Vimeo have just announced access to their new Looks Enhancer so you can enhance Vimeo videos instantly with professionally designed video effects based on industry standard effects.
Vivoom is the core technology behind Vimeo’s enhancer, you can find out more about it here.
I worked on this project as creative director, designing presets for Vivoom with a great team of international designers – I hope you like what we came up with. You can now apply visual effects by me and other artists, directly to your videos in Vimeo. It’s a bit of fun and no substitute for using effects in purpose-built applications but it uses the same technology as used by major visual effects studios – there’s lot of power under the hood! You can try these new looks out free on your videos for the next 30 days.
Here are some Inspirational motion graphic designs I include in my seminars on “Typography and Dynamic Text animation”. These are inspirational examples of opening title sequences that I have been inspired by throughout the years.
Big thanks especially to the “Art of the Title” website for providing such lovely, high-quality clips for us all to enjoy. They also have some great articles on the inspiration and processes used to create some of these stunning pieces of work. Enjoy!
OK, sometimes you need text, but no-one says it has to be boring. These ten effect presets, designed for text will have your viewers sitting up and taking notice.
Camoflash A Camouflage-style of pattern is applied to text to give it texture. The Jitter Frames value adjusts the sped of the flashing animation of the texture.
Disintegrator Added to text this will have the effect of giving it a slight disintegrated quality. Great for adding a bit of damage to your motion graphics.
Damage Limitation Scratches, stains, dust and shake are added to text to give it a more organic appearance. Perfect for those “”Seven”” inspired film titles.
Steeley Glare Adds a textured steel effect to layers. Specifically designed for use on text to add an interesting textured fill.
Searchlight This grainy effect plunges your text into semi-darkness and highlights it by adding a searchlight to it. Vignette Centre property is keyframed in the preview movie to make the light move over the text.
Textatic A groovy, tiling pattern that looks great applied to geometric text. In the preview movie animation is added by keyframing the Inside Rotation property.
Trippy Hippy Tiled instances of your text move together in a fluid way to create a groovy movement reminiscent of 60’s dancing. In the preview movie the Zoom property has been keyframes to create additional movement.
Mittageisen Designed to add a metallic look to outlined text.
Interference Animated scan lines and a dodgy reception effect make your text look slightly damaged. Less than perfect and much more interesting as a result.
Metal Postcard A great preset for adding a metallic sheen to your text layers. Who’d have thought you could use a half-tone effect for that!
My Vibrant Vignette Presets for Sapphire were released this week. This collection features a weird and wonderful collection of vignettes in an attempt to prove that vignettes don’t always need to be black and circular.
These vignettes which will give your footage extra atmosphere, extra mood, extra pop. Use them as they are or adapt them to fit your own designs.
These are free too all FX Central users. If you own Sapphire for any of the following hosts you can open the preset browser, login to FX Central and get working with them right away, on your own footage.
It’s finally here, my brand new After Effects CS6 – Learn by Video course. I worked on this course with Adobe’s Todd Kopriva who I just love working with. Together we teamed up to provide a good mix of technical and creative training in our favorite software application. We hope you enjoy it. Here’s an intro to the course from us both.
This Learn by Video course offers in-depth training on the interface, workflow, and features of Adobe After Effects CS6. If you subscribe to my newsletter you can get 20% off this course with a discount code. The contents of this course include:
Introducing After Effects CS6
In this chapter you’ll get an overview of how After Effects works, what it does, and what the main controls are.
Interface Tour
Before you start following along with the instructions in this training, it will help to learn what the controls are called and where things are located. You’ll learn about the basic controls and the most commonly used panels in this chapter.
Creating Compositions and Layers
In After Effects we work in projects. Every project contains compositions, each of which is the framework of a movie; layers are assembled within the framework of these compositions. In this chapter you’ll learn how to create compositions and bring layers into them from the Project panel. You’ll also learn how to create layers from scratch.
Importing Footage
In this chapter you’ll learn how to bring various types of files into After Effects. You’ll also see how to make sure After Effects interprets these files correctly and how to manage them once you get them in.
Interpreting and Managing Footage
Sometimes you need to tell After Effects how to use source files. This chapter shows you how to set various parameters for how files are interpreted and used.
Animation Basics
The most important aspect of learning to fully understand After Effects is getting to grips with how After Effects handles animation. Once you have mastered the topics covered in this chapter, you can really do anything in this powerful application.
Fine-Tuning Animation
This chapter will take your animation skills further by showing you how to understand timing. You’ll learn how to work in the Layer panel and the Graph Editor for more precise control over layers and animation.
Animating Text Layers
Text layers can be animated in a variety of different ways to create exciting and compelling motion graphics. In this chapter you’ll learn about the properties and methods used to control these layers. Text layer properties use a slightly different animation system than standard layer properties, so we’ll also discuss the idiosyncrasies involved in animating these wonderfully flexible design elements.
Fun with Shape Layers
Shape layers are pretty unique but can be confusing to new users. This chapter will help demystify shape layers and give you the confidence to push them in all sorts of creative directions.
Basic Compositing
Compositing is about stacking layers on top of one another and making parts of each layer show through others in specific ways. You’ll learn about many of the ways to composite layers together in this chapter.
Effects
After Effects provides you with scores of effects that you can apply to your layers, allowing you to create virtually any look or style you like. Imagine being able to animate all of these over time and you get a real sense of the creative flexibility that After Effects can offer you. This chapter tells you everything you need to know to create amazing effects.
Time
A movie is a series of images that plays over time, and After Effects provides many powerful controls for controlling exactly how this happens. This chapter will teach you about tools like frame blending, slow motion, freeze-frame, and more.
Grouping and Linking
There are times when it makes sense to group layers together into a single item, either to simplify complicated comps or to make editing, moving, or applying effects a whole lot easier. In this chapter we’ll look at several methods for grouping layers together.
Introduction to 3D
After Effects allows you to transform and animate your layers within a 3D environment. This adds some complexity to your compositions. After Effects CS6 also lets you work in ray-traced 3D, where you can extrude and bevel shapes and text and even bend video layers. In this chapter you’ll see how After Effects deals with mixing 2D and 3D in the same composition.
Memory and Performance
Every person, project, and computer system is different. In this chapter you’ll learn how to configure After Effects to match your needs, the capabilities of your computer system, and the needs of your projects.
Render Order and Collapsing Transformations
Layers and their components are processed in a specific order. In this chapter you’ll learn about that order and how to use special features to control it
Output Options
When you’re finished with your project, you need to get your data out of After Effects, usually as a finished movie. In this chapter, you’ll learn the basics of rendering and exporting movies.
Project Explorations and Recap
This chapter contains some examples of animations created in After Effects along with explanations of how they were made. You’ll also get some tips on integrating After Effects with Cinema 4D, as well as some final thoughts on the course and suggestions for further learning.
The lessons are wrapped in a feature-rich interface that lets you jump to any topic and bookmark individual sections for later review. Full-Screen mode provides a hi-def, immersive experience, and Watch-and-Work mode shrinks the video into a small window so you can play the videos alongside your application. Also included are exercise files that give you an easy way to try out the techniques you learn and a 48-page guide containing supplemental material.
Artbeats, your source for royalty-free stock footage, is offering everyone a free HD clip from their new Stereoscopic 3D (S3D) library. If you’ve been wanting to try your hand at working in 3D motion, this free download is the perfect opportunity to test it out.
For those of you who are not ready for 3D, you can download the same clip in 2D for use in your everyday high def projects.
