This is our new blog concerning the wide spread of graphic artistry: design, programming, 3D & post-production, and (maybe not as colorful as the others, but quite as important) the personal workflow. Read the rest of this entry »
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Create a blizzard scene out of a summer photo with these bad ass techniques!
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29.08.2010
Quicktip: the Power of
Smart Objects in Photoshop
Smart Objects get more and more common in designer’s workflows, but they are still being wildly underestimated. In this Quicktip we’ll go over the major advantages of using them. Read the rest of this entry »
22.08.2010
Giveaway: 3D Policelight
Today is your lucky day! We are giving away a policelight – as a fully functionable, animated, lightened and textured 3d scene for Cinema 4D.
In our 26 MB package we also enclosed an export of the 3D model in the three most common exchange formats: obj, 3ds and fbx.
If you are using Maya, we recommend importing the FBX and assigning new shaders to the separate parts before adding the light sources.
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We thank our dear friends Peter Palka and Lorens Jankovic for this great contribution!
Jake & Dan
17.08.2010
Giveaway: WEB Template Package
Today we give away the templates we’ve been using for web design presentation purposes. Clients love to see the previews within their intended medium – which, in the case of webdesign, is the browser. Read the rest of this entry »
04.08.2010
Freeze Effect Part 4/4:
The Snow and The Ice
It is finally coming to an end: this is the forth part of our “Howto” tutorial going through the steps of creating the effect of a person freezing in an instant. We’ll start with the creation of the ice texture covering up our actor, move on to the transition matte to make the spread of ice grow and end up with the snow particles and the final comping. This is our final result:
In order to get ice moving along with the actor’s body-parts you’ll first have to get yourself a nice looking lockup to bring back into Nuke. Export a still frame from somewhere towards the end and bring it into Photoshop. Read the rest of this entry »
08.07.2010
Freeze Effect Part 3/4:
Integrating The Elements
This is the third part of our freezing tutorial. We talk about integrating our elements in the scene and comping all together in theFoundry’s Nuke. If you haven’t seen it yet – this is our final result:
So far what we have is a virtual backdrop moving along with the keyed footage. Before adding new elements, we have to make sure to color correct and alter our elements (foreground element and backdrop) so they match up beautifully. Let us take you on an adventurous quest when approaching the grand finale of the final freeze effect.
26.05.2010
Freeze Effect Part 2/4:
The Backdrop
Part 2 of our four-part tutorial covers the creation of our background and basic camera projection mapping.
The background we are going to be creating is the one used in our final shot:
To justify the dramatic lighting we were looking for a background where we could easily mix tungsten- and sunlight. Read the rest of this entry »
25.05.2010
Freeze Effect Part 1/4:
Shooting and Keying
This is the first part of our four-part series on how to freeze a person.
Going from pre-production to keying, 3D camera projection to tracking and to finally comping the parts together, we will guide you through the creation of the following effect:
We could dive right into the process of keying in Nuke (the Foundry), but – wait! Stop it! Let’s take some time to talk about the preliminary stuff. The greenscreen footage is the most crucial part, so good planning is everything. Read the rest of this entry »
26.04.2010
Quicktip: Loop Expressions in AE
In this quick-tip we show you how to work with loops inside After Effects. By following our explanation you should be able to replicate the following animation in under 2 minutes.
25.04.2010
Giveaway: Vector Package “VFX Set”
In Visual Effects it is important to think through your shootings. Your sketches are a great way to plan ahead, but it often takes up to three scientists to decipher your scribbles?
Not any more! We created a little vector compilation with the most common, basic elements used during a VFX Shooting.
Download the Illustrator file or the EPS.
Jake & Dan
21.04.2010
Announcement: Typo for Animators
We are pleased and happy to tell you that one of our articles has been published on sixrevisions.com
We are talking about the most important Do’s and Dont’s in Typography for Screen Design, so go check it out!
Jake & Dan
15.04.2010
Top 10 Free Ressources
1. sxc.hu is our #1 source for good stock footage. Just register for free.
2. vyonyx.com offers free pre-keyed still footage of people and trees.
3. lostandtaken.com/ regularly releases great hi-res textures.
4. abduzeedo.com also releases hi-res textures in their category ‘Tuesday Total Textures’
5. mediamilitia.com offers a wide variety of brushes and free texture packs.
6. freesound.org although the sounds aren’t always processed and here and there come with some background noise, they have got a huge library of virtually everything good enough to serve as raw source material
7. dafont.com gives you loads of free fonts
8. interfacelift.com is a good source for free wallpapers and icons – the high resolution wallpapers often make a good footage.
9. grafplus.com offers a broad variety of useful free stuff, especially a good place to look for vector graphics!
10. And last, but not least: creatogether.com – we provide you with footage, textures, fonts and other free stuff as often as we can!
Jake & Dan
10.04.2010
Flip-Book Effect in After Effects
During the weekend, we sat over the question of how to fake a good old flip book effect and ended up with quite an interesting solution. See the results of our stresses and strains:
We thank our reader Eduardo for this suggestion – sending us a video he challenged us to find a way to copy this effect. Hence we put our heads together and came up with a pretty easy-to-use solution. Let us guide you through the single steps of the process. Read the rest of this entry »
08.04.2010
Custom Snippets in Wordpress
Writing your own blog, you sure are familiar with the occasional situation of having little snippets of code or text you need over and over again. We show you how to create snippets for Wordpress which will make your life easier. Read the rest of this entry »
06.04.2010
Deathposter
As people grow older they tend to write lists about things they want to do before they die. Well, here is our approach to this subject.
04.04.2010
Slomo from a Still Frame
I keep seeing people breaking up body parts to move arms, legs and heads of their figures in After Effect. Gosh, save yourselves some time and conjure up the Puppet tool already!
Here is what we are going to be creating – in a fairly short amount of time:
