Toolfarm Rating: (5/5)

For years I've heard of this fabled educational resource for Adobe After Effects Users, and a revered name whispered in hushes during casual conversation: Brian Maffitt. Who is this scheming, underground Yoda of AE, and why haven't I beheld his infinite wisdom? My days of secluded ignorance were to quickly end....

Read the rest of the reviewTotal Training for After Effects, Set 1, is now formally digested in my bowels - a comprehensive introduction to AE's interface, general workflow, setup, animation, and particularly specific hick-ups that motion graphic artists would meet in a typical day. I've seen some other DVD-based training for software, but Total Training contains significantly more "meat" than anything.... other than Chris & Trish Meyer's line of AE books. I attempted to jog my brain for any possible topic or technical "gotcha" that might have been overlooked in DVD Set 1, but couldn't come up with one to articulate.

Brian Maffitt, AE Guru

Mr. Maffitt (can I call you Brian?) takes you through AE in such a way as to keep you relaxed and engaged (with some rather poor puns along the way), moving from topic to topic as smoothly as I've ever seen anyone present an application program. Does Brian ever have to do another take? Does he fumble his words? Forget what day it is? The viewer would never know it. The presentations are polished, fluid, and comprehensive enough to explain the "why's" behind every recommendation, and workflows to avoid. I feel the question "why" is the most important question to answer if true understanding of AE is the goal.

The example projects Brian and viewers work through are relatively simple, absolutely necessary to new users, and targeted to exemplifying the concepts of the lesson, be they velocity curves, keyframe manipulation, import options or even working with film transfers and video interlacing. I can see how some newbies might be overwhelmed if they have never seen any Adobe software products before; it really does help to have a mild familiarity with Photoshop and Illustrator (which is pretty much where I am) before you dive into Total Training. Something many viewers might not consider is to just re-view the DVD's, especially if things go by more quickly than you can absorb. I reviewed a couple of sections, which really did make the difference.

Assisting Brian is Steve Holmes (British, I assume), who goes into most of AE's preferences and technical issues that some people might consider tedious, but are actually quite important. This is probably the fastest way to learn about technical issues you can find. The most popular technical tip is the keyboard shortcut, which Steve and Brian offer over and over, for Mac and Windows, with hearty convincing to learn them. Being more mouse oriented, I reluctantly admit some of their shortcuts are indispensable.

I should note that most of the material presented works with Version 5.5 as well as 6.0, and users who didn't get the Pro version won't miss much. I assume later DVD sets will jump into Pro version features, but Set 1 just covers basics. You'll want to make sure you feel comfortable with most of the content, because later lessons will take off using those concepts in spades.

By Matt Schirado, West Michigan After Effects User Group
Matt Schirado works as an editor at a television station, is currently training to be a master of all software with Pixel Corps and writes in his spare time.