Aetuts+ » Roundup

25 Amazing Typography Videos

Topher Welsh — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 13:24:33 +0000

It’s been a while since our last typography roundup. There has been a lot of awesome in the past months, and this week I brining a bit of that to your doorstep, or your computer monitor, or whatever analogy you would like to use.

A.S.M. Platypus Funk

This is a very interesting video as it is a preview for a music album called Platypus Funk. It uses some interesting fonts and kinetic type techinques to displace the song names as well as lyrics as one of the songs and some of the music video footage that goes with it.

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The Sherlock Holmes Opening Titles

Probably one of my favorite opening titles of the year, the artists behind Sherlock Holmes integrated the studios logo’s into the cobblestone walkway as bricks rather than just imagery. A very cool way to display seemingly boring logos with the water and textures to make it look like part of the environment.

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Yes!

This video doesn’t have too much typography, but it does utilize people pushing around floating balloon-type things that make up letters into one word… YES. It is a really cool way to integrate live action as well as CG elements in a basic abstract way and have it come together as something relevent.

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Hitchhikers Guide to a Whale’s Consciousness

We all love kinetic type, and this piece taken from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy fits in this list perfectly. Great colors, fast paced, it’s everyting a kinetic type peice should be.

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Unlovable

Featured on Church Media Design’s Morning Motion, Unlovable is a great motion piece that with some great minimalistic typography principles and great formatting of the type itself.

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Social Media Revolution

THis video is another one of those videos that make you sit back and say “hmmm…” and really makes you put things into perspective. I mean who knew how many people there were on Facebook compared the population of the USA? I didn’t!”

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Bryce Courtenay’s The Story of Danny Dunn Book Trailer

This vide has some great use of type in 3D space as well as characters animated and flowing throughout the video. It is made as a book trailer, and serves it’s purpose well.

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Showbread – The Journey

Using a technique from an earlier tutorial on ur site, this fast paced, grungy music video uses kinetic type to blow through it’s high energy lyrics. Good thing too, because it’s a little hard to understand the singer in the first place.

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Coldplay – Lovers in Japan

Now, I love light-writing and when I saw Coldplay use this technique in their video, I just couldn’t pass it up. It is very obvious, and they use this typography technique as one of their many parts of this amazing video.

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Tim Minchin – Storm Movie Official Trailer

The typography part of this comes around 30 seconds in, and although it is very small, the look of the piece is just great in itself, as well as what the message is portraying.

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Colbert Kinetic Type

You all know I am a sucker for kinetic type, and I myself love me some good Stephen Colbert, so when I saw his “Another Christmas Song” animated into a video, I just had to feature it… even if it is May.

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Pocko/Magma Title Sequence

Even if this isn’t off the wall crazy animation techniques sometimes you just need to sit back and look at how things flow together well and assess the artistry from there. This is a perfect representatin of great type, minimal animation, but an amazing opening title sequence.

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The Colbert Report – HD Show Open

Again with the Colbert! The new show open for the Colbert Report blew me away, and the second after I saw it, I thought… “how long till this is one Motionographer?” Really its a well put together piece and over the top (and overly flattering, the way Stephen likes it) and really signifies Stephen’s patriotism and his thirst for attention.

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Type In Motion

Using a custom remixed track of Kanye West and Daft Punk’s Stronger, Adam Rego puts together a good type treatment to the beat and lyrics of the song for a school project of his.

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Karmadrive 2009

Another video that really puts things into perspective for you, showing you that if you are worrying about presents for the holidays, a lot more people have much, much larger problems than that, like keeping the heat on, or feeding their families.

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MaRS – The Business of Aging Summit

This opening title sequence is for a conference whose main goal is to get the older generation more aware about the challenges and opportunities facing their population in Canada. With a very well spoken voiceover artist, the animator really puts together a great looking piece that flows together very nicely.

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Rufio

One of my favorite movies “Hook” with Robin Williams uses the fight between Peter Pan and Rufio where they are calling each other names back and forth. I always thought that would be a great piece to base a kinetic typography video off of, but it seems like someone beat me to the punch!

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What Matters to You // Me?

Another Jr. Canest video, this time more based in kinetic type. Using many elements, colors, drawings and a hand crafted voiceover track, is just another reason why Jr. Canest is on his way to being one of the top designer’s or at least more recognized designers to come out of Vancouver Film School.

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Kinetic Typography – D-Tronics

Talk about a great piece of spec work! this video for a local car stereo store came out really nice, and personally I think the company would be crazy NOT to buy the rights to using this.

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You Can Walk…

Oh wow, who loves them some Ricky Bobby and Will Ferrell? Well, this audio track, taken from when he thinks that he is paralyzed, but actually not, actually makes for a quite enterataining kinetic typography segment.

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Pan – Kinetic typography

Taking a task and going with it, Bjorn takes the supplied audio and makes a great video based off the word pan and many other ‘p’ words to create a great motion graphics piece.

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The Ten Commandments

It surprising you haven’t seen anything based on the ten commandments before. Using a basic color scheme, and some animated elements and just a music track, this is really well done video illustrating and animating the ten commandments.

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Nick the Greek

Taken from the film “Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels”, this is a very well illustrated monologue of one of the characters, with a grungy look to the text.

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Gill Sans

Even though this is in french, it is still a great piece if you just watch it. If you can understand french, it sums up everything about the font Gill Sans.

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Typography: Dedicated

Using a “Watchmen” Type of color palette, this is great hip song that animates the lyrics as they happen in a very creative way.

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The Best Sites for Royalty Free Stock Music and Sound Effects

Topher Welsh — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 11:00:18 +0000

You can’t have video without audio… it just doesn’t work. That’s why in high school it was A/V club, not just V Club… although that does sound pretty rad. Anywho… if you want to complete an animation, short film, commercial or whatever… you have to have good audio, and that means scores and sound effects! I have found some of the best places around the web to purchase packages, find individual songs, and even snag some free tracks for you and your work!

SmartSound.com

A division of SonicFire Pro’s awesome scoring software, the SmartSound library lets you pick from thousands of songs and hundreds of albums in their library. They also offer tools to trim your tracks to a custom length and you can also utilize an FCP Plugin to do that same task of automatically fitting your timeline.

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Pump Audio

The awesome thing about pump audio is that anyone can contribute to the pickings. They accept music and tracks from artists from all around the world. This is NOT stock music… these are actual songs from indie artists. The way Pump Audio sees it is, you don’t want to lay a lame, generic track over an edit you have poured your heart and soul into right? Well, then… why settle?

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Shockwave-Sound.com

These guys have been around for the past nine years as one of the pioneers of the online royalty free stock music industry. They have everything here… you can go into a song, pick different lengths, versions, sound effects FROM those songs… whatever you might need. There are always new tracks added every week, and they even have a service that you can request voiceover talent.

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Non Stop

Wow, Non Stop has a pretty hefty credit list when you check it out… Harry Potter, Monster VS Aliens, Wall-E, Chronicles of Narnia… the list just goes on. There is no wonder Warner/Chappel wanted to acquire them in 2007. They have over 700 in their library of music and by registering over at CUEgle you can preview every bit they have… this stuff is absolutely amazing.

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Digital Juice

Digital Juice is known for having just huge deals and amazing products that you get the best bang for your buck. They have two different kinds of audio products, StackTraxx and SoundFX Libraries. First, the StackTraxx are now on their 50th volume and come with 20 music tracks at varied lengths, and are usually $50 singly, but you can get a pack of five for $80, and a pack of 10 for $150! That is insanely cheap for stock music! As for the SoundFX libraries, they only have 4 collections right now, but each collection has over 11,000 elements and only costs about $250! If you are looking to buy a large pack of music or sound effects… this is probably one of your best bets.

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Video Copilot

Andrew Kramer and his team only have two products in the audio realm of things, but they are still pretty heavy hitters, and placed at a good price. The first, Designer Sound FX has been out for a couple years, and is still a pretty good package. It comes with 500 royalty free sound effects, and especially for use AE users, tutorials and project files for their killer promo video. Next, Pro Scores is more in the scoring department (hence the name) and includes orchestral music tracks and epic musical elements. There are also layered music tracks, tension building elements, and of course some killer tutorials. Both products are priced right around $100.

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SampleSwap

Finally the free stuff! Now, if you aren’t big money and can’t afford large packs, you might have to grab some free elements online and create your own beats and scores. That’s where SampleSwap comes in. They have 5.5 gigabytes of sounds from techno and drum’n'bass beats, to sound effects and instrument sounds to complete whatever your task may be.

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StockMusic.net

This site is pretty straighforward. $30 bucks a track, $200 for 10 tracks, pay once… use them forever. They have thousands of tracks in every single genre you could think of, and they are trusted by some big names in the industry. Chances are you have probably heard their work used somewhere on television or in the movies. I’m sure you didn’t miss the blockbuster, Black Dawn with Steven Seagal… yeah they had a hand in that one.

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Audio Jungle

We can’t leave out one of our most useful sites on the Envato Network! It might seem like a shameless plug, but Audio Jungle, like all the other sites in the marketplace network have some of the most competitive prices in the business. The way they work, is you can deposit money into your account, and generally get files for a little cheaper than if you were to buy them outright. There is also a fantastic affiliate program that you can sign up for to earn money for all the marketplaces as well. Anyone can submit files, but only the best and highest quality get accepted.

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Royalty Free Music Clips

This guy seems like he is doing a similar thing to me with his blog, and rounding up as many free music clips, stock sound effects and whatever else he can find from around the web. This is a great site to subscribe to and grab what he has to offer as it becomes available. He takes the hassle out of searching for you and provides it one, easy to find location!

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Partners In Rhyme

Partners in Rhyme have been delivering royalty free music since the AOL days… 1996! That’s a long time… and they have a collection to prove it. They have different CDs available for purchase (most from $70-$100), and they provide an awesome flash player so you can preview every track before you shell out your cash to buy.

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Free Music Archive (FMA)

The Free Music Archive is an editor’s paradise. You can never have enough stock music to pick and choose from, and you can never have enough FREE files either. This site is run by the WFMU, the most renowned freeform radio station in America. They are able to stick music created by artists online for use in productions, podcasts or whatever for those of us that can’t afford to by large packs of stock music. Make sure you bookmark this page, creator or consumer… it’s a great site to be a part of!

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Film Music Moby.com

You know about that musical artist Moby right? Well he has a portion of his website with free music he created for filmmakers to use in whatever they see fit, as long as it is non-commercial, and non-profit. This is obviously all professional stuff, and all you have to do to access it is create a free account on the page after the jump!

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Freeplay Music

More free stuff! Man, you gotta love sites like this! FreePlay has 6339 tracks as of the time of me writing this, and is growing every day. All of the tracks are downloadable absolutely free if you are just fooling around and this stuff is non-profit/non-commercial. If it is, however you need to go about purchasing licensing, where you can find all that information on their website.

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28 Magnificent Mocha Tutorials

Topher Welsh — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 15:56:14 +0000

We so appreciate Imagineer Systems sponsoring our March Desktop Wallpaper Contest that we decided to throw together a collection of awesome Mocha tutorials for you to enjoy. There is a lot to learn from Mocha, being such a powerful tracker, so I suggest you brush up and hone those skills!

Martin Brennand – Unlink Tracking Techniques

Martin shows up some interesting techniques to implement when dealing with tricky pan shots that can cause for a difficult track.

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Carl Larsen – Horizontal Replacement and Roto

Carl Larsen from Telescope Media Group shos you how to use Mocha effectively for replacing skies as well as some good roto techniques.

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David Torno – Face Replacement

You probably saw this a while back, but David Torno has an awesome tutorial on how he replaced the faces of characters from the Golden Girl with faces of a band for their video… spectacular.

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Ben Heusner – Using Mocha Shape in a Compositing Workflow

Well… the title was kind of a mouthfull, and really basically tells you what you are about to watch. Learn how to use the Mocha Shape addon for MochaAE as an awesome tool in your compositing shots.

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Carl Larsen – 2.5D Rig Removal

Carl shows you how to remove objects within a shot using MochaAE as well as Photoshop. This is an essential technique to learn… trust me… I have run into it many times.

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Carl Larsen – Tracking for Broadcast Graphics

In this sweet tutorial, Carl show you how to track some footage of a gun with some blowback to crate some cool graphic overlays.

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Ben Heusner – Roto Techniques

Again, using Mocha Shape in conjunction with MochaAE, learn how to create spectacular mattes in less time to ease your compositing tasks.

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Eran Stern – Red Giant Warp and Mocha

Eran walks you through exporting your tracking data for use with Red Giant Warp instead of the basic corner pin effect in AE.

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Ross Shain – Adjust Track Module

In this tutorial Ross shows you how to adjust your tracks midway through for a very thorough and awesome track for your footage, whatever it may be!

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The Basics of Mocha

In this tutorial, Ben Le Tourneau shows you all the basic features on getting you up to speed on using the software.

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Exporting Data into After Effects

This is a simple walkthrough on how to export your tracking data into After Effects.

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Aharon Rabinowitz – Exporting Mocha Data

Similar to the one before, this one features one of our buddies, Aharon Rabinowitz showing you how to export tracking data from Mocha into AE.

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Martin Brennard – Top 5 Workflow Tips

Pretty straight forward eh? So yeah, this is a must see if you work in Mocha a lot. I mean you might learn something new… you never know!

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Chris Heur – Convert 2D to 3D

In this awesome tutorial Chris shows you how to take an old movie like Nosferatu and take it from 2D into 3D using tools like Mocha.

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Martin Brennard – Tracking Foreground Obstructions

This tutorial shows you how to compensate for things that get in the way of your track, and how to make Mocha ignore those when it comes time to track the things that matter.

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Ben Heusner – Logo Replacement

Learn how to use Mocha’s roto tools for use in replacing a logo on a candy bar.

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Ben Heusner – Exporting Track Mattes

Learn how to stabilize and export track mattes into After Effects for use later for task such as eye replacement.

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Sasa Jokic – Matchmoving Multiple Tracks

This is by far one of my favorite tutorials for Mocha. In this you learn how to track a ton of different planes of people holding up green cards so that it creates a specific image.

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CMIVFX – Advance Planar Tracking

In this tutorial you will learn some advanced techniques for planar tracking in lots of real world situations.

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Ross Shain – Image Stabilization

Instead of using this just for tracks, you can also use Mocha for tasks such as image stabilization, something that I am sure we all need every once in a while.

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Mathias Mohl’s MochaImport Script and Tutorial

Mathias has created a spectacular script to let you import Mocha data into After Effects and onto certain layers. He shows you how to use that data to track makeup onto actor’s faces.

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Jeff Foster – Motion Tracking with Mocha

In this tutorial from Jeff he shows us how easy it is to take some impromptu footage shot on the street and use Mocha to replace the side of a semi truck with whatever you want!

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RGTV Ep. 27 Building an Airport Scene Part 1 – Backplate

In this tutorial, Mathias creates the backplate for which we will be creating this airport scene.

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RGTV Ep. 28 Building an Airport Scene Part 2 – Compositing

In this next tutorial, Mathias shows you how to track with Mocha and use the data with MochaImport to create a sweet looking composite.

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Eran Stern – Bionic Lab

Using Mocha in this tutorial, Eran tracks footage to a computer screen as well as offsets different layers of numbers to create a cool looking lab text animation.

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Richard Harrington – Mocha Walkthrough

Another one of those basic tutorial, Richard Harrington for Layers Magazine takes you through some of the basics for MochaAE.

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Aaron Zander – The Gatorade Effect Part 1

In this first part, Aaron takes a look at the toolset within Mocha and how it can be used to create the look desired.

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Aaron Zander – The Gatorade Effect Part 2

In this second part Aaron shows us how to use Mocha link splines to other tracks, adjust tracks and keyframes, and finally rendering.

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61 Fantabulous Fonts For Titles!

Topher Welsh — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 11:00:18 +0000

Ahh another font roundup… Gotta love these things! I often find myself scouring sites like WantedFonts or DaFont for hours at a time and end up with about 50-100 new fonts and hardly ANY work done. Well, if this sounds familiar, I have taken the searching out of finding some awesome fonts for you to use for titling in your productions! Bold and beautiful, I am sure there is something here for everyone!

Telegrafico

Old Sans Black

Headline

SF Movie Poster

Dinova

Media Gothic

Florencesans SC

Sans Thirteen Black

Xscale

Space Marine

Xcelsion

7th Service

Old Republic

Guardian

Bitsumishi

He’s Dead Jim

Hagane

Fireye

Ash

Breakaway

Autobahn

Carbon Block

Dorado Headline

Corporate HQ

Good Times

Choktoff

Kimberly

Pirulen

SF Old Republic

Final Frontier

Flip Flop

Fortune City

Harabara

Mamma Gamma

Mentone

MicroMieps

Moltors

Oceania

Olijo

Ptarmigan

Reservoir Grunge

SF Laundromatic

SF Speedwaystar

SF Theramin Gothic

Shadow Tag

Should’ve Known

Strenuous

Sveningsson

Venus Rising

Virtue

Whoop-Ass

Zag

4th and Inches

Ethon

Amity Jack

Forque

DS Narrow

Ingrata

Jumbo

Red Circle

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The Big Ol’ Compositing Application Rundown

Topher Welsh — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 11:01:41 +0000

When it comes to the world of post production, there are a lot of choices for the tools of the trade. Some are relatively cheap to purchase, and some you might never touch in your professional career. One thing is for sure though, it’s not the app that makes the spot, its the artist who finishes. it. Although, having a super fast machine and a toolset to take on the project’s massiveness helps too. I have compiled a list of 14 of the leading software options in the post production realm to bring some insight to those of you who think that After Effects is the only option available, or if you are interested in branching out away from our favorite app of choice into the world of nodal compositing.

Note on the Rating System:

“Motion Graphics” and “VFX/Compositing” are based upon how often the application is used for that task, not necessarily how well it handles that specific area of work

Adobe After Effects

If you are reading this then you probably know all about After Effects, or at least know enough to know what you are getting yourself into. AE is the main compositing and motion graphics application from Adobe Systems. Part of the Adobe Production Premium Suite, it has proven to be an essential tool of freelancers and big studios alike. After Effects is a layers-based application, where it doesn’t use nodes, like a lot of other high-end compositing applications (like the ones we will look at a bit further down the list). This program is made to interact very well with the other Adobe production apps like Premiere Pro, Soundbooth, Photoshop and others. Although After Effects can’t do true 3d modeling and animation, the rest of the 3d world has made it a bit easier for you to bring your renders into AE via exporting profiles which embed camera movement, lights and different passes for compositing further down the line. With the abundance of After Effects tutorials on the web, as well as the lower price point, this has become the #1 beginner’s app of choice when it comes to starting in the mograph and VFX world.

