Grant Swanson is a film maker and visual effects artist from the inside out. He started making movies at 10 years old with his neighbor's hand-cranked camera! He started to incorporate special effects shots a year later and visual effects shots at the age of 13, and has worked on many large productions since then. Now, he runs a business in which he teaches After Effects lessons and tutorials to students of all ages, as well as creating various promos and videos for different events and activities.
In his spare time he enjoys cooking, especially grilling, playing tennis, skiing, video-editing, watching movies, rock-climbing, listening to music, and playing ultimate Frisbee.
In this video tutorial, Creative Cow contributing editor Grant Swanson will explain how to simulate many elements to enhance your DV footage. Many techniques in this tutorial will show how to create effects similar to those in a popular software package.
In this video tutorial, Creative Cow contributing editor Grant Swanson will explain how to use the After Effects Motion Tracker to remove unwanted jitter and movement while still retaining the original motion of the sequence through the use of an expression or manual keyframes in After Effects.
In this video tutorial, Creative Cow contributing editor Grant Swanson will cover important and useful techniques for working with alpha channels that are specifically derived from certain color luminance values. He will explain how to extract the color of a certain area of the image, turn it into an alpha channel, and use it to manipulate the image.
In this video tutorial, Creative Cow contributing editor Grant Swanson will take you through an effective way of tracking Mystic Text onto a wall or screen. This technique can be used in horror films, commercials, or promos. He will cover the basics of the After Effects paint tools, some basic 2.5D motion tracking, and some simple yet effective compositing techniques.
In this video tutorial, Creative Cow contributing editor Grant Swanson will take you step-by-step through the easiest and fastest (and extremely effective) way of creating the popular Sin City effect - colorized objects in a black and white world. You will learn basic techniques when working with color, and some useful masking/rotoscoping techniques.
