Stabilizing motion in AE

Open a new After Effects Project:
-Drag the mov in Proj window onto the Comp icon to make a comp the same size and duration
-View menu/Show rulers
-drag from the rulers down to get horizon line (guide lines)

Window/Tracker
-select the layer and click "stabilize motion" button
-outer box: how far from frame to frame the computer's going to look for your unique pattern
-inner box: the unique pattern-thing that you're tracking (if it's linoleum, it would be the blob of gum that's stuck to it)
-attach point the point that your tracker sticks to: what your keyframes are made of.

Set the inner box first
set the outer box
if there's a moving camera (pan) "favor" one side of the outerbox for the search.

Use the Analyze and play forward OR (better yet) use the frame-by frame forward
-Once that area is off-screen, go back with Pg up key till the tracker is on-screen, go to Layer/Add marker (so I know I switched trackers.
-in the tracker controls hit Apply button

Stabilize more?
Click the STabilize motion button again, that makes a new tracker.
-repeat process.
Move the frame around using Position keyframes, and you'll probably have to scale the layer as well (at most 120% scale) OR if it's HD, stick it into an SD comp and do the position keyframing there.

Awesome work my students did.

Maya's Dark Theatre Show

Sebastian's Anime-inspired Video

Zach's Water Droplets

Candice Text Animation

Accessibility options! Zooming into screen

I try to teach my classes so everyone can see what my little mouse cursor is doing.
This movie shows how to set up both Mac and PC so you can do the zooming in thing I do when I teach at Pratt and NYU!

And learn about Mouse Finder/Mouse Locator here: Mac only, unfortunately:
http://2point5fish.com

More Tutorials!

style="font-weight:bold;">The Basics

Film scratches
Create Colorful Confetti
Shatter glass
Making a crowd


And the famous ones:
Video Copilot
Maltaanon.com
Greyscale Gorilla's Blog & Tutorials

Tutorials for particles & sound

When I see stuff like this I want to be a particle.

let yourself feel. from Esteban Diácono on Vimeo.

Trapcode Training video tutorials

How to use the Cycore effects that ship with AE

Trapcode Particular: create an illuminating light painting effect

AE tuts on Toolfarm Website

Particle Playground basic tutorial

Audio to Sound Waves

More Soundwave stuff

Letter to a recent college grad

Congrats on graduating college. And to put it in the words of one of my best clients/colleagues, "Sure, there's a recession going on. But the way I see it, it's up to me whether I choose to participate in it or not."

To answer your question, "What path did you take after you graduated, did you launch into having your own studio right away?" – I'd say that my career path was a bit winding. At the end of college (Rhode Island School of Design, degree in 2D Film Animation), recruiters from Nickelodeon came to campus and reviewed my portfolio. Short answer–they didn't like it. Not to let that discourage me, I re-vamped my portfolio over the next month, contacted the people who had come to campus to let them know I took their advice, and got a few interviews. I called people, showed them my work, and got more interviews. I got a couple offers, & ended up working at Nickelodeon for 2 years on a TV series.

TV series work takes a special brand of creativity, to keep things fresh and interesting with the same darn characters and terribly similar situations from episode to episode. Lacking that, I got bored. After the series wrapped, I moved on to education graphics (gag, really ugly stuff), video editing, producing for animation studios (which i loved), and eventually landed in grad school at NYU. I don't recommend it, I was at the Center for Advanced Digital Applications, and while I made some awesome contacts, I could have just networked and learned the material on my own and saved the money.

Throughout grad school I freelanced, and eventually started a small studio with 2 friends. They dropped out (1 now lives & works in LA as a motion graphics and compositing artist. The other went on to direct a series for Disney), I stayed. It's sort of a "virtual studio" in that I work out of my apartment with a couple interns who come in a couple days/week, and the rest telecommute via AIM and FTP. I've taken some on-site work doing rotoscoping and motion graphics, one of which lasted 9 months, but mostly I do a big variety of character animation (2d), motion graphics, digital compositing, video editing, and software training. I use Adobe After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash (but no programming), Apple's Final Cut, Shake and DVD Studio Pro.

I teach at a couple of schools, NYU and Pratt mainly, to have a steady income to rely on when client work is low. Currently, I'm creating a tutorials website, teaching After Effects at NYU, and working on a short film about a woman who did 1 new thing every day for a year: a compositing and animation extravaganza to present what could be mundane material in an extraordinary way. Her exploits ranged from changing a lightbulb (!) to racing a baby (?) to winning 25K on "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" (whoa!). Her blog: http://jen365.blogspot.com

The key, I think, to having a successful animation career is to be very honest with yourself about what you do and do not want to do. And to be flexible to change those ideas when you feel like it, and to learn the new skills to match. And to love it enough not to ever, ever give up, even when a client is a jerk, even when a former student surpasses my skill level, even when I have to scale back my spending a whole-lot in response to tough economic times. I maintain a huge network of professional friends and contacts, try to be friendly and helpful to anyone who needs it, and have a lot of fun doing what I do. You can check out my work at http://www.nikebackyourblock.com (I did the animation & digital compositing for the video promo), and my reel is at http://antidotefx.com/kalika.mov

I'm sure a lot of people have told you that your best asset from college is your friends and colleagues. Stay in touch with them, and appreciate that you have been through many unique experiences together and can hopefully grow those experiences outside the protective walls of college.

Please let me know if you have any other questions or would like to get together at some point. I'd love to see your work!

Week 13 notes

-Production process
-Requirements for your final

Homework:
-present your final project idea and work in progress
-Title page with Elevator Pitch statement
-Idea boards: color, type style, references, texture
-Color palette
-Reference movies: have your YouTube links ready and cued!
-Style frames: 3 frames of what your animation will look like
-Finish the in-class Affirmation Animation (I know, it's like so 80's gay)

Also next week:
-learning DVD studio pro

Production process/Workflow
This applies to animation/editing/comp/motion gfx
-important to know what your client wants
-4 D's:
Duration: how long is the final project going to be?
Due-Date(s): when do they want it delivered. Intermediate due-dates: rough-cut, fine cut before sound mix?
Delivery format: tape? data disc MOV? FLV? SWF? playable DVD?
Dollars: what is their budget?

Animation project: what style?
Animated stills: slideshow, animatic
Multiplane animatic: layered file that you're doing 3D-ish moves on
Cutouts: parenting, transform properties in AE or Flash
Animated masks: cutouts on crack
Flash (drawn): almost like drawing on paper
Drawn animation on paper: composited, colored, with sound means more complex
3D in Maya, XSI or 3DMax

Ask them: what do you like?
If they say, "I don't know!"
-Show them stuff.
-A variety of styles: A music video, motion graphics commercial, character animation, short narrative edit. No more than 5 QT movies with selections totalling no more than 2 minutes.
-can be from your portfolio
-can show professional examples make it clear you didn't do that.
-make sure you've done that technique before.
-have your URLs ready, and know where to cue the movie.

Style/Design: The Idea Board
-idea boards: based on what's out there. 1 for each major aspect of the project.
-If motion graphics: 1 for color, 1 for title design, 1 for lower 3rds, 1 for transition gfx, 1 for end credits
-If film/commercial video: 1 for art direction, 1 for photography style, 1 each for color treatment, grain, effects, costume.

Making idea boards:
Open PS, File/New/Preset US Paper, 11inx8.5in, 150 dpi

Content for idea Boards:
-for these, you can scan images from magazines, grab stuff from web, google images, iStockphoto.com
-scanning from a magazine: if there's black type on the reverse, put a black pc of paper behind the page b4 scanning.
-grabbing images from the web, Apple-Shift 4

Style frames:
It's a glorified storyboard
1-In AE, make something cool looking
2-set your zoom to 100% and your resolution to Full
3-Comp/Save Frame As/File
4-Select all layers (Ap A), UU to see all we changed from defaults.
5-keyframe everything
6-move to another time in timeline
7-repeat steps 1-6 again

Open all those in PS, drag them into a 150dpi image, and label what is happening.

Once you have your idea boards, your styleframes, your Titlepage (should include elevator pitch) all labeled as to what they are, save as PSD file and TIFF with no layers.
-Close all open documents, just open those TIFFs
-File/Automate/PDF presentation

This saves your images as 1 big PDF that you can scroll thru in Preview.

Spell-Check!

-Spellig coutns
-Copy your text from photoshop into TextEdit or Word and spell czech it.
-or type it into Google!

AFX 3D
3D: enable 3D by turning on the sugarcube icon in the timeline. Don't turn it off.
3D we have 3 axes: X Y Z
X goes left to right Red
Y goes up and down Green
Z goes front and back Blue

Wotate tool (hotkey W) to rotate around the skewers.
-in Rotation tool options on top toolbox, turn the "Orientation" to "Rotation"

Y door-hinge
X flip-book
Z clock

Name Affirmation in-class project:
-Type the first 3 letters of your name.
-Duplicate this 2 times, draw-a-box with the rectangle tool around each letter.
-Use the Solo switch (little O next to Eyeball in Timeline)to make sure your rectangle masks are good.

-Animate each letter disappearing using 3D rotations X and Y and opacity animation 100% to 0%.
-Select all your keyframes by selecting all layers and hitting U, drawing a box around all them.
-Moved keyfr to 2:00
-Layer/New/Null, align this with word on left side.
-Parent all your layers to the Null
-At time 1:00, turn on Position stopwatch on Null.
-At time 0, move Null all the way Right so all letters go offscreen.

-At time 1:00 type last letters of name
-Align with current letters.
-ApR: show rulers, drag from ruler to get a Guide line.
-Draw a box with rectangle mask tool around the last letters of your name. Have bottom of box align with base of letters
-Keyframe Mask Path and Position at time 1:15
-At time 1:00, use my Pan-behind tool (letter Y) to move my letters down in a PeekABoo

-Type as separate word-objects the words that will turn your name into an affirmation.

examples: Kalika parties well. James makes a great turkey dinner.

     -To make them separate word-objects, type a word using the Type tool and then hit Enter.

     -Set anchor point using Pan-behind (Y) tool.

     -Separate letters using Masks as needed for your animation.

     -Animate words coming together one at a time, to create your "Affirmation Animation."

Typography reference:
Motionographer.com's Cream of the Crop
Paper magazine
Barnes & Noble Union Square: layout ideas from graphic design magazines
AIGA

Screenings:
What Barry Says

The Hush Sound

Pulp Fiction

Who's on First?

V for Vendetta


I encourage you to:
-Think outside what's been done before: Do something Different. We are tired of the same old crap. 

Give us new & unique work.
-Be clever
-Be creative
-Be Yourself! Make this project your own.