Ring in the holidays with style! Trapcode Particular Presets: Holiday Pack includes 55 Particular based After Effects compositions featuring backgrounds, reveals, and sample type animations, composed at 720p and 1080i. Perfect for the holiday seaon -- this volume features a collection of elegant and useful compositions using a mix of festive colors, along with snow, star, ice, light, and ornament elements. Mix and match to create hundreds of combinations, save time, and add value to your production. Designed by freelance motion designer, Harry J. Frank.
The Motion Exchange is a New Social Network that Promotes Connections Between Motion Design Professionals, Students and Companies
"As a newly transplanted freelancer in LA, I've seen my credentials emailed out routinely to various shops in the area, and I've seen the same shops posting for jobs looking for people with my exact credentials. As I've seen over and over, there is a lack of cohesiveness to the motion design industry that connects those that need talent to the talent that is out there. There are forums and Linked-In and portfolio sites like Behance. But they all try to be everything to everyone and miss the details in between, the area of motion design being one of the details that has slipped through the cracks on this....There needs to be cross communication between users. This is my humble attempt at doing this."
Harry J Frank has created a great new tutorial called Fractal Noise Fade. I always learn so much from Harry. Also, if you haven't seen it, check out Harry's new Video Rock, an awesome new DVD library of pre-rendered QuickTime elements and still images set in a vintage style.
Learn how to use Fractal Noise to create a textured fade on a layer in After Effects. Then add some more effects and elements to finish up the title effect.
Starts in 45 minute! You still have time to join us!
Toolfarm is proud to sponsor a free online seminar featuring Adobe After Effects CS4 and its powerful integration with Adobe CS4 Production Premium. Harry Frank will be presenting a project using Trapcode Particular and Michele Yamazaki of Toolfarm will be showing the newest plug-in from Red Giant, Magic Bullet Mojo.
In this eSeminar you'll learn how:
Steve Whatley will show the deep integration between After Effects and Adobe Premiere Pro delivers time-savings and a smoother workflow on every project, so you can stay focused on doing your creative work.
Particular 2 expands your creative options by offering realistic natural effects, lighting control for shaded particles, 3D camera integration, custom shapes, depth of field, and physics controls
Red Giant's Magic Bullet Mojo helps you achieve a subtle coloring effect to warm up actors' skin tones while backgrounds and shadows get a cool blue treatment - all while keeping your talent in focus.
Greg Kupiec (The Ether) and Andrew Kramer (VideoCopilot.net) will show you some of their AE chops. Toolfarm's good friend Harry Frank will present the awesomeness that is Trapcode's Particular V2. This is a meeting you definitely do NOT want to miss if you're in the vicinity of Hollywood.
I'm giving updates from MGFest via Twitter (MicheleYamazaki) if you'd like to live vicariously through me.
My presentation went great this morning. The topic was Top 10 Must-Have Plug-ins for After Effects. I'll be posting the presentation online soon, as soon as I get the videos embedded.
On now: Archiving the New Media Art of the 70's: Presentation by Jon Cates, SAIC, New Media. Really interesting.
Here are some photos of MGFest so far. I'll be posting more as I take them.
Harry Frank has a video up at Studio Daily about Using expressions to speed up lower third creation in After Effects. He explains how to create a document that links to the text document with corresponding scene numbers... a very cool way to speed up simple but tedious work. It's not difficult, but this is definitely not something you'd figure out yourself, unless you're a javascript programmer, or a whiz with expressions.
Also, Harry's Complete training for Trapcode Particular from Class on Demand is half price this week. (DVD | Download), during our One Day Sale. Also, if you haven't heard, Trapcode Suite is 50% off today only!
As you've probably heard, our One Day Sale is actually a week of One Day Sales. It starts Monday, November 17 and runs through Friday, November 21. First up....
Monday, November 17, 2008 Only - 12am PST - 11:59pm PST
Primatte Keyer serial number will work in Adobe After Effects, Final Cut Pro, Apple Motion 3, and Avid Xpress Pro. Key Correct Pro is After Effects only.
