AE Freemart

Dennis Radeke’s Genesis Blog has a new series: After Effects Tutorial: Basic Toolbox Series.

Here’s a video that goes with his tutorials.

Have you used kuler? It’s a color selection tool that helps you create harmonizing (or clashing, if you prefer) color schemes for your video projects, print work, web sites, bathroom, etc. You browse themes that others have created or you can share your colors with others on the site, in your work group, or keep them to yourself.

Now, you can save them directly to Illustrator, Photoshop or InDesign, so no more screenshots!

Download kuler desktop

Just an observation, but are capital letters moving out of the English language? kuler desktop is lower case although it’s a name. I’ve been seeing this a lot lately. The capital letter in the middle of two words smashed together is still going strong (iTunes, MySpace, LeapFrog. Note: Toolfarm has NEVER had a captial F in the middle).

You probably don’t know this, but I have a fascination with languages. I studied Spanish for 6 years and I know a bit of Japanese (my husband is from Japan) and I have dabbled in German and some French and Italian during travel, which were surprisingly easy to pick up due to the shared Latin roots with Spanish. I find the roots of languages very interesting, as well as how they have diverged over the centuries. Thanks to globalization, the pace of language evolution is going to be even more pronounced.

I was reading a very interesting article this week in Wired Magazine, How English Is Evolving Into a Language We May Not Even Understand. It’s an English as a Second Language world, not Esperanto. “By 2020, native speakers will make up only 15 percent of the estimated 2 billion people who will be using or learning the language.” The article focuses mainly on China and how many Chinese are learning English but have no one to speak it with. They pronounce things differently than a native speaker would and add words from their own dialect. It’s known as Chinglish.

Computer jargon and the English language is having a similar effect. It already is to a huge extent - Google is now a verb, blog is in common usage and even the term globalization is fairly new. The mouse as we know it is not the mouse of 100 years ago. Other terms that are in constant use: browser, laser, internet, cyberspace, terabytes… you get the idea.

Could this happen to English grammar due to our highly technological lifestyle? Will we stop using capital letters like e.e. cummings? It has become common place for IMs and emails to be sent without capitalization or proper punctuation. cummings may have intended it as a gesture of humility, but most computer users are most likely doing it out of laziness, indiscretion or we’ve just become accustomed to being so casual with the language. Now products are named in lower case!

Your thoughts?

Computer Arts has a great article on motion tracking/matchmoving when you’re working with complex 3D compositing in After Effects and Cinema 4D.

LME 30 Super Card Dance Projects & Matching Presets is a set of presets and projects from LME for Adobe After Effects 7.0 and up and LME is giving away another freebie. This is not one from the set but similar to what you’d get in the package.

Download the free preset here

Buy LME 30 Super Card Dance Projects & Matching Presets.

That’s right, free pizza, sponsored by your good friends at Toolfarm!

This Wednesday, June 18th 6:30pm at Adobe in San Francisco.

Adobe
601 Townsend Street
San Francisco, CA 94103 (map)
415.832.2000
Entrance on Townsend Street. Reception is on the 1st floor.

FEATURED GUESTS

Brian Diecks
A 16 year veteran of branding, strategic marketing + creative for the entertainment, lifestyle and the sports industries, Brian Diecks is an award-winning broadcast designer and creative director of television branding, motion graphics, promotion campaigns, main title design, show packaging, print collateral, packaging and interactive projects.
www.diecksgroup.com

Patrick Siemer
Former Directing Animator at the esteemed H-Gun Labs, and long time Pixar AE Animator Patrick Siemer walks us through his After Effects process in the creation of the Pixar short “Your Friend the Rat”
www.tapeandglue.com

RE:Vision Effects
Plug-ins of the month

Some photos from the last meeting

Matt Silverman leads the meeting.

Colin Sharp of Toolfarm holds the box for the first version of After Effects.

The space at Adobe.

Hello Video, Film and Web guys and gals,

I thought I’d put up a few free After Effects Projects for download to help celebrate July 4th ( I’m a sucker for good fireworks ). They’re only up until July 4th.

You’ll find them on my website under the Ani Elements section labeled Ani Elements Batch 1. There are 20 assorted AEPs ranging from Flames, Bubbles, Water, Blood, Glows and a whole lot more.
As usually they are fully customizable and royalty free.

Enjoy!
DeANVELez

Come meet me at the Motion Picture Collective NYC’s meeting this Thursday, June 12. I’ll be presenting Boris Continuum Complete and possibly Boris Final Effects Complete at Pratt Manhattan, 2nd floor.

Thursday, 12 June 2008, 6:00-8:30pm at Pratt Manhattan, 2nd floor. Google Map

Seating is limited to first come, first serve, but the meeting is open to members, subscribers and their friends, so please join us.

Complete the CoreMelt poll and have your name entered to win valuable software products from CoreMelt. The poll will close on Sunday 6th July 2008 and winners will be picked on Monday 7th July and notified via email.

Take the poll and enter to win!

Yep, that’s right. I’ll be at the Motion Picture Collective meeting demoing Boris Continuum Complete and maybe Boris Final Effects Complete if there is time.

From the MPC newsletter:

Toolfarm has been taking a proactive community approach to EFX for a while now with the Plugged-In podcasts, the Experts Forums and their great compendium of plug-ins & software. Michele is the VP of Marketing for Toolfarm and is hence responsible for the awesome, 50% off One Day Sales (I keep missing). If not for the pizza or the auction, you must make it a point to meet the Software Diva, the Effects Dignitary, Michele Y and her Boris FX demo.

Oh, they flatter me. I’m certainly can’t take credit for the One Day Sales. Effects Dignitary…. I like that. Has a nice ring to it.

The Moving Pictures Collective NYC’s June ‘08 is scheduled for Thursday, 12 June 2008, 6pm-8:30pm at Pratt Manhattan, 2nd floor.

They have a full card this evening with a bunch of great plug-in developers and Sony’s EX-3. The meeting will start promptly at 6:00pm with pizza. Seating is limited to first come, first serve, but the meeting is open to members, subscribers and their friends, so please join us.

Pratt’s Manhattan campus is located at 144 West 14th St between 6th and 7th Avenues on the south side of the street. Best train stations are Union Square (4/5/6, Q/W + N/R), 1/2/3 at 14th St (7th Ave), the F/V or L at 14th Street (6th Ave) or the A/C/E at 14th Street (8th Ave). Google Map.

Did you know that your video editing software includes a powerful paint system capable of creating colored glowing light strokes? But only if you run Boris RED or Avid FX as a plug-in. In this week’s tutorial, we show you how to “draw with light” over any background video using Boris RED as a plug-in to your NLE…

Read the Tutorial

Don’t own RED? Download a Free 14-day Trial Version