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MAYA
Iron Man 3: The Trixters Behind Tony Stark's Shiny New Armor
Seventy artists from Trixter worked an entire year to create a formidable 208 VFX shots for Marvel's Iron Man 3. Each new episode in the Iron Man saga details a slick new technology created by the ingenious Tony Stark, and the new installment does not disappoint! Combining the hard surface geometry of the Iron Man suit auto-assembly with the flexibility of the human body was one of the challenges that Trixter brought from previs to believable screen reality.
Editorial, Feature, People / Interview Alessandro Cioffi |
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NAB Expo
NAB 2013: Adobe Introduces Adobe Anywhere
At NAB 2013, Adobe is introducing Adobe Anywhere, a collaborative workflow platform that centralizes projects and allows users to share and change project files. Also new are some powerful new features for Adobe Premiere Pro, including color grading and the ability to "link & locate" clips. A newly designed SpeedGrade also makes color grading tools more familiar to Adobe toolset users, and After Effects celebrates its 20th anniversary.
Editorial, Feature, People / Interview Debra Kaufman |
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Adobe After Effects
Prisoner To My Passion
"I don't know if it's addiction or adoration, but one way or the other, I'm hooked on her," says Creative COW's Rob Mize. "The signs are all there: the obsession with After Effects, the inability to function without After Effects there next to me on my laptop, waiting to be clicked. And the torment of each moment spent suffering any separation from my cherished compositor. Is it any wonder that I, a once innocent naïf in an analog world, now find myself enraptured by this non-linear, digital Delilah?"
Editorial, Feature, People / Interview Rob Mize |
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Adobe After Effects
Advice To Editors: LEARN AE!
Kevin McAuliffe's experience has been that all editors need to know Adobe After Effects at least as well as their NLE. His own experience has been that anything less than intermediate to advanced knowledge makes it impossible to actually get anything done. Even working with the compositing power of Avid Symphony, Kevin is in AE all day, every day. Here's the story of how he got there.
Editorial, Feature Kevin P. McAuliffe |
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Stereoscopic 3D
Tim Squyres Edits Life of Pi
Tim Squyres, who was nominated for an Academy Award for his work on Life of Pi, got hooked on film when he took an introductory film course at Cornell University in upstate New York. Squyres talks to Creative COW about the challenges of editing Ang Lee's first digitally shot feature film, which was also a stereoscopic 3D release.
Feature, People / Interview Tim Squyres |
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Adobe After Effects
How Did They Do All This?
When he saw a particular commercial for another local company years ago, John Cuevas was blown away, "so I asked our senior editor 'how did they do all of this?' He replied, 'After Effects.' I looked him dead in the eye and said 'Yeah, I get that they did the effects after, but how do they DO it?'" After over 10 years of visiting the COW daily, he's clear about it now, and still learning how to do it better.
Editorial, Feature John Cuevas |
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Adobe After Effects
Ronald & Kathlyn and After Effects & The COW
Soon after they purchased CoSA After Effects in 1994, Ronald & Kathlyn Lindeboom found themselves in a little over their heads. There were virtually no web resources for learning AE -- frankly, virtually no resources whatsoever, as this was long before training tapes and books. So, they founded a web community to help find the help that they themselves needed, and 18 years later, it's still growing! And After Effects is still playing a central role in its success.
Editorial, Feature Ronald Lindeboom |
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Adobe After Effects
Expressions, Scripting, Automation -- and Fun
"I first encountered After Effects in a somewhat roundabout way. I have (as many people do apparently) an aversion to public speaking, so I came up with the bright idea of creating a video to do the talking for me." So begins the journey of longtime Creative COW leader Dan Ebberts, which takes a dramatic -- and fun -- turn with the introduction of Expressions in AE 5.
Editorial, Feature, People / Interview Dan Ebberts |
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Adobe After Effects
Inspiring Me to Enable Myself
"My journey with After Effects is a reflection of my journey as a creative. Fear, skepticism, blood, tears, mocking, understanding, confidence. The cycle repeats sometimes, but it expands and contracts too. Some days it's a thing of wonder and beauty, other days it's collapsing in on itself like a dying star. When you start to have more days like the former than the latter, nice things start to happen both on your screen and in your mind. For all the rest, there's coffee," says Creative COW Contributing Editor Kylee Wall.
