I’ve been re-watching Stargate Atlantis again recently and really enjoying myself. The show sparked my interest to attempt some of the iconic visual effects on my own. I started with the Stargate Event Horizon. These are some of the reference images I pulled for inspiration. Using my trusty weapon of choice, After Effects, I started with…
Star Wars episode 7 The Force Awakens premiered before Christmas. It was fantastic! I have always loved Star Wars, I credit a lot of my early imagination to that galaxy, particularly my interest in movies and special effects. There is a great scene toward the beginning of the new film where Poe Dameron shoots at…
The first tutorial I ever recorded. It’s pretty rough around the edges and probably not very helpful to watch. It did however, teach me a lot about myself. Through the years and looking back I’m still learning how to better present information, though I still have a very long way to go I feel like…
Check out these sweet looking post apocalyptic titles… Watch the Tutorial: Watch the Timelapse: Watch the Demo:
Here’s a tutorial about dynamic paper edges around anything in After Effects. It works on text layers, keyed elements, and pretty much anything you can Pre Comp… And here’s a timelapse of the process.
In a nutshell, the trick is to give some color variation to those subtle yet tricky gradients. The techniques can also work in other programs as well. Here’s how to approach it inside After Effects: Make sure you’re working in at least 16 bit color. Blur things a tiny bit. Add some noise/grain. Watch the video to see the…
When Adobe released CS6 in 2012, I was more exited for the addition of the Global Performance Cache than anything else. I was in love instantly. No really, instantly. The first time I toggled a layer off and back on again without having to re-RAM Preview was a spectacular moment. I’ve been using After Effects since…
There are two versions of this one sorry. The original isn’t really a tutorial, it’s more of an overview/afterthought. I originally built it as a test then recorded myself walking through the project, making it a nice sneak peek for advanced users but nigh impossible to follow along and create from scratch. So I eventually got around…