Motion Graphics: 10

VFX/Compositing: 10

Price Range: $350 (educational) $1,000 (professional)

Learning Curve: 4 (Moderate, easy to jump in, but very extensive)

Training Available: 10
The Foundry’s Nuke

Nuke has become one of the hot tools the last couple of years, with some huge studios like Industrial Light and Magic, Weta Digital Image Engine and Framestore making the program a part of their post production pipeline. Nuke, now in version 6 and X (X has more features like the new roto paint tools, new tracker and some others), is a complete node-based post production tool. It provides a fast user experience, efficient multi-channel scanline rendering engine, and a ton of awesome tools to make things like keying, roto, and overall working with 3d compositing and imagery a much easier experience. There is also an optional plugin for Nuke called Ocula from The Foundry that aids in Stereoscopic workflow. Now, if you work with After Effects a lot and haven’t touched a node-based program this might be a little foreign to you. No fear, The Foundry has a ton of tutorials online, as well as some older DVDs from Gnomon Workshop, and classes offered at fxPHD.

Motion Graphics: 1

VFX/Compositing: 10

Price Range: $3,500 – $6,000 (Nuke 6.0 or NukeX)

Learning Curve: 6

Training Available: 5
Autodesk Combustion

Combustion hasn’t been updated since 2008, and doesn’t look like anything is planned anytime soon. It is a professional application, with a sub-professional price of, that integrates well between Maya, 3ds Max and the rest of the Autodesk line. This program is also node-based (which is the way a lot of compositing applications are), and provides a feature-rich interface with tons of tools to get the job done. Sadly, since this has been seemingly discontinued, it never really caught the attention of the tutorial boom, and there really isn’t too much training for it. You can find some on The Area at Autodesk, and some other places littered around the net, but that is about it.

Motion Graphics: 3

VFX/Compositing: 7

Price Range: $995

Learning Curve: 4

Training Available: 2
Flame, Flint, Inferno

These systems are where you are going to shell out some serious money. I say “systems” because these aren’t just software solutions that you can buy and install on any fast computer. They are built proprietary around running either Flame, Flint or Inferno. The purpose of this, is to have a super fast system that you can work on with a client right over your should asking for edits, tweaks, changes, and for you being able to perform those changes in realtime with realtime playback. No rendering, no RAM previews… you are literally able to work in realtime with feature film material. Now, as for the serious money part of it… Flame systems can be priced around $250,000, but to justify that price point, one hour sessions with a Flame artist can start at $600 an hour. Not too shabby. Of course, Flint is a little less ($85,000) and Inferno prices are more ($500,000), and the higher/lower the technology you go, the more expensive/cheaper it is going to be. Training for these systems are scarce, but they all pretty much work the same way. fxPHD has a couple of Flame courses you can take and Autodesk’s Area has a lot of tutorials there as well.

Motion Graphics: 2

VFX/Compositing: 10

Price Range: $85,000 – $500,000

Learning Curve: 7 (steep)

Training Available: 3
Autodesk Smoke

Smoke has been a buzz the last few months with it port over to Mac OS coining the name “Smack” (Smoke on Mac), but a lot of us After Effects people haven’t had the chance to mess with the program. Smoke is more editing and compositing based, and a software solution rather than the pricey options previously mentioned from Autodesk. There are actually two versions of Smoke available, the new Smoke for Mac is only $15,000, but it lacks some things like the batch tool that is included in its big brother, Smoke Advanced, which is around $40,000. The big difference between the two though is Smoke for Mac is Mac only, and Smoke Advanced is Linux based only. There isn’t any in between. Since they are only Software that brings the price down to between $15k and $40k, and more affordable for mid to larger scale studios. Now, don’t get me wrong, you still have to have a screaming system to run the software, but these applications provide a solution to compositing that you can spend a lot of time in like Nuke or Toxik to composite shots together. There is another title called Fire that is very similar to Smoke, but deals mostly in film editing and visual effects, and also is no longer shipping. Again, there isn’t much training for Smoke, but you can find some random videos littered around the net and personal blogs and such. As with all high end popular compositing solutions, fxPHD has some Smoke courses available.

Motion Graphics: 3

VFX/Compositing: 9

Price Range: around $15,000 – $40,000

Learning Curve: 5

Training Available: 3
Apple Motion

Motion has been kind of the secondary option for Apple users who have Final Cut Studio, but haven’t taken the leap to buy After Effects. It is a great peice of software with a bunch of training online and DVDs available for purchase, but it isn’t used in the post production world as widely as After Effects or Shake is. This is a piece of software that is for the consumer/prosumer market where you need to do some motion graphics, basic keying, and basic compositing… nothing really high end. You won’t see this used in any higher post houses, but it stays on top of the game as one of the top motion graphics applications among small companies and Mac enthusiasts. Like I said there is loads of training at places like AppleMotion.net and Zak Peric’s Website as well as DVD training you can purchase at stores online. Sadly, there is no way to purchase Motion on it’s own, you have to buy Final Cut Studio to get it.

Motion Graphics: 9

VFX/Compositing: 3

Price Range: $999

Learning Curve: 2

Training Available: 7
Apple Shake

A discontinued product, Apple Shake is still a favorite application among those VFX artists and compositors that like to work on the cheap, and on their Macs. Users that started with Shake still use it today, and swear by it as the best compositor they have ever used. Although it doesn’t let you have all the crazy new attributes that a compositor like Nuke or Toxik provide it still holds it’s own in the market. I mean, King Kong was composited in part with this software. It is a nodal compositor, but allows you to work in 3d space for compositing multiple different pieces of imagery together. The sad part is though, that it IS discontinued, and therefore will have no more updates, and other software will eventually (and have) overtaken it as a leader in the compositing market. It’s no doubt that in it’s day it was a powerhouse of a program, but there are more options out there. Some studios actually purchased the source code and created their own 64 bit versions so that they could keep using it in their workflow, but these won’t ever be available to the public. You can find copies of the legit version online throughout stores on the internet or Ebay, and it is relatively cheap if you really want a nodal compositor for Mac.

Motion Graphics: 2

VFX/Compositing: 9

Price Range: Used from $245 (Amazon)

Learning Curve: 4

Training Available: 4 (Books and DVDs)
Autodesk Toxik (Maya Composite)

There are a lot of mixed feelings about Toxik, but it is still one of the better pieces of compositing software out there. Some say that it is outdated and unpopular so they decided to stick it as a package with Maya called Maya Composite. Some say that Autodesk is still working on it under the hood making it a powerhouse, but one thing is for sure it is a difficult program to learn. Again, node-based like all high end compositing apps, Toxik takes advantage of being able to work in a 3d environment, camera projection, 3d integration and interoperability, and being able to work in a pipeline of 2k, 4k, and virtually any format you could think of. Toxik is not available as standalone product, but is actually only included with Maya 2010, and renamed Maya Composite, so you are going to have to get the 3d app with it unless you want to buy Toxik 2009 used instead.

Motion Graphics: 1

VFX/Compositing: 10

Price Range: Around $500 for used Toxik 2009 or $3500 for Maya 2010

Learning Curve: 8

Training Available: 3
Eyeon Fusion

Fusion, now in version 6 is another one of the more heavy hitting compositing applications on the cheaper end of the realm. When I mean cheaper, I mean it is still around $4,500, but at least were not dealing with a $60,000 price tag, right? Eyeon Software has been around for about 21 years now, and that 21 years of development has created a pretty killer product. Fusion lets you take 3D geometry into its interface, and using a nodal system, allows you to relight, texture and shade for compositing. Mix that with video, camera projections, particle generation and much more make this an amazing product in the sub-$5,000 range. Another plus is that the tutorial scene is moderate for this program, being one of the industry/prosumer tools that a lot of people use… places like CGSutra.com have a lot of tutorials, and even sites like Class on Demand have training videos available for purchase.

Motion Graphics: 2

VFX/Compositing: 9

Price Range: Less than $5,000

Learning Curve: 5

Training Available: 4
fxHome

Now, a lot of people say its the skill of the visual effects artist that makes a great film. That being said, this company’s promo for their products looks pretty good, but this is a line of applications geared toward hobbyists more than actual visual effects artists. If that’s all you are then this is probably going to be a great toolset for you to use. FxHome has 3 layers-based products: The first, CompositeLab Pro is a is the compositing application where they allow you to key, color grade, light wrap, basic roto, and animate the position of different elements. The second, EffectsLab Pro allows you to add special effects like lens flares, lasers, muzzle flashes, and particle effects. The third, VisionLab Studio combines the functions of both the previous products into one, allowing you to composite and add effects all in one application. If you are requiring more from an application, like moving in 3d space, creating motion graphics, and overall more flexibility to use elements other than images, video and the included effects, you will probably want something a little more. But like I said, if you are a hobbyist or just want to dink around with this concept, this is a great set of programs to start with for very little money.

Motion Graphics: 1

VFX/Compositing: 10

Price Range: $150-$500

Learning Curve: 1

Traning Available: 2 (included tutorials with software)

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48 After Effects Tutorials From The Reaches of the Interwebs

Topher Welsh — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 14:56:36 +0000

It’s been about a month since the last tutorial roundup, so I figure we are due to get our fix. Although we have had some killer contributions the last few weeks… it’s always good to get some more places to bookmark and check up on, so I present to you 48 new tutorials to hone your AE senses!

