Do you ever find yourself suffering the effects of overwork – even doing what you love? This episode takes a frank and honest look at the damage working crazy hours can do to your business – and your life – and how to handle it.

For free 1-minute business tips with Robin Dickinson, watch BLACK CHAIR Business
Mentoring TV

This promo for our brand new MILG7: MoGraph Unleashed video training, was created using Cinema 4D and After Effects. The Out Now text bounces using MoGraph 2.0 MoDynamics, the sky was added in After Effects using Trapcode Horizon, and the colour grade was created using a combination of Magic Bullet Looks and Mojo. For a 10% discount on Horizon, Looks or Mojo enter “motionworks10″ on checkout!  Watch Movie

But Brian hasn’t hosted training for some time. So when he mentioned he had just finished recording a brand new Advanced Photoshop CS4 Extended training course I had mixed emotions; part of me was so glad to see Brian once again hosting tutorials, the other half thought “Why Photoshop? Why not After Effects?  But now, having watched the training, I must say I’m impressed. I had no idea Brian had such an in-depth knowledge of Photoshop.

In this detailed, real-world training, Brian walks step-by-step through a dramatic poster design he originally created for the Rockland County Choral Society.

1. Artistic Compositing

In this chapter Brian demonstrates how to take a stock image of a dancer and transform it into a flame-engulfed fire sprite. The project includes tips on choosing source material; a terrific technique using Channels to cleanly select hair; a wealth of workflow tips including managing layers using Smart Objects; a creative technique for taking an existing illustration and customizing it, then using the Liquify tool to wrap the texture around the sprite; and techniques for compositing the sprite with images of fire.

2. 3D Modeling in Photoshop

3D was introduced in Photoshop CS3 but until now there has been no detailed training available. In this chapter Brian dives deep into the 3D features of Photoshop CS4 to create a truly jaw-dropping golden chalice, complete with skull and crossbones. The chapter starts with a brief introduction to 3D in Photoshop and then explores creating a 3D mesh from grayscale; creating and modifying depth maps, including a handy technique for making a seamless fractal noise map; and modeling using the Curves tool (which has to be seen to be believed); merging 3D layers and combining 3D objects.

I have to say that although the results Brian creates using the Photoshop tools are impressive, they weren’t easy to create. Modelling with Curves is cool but I’d much prefer to use a simple lathe in Cinema 4D. Having said that, if you don’t have access to a fully featured 3D software application, it’s pretty cool to know that you can model in Photoshop.

3. Textures and Lights

This chapter starts with a handy technique for creating a seamless metal texture, then moves deep into all of the texturing and lighting settings. Brian demonstrates how to apply the metal texture to the chalice and finely tweak material and lighting settings. The last 3 sections focus on adding detail using bump map textures, with impressive results.

4. 32 Bits – Putting It Together

This final chapter covers how to combine the fire sprite and chalice with a title to build the final poster. Brian starts by demonstrating how to place the fire sprite between copies of the chalice to create a convincing composite, then moves into a thorough explanation of 32bit compositing, including why you would use it and how to use it as an artistic tool. The final two lessons include a cool 32-bit technique for building the poster type element using no less than 6 different Layer Styles; and some must-know tricks for reducing the bit-depth of the final poster for print output.

If you want to explore some of the lesser-known aspects of Photoshop CS4 Extended or if you’re looking to improve your general Photoshop workflow, then this is an excellent training resource. As a trainer Brian is not only highly skilled but is equally warm, friendly and passionate, making watching these lessons a pleasure. I always get the feeling that Brian has my best interests at heart and truly wants me as a viewer to get the most out of the software.

For more information about this training click here. For a free-guest pass to Total Training click here.  You can also subscribe to Total Training for $24.99 per month to access the entire library of titles including Photoshop CS4 Extended – Advanced Techniques. This subscription also gives you access to the lesson work files.

The majority of this series focusses on CG integration with live action footage and disk 1 drops you in the deep end with 3D workflow, including ray tracing, normals, shading and texture mapping. Although these seem technical to the novice the videos and descriptions make is easy to follow along.

The examples are not software specific but Maya is the main 3D application and Eyeon Fusion is the main compositing software used. I use 3D most days at work but don’t consider myself a 3D guy, so learning the history of techniques and terms such as phong, shading and bump maps was a bonus.

