ANgiE tAYLoR 🧷

Tag: Learn by Video

  • Illustrator CS6 – Learn by Video

    Illustrator CS6 – Learn by Video

    I’m very pleased to announce that my new workshop – Adobe Illustrator CS6 – Learn by Video – is now available to buy directly from the web store on my videos page. I’m also featuring some free example movies from this workshop right here so you can try before you buy.

    Newsletter subscribers can also benefit from a 20% discount code off the price of the entire workshop so if you haven’t already subscribed you can do so now to take advantage of this and other special offers only available to my subscribers.

    This Learn by Video course offers in-depth training on the interface, workflow, and features of Adobe Illustrator CS6. Amongst other things you’ll learn my own techniques for drawing characters including my “Illustrator” superhero. Here’s the intro movie where I tell you more about the course.

    The contents of this course include:

    Introducing Illustrator CS6
    In this chapter you’ll be introduced to Adobe Illustrator — what it is and what it does — and get an overview of what will be covered in this course. You’ll also be taken on a tour of the new features in Illustrator CS6.

    Illustrator Fundamentals
    This chapter explores two concepts that are crucial to an understanding of how Illustrator works: the difference between bitmap (or raster) images and vector images, and the concept of paths.

    Exploring the Illustrator Interface
    In this chapter you’ll learn how to work with important elements of the Illustrator interface like panels, the Application bar and frame, artboards, and workspaces.

    Navigating and Using Views in Illustrator
    Being able to easily move around your documents and see them in different ways can be a big help in your work. This chapter will explain how to navigate in Illustrator CS6 and use the different viewing and screen modes.

    Working with Documents
    This chapter shows you how to efficiently create, modify, and view documents. You’ll learn how to use templates, guides, grids, Adobe Bridge, and more.

    Creating and Working with Shapes
    Shapes are a very important part of Illustrator, and in this chapter you’ll learn about the various tools available for creating and modifying shapes.

    Transformations
    You can transform objects in a variety of different ways in Illustrator CS6. This chapter shows you the various methods that can be used to transform and modify objects, including how to use the Transform panel.

    Understanding Objects and Layers
    This chapter shows you how to select and modify objects in Illustrator CS6 and explores the multitude of options you can use to create artwork. We’ll look at saving selections, grouping items, layers and stacking order, and Isolation mode.

    Drawing
    Drawing is at the heart of the work you’ll do in Illustrator. In this chapter you’ll learn all about the tools, techniques, and features related to drawing in Illustrator CS6.

    Using Symbols
    Symbols are a handy feature in Illustrator, and in this chapter you’ll learn how to create them, move and rotate them, adjust their size and color, and apply graphic styles.

    Color
    Color makes a big difference to the appearance of your artwork. In this chapter you’ll learn how to work with color-related features in Illustrator like the Colors panel, swatches, gradients, Live Paint, and more.

    Typography
    In this chapter you’ll learn how to add text to your documents, format that text, create styles, and more.

    Working with Images
    In this chapter, you’ll learn how to place graphics and see all the tools Illustrator offers once they are there to help you get great results in your designs.

    Working with Effects
    With effects, you can apply a look to a path that doesn’t alter the path at all. It will print like what you see on your monitor, but in reality, it’s all just an illusion…a very powerful, editable, printable illusion that can be saved as a PDF, placed in Photoshop and InDesign, and more. You’ll learn all about this incredible technology in this chapter.

    Graphs
    If you have information you want to convey as a graph or chart, Illustrator has the tool. The chart and graph tools in Illustrator aren’t new, but they are very powerful and allow you to present data in a more interesting way, as you’ll see in this chapter.

    Beyond Illustrator
    Eventually there will come a time when you want to save your Illustrator work as a PDF or in one of the common web file formats, or output it for use in an animation. The videos in this chapter will show you how.

    Project Explorations
    In this chapter you’ll apply the skills you’ve learned in this course to some projects that give you an idea of just what Illustrator is capable of.

    Closing Thoughts
    In this chapter you’ll get a brief recap of what’s been covered in the course and a few final thoughts from the author.

    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.

    Click here to subscribe to my Newsletter and enefit from a 20% discount code off the price of the entire workshop.

  • Tip of the Week

    Tip of the Week

    Animating Characters with the Puppet Tool
    from: Adobe After Effects CS5: Learn by Video.

    Animating characters with the puppet tool

    Welcome to this week’s Tip of the Week feature in a brand new video format. After Effects has great tools for character animation called the Puppet tool. The Puppet Pin tool places a mesh over your footage using the alpha channel. You can add points to this mesh that allow to distort it and animate it, using gestural animation with your pen or mouse. This provides some really natural movement for your animations and motion graphics projects. You’ll see an example of what can be done with the Puppet tools in this video.

    December 7, 2011
  • Something’s happening in Europe!

    Something’s happening in Europe!

    Me with Gerhard & some of the team at video2brain

    I’m very excited, something’s happening in Europe that’s going to be fantastic for all of us – I think you’re going to love it! First of all, let me set the scene for why I’m telling you this.

