The Happenin’ Hotspot for After Effects Artists

Ko Maruyama has posted a blog entry at Ninja Crayon about the training that is available for After Effects and happens to mention three of our Forum Experts, Harry J. Frank, John Dickinson and Dean Velez.

Harry’s training is available just this week and to say it’s selling well would be an understatement! After Effects Expressions hits a niche where there is really not a lot of training and Harry’s training is fun to watch and easy to absorb. It’s downloadable immediately and is affordable at just $29 for 60 minutes of Expressions training. It is designed for the designer, not the programmer, and it will take your Expressiophobia away.

• After Effects Expressions 01: Introduction to Expressions Duration: 20 Minutes
• After Effects Expressions 02: Introduction to Arrays and Variables Duration: 20 Minutes
• After Effects Expressions 03: 3D Text Duration: 20 Minutes
• After Effects Expression Series 1 Bundle Duration: 60 Minutes

John Dickinson’s Creative Background Design Series has also been very popular. John currently has six modules in his series and he uses some innovative techniques and explains several shortcuts that will help your workflow. John’s training is just $5 a pop and great for the beginner or seasoned veteran.

• Creative Background Design for After Effects 01: Basic Fractal Loop – Free Sample
• Creative Background Design for After Effects 02: Award Night
• Creative Background Design for After Effects 03: Venetian Blocks
• Creative Background Design for After Effects 04: Fractal Flower
• Creative Background Design for After Effects 05: Molten Cells
• Creative Background Design for After Effects 06: Rose Window

Dean Velez puts out training through his company, The Anvel. His training, The Anvel Industry Training for AE is incredible. I showed my class some of the training last semester and they were completely into it. People actually stuck around until the end of class instead of bagging class after an hour

Just yesterday, Dean posted the following to our Expert Forum:

Hello Video, Film and Web guys and gals,

The Anvel has just posted 29 new royalty free and fully customizable After Effects 7.0 Professional projects ready for download.

The Projects all deal with Text and adding effects to text. They cover the letters A-Z ( Aura, Balls, Cosmic, Destroy, Electric, Extrude, Fire, Glimmer, Hose, Ice, Join, Killer, Laser, Magnify, Nature, Odor, Paint, Quartz, Road, Strange, Tear, Universe, Vile, Web, Wind, X-Ray, Yank, Zoom )

Some are render intensive…so prerender when you can.

Hope you enjoy them! and drop me a line to let me know which one is your favorite…mine is Killer.

Dean is always posting awesome free stuff every month or two, so you’d be doing yourself a big service to go to our forum and hang out. Ask some questions while you’re there and guys like Harry and John will answer your questions.

Ko also mentions Aharon Rabinowitz’s quality training. Aharon runs After Effects NY user group, which met last night and Toolfarm gave away Harry’s new training at the meeting. I hear the meeting was great, with Curious Pictures showing their Disney Channel program, Little Einsteins ("Come on! Wave your arms to make our ship fly faster!" and so you can hear some Vivaldi… oh, I’m sure you’ve seen it!)