Part of my job at Red Giant has me looking through the content on Vimeo to see what people are working on. It’s how I find great user stories and great people to work with. But also how I find inspiration – often from people who are still in school, working on student projects.  Students have a very different bottom line than professional artists, in that they can spend a lot of time making art for art’s sake, rather than worrying about satisfying a client’s needs.

Yesterday, I came across ‘No Robots,’ a short animated film (also the name of my high school rock band):

No Robots from YungHan Chang on Vimeo.

A student film, from San Jose State University, which is directed by Kimberly Knoll (USA) and 張永翰 Yunghan Chang (Taiwan)

Aside from being beautiful to look at, this is a great example of simple storytelling, that gives a huge amount of flavor to the world in which it takes place. I love that there’s no real speaking in this piece – or at least none that matters. If you can bring a short film to the point where words are not needed, and it still carries the kind of emotional weight contained in ‘No Robots,’ (or if you are even able to simply tell a clear story), you’ve achieved a great victory.

Yesterday, Angie Taylor tweeted out these cool bokeh textures from JenniStock on deviant art:

Lot’s of cool things you can do with this, such as applying and animating After Effects’ Turbulent Displace. Or you can use them as displacement maps. Or as textures for VideoCopilot’s Optical Flares. Be creative.

JenniStock’s got a lot of great free textures and art to check out.  She has the following rules on a lot of her work:

Rules:
You can use it wherever you want (also commercial use etc.)
You don’t have to ask me
Credit me please, if it’s possible
Give me a link to your picture, if it’s possible (I’d like to see your work)
If you download it, please fave it
Be creative

If you’re not already a member of DeviantArt.com, it’s worth joining. There are tons of inspiring visuals there.

Just saw both of these videos this morning and felt inspired. One is done with camera angles and well planned concept, prop and set design, the other is entirely digital and abstract.

NatGeo ID’s 2012 from Lumbre on Vimeo.

2012 – National Geographic Channels International commissioned LUMBRE to create four new ID’s.

Plexus Test from VinhSon Nguyen on Vimeo.

Just messing around with Plexus for the very first time and decided to play around with some vintage elements too.

n this episode of Red Giant TV, Aharon Rabinowitz walks you through the process of creating a Retro Sci-Fi logo. In addition to creating the logo, he’ll show you how to age the video to make it look like it came out of the early 80′s.

In this QuickTip, Aharon Rabinowitz shows you how he quickly generates a soundtrack for Motion Graphics, using Smartsound SonicFire Pro. This is a tool Aharon uses to score most of the videos created for Red Giant and many of his non RG projects.

Learn more about SonicFire Pro and Smartsound’s library of Royalty-Free music at SmartSound.com.

Inspired by a video he found on Vimeo, Aharon Rabinowitz shows you some quick tips and techniques for creating a sketchy stop motion look for text.

Links:

• Get the Sketch Rockwell font at urbanfonts.com/fonts/Sketch_Rockwell.htm
• Watch Working with the Scribble Effect Part 1 (Creative Cow Tutorial by Aharon) at allbetsareoff.com/tutorials/working-with-the-scribble-effect-part-1/
• Get the Project Files at people.redgiantsoftware.com/explore/presetdetail.aspx?presetid=2047
• Check out “Mike & Christie – Proposal” by James Lee (of tarboy.com) that inspired this tutorial: vimeo.com/32851562

In this Quicktip, Aharon Rabinowitz shows you how to control the way particles are emitted from a picture or text, when using a layer emitter. He’ll be exploring a feature called Layer Sampling.

Layer Sampling is a feature controls whether or not particles are revealed by a layer’s alpha channel, or, depending on the setting, if they are emitted at all. If you have ever wanted to blow up text, this tutorial will help.This is also a great technique for creating underwater simulations (Ex.: bubbles created from a layer’s motion).

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged, but today, I caught this on Photoshop product manager John Nack’s Blog, and I wanted to make sure more After Effects users saw this.

MGMT – All We Ever Wanted Was Everything from oneedo on Vimeo.

Taken from the album Late Night Tales – MGMT
Info at www.latenighttales.co.uk

Directed by Ned Wenlock
Character animation by Rodney Selby
Produced by Georgiana Taylor

This is such an inspiring piece. I love how simple it seems on the surface, though clearly there’s a high level of complexity going on here. It’s well-executed and uses seemingly simple effects to transition between beautifully-crafted elements.

Read more about how the work was done, HERE at Motionographer.

Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue. In this QuickTip, Aharon Rabinowitz builds a beautiful blue Plasma Fireball effect with the help of a Torch preset created by Harry Frank for Red Giant People.

