Not even sure what to say about this other than “wow.”

I don’t know what this guy is smoking before he sits down with After Effects, but, damn it, I want some.

One of the first tutorials I ever intended to do for Red Giant TV was to re-create my favorite video game of all time – The Star Wars Arcade Game from the early 80’s. But it proved a little too daunting given a new baby and not enough quiet time to take on this massive task (and trust me there is a ton of cool stuff going on in this animation, a lot of it under the hood).

Thanks to some additional help in the Red Giant marketing department (namely Harry Frank, who I absolutely love working with), I finally found the time needed to get  it recorded. It’s over an hour long, and, when it’s done, you’ll probably know a lot more about retro-vector style animation in AE than you ever wanted to.  It uses a ton of  Red Giant PlaneSpace, Trapcode Particular, and Red Giant Text Anarchy, plus a lot of expressions to automate much of the behavior. Hope to have it on Red Giant TV next week.

Before I ever touched an animation program, I was interested in a career in Psychology. And while it didn’t work out that way, some of what I learned while studying psychology has really helped me in my work and life. Take for example the subject of Cognitive Dissonance:

Read more about Cognitive Dissonance here. Some of it is actually accurate.

Looking for other advice or inspiration? Don’t forget to read my article: “You’re Not That Talented, and Other Advice.”

I won’t even waste time with words to describe the true awesomeness of this PSA by Neil Hopkins:

Read all of the notes here.

Hey folks – just watched a great Cinema 4D/After Effects tutorial by Nick Campbell at greyscalegorilla.com:  How to make a Cascading Text Animation With Cinema 4D and After Effects. Check it out by clicking on the links below.

FinalRender from Nick Campbell on Vimeo.

Watch Part 1 here.

Watch Part 2 here

In this episode of Red Giant TV Aharon Rabinowitz shows you how to quickly create the look of a holographic interface effect using Red Giant Software’s Holomatrix. He’ll also be using Digital Juice’s motion Designer Toolkit 2 for the screen elements, as well as Magic Bullet Looks for the color grading.

Note from Aharon: This isn’t a groundbreaking tutorial – It’s more of a short demonstration of how fast and simple it is to set up a cool effect with some very basic AE animation chops and the right set of tools.

This morning we found that, after months of being ill, our Cat, Edgar, had passed away. I’ve had pets my whole life (from super sea monkeys all the way up the foot chain to cats, and everything in between – much to my parents horror), but Ed was easily the best pet I have ever had. He did however have a small “problem:”

He eventually stopped, or at least, stopped doing it publicly. What cats do in private is their own business.

We’ll miss you buddy. You were awesome.



Here’s a quick tip for adding motion blur into your live action video after filming. Also works for adding Motion blur into your 3D renders (like C4D stuff) in AE. Special thanks to Stu Maschwitz for taking the time to share some info and make suggestions.

And yeah – it’s shutter speed, not shutter rate. I rushed through this to keep it to under 5 minutes, and decided it wasn’t worth redoing the whole thing to correct that.

Crowd Control received Rave reviews from Matt Silverman at last week’s FCP user’s Supermeet in San Francisco! Check it out at 21:00 (21 minutes and 0 seconds):

Hey… We’re just saying…

A simple PS tip for hands-on control of your layer styles. Am I the only one that didn’t know this?

Special thanks to my buddy Jim Geduldick for IM’ing me last night with info on Screenr.

The car is life-size. I'm just really big.

After Effects New York just held it’s January meeting, last Thursday. If you’re in or around New York, these FREE events are not to be missed. In this last meeting we had Stephen Neary and Tiny Inventions.

BTW – Tiny inventions did the They Might Be Giants music video, Electric Car. The car wasn’t signing autographs, bt it did let me take a picture with it if I promised to let it get back to dinner with it’s family.

Check out the meeting sum-up here.

Last week I was given the opportunity of a lifetime – a chance to sit down with visual effects legend John Knoll. I expected that talking to a man who has defined visual effects for the last 20 years would be a revelation – and  I wasn’t disappointed. During the interview, we talked about a lot of things ranging from his first visual effects job, to his ground breaking work in The Abyss, to VFX supervising Star Wars.