Video Copilot – Sure Target 2

Now in plugin form, Andrew Kramer and the Video Copilot team have now transformed the amazing Sure Target Preset into a plugin that shows up in your Effects panel and is now way easier to use!

View Tutorial
Video Copilot – Smoke Trails

If you were paying attention to our Optical Flares Giveaway and Review, I am sure you saw this shot in Optical Flares in Action video. Anyways, using Particular and light emitters learn how to create some cool sprite particles and link the OF lens flare to the lights position in 3d space!

View Tutorial
Brad Chmielewski – Animated Cartoon Arrows

This is a sweet little tip that can save you time and lessen the layers in your comp. What Brad did was tweak the X rotation to make a layer move in Z Space behind the the green screened subject.

View Tutorial
Brad Chmielewski – Animation Presets in AE

Brad shows you some simple ways to save and use Animation Presets within After Effects. Simple but very, very useful if you have never done it before.

View Tutorial
Artbeats & Steve Holmes – Simply Colorful

From Energi Design, Steve Holmes makes appearances on Artbeats quite often, and this time he is showing you how to build a cool looking title design comp with a handful of elements and a bunch of easy tips.

View Tutorial
Artbeats & Eran Stern

In this tutorial, Eran uses some HD stock footage shot on RED to replace a screen with some custom interface elements and add some text treatment using Mocha and AE.

View Tutorial
CGtuts+ – Create a Jelly-like Text Animation in C4D and AE

Alexander Alexandrov shows you how to make a cool looking Jelly Text that comes into your scene. Do your initial modeling and such in Cinema 4D and then bring that into After Effects to finish off the animation.

View Tutorial
RGTV Episode 36 – Create a Psychedelic Background

Using some shape layers and Trapcode Shine to create a crazy hippie background, Aharon takes Shine in a new direction and throws some tips out there that you probably haven’t seen before.

View Tutorial
HeadsNTails

It’s been a big month for AEScripts, they have launched a ton of new scripts as well as updating lots of older ones. This script from David Torno lets you extend the head or tail of your script in either a specified amount of frames or seconds.

View Tutorial
Trajectory

Using two nulls named accordingly, after running the Trajectory script the layers in your comp will align to the invisible line between the two null objects, and stay in line wherever you move the two nulls around in 3d space. (Don’t worry there’s a demo video that explains it really well).

View Tutorial
Fit2Frame

Similar to the “fit to comp ______” functions in the Layer>Transform menu, this script will select multiple layers and resize them accordingly regardless of the pixel aspect ratios or sizes and fill the comp frame, giving you the choices of cropping or letterboxing.

View Tutorial
PhotoOrientationFixer

Ever have your photos come into AE sideways? Isn’t that annoying? Well, now there is a script that will read the metatag in photos that the camera adds to it to rotate it correctly.

View Tutorial
DecomposeText

This is a pretty sweet little script and damn handy when you need to animate letters or words separately. All you do is run the script on your text layer and pick your appropriate break out settings.

View Tutorial
pt_TextEdit

Oh snap! This is exactly what we have needed for a LONG time. Use this dockable UI script to search for text layers to edit them within the box in the UI and change them without having to select the layer and use the type tool.

View Tutorial
TextReverser

A very simple script for if you have to write something in backwards. Just write it correctly and run this script and booya! Reversed text!

View Tutorial
RepositionAnchorPoint

This script is pretty rad. Instead of having to use the pan behind tool, you can actually use this Dockable UI script to position to the top, bottom, left, right, or corners of the layer.

View Tutorial
The LoopMaker

Brilliant! No more weird expressions and keyframing and all that jazz to loop a layer. Just apply this script and you are good to go!

View Tutorial
Create3DShapes

This is great, especially if you build faux-3d worlds and objects with basic shapes. There are a bunch of different shapes you can make, and each of them have their own demo video so you can learn exactly how to make them.

View Tutorial
Maltaannon LIVE – Cool 3D Stuff

Jerzy goes through some cool techniques on creating 3d looks in AE with and without the use of 3rd party plugins. Also, he shows how to make some cool Christmas trees Trapcode Particular and Zaxwerks Serpentine.

View Tutorial
MaxAfter.com – Running Man

Using Trapcode Form along with some real life footage, learn how to generate the Form particles to react along with the footage for an interesting effect.

View Tutorial
MaxAfter.com – Gold Cash

Where is M.C. Hammer when you need him? Oh well, using a gold bar as an emitter, generate dollar bills for unique transformation using Trapcode Particular.

View Tutorial
MaxAfter.com – AE Illustration

Usually you use Adobe Illustrator for this kind of thing, but why spend money on another program when you can do it right in AE? In this tutorial, learn how to create simple shapes out of solid layers with masks and use those to make a glossy menu item.

View Tutorial
MaxAfter.com – Flip Effect

Learn how to create a dynamic animation flip board effect with photos by manually flipping them and setting up the animation.

View Tutorial
MaxAfter.com – Coin Stack

Learn how to create the 3d coins directly in After Effects without a 3d program and use a simple technique to stack them on top of each other.

View Tutorial
Chris & Trish Meyer – Extended Vignette Techniques

Although this isn’t the entire set from Lynda.com (they gotta make money somehow, right?) You can get the Introduction and the “Approaches to Creating Vignettes – Masks” taste to see if you wanna try this series out. You guessed it, its on making better vignettes.

View Tutorial
Imagineer Systems – Top 5 Mocha Workflow Tips

Martin Brennard of Imagineer gives you 5 awesome tips to improve your workflow as well as probably saving you a bit of time.

View Tutorial
Imagineer Systems – Roto Workflow Creating 2D to 3D

Chris Huer of Free Fall FX uses Mocha and Mocha to take the ancient Nosferatu film and turn it into an anaglyph 3D movie.

View Tutorials
Deeper Modes of Expression – #1 Useful Math Expressions

From Chris and Trish Meyer’s book “Creating Motion Graphics with AE” they have an extra chapter called Deeper Modes of Expression based on advanced expression functions. This part of it goes into some of the more useful math equations that you can use in building expressions.

View Tutorial
Deeper Modes of Expression – #2 Interpolation Methods

Same story as the last entry, except this entry is all about interpolation methods and how you can modify them with expressions to do what you need.

View Tutorial
Masters of VFX

Not really an After Effects tutorial, but well worth the watch, nonetheless. Matt Silverman took it upon himself to find this old series not available anymore, and upload it to Vimeo for all of of us to check out! (Find the other videos in the sidebar)

View Tutorial
Aharon Rabinowitz – Adding Motion Blur to Video

Using a fantastic new service, Screenr.com, Aharon shows us an easy way to add motion blur to your live action video after filming, or for adding to 3d renders or pretty much anything with motion!

View Tutorial
Creative Cow – AE to Blender Exporter

Paolo Ciccone has a sweet little tool to make bringing your Blender animations into After Effects quite a bit easier.

View Tutorial
Creative Cow – Reverse Stabilization

A lot of people know how to work reverse stabilization from Andrew Kramer’s famous Demon Face tutorial, but a lot of people might be in the dark as to how and why it works. Roland Kahlenberg is here to explain the fuzziness.

View Tutorial
Motionworks – Spray Paint and Bullet Holes

John Dickinson has a new recorded E-Seminar for Adobe where he uses Photoshop alongside of After Effects to create a grungy, bullet-riddled wall with spray painted on text.

View Tutorial
Robert Leger – Unplugged Making Of

After winning the Unplugged Title Challenge, Robert Leger decided to provide us with a thorough walkthough of how he created his awesome winning animation.

Part 1 Part 2
Greyscale Gorilla – Camera Projection and GI with C4D & AE

Camera projection is such an awesome technique, and Nick Campbell has a 2 parter on it with C4D, but the second actually deals in compositing in After Effects… check em both out!

Part 1 Part 2
Greyscale Gorilla – How to Make 3D Text and Use 3D Stroke

The very first episode of GSG LIVE based on tutorials on Ustream, this tutorial Nick shows us some interesting techniques on creating 3d text in After Effects as well as some fun uses with Trapcode 3d Stroke.

View Tutorial
Andrew Murchie – Basic Stereoscopic 3D in AE

This two part tutorial walks you through making your own stereoscopic 3D anaglyph (red/blue glasses) videos from scratch right from your own home!

Part 1 Part 2
Lester Banks – How to Suck Less in Vanishing Point

Vanishing Point has always been a little hazy for me, as well as a lot of other people… well Lester is doing a service and helping you suck a little less while working with this highly resourceful feature.

View Tutorial
Justin Young – Render Templates in After Effects

If you have ever wanted to create your own render templates in After Effects instead of having to switch up your setting every time you render, this is the tutorial for you.

View Tutorial
Brad Zimmerman – Match Moving

Matchmoving is a hot subject right now, and Brad Zimmerman from ChurchMediaDesign.tv has a great tutorial taking you through using PFHoe and After Effects to composite 3d objects into your footage.

Part 1 Part 2
Brad Zimmerman – Magazine Page Flip

Brad takes you through a cool animation he created simulating a magazine flipping through pages. Flipping it on the rotational axis, and using CC Bend creates a realistic looking flip.

