This was a two minute animation that I worked on at Blur Studio. Over the course of two weeks, a team of 4 of us cranked out the design, illustration and animation for this piece. Myself and freelancer Andrew Hildebrand of subpixel.tv brought the various hand drawn animations to life via After Effects and Cinema 4D.

Light the World with Firefox

“Video Rock” is an awesome new DVD library of pre-rendered QuickTime elements and still images set in a vintage style.

The promo is produced with elements and templates straight out of the library! *

*Except for the awesome whooshy text that I did in Zaxwerks ProAnimator at the beginning.

The DVD or download includes 12 After Effects templates, but the elements are useful for motion designers and editors alike. Use it with any QuickTime compatible application like Final Cut, Premiere, Avid Media Composer and more. It’s also PERFECT for particle systems like Trapcode Particular.

• Over 200 QuickTime and still image elements
• Movie transition and loop points
• Primitives, Sketches, Doodle, Lighting, Background images and more
• PDF gallery
• 12 After Effects CS3 Templates @1920×1080

Questions? Check out the FAQs/Support page

Video Rock DOWNLOAD | Price: $84.99

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Video Rock DVD Hard Copy | Price: $84.99 + S&H

Now watch the a full length copy of lesson 1 in the After Effects Expressions series!  This lesson covers an introduction to expressions and quickly dives into useful examples of how to use them in your workflow.

Targeted at the designer, this series teaches you how to use expressions in every day projects. This series has quickly become the go-to place to efficiently learn After Effects Expressions! Includes all project files and a Quick Reference PDF to aid in learning.

DOWNLOAD ONLY | $49.99 (3 hours)

Learn how to create a vintage retro style.  Use the graymachine 3D preset to create 3D extruded text and apply the BadTV preset.  Create lens flares using standard AE shape layers and effects.

Watch the Quicktime version

Learn how to use Illustrator to break up a layer into pieces. Use expressions to automatically make the pieces move randomly into place. Click here to view the expression used.

In this tutorial you’ll learn how to use the Set Matte effect with other effects like Fractal Noise, Glow, and TriTone to can create some incredible text effects!

Want more variations? Check out the compilation in the After Effects Projects area

Aharon Rhabinowitz from All Bets Are Off Production and Red Giant Software and myself had a similar idea: doing some tutorials on sound design with the tools available to most motion designers. In this tutorial, we both demonstrate techniques on creating backwards reverb. Aharon shows you some techniques common to most editing tools, and I do the same thing in After Effects.

Learn the basics on Trapcode Form, including basic shapes, color control and audio reactors. This tutorial was created for Studio Daily’s site.

View Tutorial

Sometimes the shorter projects are the hardest! This was an ID I did at Blur Studio for Disney XD.  We actually did a number of variations, but this one pretty much sums it up. The bubbles are Trapcode Particular and the caustics are Trapcode Form.

I realize that expressions can be daunting, and some would rather copy and past useful code rather than learn the language. That’s cool with me. Therefore, I’d like to share with you my 5 favorite expressions. These are expressions I use in just about every project, and I consider them to be incredible workflow enhancements.

Download them as FFX presets for AE CS3 here.

Are you looking to learn more about After Effects Expressions? Check out my complete training series on the topic in the graymachine store.

1. Intertial Bounce

Essentially, Inertial Bounce creates a bouncing motion of any parameter from one keyframe to the next, based on its velocity. Being that true “velocity” includes the vector (or traveling direction in 3D space), the bounce happens in whatever direction the object is traveling. This also accounts for scalar or array values, so you’ll find that this expression works just as well on 2D rotation as it does on 3D position. It’s very cool!

This expression is a bit of a community effort. The seeds were certainly planted by the great Dan Ebberts, and then a modified version was posted on mograph.net. Although I’ve made a slight modification to it to make it a little more user friendly, it’s nothing that I will lay claim to as my own code. Nonetheless, it’s a great helper and I use it all the time.