What you won’t see on camera, however, is a conversation we had on the subject of shyness and how it keeps a person from succeeding. By nature, John Knoll is  a quiet and brilliant guy, who is also extremely modest about his achievements. But what he is not, however, is shy. He has made some pretty bold moves in his career – the boldest of which, I think was a phone call he made when he was a teenager (you’ll hear about it in the interview when it airs on Red Giant TV).

If you’ve kept up with my blog, you know that I think shyness is one of the biggest obstacles to a person’s success. But something I hadn’t considered, and that John pointed out, is that your shyness also keeps others from succeeding, as well. If you are too fearful to give your opinion to people you work with, you’re robbing them of a different perspective that could help them to do better work. You need to remember that most people want to do good work, even if it means hearing some constructive criticism. Shyness keeps you from speaking your mind and helping others grow.

He also talked to me about not bringing work home, and how, when he spends time with his family, he doesn’t think about work. I can tell you that while I work really hard at it, I have a lot of trouble fully disengaging from work at the end of the day.   But, frankly, if John Knoll can mentally leave the responsibility of a 300 million dollar film at the office to have dinner with his family, I guess I can learn to do the same.

My budgets, after all, are slightly smaller.

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Looking for other advice or inspiration? Don’t forget to read my article: “You’re Not That Talented, and Other Advice.”

In this episode of Red Giant TV. Aharon Rabinowitz shows you how to create a cool psychedelic background in After Effects, using shape layers and Trapcode Shine. Even if you’ve used Shine a lot in the past, this tutorial takes it in a new direction.

When preparing for the Holomatrix commercial film shoot, one of the things I was most concerned with was making sure the on-set director understood what I needed. The commercial was filmed in Australia, with me attending on Skype, but there is only so much direction you can give when you’re not actually on set.

So, to save both time and money, I dusted off my old license of Metacreations Poser 4 (now owned by Smith Micro) and created these animatics:

Film shoots are not cheap, and with 8 or so different shots, and a lot of specific motion for the actress to perform, this could have been a nightmare. But the team at Orion Media was great, and used my animatics to plan the shoot with more efficiency – and, as a result, it came out almost exactly as I had envisioned it.

All I can say is unless you want to spend a lot more time and money than you need to, preparation is key. And you don’t need highly advanced technology to do it.  Even using software that’s almost a decade old, was lifesaver. Frankly, a pen and paper will also go a long way.

In case you missed it, here’s the full Holomatrix commercial:

Learn more about Holomatrix here.

I wrote and directed this commercial for Red Giant Software’s Holomatrix. It was filmed in Australia at Orion Media – the largest green screen studio in the southern hemisphere.You can learn more about how I filmed it from New York in this post.

Visual Effects and Audio work were then done at Outpost Pictures. I added additional effects and audio, in the final pass.

The voice over is David Brewer, my go-to VO guy, who has done the narration for the Magic Bullet Looks and Mojo commercials, as well as the Crowd Control commercial on this site.

The lead actress is Tess Woodward, an Australian model, who is also studying film in university. Her goal is eventually to direct. She was great to work with and stayed on her feet for 4 hours, right after ankle surgery.

The rest of the actors are from Crowd Control, our library of pre-keyed alpha stock footage.

Of course, a ton of Red Giant plug-ins (Trapcode, Magic Bullet, Knoll Light Factory…etc.) were used in the making of this commercial. Check out the endpage to see the full list.

Hi Folks – Next week, I’ll be flying out to  San Francisco to interview John Knoll, for Red Giant TV. Unless you’ve been living in a cave free of VFX news, you know that John Knoll was ILM’s Visual Effects Supervisor for Avatar, Star Wars,  and many other films. He is one of Hollywood’s most in-demand collaborators for VFX, having won many awards (including an Oscar) for his contributions to some of the biggest films of all time.

We’ll be talking about his film work, co-creating Photoshop with his brother Thomas, and the evolution and use of his popular software, Knoll Light Factory,  in motion graphics and films like Avatar, Transformers,  J. J. Abram’s Star Trek, and many others.

I’m incredibly excited. I’ve worked with and met a lot of cool people, but this is a whole other thing. His influence on what we do is so profound, I just hope I don’t forget my own name** when I sit down with him, let alone remember to ask him some worthwhile questions about his work. So I need your help…

If there’s anything you ever wanted to ask this visual effects master, post it here, and I may just ask it for you.