Discs 2,3 and 4 cover everything to do with compositing and finishing shots. Disc 2 includes lighting, compositing, mattes, keying, rotoscoping and 2d tracking. This section could be a tough one to follow as well but the relaxed pace gives you plenty of time to absorb the information.

Disc 3 explores visual effects production including how to set up a shot for match moving, motion control rigs, matching lighting and shadows and problems with shadows and reflections. Disc 4 explains how to integrate CG elements into a live action world. Some great examples are used in this section.

The later discs explain everything you need to know about blue and green screens, the pros and cons of using them, how to build and set up a colour stage and prepping and lighting it properly to pull a great key. Even simulations are covered; particles, fluids, cloth, hair and explosions are all well demonstrated and very informative to watch.

The examples used in this series are indeed easy to follow and understand, but I couldn’t help giggle at some of them. Obviously there were no “hollywood-sized” production budgets, so at some points it felt like watching the behind-the-scenes of a direct-to-DVD sci-fi horror movie.

Summary

This series is great for anyone interested in learning more about the world of visual effects. US$329 might seem expensive but trust me, if all you get out of this is how to set up a green screen, light it, shoot it and  pull a key with minimal rotoscoping, then its worth the price. If I had a dollar for every hour I’ve slaved away fixing bad keys I’d be a rich man!

Watch movie (11min, 25MB)

Watch movie (12min, 31MB)

As a tester of OF, I’m impressed with the feature set of this plug-in; Andrew Kramer has studied real-world flares in detail and invested countless hours to give us a flare generator that has KLF showing its age.

I used OF in the latest summer Campaign for Foxtel Box Office here on Australian TV. The amount of control one has over every aspect of the flare is impressive and it’s clear that Andrew has taken time designing the interface to make building, customising and saving flares simple and fun.

But Red Giant Software hasn’t run away to hide, instead it’s come out swinging with a new free addition to KLF, Knoll 3D Flare. This is a free download for owners of KLF and adds various 3D features such as linking flares to 3D Lights, intensity based on z-depth and full 3D obscuration (all available in OF).

It’s clear that Red Giant Software is taking the challenge seriously and one can only guess at what the next release of Knoll Light Factory Pro might include now there’s a new kid on the block setting the pace.

Watch movie (9min, 24MB)

Watch movie (14min, 32MB)

Rather than just choosing the winner to finish this challenge now, I wanted to share with you what we feel are the top contenders, and use this as an opportunity to discuss the entries and who you feel should take out the title and why.

Hugo Goudswaard

Israel “Izzy” Long

Renzo Reyes

Hakan Acarel

Alessandro Mazza

Justin Gundlock

Andrei Roslovtsev

Jim Hines

Ryan Snider

M.Naveen Prasanth

Mohamed Lamgouni

Alessandro Mazza

Lucia Bastenhof

Tony Zagoraios

Tony Andreana

Simon Coughlan

Hussin Khan

Joshua Timmer

Jens Arnold

Hakan Acarel

Jay Wilson

David Kopidlansky

Laura Daniels

Marc Leonard

Fabian Van Der Meer

Sárffi Tamás

Jim Hines

Daniel Thurau

Denis St-Pierre

Jack East

Israel “Izzy” Long

Renzo Reyes

Robert Bojor

Mark Shingleton

Alexander Massey

David Gugel

Hugo Goudswaard

David Kwasnik

Akseli Tuomivaara

Kevin Snyder

Brett

Released in early 2009, Action Essentials 2 replaced the earlier Action Essentials stock footage product, and has been a huge success for Video Copilot. Good stock footage is an important tool for the motion graphics and visual effects artist, and I’ve certainly found myself reaching for the DVDs to source elements for a variety of projects. 

Action Essentials 2 is hard to fault, there simply isn’t anything else like it on the market. Consisting of over 500 action stock footage clips in 20 categories from Atmospheres to Water, Action Essentials 2 has something for all motionographers and visual effects artists.

Shipping as a 2 DVD 720P version and 4 DVD 2K version, all clips are pre-keyed and ready to drop into your projects. I’ve found the 720p version ($99.95) to be sufficient for most projects but if you’re working in HD it’s a plus to have a 2K version ($249.95).

