This project for a Summer campaign on Foxtel Box Office was created using a combination of Maxon Cinema 4D and Adobe After Effects with Zaxwerks ProAnimator and Knoll Light Factory. The simple 3D text supers were created using ProAnimator inside After Effects and the supers with characters were created in Cinema 4D and finished in After Effects. read more
This project is another good example of taking poor quality 4:3 vision, making it 16:9 and giving it some polish. The tools included Adobe After Effects, Zaxwerks ProAnimator, Trapcode Horizon and Shine, and Maltaannon’s Screenify effect (featured in MILG 5). The vision was treated with the Screenify effect— which adds a realistic jumbotron read more
Trapcode “Horizon” is a camera-aware color gradient and image mapping plug-in for Adobe After Effects. It’s a straightforward utility plug-in generating a background that corresponds to the After Effects camera’s viewing direction. The camera position has no influence on Horizon, you could say it always uses an infinite distance to the camera. read more
In this recorded e-seminar I’ll show you how to build a simple yet dynamic type-based animation. Topics include working with Illustrator files, setting up simple relationships using expressions, per-character 3D type, setting up 3D layers, creative use of shape layers, Brainstorm, modifying and saving a preset. Watch e-seminar
tags | 3D, After Effects, Expressions, Shape Layers
In this recorded e-seminar you’ll see some of the techniques and workflow I used to create the award winning Fox Classics image spot. Topics include creative color grading, rotoscoping, creative lighting and camera techniques.
You may have been wondering what the ProAnimator Importer plug-in that ships with ProAnimator actually does. It’s actually a great creative tool, allowing you to harness the fast and powerful ProAnimator animation features and apply them to your After Effects 3D layers. The eyeball image is by Martin Walls (http://www.sxc.hu). Watch tutorial
In this tutorial we look at how to add flare to your graphics by creating the effect of “light” moving across your Zaxwerks ProAnimator or 3D Invigorator objects inside After Effects. In fact it’s not light at all but an animated reflection map. Watch tutorial
For this project my 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
For this project my client approached me with a print out of an ugly corporate chart representing the growth in Foxtel’s subscriber numbers. Considering that this information was to be placed at the start of a 3 minute corporate video I suggested that a dynamic timeline that captured viewer attention would be more suitable than a boring graph. At the start of the read more
Effective lighting in 3D can be notoriously difficult but I’ve found that using ambient lights can make things easier. In the example project I’ve used an ambient light at 100% intensity to fully illuminate the layer at the start of the animation and then crossed dissolved to a spot light at 100% intensity while reducing the Ambient light to 20% intensity. This is an effective read more
Just finished this spot for Fox Classics Sunday Night at the Movies. 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 read more
Camera animation can be notoriously fiddly, especially for beginners. However there are ways to make it easier, animating the X, Y and Z axes individually for example. I use a camera rig created for the Fox Classics Image Spot project. It uses a series of nulls linked to the camera and in turn linked to a master control layer for easy animating. Download project Watch E-seminar
This image spot for Fox Classics channel won the Silver Award for Best On-Air Ident Design (In-House) and was top three in the Best Television Image Promo category at the 2006 Promax|BDA Awards in Sydney. The entire spot was created in After Effects. The footage was treated using a combination of Levels, Gaussian Blur, Tinderbox 3’s Find Edges read more
In this written tutorial learn how to create a 3D video wall in After Effects using Zaxwerks 3D Invigorator. Watch movie View tutorial