No promises – but make it good, and I’ll do my best.
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** That may or may not have happened to me when I worked with Director Frank Oz (a.k.a. Yoda). I can neither confirm nor deny.

John Dickinson, the “Tutorial Thunder from Down Under,” just posted a tutorial/project breakdown on his use of Holomatrix in several Terminator spots for FoxTel. he does some really interesting stuff with Holomatrix and Mattes. Check it out here.

In this video, I just take a few moments to thank all of you for a great 2009, recap some of the bigger things that have happened here at allbetsareoff.com, and finally, to… well… why don’t you watch until the very VERY end to find out. You’ll definitely see a different side of me. That’s for sure.

Remember when you were a kid and your parents told you to turn down that music, and do your homework instead? “You’re not going to learn anything important from Rock and Roll,” they said.

They were wrong. The most important things you could ever learn about success could come from a rock band. Here’s why:

My daughter, Noa, at her first rock concert.

Last Sunday, we took our 16-month-old daughter to her first** rock concert – They Might Be Giants, at the NY Hall of Science. It was a great show. Over the last few years, TMBG has put out a lot of kid-friendly music that is just as appealing to adults as it always was.

As I sat in the audience listening to a few old favorites and a few new ones, I suddenly thought – how incredibly brilliant are these guys? Most rock bands burn out, break up, or just fade away as their audience grows out of them. But instead of letting their audience slip away, TMBG have brought their audience even closer – by inviting their kids along for the ride. Here I am, a parent with a lot less disposable income, but somehow still spending my money on the exact same band I did years ago.

But maybe you’re not into clever, funny music. Maybe you don’t get what they’re about. Maybe you just don’t like any band that uses an accordion.

Well, even if you don’t like them, as an artist trying to use your talent to support yourself, you have to respect them, and if you’re smart, learn from them. They are a perfect example of creative people who’ve found a way to achieve success in their work, while still remaining happy and true to themselves – something most of us only wish we could do in our lives and careers.

So here are a few things I see about their business and creative model that might help you:

1. Try new things, and don’t fall in love with anything you do:

TMBG have always been innovative – there’s no question there. They experiment with different genres of music, different sounds, and different textures. I’ve seen them perform the same song from concert to concert, without it ever being the same twice. Nothing is sacred, except the idea of trying something new. They’ve embraced new technologies (website, Podcast, FaceBook) to reach their fan-base – even being the first major artists to release an album exclusively as MP3’s on the web.

When was the last time you tried something new? If you can’t remember, it’s been too long. Personally, I try to do something new every day. Not easy, but I really try to challenge myself in some way that makes me a little uncomfortable, but still broadens my experience, so that I can grow as a person. We’re not talking about big leaps here. Even a small thing can mean a big deal down the line. In the past I’ve mentioned Nick Campbell’s 5-second project as a great way to experiment and learn something new. If you haven’t checked it out, you should.

2. Don’t be afraid to let others help you in your creative process, and don’t be threatened by their talent.

TMBG bassist Danny Weinkauf is a Paleontologist in this video, directed by Sean McBride.

Another thing that has helped TMBG grow is that they’ve widened their talent pool – allowing their band members to step forward and shine, and even having people not in the band singing lead occasionally. There’s no ego there. It’s not about being the center of attention – it’s about creating something wonderful as a group.

The lesson here is that inviting other people to be involved in your creative process can really help you. Don’t get me wrong – they need to be people you trust and respect – and it really helps if their skills are complementary to yours. For me, that’s my wife, who does not use computers to create art of any kind – She’s a great photographer, makes jewelry, and creates beautiful hand-drawn geometric art. And while we have very different approaches to being creative, she understands what I do and helps me improve my work by giving me a different perspective.

But I’ve also found that even as a producer or project manager, my best work is done when I gently guide my team, but really let them be as creative as they can be – instead of forcing them to get in line and do what I would do.

Let go of your ego, accept other perspectives, and create something great. The whole really is greater than the sum of its parts.

3. True success is not fame or money – it’s happiness in what you do.

An important thing I’ve noticed about TMBG over the years is that they have grown organically. Though they’ve won 2 Grammy’s, it hasn’t been a fast track to glory. They’ve achieved success and recognition through years of just doing what they love. Maybe they’re not U2 pushing Blackberries in national commercials, but I doubt that’s what they want.

