Check out These Great Articles!
Cowdog ~ New AE DVDs for the Cow Master Series. Save Now!
Bill Oneil ~ Slam Dunk! AE, PS, 3D...and Basketball
Ron Lindeboom ~ Apple Bows Out of NAB 2008
Steve Wright ~ How CGI in Commercials Changed the History of Film: A Creative Cow Magazine Extra
Bill O'Neil ~ Building a 3D World in After Effects
Kurt Murphy ~ Creating a Glass Globe
Jim Harvey ~ AE Pro Series BROADCAST GEMS Volume 01
Joaquin Gil ~ Joaquin Gil reviews Panasonic's BT-LS1400 LCD monitor
Jean Hauptman ~ Jean Hauptman reviews eDesign Magazine
John Fischer ~ John Fischer reviews: Experience Design by Nathan Shedroff
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Adobe After Effects
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New AE DVDs for the Cow Master Series. Save Now!
Article Focus: Now on sale!! Introducing the 3 newest DVDs in the Creative Cow Master Series, training even artists can afford. Learn secrets of advanced rotoscoping and compositing, real-world motion graphics that you can start using right away, and the CS3 tutorials you need to take your work to the next level from true masters from the craft.
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Broadcast Design
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Rick Gerard reviews Pause & Effect: The Art of Interactive Narrative
Rick Gerard takes a close look at ''Pause and Effect The Art of Interactive Narrative'' by Mark Stephen Meadows. This new book from New Riders Publishing (ISBN: 0735711712) is a fascinating study of how interactivity has changed the narrative art and opened unlimited new avenues for creativity.
Review |
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Adobe After Effects
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AE Pro Series BROADCAST GEMS Volume 01
this article, CreativeCOW.net contributing editor Jim Harvey reviews AE Pro Series BROADCAST GEMS Volume 01 and states, ''BROADCAST GEMS is a package of Royalty Free animated backgrounds that you can import into your work. But more than just a bunch of animated backgrounds, BROADCAST GEMS is more of a compendium of elements, expressions, and comps that allow you to customize the project in an infinite number of ways. This is a lot different than just a couple of moving backdrops that you plunk into your project.''
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N.A.B. Expo
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Apple Bows Out of NAB 2008
Following Avid's November 13, 2007 lead, Apple officially opted out of NAB 2008 on February 7, 2008. What are the ramifications of this laterst news on the future of NAB and what does it likely portend for the industry's largest gathering? In this editorial, the COW's Ron Lindeboom explores some of the trends and factors that are affecting decisionmakers and the growing move away from expensive trade shows.
Editorial, Feature |
Adobe After Effects
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Digital Compositing for Film and Video
In the world of graphics production, few books attain legendary status. In the past decade, two come to mind: David Biedny's ''Photoshop Channel Chops'' and Trish & Chris Meyer's ''Creating Motion Graphics.'' Well, if I were to pick another book that could stand right alongside these two titles and hold its own -- it would be Steve Wright's ''Digital Compositing for Film & Video.'' Some would read that and ask: ''Have you lost your mind, Boomer?'' To that, I can only answer that in 6.5 years of building forums-based communities online, we have met few people who have mastered what's in this book. Even fewer can articulate this mastery. Steve is one who has accomplished both. Buy it -- unless you could have written it yourself.
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Adobe After Effects
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Creating a Glass Globe
When broadcast designer Kurt Murphy received a glass globe as a gift, it inspired him to see if he could create one in After Effects. In this tutorial, Kurt demonstrates creating and animating a glass globe totally in After Effects using Solids and Effects. This project is totally self-contained, needing no outside footage, but you will need the production bundle to complete it. Also nice but not necessary is the Trapcode Starglow plug-in.
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Broadcast Design
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Preparing a News Open: Basic and Path Text
Join noted broadcast designer Kurt Murphy as he continues his exploration of the process of re-creating the on-air identity of a local broadcast affiliate in the Pacific Northwest area of the United States. At the end of the animation, Kurt Murphy adds the titling for each heading (Local News, Morning News, etc.) using Basic Text. In this lesson, Kurt shows you some tricks to using Basic Text and follows with Path Text. And then... Finishes with the Arc Reflection. This is the completion of the series.
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Broadcast Design
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Preparing a News Open: Logo Touches
Join noted broadcast designer Kurt Murphy as he continues his exploration of the process of re-creating the on-air identity of a local broadcast affiliate in the Pacific Northwest area of the United States. In part seven of the series, Kurt adds a few touches to the logo - a blur, a lens flare, a drop shadow - little touches added to fine tune the look.
