A well-crafted TV advertisement by Jonathan Gurvit.

This comment was written by Sean, a Motionworks reader:

“I was viewing an article on Creative Cow a few months ago, and like usual got side tracked and looked at some of the demo reels. The first demo reel i clicked on started with a 1:1 copy of Andrew Kramers submerged tutorial/effect. I left the site and haven’t been back since. I just watched a world cup game on the BBC and guess what, Andrew Kramers Ancient Titles had been copied, and not even that well. Pathetic.

I think that you guys have actually devalued graphic design and opened a pandora’s box scenerio in pursuit of your own self interest and ego. Read more…

Photoshop CS5 has introduced some terrific new time-saving features. In this tip for Adobe, we explore the new enhanced Refine Edge feature and learn how it can take much of the hard work out of refining intricate selections.  Watch tip

Industrial Light and Magic has a new site. It’s quite amazing just how many productions ILM has been involved in.

Just completed, Foxtel Box Office’s (FBO) winter campaign in Cinema 4D.

With a Stars theme, the campaign includes a competition to win a trip for 2 to Cannes Film Festival. Given the theme, I suggested we use the tagline “follow the stars”. This has the dual meaning of following the logo stars throughout the promo (which represent FBO), and mingling with movie stars on the red carpet in Cannes. Read more…

Sapphire, MonstersGT, ParticleIllusion
and a new direction for Tinder for After Effects

For over a decade GenArts had a single product – Sapphire – plug-ins for high end systems such as Flame, and in more recent times, After Effects. Recently GenArts has begun to diversify, acquiring Monsters GT from Speed Six, Tinder from The Foundry and Particle Illusion from Wondertouch. In this candid episode I discuss each of these products with GenArt’s Steve Bannerman. Read more…

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.

Wacom has posted a handy tutorial showing how to maximize productivity with your Wacom tablet.

nailgun* has done some smart spots for ESPN. Note the detail and depth, enhanced by depth-of-field and subtle camera drift, taking the photo/slide theme to the next level.