Red Giant Primatte Keyer
Red Giant Software Key Correct Pro
In addition to the Red Giant and Trapcode Bundles, we're offering Complete training for Trapcode Particular from Class on Demand. (DVD | Download) Learn more about the sale here.
Next week during the week of Toolfarm One Day Sale, we're throwing in a bonus item that will be available all week, from November 17-21. Harry Frank will get you up to speed with Trapcode Particular through this series of informative and project-focused lessons. Explore emitter types and functions in-depth with motion graphics expert, Harry J. Frank. Go beyond generating your typical particle effect and learn to use Particular in new and interesting ways.
Choose from the download version and the DVD version. The download version is available immediately at checkout and is a great pick for those of you who live outside of North America because you will not incur any shipping.
Get the fantastic Making It Look Great training series as downloads! The popular and proven Making It Look Great video workshop series has been designed to answer that question. Throughout these in-depth DVD workshops, professional motion graphics designers demonstrate techniques essential to their daily work and give the design decisions and rationale that support them.
The featured projects are demonstrated step-by-step from start to finish, giving priceless insight into what it takes to design and produce professional broadcast motion graphics.
Making It Look Great 1 with John Dickinson has been available as a download at Toolfarm for a while. Design and Production Techniques for Adobe After Effects and Zaxwerks ProAnimator.
Making it Look Great 2 with Alan Shisko - Design and Production Techniques for Adobe After Effects and Zaxwerks 3D Invigorator Pro.
Making It Look Great 3 with Harry J. Frank - Design and Production Techniques for Adobe After Effects, Zaxwerks 3D Invigorator Pro, Trapcode Particular and Trapcode Form.
Making It Look Great 4 with John Dickinson - Design and Production Techniques for Adobe After Effects, Zaxwerks ProAnimator and Zaxwerks 3D Flag
So why would you want a download, instead of a DVD? Here are a few reasons:
No wait for shipping
No shipping costs, which is especially great to our international customers who can get hit with large shipping costs
Harry Frank will get you up to speed with Trapcode Particular through this series of informative and project-focused lessons. Explore emitter types and functions in-depth with motion graphics expert, Harry J. Frank. Go beyond generating your typical particle effect and learn to use Particular in new and interesting ways.
Choose from the download version and the DVD version. The download version is available immediately at checkout and is a great pick for those of you who live outside of North America because you will not incur any shipping. The DVD version will be shipping in a week or two but is available for pre-order.
Pratt Manhattan 144 West 14th Street (b/w 6th and 7th Ave), Room 213
Pizza and soda/water served. Thanks to Adobe and Pratt, the meeting is FREE.
The Lineup Includes: Design Junkie and Motion Graphics artist Sean Cusson of Qmedia will be flying down from Canada to share his workflow, and show some of the cool tips and techniques he's developed and learned while animating up north. Get ready to say "Man, that was awesome, eh?"
Get ready to do battle with aliens, vikings, Santa Clause and sketchy fruit! Dan Opsal, Editor for CableVision's Gameplay HD, will debut his animated short "Billy Bombo," a stylized work that will make you sorry you threw away your old Nintendo Entertainment System.
Toolfarm is giving away a few prizes at the meeting.
Trapcode Form Training - Trapcode Form is a grid-based 3D particle system with a twist. It can be used to create fluid, organic patterns, complex geometric structures and swirling stringy animations. Form is phenomenally cool but also extremely complex. Harry J. Frank, freelance motion graphics artist, instructor and Adobe Certified Expert, beta tested Trapcode Form and shows you how to get comfortable with Form very quickly. You'll be spinning out gorgeous textures and eye candy in no time.
Professional Video Templates Weekly Weather Report This high-quality template for Adobe After Effects shows a weather report with seasonal opens. A classy addition to a television station or website. It is sized SD NTSC and Pal.
AE Expressions Tutorials Bundle 1 & 2 Harry J. Frank, freelance motion graphics artist, instructor and Adobe Certified Expert, goes over the basics of Expressions – Expressions for the average designer. The tutorials are in 6 parts - 20 minutes each: Introduction to Expressions, Introduction to Arrays and Variables, 3D Text.
Microfilmmaker gives Harry's After Effects Expressions Training a 9.2/10 in overall score.
Craig Herron, the reviewer says:
If you are interested in learning expressions more fully, both bundles are a must have. This is the clearest, most useful tutorial on expressions that I have ever used. If you are curious about expressions and want to see if they are for you, then I would recommend starting with Bundle 1. Even if you decide that expressions aren't your preferred way to work, you can still follow the tutorials and use the results in your own projects to good effect.
I give Trapcode Form Training with Harry Frank a whopping 5/5 stars for well explained training and ROI. You can pick up the training at ToolFarm.com. I highly recommend Trapcode Form Training with Harry Frank for anyone wanting to get going with Form fast.
Congratulations on the great review, Harry. Trapcode has also endorsed the training. It is really good.
The CMGF08 was a smashing success and we had a great time. We came in on Thursday morning and after getting settled in, we headed to the Stash Screening. I had forgotten that my laptop doesn't reset the timezones automagically like my phone does and I arrived over an hour early.
Well, it's a great thing that I did because I got to catch most of Reiner from LeftChannel Industries presentation. LeftChannel, of Colubus, Ohio, worked with a Japanese company on a project for Kirin Hyoketsu, an adult beverage flavored with Hyoketsu, a Japanese apple variety. He talked about how they made animatics and how the shots were incredibly detailed, even though the shots lasted all of 2 seconds. The video is on their website if you want to have a look.
He also talked about an amazing video that they produced by pulling two words out of a hat, 'Blissful' and 'Devil'. They passed around the posters that they came up with, based on those words, and in the end animated it. They entered it into film festivals all over the place and received several awards and new jobs too. Not half bad for pulling two words out of a hat!
I got to sit by my old friend Rani Stack, who worked with me 7-8 years ago at Postworks. She's now doing digital signage for big hotels. She presented earlier in the day, but unfortunately, I missed her presentation by a couple of hours.
There was a studio tour that evening, but I decided to get some sleep and be bright eyed for my class in the morning.
On Friday morning, Harry Frank and I met up in the doorway of the SAIC (School of the Art Institute of Chicago). We taught a class together on intermediate to advanced After Effect use. I first taught Harry's lesson called 'DJ Roto' and went on to show s few things about the new Shape tool in After Effects. Harry filled the afternoon with some great examples from a Sherwin Williams spot he just finished with Digital Kitchen, and also showed us how to make incredibly cool 3D grass with CC Hair and a few other plug-ins.
The AE Class Harry and I taught. Greg Dillard snapped the pic.
Friday night was the tour at Bridges Media, a post house and studio in Chicago. It's the third year I've been there and they're pretty much all FCP HD suites and running all Macs with the Adobe video tools. The CEO gave us a tour. The food at the party was very interesting and vegan. They had really delicious (and hot!) stuffed jalepenos, plus mini salads served on a leaf of endive with watercress, grape tomatoes, and these crispy brown onions. Truffles too. Very frou-frou, and I loved it! They also had a DJ spinning some great tunes. It was a lot of fun meeting new people and seeing the folks I met in the past years at the fest.
Me, Rani Stack and Harry Frank at Bridges Media
Saturday morning was my Apple Motion class. It went really well and I plan to put some tutorials and presets up at Toolfarm/AE Freemart soon. Maybe I'll make some full training... not sure yet.
On Saturday night there was a video installation from 9pm-2am, but I missed it. I was very tired and it was very cold. When I say very cold, I mean frigid. I wasn't just being wimpy. The high was 3° and the wind chill was -40°
On Sunday, Harry taught After Effects Expressions at the SAIC and he said it went very well.
The event is really well organized and they have a terrific lineup of activities and guests. My only complaint is the weather. Chicago in January. Ick. How about having the fest in May next year?! It was also the same week as Mac World, which I know caused a few conflicts.
