Kevin Schmitt has an article about After Effects CS4 benchmarks at DigitalMediaNet. Leopard vs. Vista. If you’re a Mac user, you may not want to read it. "Cripes, the Mac OS X version of After Effects is absolutely smoked again, and the results are slightly worse than last time in places."
The <a href=”http://www.adobe.com/education/adaa/”>2009 Adobe Design Achievement Awards Call for Entries</a> is now calling. Ringy dingy!
The Adobe Design Achievement Awards celebrate student achievement reflecting the powerful convergence of technology and the creative arts. The competition – which showcases individual and group projects created with industry-leading Adobe creative software – honors the most talented and promising student graphic designers, photographers, illustrators, animators, digital filmmakers, developers, and computer artists from the world’s top institutions of higher education.
Submission are now being accepted through June 5, 2009.
Late Entry Deadline : Dec 19
Submit a Link + Submit a Movie + Submit a Topic
http://mgfest.com/09/call.php
[ Easy ] Submit a Link
Simply enter a link to a video you think is really good!
Online voters will select the top videos in several caregories. If your video is selected you will reveive a free badge to the Motion Graphics Festival.
[ Medium ] Submit a Video
Send us a DVD of a video you made. Late Entry Deadline: Dec 19, 2008
Send us your finest minutes, your dreams realized, your fictions animated, your adventures recorded, your sweat and passion woven into something of beauty, and we will take it to audiences across the country. Selections will be screened during the 6th annual Motion Graphics Festival tour in Chicago, Boston, Austin, Atlanta and Washington DC.
[ Hard ] Submit a Topic
Suggest a presentation topic, performance or installation.
No Entry Fee. Just let us know what’s on your mind. Our three themes are: New Motion, New Sound and New Media. Be a presenter, performer or panel/discussion leader. We are looking for presentation topics, technologies, abstracts, essays, performances, art installations, events, groups, conceptual meanderings and just plain smart fun.
Why Adobe ‘Configurator’ Will Revolutionize The Way You Use Photoshop.
If you missed the post, Adobe Labs posted a new item today, Configurator, which is a utility that enables the easy creation of panels (palettes) for use in Adobe Photoshop CS4.
On The Genesis Project blog Dennis Radeke says: "During this episode, I use a couple of presets along with a little Turbulent Displace and CC Vector Blur to make something cool."
Check out this free video tutorial from Lynda.com, AE CS4: New PARs (Pixel Aspect Ratios). He gets pretty technical, but man, this explains a lot.
Harry Frank has a video up at Studio Daily about Using expressions to speed up lower third creation in After Effects. He explains how to create a document that links to the text document with corresponding scene numbers… a very cool way to speed up simple but tedious work. It’s not difficult, but this is definitely not something you’d figure out yourself, unless you’re a javascript programmer, or a whiz with expressions.
Also, Harry’s Complete training for Trapcode Particular from Class on Demand is half price this week. (DVD | Download), during our One Day Sale. Also, if you haven’t heard, Trapcode Suite is 50% off today only!
Ko Maruyama posted this free holiday footage link on his blog Ninja Crayon. You do have to pay the $9 shipping and handling for the DVD, but what a deal, man. This is great for those quick holiday projects and family holiday photo reels that your grandma has been begging you to make for her.
You can also download some of these by joining the DVProfessionals group.
Harry has been a super busy guy and hasn’t had much time to post here. From the sound of it, he’ll be moving across the country very soon because an incredible opportunity has come up for him. Good luck, Harry!
From Harry’s Gray Machine: “‘This is a great compilation of many Trapcode Particular projects that I’ve posted over the past few years at AE Freemart and Trapcode People. There’s lots of ideas and creative uses of Particular in here, so take a look for yourself!”
Trapcode Suite 2008.5 
Regular price: $799.00
One Day Sale Price: $399.50
When you order Trapcode Suite 2008, you will receive a serial number that will work with multiple hosts, including Adobe After Effects, Apple Final Cut Pro, Apple Motion, Premiere Pro and Avid**.
In addition to the Red Giant and Trapcode Bundles, we’re offering Complete training for Trapcode Particular from Class on Demand. (DVD | Download).
Although not included in the sale, here are some great items to extend the Trapcode Suite. Trapcode Form Training with Harry J. Frank is a MUST HAVE, as well as TONS of Trapcode Presets from LME that are highly affordable and completely reverse engineerable (I coined a new word!)
AE Freemart is Stephen Fry proof thanks to caching by WP Super Cache