First I saw it on Motionographer, then I saw it on Postfolio, and low and behold there was a making of. Tim Nakashi’s video for OK Go’ “WTF?” is pretty visually amazing, and makes you feel like you are on a hardcore acid trip (which I think is what he was going for). After the jump, check out their video and the making of, but one thing I realized, there really wasn’t an explanation as to how they did the effect. I mean, they explain what props they used and why, but how did it work on the back end? Well it’s actually pretty simple… the Echo effect in After Effects. Check out my tutorial on how to make this effect, and how easy it really is.
There are many different reasons to use stock footage… perhaps you don’t have a camera, your budget is up for your production, or you might just need one extra pickup shot to finish off a piece. Sometimes, it just doesn’t seem feasible to rent a camera, put your time into something, go on location, set up lights, and everything else that goes along with getting that shot. That is where stock footage comes into play. We’re going to discuss some situations where you might use stock footage over shooting it yourself, and what the benefits might possibly be.
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To combat the competition on the horizon that is Video Copilot’s Optical Flares plugin, Red Giant Software is developing their newest extension to Knoll Light Factory, called Knoll 3D Flare. Now 3D lens flares and positioning has always been possible with Knoll, you just needed a little jerry-rigging, but with the new extension, it is going to make it super easy, as well as adding a bunch of attributes that will make using your lens flares a lot easier, and hopefully (for RGS) keep you with Knoll over Optical Flares. (more…)
I felt like it was time to take a break from the nice workflow tips and simple techniques today, and make something that looks cinematic and cool looking. What we are going to do is use only one effect, Simple Choker, to create a write-on effect like you would see words appearing on a misty window or appearing from nothingness. (more…)
There is nothing better than watching videos on the internet, and in this day and age, it seems there is a talk show, VLOG, or some kind of online series geared toward your niche and passion. Lately, in the mograph community it has become the trend to create shows like this from some of our favorite content creators online. Nick Campbell, John Dickinson, Mataannon and Andrew Kramer all have their own shows now… and I am going to link you up to each one of them! It’s the Mograph Show roundup!
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I always like the look of that text treatment that you see on titles where it looks as though you drew it by hand like in the old days, except you have a few details off, or the lines just don’t match up correctly, so you get that jitter when it plays at normal speed. What we are going to do is replicate that effect with just a few steps and the liquify effect.
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There are a lot of crap movies out there… A LOT, but it’s my job to filter through that crap and bring you wonderful, loyal followers the goodness that is brilliant cinema. I felt it was high time to take a look at what is going to be hitting theaters in the next couple months and give you a quick synopsis on each, and direct you over to some sweet behind the scenes footage, and their respective trailers. (more…)
Its that time again where we check out what’s going on with our “sister” site, AEtuts+ and seeing what new tutorials they have posted over on the main tutorial front. If you haven’t checked out AEtuts+ in a while, well you will be happy to know that Plus Content is up and running strong, and that means materials, project files, images, and full tutorials available for download!
Every couple weeks we will showcase the tutorials from the past weeks so you can brush up and hone your After Effects skills to learn some new tricks and broaden your horizons when it comes to our favorite application.
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Harry Frank’s lack of tutorials lately on the After Effects scene comes with a damn good excuse: Video Rock. His newest product is a huge packet of 200 graphic elements, stills and movies alike that help to give your productions that 80’s & 90’s flair. This is chuck full of “hand-drawn” looking animations, glints, lightning bolts, clouds and everything that you see when you watch those shows from the era when motion graphics, and titles had that retro-esque look about them that we all seem to love.
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I am always trying to improve my work flow, make things more organized in my comps, and overall work faster and work smarter. There are so many features to After Effects that people sometimes overlook or forget about, that can save you ten seconds here and a minute there, that when you add that all up, it tends to be a lot of time you are wasting when you could just use some simple shortcuts. Things we will be exploring today include: Layer > Time functions (Time Remapping, Time Reverse Layer, Freeze Frame techniques), Layer > Transform functions (Fit To Comp, Width & Height), and the Crop Comp To Region of Interest technique to eliminate empty alpha space on layers.
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