Also, I'd like to mention, for being such a hot dog/deep dish pizza place, I had some of the best food I've ever had in one city in Chicago. Chicago really is a culinary destination.
Harry has created a promo for his Trapcode Form training so you can watch it to see if it is something you want to buy. If you haven't played with Trapcode Form, let me tell you, it's so incredibly cool. It has dozens of settings and hundreds, if not millions, of variations you can create. All of these settings can be a bit daunting, so Harry has created a four part training series that will get you comfy with Trapcode Form.
Interested in Form but not sure where to start? Try this!
Trapcode Form is a grid-based 3D particle system with a twist. It can be used to create fluid, organic patterns, complex geometric structures and swirling stringy animations. Using other layers as maps for various properties provides endless possibilities to create unique designs. Furthermore, Form can be used as an audio-visualizer, automatically generating stunning visuals for your audio.
Trapcode Form is phenomenally cool but also extremely complex. Harry J. Frank, freelance motion graphics artist, instructor and Adobe Certified Expert, beta tested Trapcode Form and shows you how to get comfortable with Form very quickly. You'll be spinning out gorgeous textures and eye candy in no time. And, it's only $24!
More Expressions Demystified... Written for the Designer
The latest volume of After Effects Expressions Series Bundle 2 came out last week and people are scooping it up. Harry has a way of explaining expressions so they are simple to understand.
I spoke to Harry just before his AE NY meeting yesterday and he was very excited. Jim Geduldick, one of the organizers of AE NY, tells me the meeting went splendidly and they had 150 people show up! Jim says "It was packed to the brim, standing room only, lots of fun. Harry was running back and forth between the screen and the podium. It got hot with all the people. Mate Steinforth showed some amazing (expletive) work and some Pysop work and showed his Advanced Beauty (Trapcode) Form stuff he did, all in AE. We gave away the most prizes we have ever had too!"
Sounds like a very successful meeting. Harry's new After Effects Expressions Series 2 training launched yesterday so it was great timing.
Harry J. Frank, freelance motion graphics artist, instructor and Adobe Certified Expert, (not to mention AE expressions expert and Toolfarm Forum Expert) will be showing some recent work and teaching you the secrets of using After Effects expressions to quickly create better animation. There will be some giveaways of Harry's training from Toolfarm too! Harry's new training will be out within 24 hours. Don't worry, we'll keep you posted!
Also presenting at the meeting: Hot off his win at the Cut &Paste design battle here in NYC, extremely talented artist and director Mate Steinforth will be showing off some works both personal and in-conjunction with Pysop.
Thursday, November 29, 2007, 6:30 PM - 9:00 PM Pratt Manhattan 144 West 14th Street (between 6th and 7th Avenues) Room 213
Check out the AE NY website for more on the meeting, including a massive list of door prize sponsors.
Harry will have Series 2 out sometime soon, so if you haven't checked out Series 1, you'll want to do that first. It's like the show Heroes. If you start watching at Episode 10, you'll have no idea what's going on.
Word on the street, um... AE-List... is that there is an Adobe After Effects update available. It's not on their site yet, but you can get it by going to the Adobe Software Update thing-a-ma-jig. Open After Effects Help Menu. The last item is the Update.
Harry Frank says "Open GL previews on the Mac.. WITH shadows and blending modes." Now that sounds like something to get excited about! Wheeeeee!
Harry Frank has added a cool preset at his site Gray Machine that gives your content a bad TV look.
Here is a preset for AE CS3 that simulates a fuzzy TV picture, from back in the day when you had to get up and adjust the antennae to watch Real People. This file was kind of an experiment on my part, not really for any project. So, if there are any suggestions, feel free to post ideas for improvements.
Did you know Harry has an incredible training bundle for After Effects Expressions? He has built the training for designers, not programmers, and you'll be up and at Expressions like a pro in no time. Seriously, it's pure minted.
Ko Maruyama has posted a blog entry at Ninja Crayon about the training that is available for After Effects and happens to mention three of our Forum Experts, Harry J. Frank, John Dickinson and Dean Velez.
