This Adobe E-seminar covers some basic techniques, some little-known techniques and plenty of handy workflow tips for using Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator with Adobe After Effects. Click the thumbnail to view full size images. Watch e-seminar Download project
The Foundry has released 3D Camera Tracker and Kronos, two exciting new plug-ins for Adobe After Effects.
Alexander of Amateurmedia.net has created a stylish new font named Typograph Pro. Also check some of the great usage examples created within Cinema 4D.
Red Giant Software has released Colorista 2, with some exciting new features and improvements. Use motionworks10 for a 1o% discount.
Fontfeed.com has an excellent column “Screenfonts” which discusses the use of fonts in movie posters.
Industrial Light and Magic has a new site. It’s quite amazing just how many productions ILM has been involved in.
Urban Dirty has terrific free grunge stock images and also provides color themes for various images with a downloadable .ASE file. You can import the .ASE file into After Effects using Swatch You Want.
37 Responses to this post
February 21, 2009 at 8:15 am |
Hm, Connect won’t, um, connect. I’ll try again later.
February 21, 2009 at 9:19 am |
It didn’t work for me either…
Why not make it into a regular quicktime like the other tutorials?
Thanks!
February 21, 2009 at 12:43 pm |
Seems to be working fine for me….
February 21, 2009 at 5:20 pm |
only audio !!!!
February 21, 2009 at 5:50 pm |
Hi John. The tutorial was great! It was so great that I tried viewing it a second time, and I couldn’t get in. Aside from that, I have always loved your work. Thanks for sharing your talent.
Cheers,
Gwendolyn
February 21, 2009 at 6:10 pm |
Is there a queue to actually connecting which is causing problems for people to access this particular e seminar?
ie. It might be limited to 20 people connecting at once…
This morning i got it and then now i can’t get in…what is going on with connect pro?
February 21, 2009 at 6:19 pm |
Bummer – I can’t connect either. John – can this be made into a QT?
February 21, 2009 at 8:16 pm |
Hey sorry about the connection problems. I have prepared an offline version as a .flv file but need to do a few things to get it online. Keep trying and I’ll keep you updated on the flv.
February 21, 2009 at 9:00 pm |
Okay I’ve saved the seminar offline as .flv file. As long as you have Flash Player on your system you’ll have no more problems viewing the movie. I’ll be doing this will all e-seminars from now on.
February 22, 2009 at 12:57 am |
Thank you JD. Ai is not much used by me together with AE. I guess this tut will change that. Oh, and thanks for converting the e-seminar, It´s running much better now.
February 22, 2009 at 9:51 am |
this is great anther tutorial keep them coming.
February 22, 2009 at 10:22 am |
I loved your seminars but I strongly recommend all seminars to be as FLV file.
Thanks for sharing your tips , tricks and techniques……and waiting for putting all old seminars as FLV file.
February 22, 2009 at 5:52 pm |
Great tutorial. Thanks so much for addressing this. I could never wrap my head around this and coincidentally spent the earlier half of this day testing and trying to figure it all out. I was really surprised to see this offering on Motionworks later in the day. You’ve made everything clear. Thanks!
September 20, 2009 at 11:41 pm |
Wow thank you for the heads up on using Illustrator and AEP together, I was always thrown by the cropped layer definition and now I know its real meaning. Thank you for making this tutorial available for free its much appreciated John.
September 21, 2009 at 2:40 am |
You’re welcome Gavan, there isn’t much information out there in free tutorials concerning AE and AI so I thought this might help. All the best, John.
September 25, 2009 at 10:47 am |
Um it will not work for me.
When I download the flv it crashes my flashplayer/VLC media player.
September 26, 2009 at 8:09 am |
Thanks john,
especially for the illustrator tips.
I think the cropped layers terminology makes sense if your elements fit within the comp. So on your illustrator example you would have the centre point at the middle of the cog, which would help if you wanted to rotate it.
Keep up the good work.
September 26, 2009 at 8:26 pm |
That’s right Steve, Composition-Cropped Layers maintains a unique centre point for all individual layers. Thanks for your input and best wishes, John.
September 28, 2009 at 4:46 am |
This is great information John!
September 28, 2009 at 2:58 pm |
Hey Chris, glad you’ve found it useful. All the best, John.
September 30, 2009 at 9:27 am |
Hey John, great resource!
I discovered your site after you did Andrew Kramer’s interview. I’ve been following him for a few years now.
Cheers, mate.
September 30, 2009 at 3:30 pm |
Hi Andrei, welcome to Motionworks and thanks for dropping into the comments! Best wishes, John.
November 2, 2009 at 9:00 pm |
Thanks John. I really enjoyed this session.
November 3, 2009 at 2:31 pm |
Good to hear Mike, thanks for letting me know.
December 15, 2009 at 4:06 am |
totally awesome
January 15, 2010 at 2:26 pm |
To change the application preference for PSD files (or any file type) on a Mac just right-click on any PSD file in any Finder window and then hold down alt so that “open with” changes to “always open with” then just select the application you want.
I have CS3 and I use the “edit original” feature (command + E) constantly to edit the original file from within After Effects and I found that it works flawlessly if you play by AE’s rules. Break the rules and it will not update automatically.
The rules are:
- Open the file from within AE with the command + E shortcut
- Make whatever changes you want to the file
- Save the file
- Return to AE and the file automatically updates
Any deviation from this sequence can cause the automatic update to not work.
For example: If you select a PSD file in AE and hit Command + E to open it in Photoshop and make a change but before you save your PSD file you click back on AE for a moment to look at something in your project or whatever and then go back to Photoshop and save the file, when you finally return to AE the PSD file will not update automatically.
January 16, 2010 at 2:00 am |
Thanks for helping Erik. Best wishes, John.
February 1, 2010 at 2:13 pm |
I just wanted to update this because they just installed OS X 10.6 snow leopard on our machines at work and it doesn’t quite work the same way as 10.4 when you want to change the default application for opening a file type. “Always open with…” on snow leopard only applies the changes to that particular document and not to all documents of that file type. Here’s how to change the default application in snow leopard (from the mac help file):
To change the application that opens a document:
Select the document and choose File > Get Info.
Click the triangle next to “Open with” to expand the section.
Choose an application from the pop-up menu, or choose Other to locate a different application.
If you want to use that application to open all documents of the same type as the current document and created by the same application, click Change All.
February 1, 2010 at 11:18 pm |
Thanks for the update Erik! Best wishes, John.
April 9, 2010 at 10:34 pm |
Thanks for this tut, just found your site. Def going to check back from now
May 8, 2010 at 9:20 pm |
Well, thanks for the tut! Will try this after finish readin
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