Included on disk 1 are 4 full-length video tutorials, with an introductory walkthrough, building collapse, street bomb and muzzle flash examples, plus a bonus Sound FX starter pack.

Action Essentials 2 is popular amongst our design team at Foxtel. Once or twice a day you’ll hear someone call out “who’s got the Action Essentials 2 disks?”. I’ve included elements of fire, sparks, smoke and explosions from Action Essentials 2 in my last 3 projects.

A minor gotcha is that the video thumbnails are only included on disk 1 so if you have inserted disk 2 and want to browse the thumbnails, you need to reinsert Disk 1. Of course you could copy the thumbnails to your hard drive but I prefer not too.

This is a large library and finding what you need takes time. The video thumbnails help but it would be handy if some kind of browser such as Digital Juices’s Juicer was included. A workaround is to use Adobe Bridge, which is demonstrated in the introductory tutorial.

It would have been great if the collection included some slo-mo versions, particularly of fire, smoke an water, which would make these elements even more useful for motion graphics. It is possible to time warp using After Effects for example, but nothing beats the look of footage shot at high frame rates.

Positives: Affordable, high resolution, large variety of elements, pre-keyed clips.

Negatives: No slow motion versions, difficult to browse without Adobe Bridge or similar browser.

Summary: Action Essentials 2 raises the bar high for affordable, HD resolution stock footage. It really is a no-brainer to have at least the 720p version in your motion graphic and vfx toolkit. Buy it!

Addendum: Andrew Kramer of Video Copilot has informed me that many of the clips were shot at 50 and 60 frames per second, with some shot at 120 frames per second. The down-side is there is no indication as to which clips were shot at the higher frame rate.

Shipping on a whopping 28 disks, the Compositor’s Toolkit from Digital Juice includes over 250, 2K resolution organic stock clips. With 15 categories including Clouds, Water, Ink Chamber, Breaking Glass and Paint Splashes, this series will appeal to both motionographers and visual fx artists.

Positives: Large range of organic stock footage clips, shot at high speed, 2K resolution, pre-matted clips, easy access using The Juicer.

Negatives: Unnecessary colorisation of clips, preparing clips with The Juicer can be slow, similarities between a number of clips.

It’s important to note that while there are plenty of useful clips in this collection, there are also a number of similar clips in some categories, making this series not quite as impressive had there been 250 unique clips.

As with the Motion Designer’s Toolkit, Digital Juice’s own browser “The Juicer” is used to preview and output clips at the required settings. Some stock footage libraries ship with previews as individual movies, so having the Juicer to browse the entire library is a time-saver.

The Browser Panel

Once a clip has been selected, you drop it into the Batch Panel and click Settings to choose the appropriate output settings for your project including alpha, frame rate, field order and aspect ratio.

Most clips include pre-extracted mattes for fast composition into your project. There is also an Output Speed setting with three speed options: Very Slow, Slow and Real-Time. All footage was shot at high speed so being able to adjust the speed with smooth results makes this package more flexible. The clips can also be previewed at these speeds.

The Settings Panel with Speed Options

A downside of using the Juicer to prepare a clip is waiting for the render. It took 12 mins on my Macbook Pro to render a 1050×576 clip, which can be annoying when you’re in a hurry. It was much faster to grab the clip directly from disk and resize it in After Effects.

Clips in the Water Textures and Ink Chamber categories have been either shot in color or colorized in post. I would have preferred all of the water clips to be non-colorized and the Ink Chamber clips to be black or white, leaving me to make my own colour decisions.

Colorized Water Textures

Summary

I don’t think you can ever have enough stock elements and the Compositor’s Toolkit has come in handy on some recent projects with short deadlines.

The Tale of Despereaux: Fabrics. The Uninvited: Water and Smoke

The list price on the Digital Juice website is $499.95 (discounted from an original $599.95). $499 may seem a lot when compared to some stock footage libraries but the quantity of clips makes this pretty good value considering you could pay at least this much to buy one single collection from one of the better known stock footage providers. If you think you’ll find plenty of use for this collection then it makes a good value investment.

This week I received an email from Max Bretherton titled “The Never-ending Tutorial Chase”. Max finds himself overwhelmed by the abundance of tutorials available on the web and asked the following questions:

“How do you see these attractive and well devised ‘tutorial’ sites fitting into an artists work flow? Do they at all or are they just a detour – like watching a movie – that eats into valuable time? Or could we be wise and use them for the advancement of our own creative lives, work and knowledge? I struggle to find the best balance of watching great tutorials and getting work done.”