Harry's training is available just this week and to say it's selling well would be an understatement! After Effects Expressions hits a niche where there is really not a lot of training and Harry's training is fun to watch and easy to absorb. It's downloadable immediately and is affordable at just $29 for 60 minutes of Expressions training. It is designed for the designer, not the programmer, and it will take your Expressiophobia away.
John Dickinson's Creative Background Design Series has also been very popular. John currently has six modules in his series and he uses some innovative techniques and explains several shortcuts that will help your workflow. John's training is just $5 a pop and great for the beginner or seasoned veteran.
Dean Velez puts out training through his company, The Anvel. His training, The Anvel Industry Training for AE is incredible. I showed my class some of the training last semester and they were completely into it. People actually stuck around until the end of class instead of bagging class after an hour ;-)
Just yesterday, Dean posted the following to our Expert Forum:
The Projects all deal with Text and adding effects to text. They cover the letters A-Z ( Aura, Balls, Cosmic, Destroy, Electric, Extrude, Fire, Glimmer, Hose, Ice, Join, Killer, Laser, Magnify, Nature, Odor, Paint, Quartz, Road, Strange, Tear, Universe, Vile, Web, Wind, X-Ray, Yank, Zoom )
Some are render intensive...so prerender when you can.
Hope you enjoy them! and drop me a line to let me know which one is your favorite...mine is Killer.
Dean is always posting awesome free stuff every month or two, so you'd be doing yourself a big service to go to our forum and hang out. Ask some questions while you're there and guys like Harry and John will answer your questions.
Ko also mentions Aharon Rabinowitz's quality training. Aharon runs After Effects NY user group, which met last night and Toolfarm gave away Harry's new training at the meeting. I hear the meeting was great, with Curious Pictures showing their Disney Channel program, Little Einsteins ("Come on! Wave your arms to make our ship fly faster!" and so you can hear some Vivaldi... oh, I'm sure you've seen it!)
Harry J. Frank, freelance motion graphics artist, instructor and Adobe Certified Expert, goes over the basics of Expressions - Expressions for the average designer. Harry teaches you the terminology and the tricks and even explains a bit of basic trigonometry (but don't worry, it won't bring back repressed high school math class memories!) Before you know it you will be adding Expressions everywhere. This training will add value to your technique and expand your After Effects skillset.
All project files are included, along with a Quick Reference Guide to help you learn Expressions in the most efficient way possible. You're not going to get this kind of quality training anywhere else and this series is ONLY available at Toolfarm.
Want the training modules individually or in a bundle?
This 3 part series on After Effects Expressions is available lesson by lesson. The bundle of the three lessons is available at a discount.
Harry has been a Toolfarm Forum Expert from about the time the Forums went up and runs Gray Machine, a very popular motion graphics site with tutorials and samples of work. Harry is also half of the relaunched AE Freemart.
Make sure you pick up the June 2007 issue of Digital Arts, a really cool inspirational magazine from the UK for digital artists. It's a bit pricy for US readers, but it does come with a great CD full of great content.
Harry's article is called Masterclass: TV idents part one: Using grunge mattes. After Effects adds dirt to TV titles.. Congrats, Harry! I'm looking forward to reading it.
If you're not familiar with Mr. Frank, he is a super-talented artist and instructor... oh, yeah... and he's a Forum Expert at Toolfarm, too.
Ring in the holidays with style! Trapcode Particular Presets: Holiday Pack includes 55 Particular based After Effects compositions featuring backgrounds, reveals, and sample type animations, composed at 720p and 1080i. Perfect for the holiday seaon -- this volume features a collection of elegant and useful compositions using a mix of festive colors, along with snow, star, ice, light, and ornament elements. Mix and match to create hundreds of combinations, save time, and add value to your production. Designed by freelance motion designer, Harry J. Frank.
Trapcode Form is phenomenally cool but also extremely complex. 
All project files are included, along with a Quick Reference Guide to help you learn Expressions in the most efficient way possible. You're not going to get this kind of quality training anywhere else and this series is ONLY available at Toolfarm.
Harry has been a 