Presets:

Get the FREE Plasma Fireball preset at Red Giant People: people.redgiantsoftware.com/Explore/PresetDetail.aspx?PresetId=1949

Get the FREE Form 2 Torch Preset at Red Giant People: people.redgiantsoftware.com/explore/presetdetail.aspx?presetid=1933

In this Episode of Red Giant TV, Aharon Rabinowitz explores the basics of 3D Stereoscopic Workflow with Trapcode 3D plug-ins.This tutorial is a great intro to Stereoscopic 3D in After Effects. If you have them, bring your 3D Glasses – it will help. Watch it here:

Check out Pinkau.com to get the FREE stereoscopic tools (and tutorials) for AE, By Christoph Keller.

In this tutorial, Aharon Rabinowitz shows you a new feature in Primatte Keyer 5 that helps you fix poor lighting on your green screen (or other chroma background), by unifying the background color to make it easier for you to key and composite. Watch the tutorial here:

Learn more about Primatte Keyer at: http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/products/all/primatte-keyer/

In this QuickTip, Aharon Rabinowitz explores some fun new tools in Magic Bullet Looks 2, to create a cool distorted “glassy look.” Watch the tutorial right here:

You can get the preset at: people.redgiantsoftware.com/​Explore/​PresetDetail.aspx?PresetId=1836

you can get Magic Bullet Looks 2 at redgiantsoftware.com/​products/​all/​magic-bullet-looks/​

In this QuickTip, Aharon Rabinowitz talks about the process of color correction/grading, when you are also compositing or adding visual effects. He’ll show you how to avoid a common mistake that kills the composite. Watch the video right here:

Many of you may have caught that I was working on a film with Seth Worley for Red Giant. I’ve not been able to say much until now, but today, the film has been released online as a part of the Magic Bullet Suite 11 Launch. Here it is:

I am truly blessed to be working at Red Giant, a company that supports creativity in it’s employees. They backed this film and gave me full autonomy in making it happen. Furthermore, I want to thank Stu Maschwitz for believing in the project, so much so, that he was willing to let us put our work together with his labor of love, Magic Bullet Suite 11 – software you must have if you are a filmmaker.

Behind the Scenes

On the non-RG side of things, I can’t thank Director Seth Worley enough for making this happen. While he and I co-wrote the film, he, along with his incredible team, did the heavy lifting. That’s not false modesty – my job was pretty easy compared to what they had to do on a very limited budget. I literally sat back and watched as they turned our ideas into a beautiful reality. I did get very involved with color correction, but really and truly, this is a Seth Worley Film – which is the kind of film I wanted to make. He is a director who’s work I love and respect, and that’s the reason I hired him for this project. Watch the Behind the scenes documentary right below this text to learn more about how and why we did it all.

What’s new, cool & delicious? Find out in NYC, SF and Portland

Ever wonder how certain people always know things before you do? That’s ’cause they go where the buzz, big shots and booze are.

On Monday, June 27, you can be the first to know about something really cool. Join us for a fun evening in New York City, San Francisco or Portland as we reveal a new, exciting creation. Mingle and meet Red Giant folks like Stu Maschwitz and other ‘Guru’ industry leaders at our Red Giant Tweet-Up.

Let us treat you to refreshing Cosmos, yummy finger food, and then whet your appetite with something surprising and truly delicious. Get more details throughout the week on Facebook or Twitter! If you can’t make Monday’s event, stay tuned to Facebook and Twitter all of this week for hints and updates about our surprise.

Red Giant Tweet-Up meetup*

When: Monday, June 27, 2011
Time: 5:00pm PST & 8:00pm EST

Where: New York City
Who: Chat with our Director of Communities, Aharon Rabinowitz, and in-house
Guru Harry Frank
Go to: Cafe Del Mar, 89 MacDougal St, NY, NY 10079, www.yelp.com

Where: San Francisco
Who: Hang out with Red Giant Co-founder Sean Safreed and Creative Director Stu Maschwitz
Go to: 111 Minna Gallery, 111 Minna Street, SF, CA, www.111minnagallery.com

Where: Portland
Who: Get to know Red Giant’s dedicated Portland Quality & Support teams and local Industry Gurus
Go to: Saucebox Annex, 214 SW Broadway, Portland, OR 97205, www.saucebox.com

*Please note this a 21+ event.

Just a moment of cheesy randomness this morning…

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Hey folks – I know I’ve been silent lately – I’ve just been quite busy and under water (or as I prefer to say, “creatively engaged”) but I read an article by Steven Paul Leiva in  the LA Times on the subject of how motion capture is not animation, and it made me surface. This is really just my opinion, but I feel the Animation Producer writing this op-ed is not even listening to his own words as he writes:

“The New American Oxford Dictionary defines “to animate” as “bring to life.” The late, great animation director, Chuck Jones, with whom I worked off and on for several years, often defined animation as, “To breathe life into the lifeless.” Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, two of Disney’s Nine Old Men, called animation — and titled their book on the subject — “the illusion of life.” And many animators define animation simply as “frame-by-frame filmmaking.”