Modify “amp” for the amplitude or how much bounce is present. The variable “freq” is the frequency, or how frequently the bounce occurs. The “decay” is like a friction or mass setting, a higher value means a shorter decay over time.

amp = .1;
freq = 2.0;
decay = 2.0;

n = 0;
if (numKeys > 0){
n = nearestKey(time).index;
if (key(n).time > time){
n--;
}}

if (n == 0){ t = 0;
}else{
t = time - key(n).time;
}

if (n > 0){
v = velocityAtTime(key(n).time - thisComp.frameDuration/10);
value + v*amp*Math.sin(freq*t*2*Math.PI)/Math.exp(decay*t);
}else{value}

2. Autofade

This is nothing brilliant, but it is something I wrote and use all the time. You’ll also find something similar in the After Effects preset “Behaviors” called Fade In + Out, which uses the Solid Composite effect and a custom interface. But, I like a simpler version that I use on Opacity.

This is a slightly enhanced version that I’d revamped since I posted it in the “Auto Slideshow” presets and added the option to use markers. If there are no markers, the transition variable is used (where is says “transition=20″, this is in frames.) If there are *2* markers, the first marker is used for end point of the fade in, and the second marker is used to define the start of the fade out.

//Autofade: Add to opacity

transition = 20;       // transition time in frames
if (marker.numKeys<2){
tSecs = transition / ( 1 / thisComp.frameDuration); // convert to seconds
linear(time, inPoint, inPoint + tSecs, 0, 100) - linear(time, outPoint - tSecs, outPoint, 0, 100)
}else{
linear(time, inPoint, marker.key(1).time, 0, 100) - linear(time, marker.key(2).time, outPoint, 0, 100)
}

3. Snap Zoom In/Out

This is a cool expression to use on text. It creates a “snap” zoom on the in and out of the layer by modifying scale.

//Snap zoom in and out: apply to scale
snapScale = 300; //percent of scale to zoom

trans = 4; //  transition time in frames
trans = trans * thisComp.frameDuration;
inTrans  = easeOut(time, inPoint, inPoint + trans, [snapScale,snapScale], [0,0]);
outTrans = easeIn(time, outPoint, outPoint - trans, [0,0], [snapScale, snapScale]);
value+ inTrans + outTrans

If you prefer to use Z space position instead of scale, try this one:

zoom = 5000; //distance to zoom
trans = 4; //  transition time in frames
trans = trans * thisComp.frameDuration;

inTrans  = easeIn(time, inPoint, inPoint + trans, [0,0,zoom], [0,0,0]);
outTrans = easeOut(time, outPoint, outPoint - trans*2, [0,0,0], [0,0,zoom]);
value+ inTrans - outTrans

4. Y Axis Jitter

This is from Lesson 5 of my expressions series. This creates a random jittery motion in the Y axis. You can modify probability to make or less jitter, and the pos variable to define how large the jitter is.

// Y Axis Jitter
probability = 8 ;  //higher is less likely
pos = 50;

val  = random(-probability-2, 1);
m = clamp(val, 0, 1);
y = wiggle(10, pos*m)-position;
value + [0, y[1]]

5 . toComp

This one you’ll have to watch a short tutorial for here, and you can read a lot more about it at motionscript.com. The idea is that you can apply the equivalent 3D location to any 2D location. This might not sound exciting. But, think of all the 2D parameters out there, like lens flare location, Shine source, beams, etc. It is probably my most commonly used expression.

But, the basic idea is this:

layer = thisComp.layer("Null 1")
layer.toComp([0,0,0])

Note: I intentionally left off the semicolon, as you techinically don’t need it in this case. Therefore, all you need to do is pickwhip your layer where the “layer =” variable is.

This is a new spot introducing a new look and feel to TV Land Prime and a new tag line: “Feels Good”. The spot was a challenging task of taking a great edit, and mapping that to a series of cubes in a vast 3D world. In the end, we opted for a simple approach of letting the edit stand on its own, with some graphics interspersed, and saving most of the animation work for the final tag line. The client wanted lots of color, so I opted for a bit of a mid 80s Robert Abel feel with the logo resolve.

Producer / Editor: Monina Verano
Creative Direction: Carey Smith
2D and 3D Animation: Harry J Frank

Client: TV Land / SLAQR, El Segundo , CA

This is my current reel for Fall 2009.