View Tutorial
Brad Zimmerman – Looping Backgrounds: Wiggle Effect

In this basic tutorial, Brad shows you how to use the wiggle expression to create some awesome looking backgrounds in your projects.

View Tutorial
Garus Booth – Nissan Reveal Part 2

Last roundup we gave you a taste of what Garus had in store, and now finally the second part of his Nissan Reveal tutorial is complete!

View Tutorial
TraptCG – Person Disintegrating into Particles

Learn how to create an effect where a person disintegrates into particles. Use 3ds Max to create the particles and finish off the composite in After Effects.

View Tutorial
Tutorial Clarity – Audio Particle Spray

Learn how to spray particles out of an emitter dependent upon the frequency and sound of an audio file.

View Tutorial
Tutorial Clarity – Custom Particles In AE

Learn how to set up custom particles for use in Trapcode Particular or Trapcode Form.

View Tutorial
Tutorial Clarity – Digital Effect

Learn how to create a plane of particles inside of Trapcode Form and animate those based upon the audio levels with the Fractal Field options.

View Tutorial

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32 Fantastical Demo Reels

Topher Welsh — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 11:00:59 +0000

I know you were itching for another Demo Reel Roundup… I could just feel it from the innermost cockles of my being. Well I got 32 more for you to take a good gander at, get some ideas, and go out and make some AWESOME! That’s right I just used ‘awesome’ as a noun. Now do it!

Miguel A. Salek 2009 Reel

Miguel is an amazing Effect Technical Director, with an amazing looking reel filled with some really interesting spots that he has worked on. His reel shows the position he held for each spot as well, so you know exactly what he was responsible for.

View Demo Reel
Spov Ltd Showreel 2009

Spov has some killer looking screen UI and wireframe design as well as some slick looking titling for various clients.

View Demo Reel
Dvein Showreel 2009

I know you saw Dvein in my last roundup, but I had to include their reel on this roundup… its amazing. Just wait for the page to load, and then navigate to Reel 2009 right in the middle of the scrolling menu.

View Demo Reel
Mark Theriault/Partially Frozen 2009 VFX Reel

With most of Mark’s work coming from stuff he created at Blur, Somersault and Prime Focus, you can see this guy really has what it takes when it comes to the compositing and VFX game.

View Demo Reel
Engine

Engine is a group of designers, producers and talented VFX artists working together in Sydney, Australia to produce some amazing looking pieces for some top clients.

View Demo Reel Youtube Version
Royale Spring 2009 Showreel

I think I featured Royale a while back, but they are about due for another appearance. They have only been in the biz for around a year, but they have a ton of awesome mograph pieces to show for it.

View Demo Reel
Ahmed Max 2008 Reel

Ahmed is an all around production guy spending the last ten years full time in the business. He has a great eye for awe inspiring 3D mixed with motion graphics and 3D environments.

View Demo Reel Vimeo Version
Toch

Toch’s another new studio to the scene. They’ve only been around for about a year, but they got a reel to make up for the time they haven’t been in existence.

View Demo Reel
Daniel Macedo Reel

It’s too bad this guy’s website is actually offline… because I really enjoyed his reel, and was looking forward to seeing more work. It’s one of those reels that isn’t super pro, and doesn’t blow you away, but gives you some ideas of what you can implement into your own work, if you aren’t as well versed as some others. No offense Daniel… still love your reel!

View Demo Reel
Miles Christensen 2009 Showreel

Miles has some fantastic work from when he was working at Spov as well as some killer work done on Call of Duty and Transformers 2. I especially enjoy the screen UI for Transformers 2… the wireframe stuff is phenomenal.

View Demo Reel
James Pina Spring 2009 Reel

This reel might be short… but it still blows me away every time I see it. I wish I could be those good of a roto & paint artist. The work on the Bear Grylls Man VS. Wild stuff is mind blowing!

View Demo Reel
Capacity

With a catchy custom tune for the reel, this one really grabs you, showing some of Capacity’s spectacular work from commercials, branding, titling, show packages, promos and some of their experimental stuff too!

View Demo Reel
GKASTER Motion Demo Reel

Is it just me, or do you get a steampunky, organic-ish feel from these guys? I really like their reel, from the very first shot of the GK all the way through to the end. They have a great talent for making their work look gorgeous.

View Demo Reel
Colors and the Kids

These guys are located in Germany, and actually have a really wierdly (is that even a word?) designed site to see their work and find the reel… luckily I got it for ya below. Forgetting about that, take a look at their reel, and you can see where they get their name from… at least the colors part.

View Demo Reel
Gabriel Gareso

This Brazilian graphic designer decided to take ten months off from his mainly web based life and hitched a ride to New Zealand to study animation and vfx, and what came out of it is fantastic! You can tell that Gabriel really took in the information handed to him and became a very accomplished motion graphics and vfx artist.

View Demo Reel
Franco Barroeta 2008 Reel

Fraco has a great site with tons of examples of past work, but his reel is all you need to see to know that is a top class designer. Dealing in mostly commercial production he has collaborated with some top Canadian studios, and taken part in work for some prestigious clients.

View Demo Reel Vimeo Version
Timo Boese/LowerGround Winter Reel 2007

This guy’s opening song makes me giggle, therefore I was sucked in to watching more. You have to hear it to understand what I am talking about, oh and the work ain’t to shabby either.

View Demo Reel
Matt Lavoy

Matt is a freelancer working at a few different agencies you have probably heard of… Digital Kitchen, Superfad, and Vitamin to name a few. You will almost for sure recognize his work, either from TV or somewhere on the web, like the Playstation 3 spots or Budweiser commercials.

View Demo Reel
Steffen Knoesgaard

Heavily showcasing typography, Steffen’s reel really grabs you with the music track as well as his unique way to integrate simple shapes, live footage and amazing colors along with his titling.

View Demo Reel
Fredrik Ekholm

This hard hitting reel from Fredrik Ekholm is short, since he is still in school, but from looking at what he has been learning and done with his media degree, I am sure you can expect more awesome pieces from this guy very soon.

View Demo Reel
North Kingdom 2003-2009 Reel

Entitled “A Story From North Kingdom” their reel shows some of their proudest pieces of work from the last six years. The compositing and CG in that they put out is absolutely phenomenal… some of the pieces are from website designs, but you have to watch this reel.

View Demo Reel
Justin McClure 2009 Reel

Ahh you guys know Justin! The founder of Rerendered, (recently acquired by VideoHive) is an amazing motion graphics artist working for clients like CMT, Discovery, MLB, and tons more. The thing I like about Justin’s work, is it always looks so polished and perfected, you would think an entire studio took part in the endeavor.

View Demo Reel
JR Canest 2009 Reel

Still a student at Vancouver Film School, JR had a piece featured on Motionographer a while back called Crazy Enough which had around a thousand keyframes, all created within After Effects to create an awesome one minute animation. This is a great student reel, probably one of the best I have seen in a long while.

View Demo Reel
Asylum 2010 Design, Main Titles, & Screen Design Reels

This entry here counts as three different reels, because Asylum has a ton of work to show off. First their design reel really shows off everything they produce from film VFX, to titling as well as commercial production. The second focuses mainly on their titling, and then the third focuses on their phenomenal screen design.

View Demo Reel
Anton Sakara

With the help of the Raketmedia Design Studio Team, Anton Sakara shows off some of his best work with a lot of it including live action rather than strictly motion graphics. Based in Moscow, Russia, Anton has worked on a lot of big name russian clients like the Miss Russia competition, and the MTV Movie Awards

View Demo Reel
Qube Konstrukt 2009/2010 Motion Reel

The amount of detail in each and every piece in this reel is looking like it is going to be one of my favorites of the list. I love it when a company can take the time to model, light, matchmove, and render things absolutely perfectly, it really shows the pride that they take in their work.

View Demo Reel
Margo Design Reel 2009

These guys have a very unique way that they put together their reel… they mix print design along with their video stuff by taking a camera around their studio and zooming into different screens, posters and print ads. Very cool concept and it really makes things flow together very well.

View Demo Reel
Alain Lores 3D/Motion Reel 2009

There is some fantastic particle and 3d works in this reel, especially the stuff with blue and red fire types of elements. That, mixed with a bunch of 3d as well as a bunch of help from his friends, really brings Alain’s demo reel to life.

View Demo Reel
Holke79 – This is Not a Reel

I beg to differ. This looks very much like a reel, I guess you could call it a killer collection of artistic works… but that is kind of a mouthful. I really like the slo-mo effects, as well as the way they edited this thing together, whatever it is.

View Demo Reel
12Frames Jan Schönwiesner Reel Summer 2008

You really get a feeling of surrealism as you watch a lot of the stuff put out by 12Frames, especially with the manipulation of buildings and the weird puppet looking things. Hats off to 12Frames, and kudos for the breakdown and the creepy narrator. Note: this only displays well in Internet Explorer and Chrome (didn’t test in Safari).

View Demo Reel
Teddy Gore

Another artist that you have probably seen his work all over the place on promos for shows like Heroes, 30 Rock, and Cartoon Network, I always like seeing this stuff in people’s reels, because it really gives me a push to know that we, as artists can make it to that point someday. Another really fantastic collection to end with.