    Once in a while, if you’re lucky, you end up working with a bunch of really special people – I’m so lucky it’s happened to me. I create video training workshops with the fantastic team at video2brain which is led by one of the nicest men I have I ever met, Gerhard Koren.

    Gerhard and I used to be demo artists for Adobe, traveling to trade shows and events, speaking about how we used Adobe software in our work. We clicked right away, Gerhard was so knowledgeable and talented, and as with most truly gifted people – humble and genuine with it. He always took time to help people to really understand the software and went out of his way to be friendly and kind.

    Gerhard set up video2brain in 2002 and it quickly became established as Europe’s premiere go to place for video training. They gained a reputation for quality and innovation that has never been matched.

    In 2009 they started creating English Language titles and were joined by Dan Brodnitz who came in to head up the amazing English language team. Dan has an extensive experience in the publishing industry having worked at Lynda.com, O’Reilly and IDG. As well as bringing his publishing expertise to the table, he also brings a passion for creativity, ideas and people. Like Gerhard, he’s what we call in the UK “a top bloke”. Friendly, full of ideas and he cares about quality and integrity.

    I’ve worked with video2brain since 2009 when I created my first After Effects Learn by Video product with Adobe’s Todd Kopriva. Since then I’ve created lots more titles and made many more friends at video2brain who I’d love to mention by name but are too numerous to list (you know who you are and how much I love working with you!) We have gradually built a fantastic team of English language trainers who you can find out more about here.

    2011 marks another great landmark for video2brain which will be announced this week. I wish I could tell you now but my lips are sealed. All I can say is please keep an eye on the countdown on our video2brain website. And if you want to get an idea about the kind of video training we offer, take a look at some of the 600 plus free tutorials we offer online as a taster of what’s to come.

  • Animating a line drawn on a map – Indiana Jones Style

    Animating a line drawn on a map – Indiana Jones Style

    My recommended workspace setup for this kind of 'Rostrum-style' work. You need to have the Layer panel and Comp panel visible.

    I contribute to the Creative Cow Basic After Effects forum (amongst others) where this question was posted recently;

    “Hi I am newish to after effects and I have created a old map effect that pans from the UK to africa now I want to add a red line that reveals like in the Indiana Jones graphic.”

    There’s definitely a trick to getting this right but once you know the trick, it’s easy, so, here are the rough steps for getting it right.

    BTW, a movie demonstrating this technique is available in my After Effects CS5 Learn by Video DVD if you are interested in that here’s a link to it.

    1. Place the map in a new comp, it’s best if the Map is bigger than the comp if you want to pan around it. In the Timeline, set a keyframe for the Anchor Point property as it’s this property you will animate to pan around the map. NB: Don’t animate the Position property as you’ll just run into problems.

    2. Alt-double-click the layer to open up the Layer panel, this is where you’ll do the animation. It’s great as you’ll be able to see an overview of the whole image without having to faff around in the Comp panel. Make sure that the Target menu is set to Anchor Point Path.

    3. In the timeline, move to where you want the next change in direction of the path to happen, and in the Layer panel, click and drag the anchor point to the landmark that you want to be central in the comp panel at that time. You’ll notice that, in the Comp panel, the point that the anchor point is on (in the Layer panel) is always central in the Comp panel, which is what you want exactly!

    4. Keep repeating this till you have completed the journey you want the ‘camera’ to follow and so have completed the positional aspect of the animation.

    5. If you want to smooth out the timing of the animation so that it maintains an even speed throughout, select all the keyframes except the first and last one, right-click on them and choose Rove Across Time. Once you’ve done that you can pull or push the first or last keyframes to speed up, or slow down the whole animation.

    6. Now apply the Write On effect to the layer. Choose a color and style by adjusting the settings.

    7. To make the Write on effect follow the path you can either use and expression to link the Brush Position property to the Anchor Point property of the layer (my preferred option) or, if you’re not keen on using expressions you can simply select all the keyframes from the Anchor Point property, copy them, then paste them into the Brush Position property.

    8. In the Write On effect, make sure that the Paint Style property is set to On Original Image.

    The nice thing about this technique is that it’s now easy to make it into a 3D map pan. All you need to do is add a camera and some lights, adjust the camera angle and animate the zoom property and that’s it! The camera and lights will automatically follow the anchor point so no further animation will be necessary unless you want to animate the angle, zoom, or depth of field.

    To find out more details of this technique and others, check out my After Effects CS5 Learn by Video DVD that I created alongside the wonderful Todd Kopriva from Adobe.

  • Free tutorial – creating a 1960s retro opening title sequence

    Free tutorial – creating a 1960s retro opening title sequence

    My dear friend and esteemed and talented After Effects aficionado, Aharon Rabinowitz has posted my 1960’s retro “Pop-art” tutorial up on Red Giant TV. I actually recorded it in the 1960’s but it’s taken this long for technology to catch up to a stage where it can broadcast a whole hour (almost) of FREE After Effects video training online! Download and enjoy, it’s all free and includes tutorial files! You’ll love Aharon’s “authentic” Scottish accent at the end!