My approach

I’d love to watch more tutorials but I don’t have the time. So I don’t fight it. Paying work always takes priority over study, so my approach is to allocate a short time each day for tutorials, usually watching about 30 minutes of training each morning before work.

Being a great motionographer doesn’t necessarily mean knowing all the techniques by heart. Often you’ll watch a tutorial and have no use for that particular technique at that time, only to find yourself re-watching the tutorial to refresh your memory later anyway.

So for the majority of tutorials I keep a reference and watch them when they are relevant to the current project. Bookmarks in your browser or an RSS Reader such as Google Reader is great for filing tutorials and other inspirational posts for later reference. There are also numerous tutorial lists that make it easier to search tutorials across multiple sites. Check out this list of 1001 After Effects tutorials over at Filmmaker IQ for example.

What do you think?

How do you feel about the abundance of tutorials available from sites such as Motionworks? Does it overwhelm you? Does it frustrate you not being able to keep up? Do you find yourself spending too much time watching tutorials at the expense of other things? Let’s talk.

Up until recently I had discounted Digital Juice as a supplier of stock content for editors who needed a quick motion graphic background or sound file for a project. My limited view was that being a motion designer, I didn’t need their products and could create my own looks. Well, while there certainly are some stock products available on Digital Juice that I probably wouldn’t find a use for, I was surprised by what I discovered in the Motion Designer’s Toolkit.

Positives: Large range of useful graphic elements, vector format, After Effects projects included.

Negatives: Some styles are cheesy and repetitive, Juicer crashes, crash information sent without consent, regular price is excessive.

The Motion Designer’s Toolkit includes eight DVDs, shipped in a stylish and protective disk folder and sleeve. The installer disk includes The Juicer, Digital Juice’s own browsing software used to preview and save the files on disk. The other seven disks include a extensive range of graphic elements available in three varieties: pre-rendered movies, Illustrator vector files and After Effect project files (AEP).

The Juicer

With The Juicer installed, you enter the supplied activation key which will then install previews and content (the AEP and vector files get installed too). The range of content is vast, from Arrows to  Skylines. Some elements are more my style than others. For example, Gradient shields and Ornate Frames aren’t common in my work but there is a wide range of organic, grungy elements including Halftones, Rough Edges and two I particularly like – Destruction and Screen Chaos.

Screen Chaos

Most of the animation styles are well designed and great time savers. Some of the styles lacked variety, including the non-descript Skylines category, with every animation a variation on buildings popping up from the bottom of the frame. Some famous “real-life” skylines would have been useful also.

To find an element, you choose a category from the Juicer’s category list, then click either the Animation, Projects or Vectors tab and select a thumbnail. The Animation and Project thumbnails have realtime previews, showing exactly how the animation will look. Once you find what you need, for the AEP and vector files, you simply save them into a directory of your choice (no need to install a disk).

Categories and Tabs

If you choose an Animation version, you drag it to the Batch Panel and click the Settings button. This presents a wide variety of output settings you can choose to customise your render including resolution, aspect ratio, frame rate, playback speed and alpha channel options.

Batch, Settings and Preview Panels

I can see why pre-rendered animations might be useful for some users. As an After Effects user I prefer the flexibility of the AEP file or the vector file which I can customise to my needs directly inside After Effects.

My experience with the Juicer was mixed. It was easy to use but also crashed regularly on my Macbook Pro. After each crash, a message appeared informing me that my system information was being collected, so I assume that was sent to Digital Juice but this wasn’t clear. My preference is for the Adobe style warning that informs me that information will be sent to Adobe if I choose.

Summary

As a motion designer, having a large range of graphic elements at your fingertips is important and the Motion Designer’s Toolkit delivers a lot of bang with 1,755 different elements to use. Having access to the After Effects project files makes customisation easy and allows you to be as creative as you like.

The list price on the Digital Juice website is $499.95 (discounted from an original $599.95). I probably wouldn’t be able to justify the purchase at either of these prices unless I knew I was going to use it regularly. Digital Juice is running a half price August special, and at $249.95 this is a good value investment.