View Demo Reel

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15 Companies That Make After Effects Plug-ins

Jorrit Schulte — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 11:00:48 +0000

Of course it’s always nice when you can create something in After Effects that looks great… but sometimes we need a little extra help to to get that perfect result. We talk about plug-ins all the time and there are a ton to choose from! Hopefully this roundup can provide some clarity to know who makes what.

Red Giant Software

Let’s just start with the leading and best known company, Red Giant Software. Red Giant Software was founded in 2002 by industry veterans to develop and distribute special effects tools for digital video & film professionals. They’ve developed some of the coolest plugins on the market like Peder Norrby’s Trapcode Particular
and Magic Bullet Looks

Visit The Red Giant Website
RE:Vision Effects

RE:Vision is a company that provides end-user software tools in the form of plug-ins and add-ons to many popular compositing, NLE and 3D applications. They’ve developed unique plug-ins like
ReelSmart Motion Blur which automatically adds a more natural-looking motion blur effect to a sequence and Twixor Pro for Great Slow- or Fast Motion effects.

Visit The RE:Vision Effects Website
Zaxwerks

Zaxwerks develops software for the digital video, broadcast, film and web markets. They are the leading innovator of 3D title and logo technology with plug-ins as 3D Invigorator Pro and 3D Flag.

Visit The Zaxwerks Website
3Dar

3Dar is actually not a Plugin Company But a Visual Effects Studio.
but they developed a great plug-in for motion
blur with RPF Files, called RPF Motion Blur, which of course is used with 3D programs.

Visit The RPF Motion Blur Website
Frischluft

Frischluft creates great plug-ins For After Effects, I especially like the Lenscare Plugin, it creates very realistic DOF effects which are great for VFX as well as Motion Graphics. Frischluft was founded in 2002 by Philipp Spöth.

Visit The Frischluft Website
Video Copilot

Video Copilot is a progressive web presence offering high quality tools for motion graphics and visual effects artists. Video Copilot’s Twich plugin has become quite well know, and there is much anticipation for the upcoming Plug-in Optical Flares.

Visit Video Copilot
The Foundry

The Foundry is a leading developer of visual effects and image processing technologies that boost productivity and workflow in film and video post production. We all know Keylight, but The Foundry also has 4 Plugin Collections called Tinderbox and a new great plugin called RollingShutter.

Visit The Foundry
Fnord

Fnord software is a small software boutique creating graphics software primarily for Mac. Though they don’t have many plug-ins, one I like is Power Picker, which allows you to have the Adobe Color Picker in the UI.

Visit The Fnord Website
DigiEffects

Digieffects is a developer of popular software plug-ins for Adobe After Effects, Apple Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere Pro and Autodesk Combustion.
They have a couple of great plug-ins, but the best by far is FreeForm AE.

Visit The DigiEffects Website
FXhome

FXhome is a leading developer and consultancy firm, specialising in video and photo products, web design and third party solutions. They primarily built little VFX programs, but they also have 2 plug-ins for After Effects: PowerPlug, for creating lightning, and MuzzlePlug, for creating muzzle flashes.

Visit FXhome
Wondertouch

Wondertouch, headquartered in St. Louis, Mo., is an award-winning software developer specializing in particle effects for the visual effects industry. Yes, the creators of ParticleIllusion now have a plug-in for After Effects: pIllusion AE, which is basically just ParticleIllusion for AE. (Coming Soon)

Visit The Wondertouch Website
Jawset

Jawset is a company that creates plug-ins for After Effects and Cinema 4D. So far they only have one After Effects Plugin, TURBULENCE.2D which creates cool fire simulations. This plug-in is more for Motion Graphics than VFX, since it is really hard to get very realistic fire.

Visit The Jawset Website
ABSoft

ABSoft develops different technologies, but they also have a great After Effects plug-in called Neat Video. It removes visible noise from any kind of footage and hardly loosing any quality and I think it’s pretty affordable!

Visit The Neat Video Website
GenArts

GenArts, Inc. is the premier provider of VFX software for the film, broadcast and video industries. Their After Effects plug-in set called Sapphire has more over 200 plug-ins. They allow you to buy this set as a whole or individually as well as the option to pay a flat rate or rent them on a monthly basis.

Visit The GenArts Website
Ultimatte

Ultimatte is an award-winning software and hardware developer that focuses on luma keying. There After Effects plug-in, AdvantEdge, is great for keying, however, seeing as how it’s more expensive then the host program itself, it has a limited reach for the average AE user.

Visit The Ultimatte Website

Who’s Who in the World of Design Studios and VFX Shops

Topher Welsh — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 11:00:17 +0000

I know you guys like seeing what companies are out there making the amazing stuff you see on TV, the interwebz and all that, so I figured I’d do a justice and roundup a TON of studios, VFX shops, post houses and the like. Get ready to watch some reels and poke around… it’s a good one.

Endeavor Media

The guys at Endeavor Media really put together some fantastic work with it just being a couple of guys. You might have seen some of their work in the music video industry (where they reside) on a few songs like Owl City’s “FireFlies” or Anberlin’s “The Feel Good Drag.” Run by Steve Hoover and Danny Yourd, together these two dudes really kill it when it comes to some amazing looking music videos.

Visit Site
Dvein

Dvein verses themselves in almost anything they can. From broadcast, to music videos to cinema, they provide art direction, design an animation, and go full force to make it the best possible result. Located in Barcelona, they have worked on movies like Spiderman 3, with networks like ESPN, produced some gorgeous pieces of work for hundreds of other clients along the way.

Visit Site
Axis

Axis is one the UK’s fastest growing animation studios, specializing in commercials, games, broadcast and film, and is becoming one of the up-and-coming players in the VFX and CG industry. Although they don’t have their reel on the site, you can see some of their work page.

Visit Site
Flaunt

Flaunt is actually an extension of Axis, but it represents a talented roster of award-winning directors and utilize all aspects of animation to tell the story and create an amazing product. Flaunt is headed by former agency producer and Senior Producer at Axis, Paula Lacerda. Check out their Recent Work tab for a look at what they have been up to.

Visit Site
JWT

This company has worked with some huge names like Microsoft, Nokia, Nike, MTV… you name it. If you take a look at their network… you can see they are all over the place! They actually don’t have too much information about themselves, but looking at their work, and their awesome website I’m sure you will see what I am talking about.

Visit Site
The Moving Picture Company

I absolutely love this company. I know I have mentioned them before, but they deserve it. The amount of precision and dedication they put into their work deserves the most credit possible. As of late, you can jump around the site and see some new stuff like the Evian Babies, Harry Potter 6 breakdowns, or the spot entitled “Clever Hamsters” as just a bit of what they have been up to lately.

Visit Site
Umeric

Umeric is a killer creative-driven production studio in Sydney, Australia. They have a really organic feel to their work, in that it always seems a little creepy and alive… at least to me. They have a interesting little bit of superstition as well. After wrapping a project they get a Maneki Neko, or a cat statue as to attract either more money, or more customers, depending on the paw that the statue is raising… interesting.

Visit Site
The Molecule

Finally, The Molecule’s website is up, rather than the blog that you might have seen in the past months. Launched in 2005 they have done a ton of work with The FX Network, ABC, Discovery, just to name a few. They also specialize in music videos, online content, commercial production… basically anything you throw their way, they can handle it.

Visit Site
HunterGatherer

Founded by Todd St. John, HunterGatherer is a design, illustration, animation, and production studio that has earned awards from almost every major design organization. Make sure that you check out their reel to really see what I’m talking about.

Visit Site
The Mill

The last thing I saw from The Mill was the “Apples” spot for City Harvest Food Rescue Organization, and it reminded me that I had to put them in the roundup this week. They have shops in London, New York, and Los Angeles, and are one of the more well known studios in the industry.

Visit Site
Syndrome

Syndrome’s list of client’s goes on and on, creating pieces for G4, ABC, AT&T, Old Navy and tons of others. They work in TV idents, music videos, commercials, and pretty much anything else. They have been featured in Stash, Dzine.tv, Create, and many other press segments in their career.

Visit Site
PostPanic

These guys have been making visual awesomeness since 1997 when it was founded by Mischa Rozema and Jules Tervoort in Amsterdam. They work with all kinds of different media, striving to keep an original style and a unique look to everything they produce.

Visit Site
Double Negative

With a staff of over 650 employees in their London Soho office alone, Double Negative is the largest VFX post house in Europe. They have been steadily growing since opening their doors in 1998, and just opened a second shop in Singapore just this last year. Their reel sports tons of high profile movies, and their “In Production” list includes Prince of Persia, Inception, and Iron Man 2, just to name a few.

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Weta Digital

Who doesn’t know Weta Digital? They are basically synonymous with anything that Peter Jackson touches, including King Kong, Lord of the Rings, District 9, and just recently, Avatar. They are one of the more prestigious, or at least one of the more well known VFX shops for a simple reason: they produce phenomenal work. It also helps to have the LOTR trilogy on your demo reel.

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Animal Logic

These guys have won award after award… Satellite Awards, Australian Film Institute, Emmys… and rightfully so. Their work is seen by millions of people in movies like Australia, Happy Feet, 300, and Knowing. They work in all genres though, film, commercial, TV, design… all over the place. They also have individual reels for each outlet.

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dbox

Upon first visiting this site, you can already tell that this company has an eye for design. Based in New York, Amsterdam, and Taiwan, this group of fifty produces some amazing work. Although, they don’t seem to have any high name, recognizable clients, that doesn’t mean they don’t have talent… you can see from their reels they really know their stuff.

