A solid investment that will broaden your After Effects skills

A New Solid is the latest training release from Creative Cow host Eran Stern. The DVD includes a wide range of After Effects tutorials, consisting of a combination of full-size versions of Eran’s Creative Cow Podcast tutorials and five more advanced, previously unreleased tutorials.

The content includes motion graphic and visual effects techniques and is suitable for beginner to advanced After Effects users. None of the lessons are complicated but beginners should understand the interface before jumping in to this title. Read more…

Todd Kopriva (Adobe) has posted a simple recipe for radial rays using an After Effects Shape Layer.

This clip by Oren Lavie is a lovely example of stop-motion animation. Quite mesmerizing.

Coremelt is a relatively new player in the After Effect plug-in market, with a wide range of inexpensive Mac OSX-only plug-ins that are all 16bit and GPU-accelerated. In this chat with Coremelt’s Roger Bolton we discuss the origins of Coremelt and it’s plug-in range, with specific focus on the Shatter and Luminous products. Coremelt is also offering a $30 discount Read more…

Maltaannon.com has posted a short Adobe After Effects  tutorial demonstrating how to create a Magic Bullet Looks-style shutter streak effect.

Just received the Motion Designer’s Toolkit and Compositor’s Toolkit from Digital Juice. I always disregarded Digital Juice as being only for editors who needed canned backgrounds… Man was I out of touch. Look out for a full review soon.

This screen capture of a recent trade show presentation for Adobe demonstrates working with the video in Photoshop CS4 Extended. Topics include importing, trimming, interpreting, touch up, color correction, Smart Filters and Exporting. You’ll also learn how as an After Effects user, you could include these features in your workflow. Watch tutorial

Over at CGTutsplus Tomas Sinkunas demonstrates how to use Maxon Cinema 4D and Adobe After Effects to build a fun dancing ice cream animation in 126 simple steps.

This behind-the-scenes video for Gimme Sympathy by Metric, shows the band switching places throughout the song and the amazing thing is it’s all captured in one take. The split screen shows the final edited video side-by-side with the frantic on-set actions of the crew and talent as they switch places while off camera. A great idea, well executed. Thanks to Evan for this link.

FXGuide has posted some Terminator ”Machine Vision” examples created by Imaginary Forces using Trapcode Form. Thanks to @filmbot for the link.

Najork has posted some mind–blowing examples of what is possible with Trapcode Particular 2. Along with the seamless tracking, the ability to now light particles with After Effects lights has a huge impact on the natural appearance of the scenes.

Every now and then I’m asked what’s the best way to get into Adobe After Effects? I started in 1994 reading DV Magazine articles by Trish and Chris Meyer, working through the Adobe Classroom-in-a-Book, watching Brian Maffitt from Total Training presenting the 10 VHS monster series “Total After Effects”, and most importantly using After Effects at every opportunity. Back then the Web was the new buzzword but the idea of online training of the type now available was still years away. These days there is a wealth of knowledge out there, some free and some fee-based. Here are some resources that I recommend for getting started with Adobe After Effects: Read more…

This is a beautiful flash-based interactive video that is just mesmerizing. FXGuide has an episode of FXGuideTV that walks through the creation of the spot.

Maltaannon has a plug-in under development for working with 3D objects and textures in After Effects. Basically it will allow users to use UV Maps from 3D applications directly within Adobe After Effects to replace textures, saving a lot of re-rendering. Cool.

Zaxwerks has revamped their video tutorial page. You’ll find a range of 3D Invigorator and ProAnimator tutorials, including some old classics by me.

Over the coming weeks and months I will be holding informal chats with various plug-in developers, designers and people of interest in our industry. This first interview is with Sean Safreed, the co-founder of Red Giant Software. Red Giant Software offers some of the most popular plug-ins on the planet including Magic Bullet Looks and the various Trapcode Read more…

You may have noticed we’ve been making some changes to Motionworks over the past few weeks. These updates are designed to make the site more useful and capture some of the joy and fun of design and motionography.

The News page has been removed and all posts are accessible from the Home page. Tutorials, Tips and Downloads still have their own page and Business of Design (BOD) now has it’s own page. Keeping all of these sections separate means you’ll more easily locate what you need.

A new Shorts section has been added to the sidebar and Comments has been updated so you can now reply to a specific comment. Here’s to working hard and having fun!

AE Tuts+ posted a handy tutorial demonstrating the popular growing leaf look.

The Business of Design is a series of discussions and interviews focussing on business development and communication with specific reference to the graphic design industry.

Just received my copy of Video Copilot’s Action Essentials 2. It’s Jam-packed with stock footage and great value at $99.95. Look forward to a full review soon.