In this tutorial for Digital Juice, learn how I used the Motion Designer’s Toolkit 2 with Cinema 4D and After Effects to create a detailed background and multi-layer text effect with a dynamic sci-fi look.

The Roto Brush tool is brand new in Adobe After Effects CS5 and is killer! Check out the new Motionworks tutorial.

Great topic! I have a horrible story where I learned this stuff the hard way!

When I was just young and starting out, I was working on an opening sequence for a client. From the start I had the go-ahead from my producers, and I spent weeks pouring  my heart and soul into this project. I felt it would be my big break! To my delight, my producers and co-workers all loved my final project. I was feeling pretty cheeky. But when the piece was submitted to the client, they didn’t like it. At all. I was crushed.

So I made them a very boring stock intro, they were pleased with it, and that was done. But I had my old original piece that I wanted people to see. So I posted it online, with the caption “this was the original opening to ’such-and-such show,’ it was rejected.” My friends left harsh comments towards that client. “What were they thinking? they are idiots!” “I never like that company anyway!” And of course, that client’s company name was mentioned BY NAME in my piece.

Well, when someone from that company was shown the video, and read the comments, she wasn’t very happy with our production house. Needless to say I was fired that day. Luckily, my producer fought for my job and it was changed to a suspension. But I definitely learned some hard lessons, not only about intellectual property rights, but taking things personally. Don’t do what I did, kids.

Hi John, back in ‘92 when I’d been a 32-bit paint system specialist (a rarity back then) I was hunted by the music industry for a variety of projects that – at the time – were very exciting and made me alot of money and allowed me to circulate among many stars of the day in both design – Peter Saville & Malcolm Garett among others – and pop stars. Great fun.

Sadly this new found popularity and lifestyle brought with it the inevitable negatives of drug abuse which moved very quickly from ecstasy & cocaine to heroin which stayed with me destroying my life and the majority of my career for the better part of 20 years.

18 months ago I managed to force myself back into 3D (Cinema 4D in fact). For over a year I locked myself in a cold garage with heroin in one hand and a C4D loaded laptop in the other, learning as much and as quickly as I could.

In March of 2009 I put myself into rehab and managed to finally leave behind my addiction and concentrate on my love of animation returning to work like a new man. A year down the line I’m doing great and I owe a great deal to the lessons learned from Tim Clapham and Motionworks (amongst others) who have given me the push and confidence I lost through heroin in the first place.

I hope this hasn’t sounded pathetic John because guilt and shame aside it’s all a very true and uplifting story. I went from (approx) six months to live to a popular and capable 3D artist all through the guidance and tutelage of sites such as your own. I look forward to every new MILG and make use of the tuition as much as possible…

A fancy disco ball created entirely within Adobe After Effects. Read more & download project

Practicing Neurologist Howard Silby turns to After Effects

“Your website, training, tuts, and unplugged series are outstanding! After 40 years as a practicing neurologist I decided to learn video editing, mainly to begin to archive our family’s life for the benefit of our 5 grandchildren. So, at age 68, I started with the Cassablanca system which allowed me to ease into the skill, I soon found it limiting and decided, with great trepidation, to jump into after effects. So, I purchased total training 6.5, and since have purchased every Cow series, Meyer’s books, total training series thru 7.0, many of lynda.com dvd’s, as well as in/out monthly membership to lynda.com, and take all tuts from you, and messrs.Rabinowitz, Maltaannon, Kramer, Velez, Holmes, etc etc and purchasing almost all of their and your products.

Trying to get into after effects in 2003 would be like you deciding today that you wanted to be a neurologist: I thought “alpha” was a dominant male, “channel” was something that held water, “mask” something the Lone Ranger wore, “transparency” something that defined a shallow person, “matte” something you wiped your feet on, and “travelling” something you did when you retired. I just couldn’t wrap my brain around “layers” and “duplicating”, etc. It all seemed counterintutive to my medically trained brain. Being color blind didn’t/doesn’t help any! But all of you helped me get from After Effects Ground Zero to 0.005% above ground zero, where I now still labor tring to learn this stuff. It’s great fun, and now I mainly continue in order to keep my brain challenged and stave off Alzheimer’s Disease.

Many thanks to all of you who have helped me acieve my limited AE skills that have made my 74 year old artistic life happy and fulfilled. The free stuff is terrific, but the bought stuff even better, and the two complement each other. I use Adobe CS4 with every plug in known to man/woman even tho I use almost none of the special effects when I produce a video since I don’t want the FX to be the story. But just knowing I can do some of the stuff is all the reward I need. On rare occaisions I use FX just to have fun. If you want, here’s a link to some intro fx stuff I did last week.”

In this recording of a recent e-seminar, learn how to create a Sopranos–style text look, inspired by HBO. Main tools covered include Adobe After Effects and Zaxwerks ProAnimator.

As with all graphics on Fox Classics, the palette for this spot was restricted to orange, black and white. Being that this is Sunday “Night” at the Movies, it made the most sense to use black as the base color. Most of these movies are from the 60’s/70’s and when I heard the music (The Supremes) I thought of one of those old 70’s-style beaded door curtains and decided to use that as the basis of the design. Read more

For this Adobe After Effects project the brief was pretty open but I had to include graphic elements from the Crime and Investigation network’s existing identity along with key words and footage from various “ci” programs. The channel tagline is “look closer” so I decided to use glass panels similar to the glass slides one uses to examine specimens under a microscope. Read more

This 1 hour recorded 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. View post

This project is an example of taking poor quality 4:3 vision, making it 16:9 and giving it some polish. Tools used include Adobe After Effects, Zaxwerks ProAnimator, Trapcode Horizon and Shine, and Maltaannon’s Screenify effect (featured in MILG 5)…

This seamlessly looping After Effects background is based on the Cell Pattern effect and includes a number of adjustment layers you can use to modify the basic look.

17 jam–packed hours of real-world Adobe After Effects training with top motion graphics designers from around the world. Throughout these in-depth video workshops, professional motion graphics designers including John Dickinson, Harry J Frank, Alan Shisko and Maltaannon, demonstrate techniques essential to their daily work and give the design decisions and rationale that support them. Grab the bundle and save 100 dollars.