in AE world.
Great list Topher, hope to see more in part II of the list.
( )John Doe September 22nd
Good Stuff!
( )arlington cruz September 23rd
Regarding the Comments with Ayato Fujii. http://www.ayatoweb.com
Yes he’s got some awesome tutorials, But they can be indeed hard to follow.
I think it could be translation issues and more details on certain steps.
For instance, the flowing petals tutorial (awesome tut): http://www.ayatoweb.com/ae_tips_e/ae19_e.html
Could not figure out what he meant on Step 5 and which camera he was he refering to No disrespect for his tuts, I just felt frustrated being stuck back then.
( )Rajeev Malik September 24th
amazing people collection……
( )I’m huge fan of andrew kramer…..
he is such a killer……
Olek September 24th
What about Steve Holmes, Energi Design, http://www.clickenergi.com
(totaltraining.com AE tutorials)
ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNO ANDREW KRAMER
( )Bitto September 26th
Mark Christiansen , Steve Holmes, Stu and Kramer…. High-end skills…. top of the game : )
( )veronica September 26th
great to see them ….all together
( )m.insaf nias September 27th
COO L POST BUDDY, GREAT WORK, U HAV BOT SOM OF THE GREAT TEACHES TO THE SPOTLIGHT.
WELL DONE.
THANKS
( )Tukaine October 18th
Andrew Kramer at the top!!! Everyone loves him
( )Wiqar Ali Khan November 2nd
Recently I have observed Shoaib Khan’s tutorial work and it’s easy and self explanatory .. great job bro
I am not surprised to see who made it to this top list and I am sure it was tough competition.
Shoaib has my vote as I have hired him for many projects for London and Dubai based TV channels over the past 10 years, and his innovation, dedication and professionalism has remained outstanding.
Hats off to all of the guys on this top list..!!
p.s. no ladies on the list..? hmmmm just a thought..!! equal opportunity ??
( )Shoaib khan November 2nd
Thanks guys! Great stuff
Shoaib khan
( )http://www.Maxafter.xom
Salman Haider November 3rd
Hey.. shoaib .. i am salman a friend of zeeshan siddique .. he send me that link ..
well bro you have a great stuff on your cyber ! .. keep rocking .,,
keep animated !
( )