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Hydraulx

Based in Santa Monica, Hydraulix puts it very simply, they hold two tenants: hire the best artists and arm them with the latest tools and technology to get the job done. By doing this, they keep a killer core team of artists and are able to really produce some amazing pieces of work. They actually have two other sister companies, Brothers Strause that specializes in music video, and Lola VFX that works in digital beautification and aging for TV and film.

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Industrial Light & Magic

Now really, if you are reading this article and haven’t heard of ILM… well, they are like the pioneers of the VFX industry. They have been working on movies since the Star Wars Epidode IV days. Since then though, they have become THE VFX house to handle huge name titles, like Harry Potter, Iron Man, Indiana Jones, and much, much more. They actually haven’t updated their site in a while, but they are probably really busy producing some ridiculous groundbreaking CGI technology. Oh yeah… they’ve working on Avatar the last few years.

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Zoic Studios

Another one of my favorites to check out, Zoic continually produces phenomenal work. Another reason why I like their stuff, is that they like to give some VFX breakdowns along with their reels, which is always fun to watch. They create a lot of television and film VFX, but no project is too big for them.

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Sony Pictures Imageworks

Imageworks actually has a unique looking demo reel, which looks more like a pitch video rather than a demo. Not that, that’s a bad thing, but it’s just something you don’t usually see. There really tell you a lot about what Imageworks is about, what they do, and what they have acheived, it really is pretty spectacular… but you don’t expect anything less from Sony.

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Dreamworks Animation SKG

Another one of those super well known animation studios is Dreamworks. They have one of the main leaders when it comes to blockbuster cartoony animation flicks. Shrek, Madagascar, Monsters VS Aliens… I mean, they just can’t go wrong!

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Pixar Animation Studios

Another one of those animation studios I grew up watching… Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, those are the movies I always remember… and how can you forget about the Pixar lamp? Pixar is another one of the studios that has set the standard for cartoon 3D animation in Hollywood.

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Theory FX

A little lesser known than the last few, Theory FX is a post house basing their skills in compositing, object insertion, removal, green screen, and actually all around visual effects. Lately they have been working on The Wolfman, and have produced quite a few shots for I Love You, Man, Pineapple Express, and Couples Retreat.

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The Embassy

These guys are most famous for a series of commercials they created for Citroën back in the day, but lately they have been doing more feature film work. They have a couple of really good making ofs on their site for Iron Man, and District 9, and I am sure we can expect a lot more from them in the future.

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Rhino-Gravity

Rhino-Gravity is a group award winning directors, and creative artists that work in both traditional and new media. Whether its on the big screen, or your home monitor, you can see Rhino’s work all over the place.

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BTRY

This highly recognized VFX shop has been showcased in Wired Magazine, Stash, the Cannes Advertising Festival, and many more. The core team is made up of VFX Director David Greene, Creative Director Mike McDougall, and CG Supervisor Steve McArdle.

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Spillt

Based in Denver, Colorado, this post house provides all kinds of different motion graphic pieces such as rebrands, opening titles, amazing typography and in your face graphics… my favorite kind!

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Nylon

This group of geeks strive to put a little bit of humor, some strong narrative and dynamic animation into every piece they create. They have a fresh style, and everything they seem to create has a very colorful, fun feel to it.

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Bravo

In the heart of Buenos Aires, Argentina, Bravo brings to the game a killer studio specializing in illustration, corporate identity, packaging, broadcast, and animation. They have only been around for three years, but in that three years they have made quite a name for themselves.

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Your Majesty

Based in New York for the time being, and with Stockholm and Sao Paulo offices underway, Your Majesty is a studio with a laundry list of awards, an arsenal of services and a dictionary full of clients.

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HUSH

In the game for over a decade, HUSH dominates all different platforms of media and demonstrates an amazing skillset of the artists that they employ.

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Stardust

There actually isn’t too much information on their website, but I see their name mentioned all over the place. Taking a look at the site though, and taking a gander at the reel, you can see why they are such a talked about institution.

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54 Highly Resourceful After Effects Tutorials

Topher Welsh — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 11:00:25 +0000

I know it’s been a while since the last After Effects tutorial roundup, but hey… it was Christmas time! Give me a break! I hope you all got what you wanted for Christmas, but in case you didn’t, and you don’t have anything taking up your time, why not spend a few hours working through some tutorials? Think of it as my Christmas gift to you!

Video Copilot: Lightning Strike

Getting closer and closer to tutorial #100, this tutorial teaches you how to make an amazing looking, albeit gory, lightning strike to our good buddy Sam Loya, and make him explode using some elements from Action Essentials 2 HD.

View Part 1 View Part 2
Video Copilot: Reflection Plugin

The newest free plugin and product from Video Copilot is the sweet new Reflection plugin which, well… does exactly what you would think. Instead of duplicating layers, and screwing around with sizes and other effects, just use this to create simple reflections within the layer you want a reflection for.

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Video Copilot: Dynamic Bar Graphs

People have been waiting for this expression-heavy tutorial for a while now, and it is not going to disappoint. You will use a prerendered set of videos out of a 3d program, and use time remapping linked to specific values via expressions to control how much of the bar graphs get displayed.

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Video Copilot: Glass Orbs

Finally, number 100! it only took like, 4 years. Anyways, it could be any cooler, and more amazing looking. This tutorial uses just the built in plugins in AE to create some breathtaking 3d glass balls with reflections and all.

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Brad Chmielewski: Creating a Walk Cycle

The Digital Hitchhiker himself walks you through how he created a walk cycle using only AE for a character he created for his work on the Groupon commercials.

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Projuice.org: Designing a Graphic From Scratch

There hasn’t been much happening on the AE front over at Projuice, but this walkthrough shows how Nick worked through making a motocross promo for a network in Australia. Not too much to it, but there are some nice techniques in there.

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Graymachine: Video Rock & Invigorator

Harry Frank uses Zaxwerks 3D Invigorator along with his new product, Video Rock to create some cool looking 3d titles, and uses a technique to make a cool looking edge glow.

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Graymachine: Drifting Title Sequence

A follow up tutorial to Harry’s Grunge tutorial, this one shows you how to make a cool fly-through title sequence with some fog and particles using Trapcode Particular.

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Graymachine: Fractal Noise Fade Effect

Harry shows you hot to use some Artbeats stock footage along with the fractal noise effect to create an orignal fade-on effect.

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Creative Cow & Eran Stern: The Pen Tool

This is a pretty basic tutorial of sorts, but also useful if you don’t use the pen tool often, or are just starting out in AE. Eran shows you how to use all the functions of the pen tool, as well as tips for rotoscoping.

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Greyscale Gorilla: Make the JibJab Effect using AE and the Tracker

Nick Campbell explains how he makes the JibJab effect without the moving mouth, and how to set up your shot if you want to do it yourself.

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Greyscale Gorilla: How to Make a Globe Radio-Wave Animation in AE & C4D

Nick shows us how to make this globe-like looking animation with things orbiting around it. You will learn how to make this animation in AE as well as Cinema 4D.

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Greyscale Gorilla: How to Color Correct Footage from your 5D or 7D

The new hot thing the last year has been DSLR cameras that can shoot HD video… Nick is going to walk us through a process to learn how to color correct our footage inside of AE to make the finished product more polished.

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Motionworks: Zaxwerks 3D Flag & ProAnimator

John Dickinson shows us a sweet way to manipulate 3D Flag to make it look like wind is “flowing through” a banner. Also learn a technique to make your shadows from your ProAnimator text fall onto the banner and move with the movement of the banner.

View Part 1 View Part 2
Motionworks After Effects A-Z: Eran Stern – Bulge

In the last few months, we have kind of taken a break with our project, the After Effects, Effects A-Z Rundown… with the holidays it’s understandable. Anyways, Eran actually found some time to put together a tutorial for how to use the Bulge effect.

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Artbeats: Vignettes

Chris and Trish Meyer put together a nice pdf tutorial of how to effectively use vignettes to focus your viewers attention on what you want them to.

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Artbeats: Blending Ideas

Another tutorial from Chris and Trish, this time expanding on the idea of vignettes, but this time using it to blend with other footage.

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CGtuts+: Animate a Stylized Musical Motion Graphic with Maya & AE

Use Maya and After effects to create this awesome looking speaker bumpin effect. Mostly all the modeling and stuff is done in Maya, but use AE to map out the music and put on the final touches.

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CGtuts+: Create a Realistic Subway Scene with AE & C4D

Michael Szabo from Big Mike Design shows you over at CGtuts+ how to create a realistic looking subway scene with After Effects and Cinema 4D by modeling everything in C4D and putting the finishing touches on it over in AE.

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CGtuts+: Create a Stylish Liquid Type Logo

Using RealFlow inside of Cinema 4D, create a liquid simulation then bring that into After Effects, like always for the finishing touches.

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CGtuts+: Match Your 3D Animation to Live Action Footage

It seems like Chris Martin is the man when it comes to tutorials matching CG and live action together using C4D, Syntheyes, AE, and this time, some RealFlow thrown into the mix.

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RGTV Episode 33: Death Eater Apparition Effect

You know I am stoked about this tutorial, because well, I am a Harry Potter nerd. Anyways, Michael Park is going to show you how to create the smoke that the Death Eaters travel in and apparate from.