Mostly, they seem to want to just have fun, experimenting with sounds and ideas, and to connect with their audience in a very human way. On a really hot summer day, Dan Miller once gave my wife, and other fans, water between sets. After the show at the Hall of Science on Sunday, John Flansburgh handed me stickers for my daughter. It’s that kind of willingness to connect that makes me, as a fan, feel important to them – even if I know they’d do the same for any other person in their audience. This is actually what I think makes them different than most other bands that have achieved their level of fame. They haven’t lost touch with what they’re about or the people who have helped them.

I know I said that already in the title of this section, but it’s worth repeating. The lesson: True success is not fame or money – it’s happiness in what you do.

For me, that’s helping people to learn to do what I love – computer animation and visual effects – whether it’s through the tutorials or career advice I’ve put online, or through contributing to communities like CreativeCow.net or After Effects New York.

In fact, I recently reached out to Tiny Inventions, the team that did the TMBG music video for Electric Car, just to tell them I loved their work. Almost immediately, they wrote back to me thanking me for my tutorials, which have helped them over the years. Knowing that I’ve helped someone create something so spectacular, even indirectly, is the most rewarding thing about what I do.

All of this said, the real lesson here is simply this: Be grateful to the people that help you grow, and stay connected with the things that motivate you to do your best. If you do that, you can achieve whatever you want – without having to be someone you’re not.

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**Technically, it was her second concert. The first was TMBG at the Beacon Theater, but she was still in utero, and there was definitely a lot more weed at that one.

For even more advice on being creative and making money, check out my article: You’re Not That Talented, and Other Advice.

Often people ask me where to find inspiration. It’s a tough question to answer because each of us is inspired by different things. But when I hear someone I respect talk about something that inspires them to be more creative, I usually look into that (it doesn’t always work, but it can be a good starting point).

Peder Norrby (Founder of Trapcode, and a guy I really respect) has created some of the core tools we use as motion graphics and effects artists. If you want to know what inspires him, check out his Vimeo Likes here. Here’s a great piece by Alian Lores that I saw this morning, and loved.

I think it’s fair to say that there’s no real point to it, other than being what it is – a beautiful and inspiring piece of motion art. Good stuff.

In this tutorial, Aharon Rabinowitz introduces you to the features of Knoll 3D Flare – the new FREE add-on for Knoll Light Factory Pro from Red Giant Software. This add-on for Knoll Light Factory (2.5) in After Effects includes fantastic features like Edge flare-ups, color linking, Z-depth intensity, and full 3D obscuration.

The holidays are upon us, and we wanted to offer you a special holiday treat: 40% off Crowd Control, our library of pre-keyed alpha stock footage.

The sale ends on Thursday December 17,  2009 @ 12:00AM EST.

Use the code CCYE40 when purchasing, and you’ll be given 40% off the price of download credits. You can start using those credits right away, or save them for later, when you have a project that needs Crowd Control. Start browsing the library here.

Happy Holidays from the team at All Bets Are Off Productions!

In this video, I’ll tell you about my first experience with the broadcast industry. Maybe it will inspire you to share yours. Feel free to post your story in the comments below, or to make a Vimeo video and paste the link in the comments.

Looking for other advice or inspiration? Don’t forget to read my article: “You’re Not That Talented, and Other Advice.”

This was just posted on the Red Giant Software site – get 40% off EVERYTHING from Red Giant for the next 24 hours! That means 40% off Trapcode, Magiuc Bullet, Knoll, Warp… and everything else!

From Red Giant:

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We want to show our appreciation to all our dedicated fans with a Secret Sale. We are offering 40% off all products. This includes already-discounted bundles and suites such as Trapcode Suite or Magic Bullet Suite, as well as the brand new Red Giant Holomatrix.

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The sale runs through Tuesday, Dec. 8, 2009 at 11:59 PM PST (California).

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To find out when the sale ends in your time zone, visit the World Clock site.

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This sale is ONE DAY ONLY. Enter Coupon Code secretsale40 during checkout to redeem your discount on the page titled Review and Submit Your Order. (Note: The coupon code field appears after you have entered your credit card information and hit Continue.)