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Broadcast Design
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Preparing a News Open: Open Beauty Shot
Join noted broadcast designer Kurt Murphy as he continues his exploration of the process of re-creating the on-air identity of a local broadcast affiliate in the Pacific Northwest area of the United States. In part six of the series, Kurt integrates the beauty shots into the design.
Tutorial |
Broadcast Design
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Preparing a News Open: Introducing the text: Local Coverage
Join noted broadcast designer Kurt Murphy as he continues his exploration of the process of re-creating the on-air identity of a local broadcast affiliate in the Pacific Northwest area of the United States. In part five of the series, Kurt adds some text to his sequence.
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Broadcast Design
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Preparing a News Open: Arc Highlight & Arc Flare
Join noted broadcast designer Kurt Murphy as he outlines the steps he used to re-create the on-air identity of KVEW television, an ABC affiliate in Washington state. In this on-going series, Kurt explores design issues as well as set-up short-cuts and tricks. In part four of the series, Kurt adds some highlights to his design components. Join in, you will enjoy this great series.
Tutorial |
Broadcast Design
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Preparing a News Open: Creating the Background
Join noted broadcast designer Kurt Murphy as he outlines the steps he used to re-create the on-air identity of KVEW television, an ABC affiliate in Washington state. In this on-going series, Kurt explores design issues as well as set-up short-cuts and tricks. In Part One, he introduces the subject and then sets out to create it. Join in, you will enjoy this great series.
Tutorial |
Broadcast Design
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Preparing a News Open: Adding WOW to the Logo
In Part Two of the series, noted broadcast designer Kurt Murphy expands on the logo that the client chose in Part One. Here, Kurt takes the EPS files into After Effects and uses the 3D powers of Zaxwerks Invigorator to bring the Wow! to the on-air identity Kurt creates for KVEW. Even if you do not have the Invigorator, this is a great article for AE and other users as it shows the process used by a respected artist in action.
Tutorial |
Broadcast Design
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Preparing a News Open: Choosing the Logo
Join noted broadcast designer Kurt Murphy as he outlines the steps he used to re-create the on-air identity of KVEW television, an ABC affiliate in Washington state. In this on-going series, Kurt explores design issues as well as set-up short-cuts and tricks. In Part One, he introduces the subject and then sets out to create it. Join in, you will enjoy this great series.
Tutorial |
Adobe Photoshop
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Quick Clean Composite Images in Adobe Photoshop
In this matte painting tutorial noted broadcast designer Kurt Murphy explores some basic compositing and image enhancement techniques using Adobe Photoshop. He focuses on ways to avoid the obvious paste up look of a shoddy compositing cut-job. He also points readers to some of the productivity short-cuts that will enable you to create your images in the shortest amount of time possible.
Tutorial |
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Broadcast Design
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Slam Dunk! AE, PS, 3D...and Basketball
Fix it in post? This article shows how to BUILD it in post. Here in April, as March Madness ends and the NBA Playoffs begin, the Cows Bill ONeill shows how he combined greenscreen, 2D graphics and 3D compositing in a remarkable promo for Big Ten basketball. This Web Extra from Bills article in the Cow Magazines Commercials issue shows you rough edits along the way, and shares some of the production secrets for building an entire world in post.
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Adobe After Effects
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Building a 3D World in After Effects
When a project requires a photo-realistic 3D world, After Effects isn't usually the first program that comes to mind. Typically a 3D modeling/animation program is necessary to create virtual 3D worlds, but in this article CreativeCOW contributing editor Bill O'Neil demonstrates creating a 3D world for a TV spot he was hired to direct and post for the Big Ten Basketball Conference.
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Broadcast Design
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How CGI in Commercials Changed the History of Film: A Creative Cow Magazine Extra
For his article in the Creative Cow Magazine's "Commercial" Issue, film compositor, VFX artist, animator and Creative Cow Contributing Editor Steve Wright (Ray, Traffic, Blade: Trinity, Never Die Alone and 60 others), told how the computer graphics animation technology we see in film today actually originated in the world of commercial advertising. (He knows. He was there.) In this Creative Cow Magazine Extra, Steve provides even more details, including the demo reel for CGI pioneers Robert Abel & Associates, and a great spot that Steve created for Volkswagen...with cows!
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