By this argument, even Pixar’s work does not qualify as animation. If someone has to sit there doing frame-by-frame work for it to be “animation,” then it would disqualify almost all 2D and 3D animation that is not done traditionally (hand drawn).  Much of the time, programming is used to bring life to characters (such as using physics to make body parts jiggle as they move) or to create group behaviors in schools of fish. Motion graphics animation relies heavily on the use of particle systems, which are entirely driven by calculations – Math is doing the work.

So who is really doing the animation? Yes there is a principal animator, but much of the work would never be lauded without these programmed additions to truly breathe life into the full body of work.

None of the above definitions can be applied to performance capture, which, as its name implies, captures and documents a real motion or performance in real time by a live actor and does not create the illusion of that motion or performance through frame-by-frame filmmaking.”

You can spin it any way, but a 3D character is lifeless until an animator somehow brings it to life. In the case of motion capture, the actor, in-part, takes on that role just like the programmer does in the previously mentioned cases. He’s using his body to create animation, not just his hands. Should that disqualify the work from being animation? Why does one need knowledge of animation software to be an animator if he or she can help create something that feels alive? I wouldn’t call them an animator in the credits, but they are partially filling that role – same as the programmer.

“In 1979 I produced a program for the Los Angeles International Film Exposition called “The Animator as Actor.”"

Perhaps it’s time for a new course called “The Actor as Animator?”

I do understand the Levia’s sentiment, though. Personally, I find motion capture quite creepy because, while the body motion looks right, realistic human facial animation is just not there yet (see Tron). But, that said, I disagree with the author’s conclusion -  it doesn’t disqualify it from being animation. It usually (IMHO) keeps it from being GOOD animation, but it is animation nonetheless.

I think the About the Author area of the article sums up my point:

“Leiva spent more than 20 years programming, promoting and producing animation.”

How can you PROGRAM animation, unless you broaden the scope of what “animation” means?

(it has been pointed out to me that this probably means programming, as in setting up programs, for TV and festivals. Duh.)

Technology changes the nature of art. Aesthetics aside, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck – even if it was wearing a motion capture suite with webbed feet.

BTW – Thanks to Austin Madison at Pixar for tweeting “At the end of the day, the artist creating the character’s performance is the animator.” It helped organize my thoughts on this subject.

In this tutorial, Aharon Rabinowitz shows you how to clean up (remove noise) and add life to interview footage through color correction. Though Aharon demonstrates in After Effects, the tutorial works for users of Final Cut Pro, Premiere Pro and more.

Watch the tutorial below.

In this QuickTip, Aharon Rabinowitz explores the Kaleidospace features of Trapcode Form to create 3D mirrored kaleidoscopic effects.

Watch the tutorial below.

In this video, with some help, I give a very quick update on my goings on. Filmed in high quality iPhone 4 (lo-res front facing camera), and cleaned up with Magic Bullet Denoiser and Looks:

First off, just wanted to wish all of you a happy holiday! Here’s a special song for you (yeah – it’s me singing – sorry):

Listen to We Wish you a Happy Holiday

Thanks so much for a great year, everyone. Looking forward to a great 2011.

For those that asked, yes – we did finally name my son: Nathan Gabriel (or Natan Gavriel, in Hebrew). It basically means to give strength to others. Between that name and my daughter’s name (Noa) meaning Motion, it basically sums up my philosophy and interests pretty well. Here are some more pics:

Hey folks – I had a bunch of stuff well planned for the site through the end of the year, so naturally,  my son (name TBD) decided to come into this world, 3 weeks early. He was born on Saturday, December 4th weighing it at only 6 lbs, and 19″ tall.We’re all excited and exhausted. We left the hospital with him feeling almost none of the fear we had with our first kid – which only proves how much we’ve forgotten since the last one.

Anyway, I’ll be off the grid for a while, but as you can see below, not completely. I won’t be responding to too much, but you never know.

Plain and simple, Film Flash is an automated, dynamic preset for After Effects that bumps up the exposure of the footage to create a cool transition effects between two video clips. All you have to do is add a layer marker right at the point of transition, and Film Flash does the rest. The effect is highly customizeable and has many additional uses.

• Works with After Effects CS3 and later.
• No 3rd-Party plug-ins are required.
• Universal – Will work in any language version of AE.

Get the Presets HERE.

The preset was created by Dan Ebberts and Aharon Rabinowitz. Here is a video explaining how to use it: