Bookmark this page for future reference when you do begin your adventure with After Affects CS3.
ANIMATING YOUR MESSAGE
To intrigue potential readers about my latest book, An Artist Empowered, I wanted to replace the static image of the book cover on my website with a more 'e-motionally charged' promotional video that would also include animation. My plan was to also post the video on YouTube, Gather, and other relevant sites.
LET’S MAKE A MOVIE
For starters, After Effects CS3 is not a video editor like Final Cut Express HD, which has many professional tools—from producing feature length films to a three-to-four-minute video describing the merits of my book. While I could choose from various title sequences and effects available with FCE, I felt my talking head approach needed a bit more eye-catching visual interest.
Without a quality presentation, the greatest of content can linger unnoticed. We also live in a media saturated world of the dwindling attention span further compounded by the quest for sound bites, quick edits, text messaging shorthand, and where newsworthy often translates into pandering and sensationalism instead of things that do matter. To be realistic, art, books, and videos, which are my concerns here, and perhaps yours, do compete in the realm of getting attention in a vast sea of look at me.
MOTION OVER TIME
The introductory title sequence and animated interludes that I had in mind for my promotional video would require another power player: Adobe After Effects CS3, a high-end professional compositing, effects, and animation tool. Although you might not have known it, you’ve seen motion graphics and visual effects created with After Effects in film titles (including Hollywood movies), video, DVD, and on the web.
After Effects animations are typically of short duration—from several seconds to fewer than 30. This can be a simple, or a complex undertaking as the possibilities and combinations for innovation are limitless.
THE FAT LADY SINGS
While After Effects incorporates tools you will find in Photoshop, Illustrator, and nonlinear video apps such as Final Cut Express or Adobe Premiere, it is unlike any other image creation or editing program because it works with motion and time in 2D imagery; and in 3D mode you can also control camera angles and depth of field within compelling environments—which, of course, you must also construct.
Finding a metaphor to describe After Effects is a good place to begin.
Antony Bolante, author of After Effects CS3 Professional: Visual QuickPro Guide from Peachpit, describes After Effects as the opera of digital media. This metaphor works for me as opera incorporates the gamut of theatrical elements: acting, drama, music, sound, lighting, speech, art, costume, set design, and, to pull it all together—direction.
After Effects is extremely flexible, allowing users with various needs to create compositions (called comps) from disparate media sources such as Photoshop, Illustrator, QuickTime movies, and 3D modeling programs. AECS3 brings together typography and layout, photography and digital imaging, digital video and audio editing, and 3D animation. Animating elements over time, or motion graphics, is what After Effects is about.
IN-HOUSE TOOLS
While After Effects will happily import files made with other apps, AECS3 offers fabulous tools for creating original work directly from within the program—most notably vector graphics (including the new and innovative Shape Layers feature) and a state of the art typography engine that renders out superb 2D and 3D text effects.
INDEPENDENT FILM
After working with AECS3 for nearly two months, my impression was this: I was an auteur (writer, producer and director) with control over all the elements in my 'Indie' production, from setting the stage, animating my ‘actors’—to such advanced tools as sound, lighting, and camera angles. This precise control over motion and time does demand grasping many new concepts—familiarity with Photoshop and Illustrator provides you with a slight edge.
torrent
SOCIALIZE IT →