Just got this list from Jim. This is going to be one seriously kick-ass meeting!
- G tech Hard Drive
- Avid Media Composer 4 (with free upgrade to 5, when it ships)
- Adobe Production Premium CS5
…and more
Lots of Cool Extra Give-Aways at the April Meeting!
Awesome user Group Video from AEPDX
An AEPDX Meeting – by Juliet Zulu
Jayson Bosteder, of the After Effects Portland user group (AEPDX) just posted an awesome video. Come on New York AE users! Don’t you love us enough to make one too?
Red Giant Software Releases Photoshop Versions of Their Video Plug-ins
Red Giant Software just released Magic Bullet PhotoLooks (Like MB Looks but for Photoshop) and Knoll Light Factory for Photoshop.
That’s great for the Photoshop market, but what does that mean to you as a video artist?
Think Print Resolution Style Frames: No more trying to render out a printable high-res style frame or still shot in AE when using Looks or Knoll. You now have access to these effects directly in Photoshop. Also, when working with designers who have to use Photoshop whil you use AE, you can pass your Looks from MB Looks to MB Photolooks.
Here’s a tutorial on how to do that.
February Meeting May be Cancelled!
IMPORTANT NEWS:
Hi Folks -
Just want to let you know that Thursday night’s meeting may be cancelled, due to weather. It’s not clear yet how bad the snow may be, but if it closes down the schools, we won’t be able to have the meeting. Please keep your eyes on the AENY blog and our twitter account to know for sure.
We hope not to cancel, but we are at the mercy of the elements and the Board of Ed.
Some Great New Stuff at MotionWorks
A new Making It Look Great training DVD from Tim Clapham:
- Click Image to watch video.
This promo for our brand new MILG7: MoGraph Unleashed video training, was created using Cinema 4D and After Effects. The Out Now text bounces using MoGraph 2.0 MoDynamics, the sky was added in After Effects using Trapcode Horizon, and the colour grade was created using a combination of Magic Bullet Looks and Mojo.
Interview with our good friend Paul Babb – CEO of Maxon USA:
Click Image to watch an interview with Paul Babb.
Paul Babb is the popular and charismatic CEO of Maxon USA. In this Cinema 4D–focussed episode of Unplugged we talk about Paul’s early days, including a time in film and on the stage; then dive head–first into Cinema 4D and MoGraph and what makes it just the hottest 3D software out there right now. Plus plenty more!
January Meeting sum up
Man – what a blast. This last meeting featured 2 presentations focused around character animation, but really covered design in storytelling as whole.
First up was Max Porter & Ru Kuwahata of Tiny Inventions. They showed us “Electric Car” a video they directed for They Might Be Giants:
They even let me hold the electric car! (I sent the picture to my AENY co-leader, Jim Geduldick, who was away visiting Adobe HQ, just to make him a little jealous that he missed the meeting).
Then Ru and Max they broke down their process for character and object design and animation. Some pretty hefty stuff and hard work for what looks to be so light and fun. They know what they’re doing. A lot of photoshop problem solving to bring their real world models into AE 3D. Also a lots of expression and cool character rigging. Not to mention all that cutting, pasting and sewing.
We’re working on getting a project file for you to play with (for the character rigging, not the sewing).
They also showed us a new piece their working on which focus on the Zodiac Killer, although the characters sill look like kid’s TV show characters (who area also modeled after Max and Ru, themselves). Check out their work at http://www.tinyinventions.com/.
Next up was Stephen Neary, in his 3rd appearance at AENY. He showed us Chicken Cowboy. A film that he descibed as a way for him to get back to the basics of storytelling:
After the meeting, Stephen mentioned to me that the cat was inspired by my cat ford who likes to be spanked. Yes. I have a cat that likes to be spanked. Please don’t ask me how we figured that out. It’s bad enough I admitted it here…
He also showed us and broke down his process for “Let’s Make Out” an animated short which will be a Jib Jab Valentines Day card:
And finally he showed us a project under development called Dr. Breakfast – A Serial (not Cereal) cartoon. It involved deer bathing a naked man with his eyeball hanging out. No really – it was funny as hell. It didn’t hurt that Steve did all the voices and sound effects live, so we could get the full experience.
Steve’s other work can be found at:
Finally I showed a commercial for Holomatrix that I directed, and talked about the process of filming it halfway around the world via Skype.
Then it was prize time… Oh yeah…
Prizes AT AENY DOT org
OK… Ok… for those of you emailing us for you’re prizes from the January (tonight’s meeting)… when we moved the domain over to a dedicated server to host the site, I forgot to set up the Prizes email account.
It ‘s working now – sorry for the bouncebacks.
Video Copilot Optical Flares page now online
AENY’s good friend Andrew Kramer and his team at Video Copilot now have the Optical Flares page online.If you have not being keeping tab on his blog and the development of the plugin over the past few months it is a huge undertaking to say the least. The page has tons of videos from Andrew walking everyone through the plugin from interface,usage and tutorials.You can get all of the information by checking out Andrew’s site Video Copilot
Broadcasting the Meetings Live
We’ve had a lot of requests for broadcasting our meetings live. And while we really want to, there is no internet connection (wired or wireless) at PS41 that AENY can access.
We would love to use Ustream, but according to their bandwidth requirements:
“Depending on your set-up and settings, broadcasting will dominate between 300-700kbps.”
Right now, we have 0kbps, but even if we got some kind of wireless connection, we’d need at least that much.
We have some money in the budget to cover wireless internet fees, but we haven’t found a good option for doing this yet.
Do you have any suggestions? Please post them here.