Feature, People / Interview Kylee Wall |
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Adobe After Effects
An Old Dog, Learning New Tricks
You'll be surprised at how late Andrew Devis started with After Effects, but he's thrilled to be constantly learning new tricks. The excitement he finds in turning that knowledge into tutorials has clearly been reciprocated, as he has become one of the web's most popular trainers.
Feature, People / Interview Andrew Devis |
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Adobe After Effects
Keeping Them Guessing
For 22 years, Dave LaRonde created on-air promotion for KCRG-TV, the ABC affiliate in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Through the years, one thing has remained constant: Adobe After Effects has been in his video toolbox. Dave describes his introduction to After Effects and how it helped him turn an also-ran into the leader of the pack.
Feature, People / Interview Dave LaRonde |
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Cinematography
The Hobbit & The Dawn of High Frame Rate Cinema
The technology wizards of the film/TV industry have been talking about High Frame Rate cinema for a long time; indeed, Douglas Trumbull's Showscan at 60 fps presaged the current interest over 30 years ago. But it took director Peter Jackson to take the plunge for mainstream cinema, declaring he would shoot The Hobbit in 48 fps to get momentum going. In about a year's time, manufacturers made the gear, theater exhibitors updated their movie theaters, and the studios prepared for one of the most audacious technology debuts that cinema has seen. Creative COW goes behind the scenes to see what it took for you to see The Hobbit in 48 fps.
Editorial, Feature, People / Interview Debra Kaufman |
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Adobe Premiere Pro
IBC 2012: Adobe Provides Broadcast & Media Solutions
Adobe came to IBC 2012 focused on the broadcast industry. The big reveal was its new Adobe Anywhere, a collaborative workflow platform that allows real-time collaboration for remote users of Premiere Pro, After Effects and Prelude. Adobe expanded its partnerships with broadcast solution companies, to over 200. At the show, Adobe also unveiled a new promotional offer for individuals and corporations interested in switching from Apple Final Cut Pro or Avid Media Composer to Adobe Production Premium or Adobe Creative Cloud.
Editorial, Feature Debra Kaufman |
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Cinematography
Behind the Lens: Paul Cameron ASC on Total Recall
Paul Cameron, ASC, just finished work on the remake of Total Recall, directed by Len Wiseman and starring Colin Farrell, Kate Beckinsale and Jessica Biel with Bill Nighy, Bryan Cranston, and John Cho. Cameron was last featured in Creative COW for his work on Henry's Crime. His previous credits include director Michael Mann's Collateral and Tony Scott's Man on Fire.
Feature Paul Cameron, ASC |
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NAB Expo
NAB 2012: Adobe CS6 Release
With the release of Adobe Creative Suite 6 Production Premium, Adobe's booth at NAB 2012 was packed every day of NAB 2012. Editors in particular came to check out all the dramatic changes made to Adobe Premiere Pro, including a redesigned interface that makes it friendly to users of other NLEs.
Feature Debra Kaufman |
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Adobe After Effects
Create a Rotating Counter TWO: Adding & Adjusting a Bounce Play Video In the second part of this 2 part tutorial, Andrew Devis shows how to animate the rotation of this group of layers as well as how use and adjust an expression that ships with After Effects to have the layers bounce in place as they stop which can give the sense of the counter having some real mechanical properties rather than just a linear of easy-ease keyframe approach.
Tutorial, Video Tutorial Andrew Devis |
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Adobe After Effects
Create a Rotating Counter ONE: Positioning 3D Layers Play Video In the first part of this 2 part tutorial, Andrew Devis shows how to create and place layers in 3d space such that they can be rotated as a single group to be used for a rotating counter. Andrew shows how to create and place the layers using both the math function of AE as well as a handy and simple expression that places layers a fixed distance or rotation from the previous layer. He then goes on the show how to create and use a controller for the multiple layers so that they act as a single group.
In the next tutorial, Andrew will show how to animate the rotation of this group of layers as well as how use and adjust an expression that ships with After Effects to have the layers bounce in place as they stop which can give the sense of the counter having some real mechanical properties rather than just a linear of easy-ease keyframe approach.
Tutorial, Video Tutorial Andrew Devis |
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Adobe After Effects
After Effects Tutorial: Using the Scribble & Stroke Effects Play Video The "Scribble" and the "Stroke" effects are often overlooked due to the fact that it isn't immediately obvious how they work as they won't work unless applied in a very particular way. In this in-depth tutorial, Andrew Devis explains how to apply these effects and then goes through the many options in each effect which can make them very powerful and able to produce a surprisingly large variety of results.
Tutorial, Video Tutorial Andrew Devis |
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