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RGTV Episode 34: 3D Thunderstorm Storm

In this tutorial from Robert Hranitzky he shows you how to create a realistic thunderstorm scene as if you were looking up the side of a building into the air.

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RGTV Episode 35: Creating a Christmas Tree with Trapcode Particular

Michael Park has had a couple of episodes on RGTV, and this time he is back with the Christmas Episode, where he shows you how to make a Christmas Tree out of Trapcode Particular with lights and everything! Merry Christmas!

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VideoHive & Topher Welsh: 3D Credit Roll

In this tutorial I show you an interesting take on the credit roll at the end of movies that I saw in the movie “Minghags”, the sequel to “Haggard” by Bam Margera… don’t worry it’s a horrible movie, not recommended. The only good thing about it actually is the credit roll.

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VideoHive & Topher Welsh: Using Bridge and Animation Presets

It never ceases to amaze me when people don’t take advantage of the tools given them. Adobe Bridge as well as the TON of animation presets that ship with After Effects can make tasks in your day to day production life so much easier, but only if you really know how to utilize them.

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VideoHive & Topher Welsh: OK Go – “WTF?” Video Effect

Inspired by the new video from OK Go… this video effect uses the Echo effect in After Effects to create lasting echo trails on an alpha channel to simulate a “painting” effect.

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VideoHive & Topher Welsh: It Came From Underneath

This is a very simple tutorial, it uses the simple choker effect to make the text of a font “bleed on” screen as if blood had been staining a carpet or something like that.

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VideoHive & Topher Welsh: Hand Drawn Animation Text

If you have ever seen those squiggly drawn cartoons or titles in movies, and wanted to recreate it… then this one is for you. Pretty simple task, a very few amount of steps and minimal time you can have some rad titles yourself.

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VideoHive & Topher Welsh: Workflow Shortcuts

I walk you through some basic things you may not know about including, Layer > Time functions (Time Remapping, Time Reverse Layer, Freeze Frame techniques), Layer > Transform functions (Fit To Comp, Width & Height), and the Crop Comp To Region of Interest technique to eliminate empty alpha space on layers.

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VideoHive & Topher Welsh: Another Technique for Super Tight Junk Mattes

A few years ago, Aharon Rabinowitz had a technique called Super Tight Junk Mattes. Well Maltaannon came up with a new way to do this, less time intensive, and I decided to stick it in Quick Tip form for you all to check out!

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pt Multiplane

This is the newest script from Paul Tuersley called Multiplane, which can take a set of layers, or a PSD imported with cropped layers and automatically applies expressions and distributes them in 3D space.

View Script & Tutorial
pt ImportSubtitles

This could be an incredibly useful script to use, especially if you are doing a lot of subtitling for film or commercials or whatever. What this does is you build your subtitles in Adobe Encore, but then import those into After Effects for rendering out, instead of doing it in Encore.

View Script & Tutorial
Bad TV

This Pixel Bender plugin from Satya Meka is now working for Windows and Mac, and also has a demo video to go along with it. It’s a really simple plugin that basically simulates Bad TV system receptions.

View Script & Tutorial
Seperate RGB

Another one from Satya, this one simulates seperating the red, green, and blue channels of your footage, similar to the way Video Copilot’s Twitch works, but less of the bells and whistles.

View Script & Tutorial
Expression Toolbox

This is a pretty sweet script that I am surprised took this long to create. It’s a script for executing scripts that you can use as a dockable pallette.

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Batch Search-and-Replace Paths

This is a pretty cool little utility used to fix the file paths for broken footage links. It has a couple different ways it works, but don’t let me explain it to you, watch the demo video it comes with.

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Render Frame at Markers

This is named very obviously, basically all you do is set up layer markers in your composition and execute this script to render still frames wherever the markers appear.

View Script & Tutorial
CompsFromSpreadsheet

This is super handy if you are creating multiple comps of the same thing, just with different text fields in it. What this does, is looks at a spreadsheet document when you execute the script and it searches through the specified comps and creates new comps with the different text and automatically sets itself to render.

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Aharon Rabinowitz: Keep Your Wiggle Under Control

If you have ever set up a wiggle expression just right, and then saw it sabotaged just by switching up a layer order or something like that, Aharon will show you the workaround for it.

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Aharon Rabinowitz: Introduction to Holomatrix

The new plugin from Red Giant Software, developed by Aharon Rabinowitz and Dan Ebberts is now a reality. Aharon has a set of tutorials to get you up to speed on how to use it and what it is capable of.

View Part 1 View Part 2 View Part 3
Aharon Rabinowitz: Introduction to Knoll 3D Flare

You have probably heard about the extension to Knoll Light Factory Pro 2.5, if not… its the free set of tools that you can download to work with your already purchased plugin to give it more extended capabilities.

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Creative Cow & Eran Stern: Jack of All Trades

Eran Stern shows you how to create a jumpy and squishy animation using some handy expressions.

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Creative Cow & Omar Alkattan: Creating Stormy Oceans

Learn how to create a simple ocean scene with rain clouds and a stormy atmosphere.

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Pixel Perfect: Motion Control With After Effects

Richard Harrington guest hosts this episode of Pixel Perfect and creates a 3D fly through scene using just photographs and AE’s 3D space.

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DuIK Tools – Inverse Kinematics for AE!

Check out this tutorial on using DuIK Tools’ Inverse Kinematics in After Effects to easy create walk cycles and realistic body movement.

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Big Mike Design: Curtain Reveal

Learn how to make a cool looking theater curtain reveal so that you can reveal something such as a demo reel or a movie trailer!

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Pixel Art: Create a Rhythmic Seismograph

In this tutorial by Vailancio Rodrguez, learn how to create an effect from a popular music video (or at least part of it), by animating a Seismograph drawing the waveform of a peice of music.

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VFX Haiku: Node Based Compositing for AE Users

A hard transition for After Effects users to make is that from layers to nodes. Kert Gartner shows you how to make an easy transition to Fusion from AE.

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VFX Haiku: How to Use Normal Passes in AE

Learn how to use a Normal Pass out of Cinema 4D to relight objects inside of After Effects and Fusion 5.

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VFX Haiku: Create Light Wrap and Edge Blur

Use some handy techniques to create light wraps and edge blurs inside of After Effects and Fusion 5 with no third party plugins needed.

View Tutorial
Garus Booth: Nissan Reveal

In the first part of this tutorial, Garus shows you how to cut up an image of a Nissan car in Photoshop, then bring that into AE later to make the final reveal.

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Yapper Design: Flare Text

This is a very basic tutorial with basic rotoscoping, basic animation and basic text manipulations. Still kinda worth checking out though.

View Tutorial

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Aetuts+ » Roundup

25 Amazing Typography Videos

A.S.M. Platypus Funk

The Sherlock Holmes Opening Titles

Yes!

Hitchhikers Guide to a Whale’s Consciousness

Unlovable

Social Media Revolution

Bryce Courtenay’s The Story of Danny Dunn Book Trailer

Showbread – The Journey

Coldplay – Lovers in Japan

Tim Minchin – Storm Movie Official Trailer

Colbert Kinetic Type

Pocko/Magma Title Sequence

The Colbert Report – HD Show Open

Type In Motion

Karmadrive 2009

MaRS – The Business of Aging Summit

Rufio

What Matters to You // Me?

Kinetic Typography – D-Tronics

You Can Walk…

Pan – Kinetic typography

The Ten Commandments

Nick the Greek

Gill Sans

Typography: Dedicated

The Best Sites for Royalty Free Stock Music and Sound Effects

SmartSound.com

Pump Audio

Shockwave-Sound.com

Non Stop

Digital Juice

Video Copilot

SampleSwap

StockMusic.net

Audio Jungle

Royalty Free Music Clips

Partners In Rhyme

Free Music Archive (FMA)

Film Music Moby.com

Freeplay Music

28 Magnificent Mocha Tutorials

Martin Brennand – Unlink Tracking Techniques

Carl Larsen – Horizontal Replacement and Roto

David Torno – Face Replacement

Ben Heusner – Using Mocha Shape in a Compositing Workflow

Carl Larsen – 2.5D Rig Removal

Carl Larsen – Tracking for Broadcast Graphics

Ben Heusner – Roto Techniques

Eran Stern – Red Giant Warp and Mocha

Ross Shain – Adjust Track Module

The Basics of Mocha

Exporting Data into After Effects

Aharon Rabinowitz – Exporting Mocha Data

Martin Brennard – Top 5 Workflow Tips

Chris Heur – Convert 2D to 3D

Martin Brennard – Tracking Foreground Obstructions

Ben Heusner – Logo Replacement

Ben Heusner – Exporting Track Mattes

Sasa Jokic – Matchmoving Multiple Tracks

CMIVFX – Advance Planar Tracking

Ross Shain – Image Stabilization

Mathias Mohl’s MochaImport Script and Tutorial

Jeff Foster – Motion Tracking with Mocha

RGTV Ep. 27 Building an Airport Scene Part 1 – Backplate

RGTV Ep. 28 Building an Airport Scene Part 2 – Compositing

Eran Stern – Bionic Lab

Richard Harrington – Mocha Walkthrough

Aaron Zander – The Gatorade Effect Part 1

Aaron Zander – The Gatorade Effect Part 2

61 Fantabulous Fonts For Titles!

Telegrafico

Old Sans Black

Headline

SF Movie Poster

Dinova

Media Gothic

Florencesans SC

Sans Thirteen Black