• The Centrica Carnivale

    The’Centrica Carnivale’ is a 3-part video series that takes a very detailed look at the production of a corporate awards opener – from pitch to delivery. It includes an overview of how to use After Effects to produce results that look like they were made in a 3D animation program: The Centrica Carnivale – Part 1 The Centrica Carnivale – Part 2 The Centrica Carnivale – Part 3 This was the first time I attempted a video tutorial after a few years of submitting written articles to the Creative Cow, so I was especially flattered by the kind comments from Adobe’s Todd Kopriva: “Your Centrica Carnival making-of videos are among…

  • Building Projections

    I’ve been fortunate to have been involved with a number of projection projects lately. I’ve put together a 2-part video presentation on building projections, which you can find over at the ProVideo Coalition. Part 1 gives a general overview of building projections, while part 2 looks at the specific After Effects problems and solutions we faced on the Melbourne project.

  • More compositing… TVC cleanup and rotoscoping

    Here’s another quick breakdown, it’s much easier to put these together than it is to re-edit a new showreel! These spots were produced by Rotor Studios in North Sydney. They were shot on an Arri Alexa and graded in DaVinci, the footage is gorgeous. The interesting thing about these spots is the colour workflow that Rotor used. Colour management is a very complex subject matter, and it’s not a simple task to introduce a fully integrated, colour managed workflow to the entire post-production chain. I’ve work at loads of places where they think that colour management is simply a matter of calibrating the computer monitor. I’ve also seen places that…

  • A quick look at multi-pass compositing

    Multi-pass compositing using Adobe After Effects. I haven’t had time to create an updated showreel, but here’s some recent compositing work completed in After Effects. This was a fun project to work on and it was produced by a great team of guys at Digital Pulse, in Sydney. The fun part of compositing is thinking of elements that would enhance the scene and then creating them from scratch within After Effects. For example, the opening shot required rain – that was in the script. But adding splashes on the footpath added authenticity- simple yet effective.  In the shot where the guy looks out of the window, some subtle light rays…

  • Thoughts on keying part 3- Compositing

    Spell-checkers insist on changing the word “compositing” to “composting”, which has caused more than one person to think I’m some sort of gardener.  And although I can teach a spell-checker to recognise the word ‘compositor’ it’s not as easy to explain what it means, so many of my friends still don’t know exactly what it is that I do. In part one of this rambling chain of thought, I looked at the way that technology has improved the process of keying blue/greenscreen footage.  Compared to 15 years ago we have better cameras, better hardware and better software.  In part 2 I looked at keying from a producer’s perspective and concluded…

  • After Effects Leftovers…

    I’ve just finished a new series of video tutorials over at the ProVideo Coalition.  I called it “After Effects leftovers”, because it looks at features that have been in After Effects for a while but are often neglected.  I find it interesting how some features of After Effects are rapidly adopted and others aren’t.  In my experience parenting, for example, is something that seems to have been picked up pretty quickly and used by many people for all sorts of things… shape layers – not so popular.  I can also add that there’s no correlation between how many keyboard shortcuts someone knows- or how well they know After Effects in…

  • Thoughts on keying part 2- The Myth of the Single Click

    To paraphrase John Lennon- I never expected to become an After Effects specialist, it happened while I was making other plans. Many people I work with are surprised to discover that I have previously worked as a writer, producer and director (not at the same time) and it’s the producing part especially which relates to keying.  And while technology has advanced in leaps and bounds over the course of my career, some other things haven’t changed at all- which brings us to part 2. In part 1 I talked about the technology that was in common use when I began my career, and I said that many of the steps…

  • LINKS! Where to go for the good stuff…

    Hi there.  However you’ve found your way here, you’ll probably notice that this site’s looking a bit neglected.  That’s mostly because I’ve been too busy to do anything about it, but who can complain about having too much work? However I have my own channel at the ProVideo Coalition, which hosts all of the video tutorials I have made more recently and ensures they’re compatible with all browsers, phones and tablets. In addition, you can check out the After Effects project templates I have for sale over at VideoHive. More recently, I’ve started authoring After Effects scripts for the AEScripts site, which are powerful workflow tools that I originally wrote…

  • Thoughts on keying part 1- Technology

    For a long time I’ve subscribed to the Media Motion After Effects email list, an invaluable resource for all things After Effects as well as being a friendly online community.  The other day I found an email I posted there about 2 years ago, in which I listed some of the changes I’ve seen in keying throughout my working career.  I’d written the email to kill time while I was rendering, and I’d forgotten I wrote it until the other day.  It’s always weird to read things you can’t remember writing, but it did make me think about how technology changes some things and not others.  So here I’ve taken…

  • 3D in After Effects – A demonstration

    In 2006 I created the opening video for a Centrica conference that attracted a lot of attention, because it looked like it was made in a 3D animation package but it was actually done inside After Effects. I’ve recently completed a 3-part video tutorial on how it was all done, and you can watch the series over at the ProVideo Coalition. The tutorials aren’t intended to give a detailed explanation of every step, but rather to give a general insight into the various processes that were used- starting with the original client brief and ending with final delivery. To celebrate the release of my first video tutorials for the ProVideo Coalition…