Harry J. Frank

Harry was a freelance motion graphics designer and instructor based in Detroit, Michigan and is now a partner at Truxton Pictures in Los Angeles.

As a classical percussionist, he earned a degree in music and audio engineering from the Fredonia School of Music in New York in 1995. Since then, his professional career has spanned the titles of audio engineer, music composer, video editor, graphic designer, finally settling on "motion designer".

His experience as broadcast design instructor has spanned universities, festivals, seminars and training centers across the country. Currently, Harry is an "Adobe Certified Expert" in Adobe After Effects.

As Toolfarm Forum Expert, contributor to aefreemart.com, and contributing writer to DigitalArts magazine, Harry is an active member of the worldwide motion graphics community. He is the author of the series "After Effects Expressions", a training series that teaches the scripting language within Adobe After Effects.

Focusing mostly on After Effects, Maya and Cinema 4D as his tools, Harry is available for freelance work off-site or on location anywhere in the world. See examples of his work, free tutorials, and various ramblings at
graymachine.com.

Charles Forbes

Currently Charlie is a Commercial Producer for CBS/UPN Detroit, soon to be CW. Previously, he worked for WEYI-TV as Production Photographer and Editor.

He has worked with After Effects for nearly a decade and as well as other graphics software. Charlie's well-rounded software knowledge includes Media 100, Final Cut Pro, Avid Media Composer and Adrenaline, Boris FX/RED, Boris TitleTool, Photoshop, Illustrator, DVD Studio Pro, and too many others to list.

His favorite pastimes include hunting, fishing, going to the movies, playing videogames, and volunteering as a sound tech at his church.

Michele Yamazaki

Michele is the VP of Marketing/Content Creator and Web Mistress for Toolfarm. She co-authored the book Greenscreen Made Easy with Jeremy Hanke. She previously worked at Postworks and taught After Effects at Kendall College of Art and Design for 4 years. She is president-elect for MCA-I Mid Michigan.

In 2001, she launched the AE Freemart and in 2002, she started the West Michigan Animation & Effects User Group with Matt Schirado. She also worked on a book with Richard Harrington called After Effects @ Work, published by CMP.

She spends her spare time with her husband and six year old daughter, Lily. She is an amateur chef, an aspiring jet setter, indie music connoisseur and is involved with a local organic farm. She's also stuck in the '80s. And, no, she's not Japanese.

Jim Geduldick

Former Kool-Aid drinker (Apple employee), I'm now employed with Mercedes-Benz Digital Media and known as Apple Jim by others. My day to day can be hectic - making sure Xsan and Xserves don't blow up, to editing, mograph and shooting. I shoot it all on HD with my camera phone (I kid, I kid).

Running my two companies, Visual Collective (production/design) and Creative Mind Solutions (consulting/integrations) can add to the hectic-ness (or gnar as i call it).

Drawing and painting has been a legacy passed down in the family. My media history started with a cheap Pinnacle box I bought back in the day to edit skateboard/snowboard vids of me and my friends. It blossomed into freelance work for 411VM, a skate/snow video magazine.

My arsenal of choice revolves around lots of toys from the entire FCP Studio suite (use 'em everyday), After effects, Shake, Particle Illusion, Silhouette, Cinema 4D, Adobe CS2 Suite, Toonboom... and way too many icons in my dock. I will just say, last time I checked I had 14 GB of just applications. And, it's not just software. Gotta have the hardware toys as well. I'm Xsan for Pro video, FCP, Motion and DVDSP Apple Certified.

You ask, "How does one acquire such knowledge? Film/mograph school? A sensei?" Nope! Dorking out with no sleep and teaching oneself.

Likes - hanging with my son and my lady, skateboarding, snowboarding, filming either of the two, learning, '80s movies, all music and techie toys.

Alicia VanHeulen, Toolfarm

Alicia is the Marketing Specialist and Design/Content Development Administrator at Toolfarm. She also currently owns AVsolutions, a video post production/media company.

As an Emmy-award Nominee, she formerly worked for Postworks Michigan as a lead designer, handling creation and design of marketing materials for a variety of end-uses and delivery methods, from flash presentations, print design, web, video/animations/special effects, and CD-ROM/DVD multimedia applications. She has worked with Photoshop, Flash, Illustrator, After Effects, Swift3D, Dreamweaver, Premiere Pro, and Combustion extensively.

She has won The Videographer Awards 2007 and The Telly Awards 2007.

John Dickinson

John is currently employed as a Senior Broadcast Designer at Foxtel in Australia where he designs and produces a wide range of broadcast graphics for various channels including National Geographic Channel, The Biography Channel, The Comedy Channel, Main Event Pay-Per-View, Fox Footy Channel and Fox Sports.

Thorough industry-based experience includes a position at the Computer Graphics College as Interactive Video Production course manager and After Effects lecturer. John has a Certificate III in Work-based Training and has been teaching After Effects to individuals and groups for over 6 years. John is dedicated to excellence in motion graphics and is a contributing member of the global online After Effects community.

Check out John's terrific website, Motionworks.

Chris Smith

I got my first synthesizer in '85. I stared at it . All those knobs and sliders. The possibilities seemed endless. That's when I fell in love with the idea of twiddling. I wanted to be a master twiddler. I worked at a music store when I was 16 in '88. Twiddled a lot there and saved up for my first sampler. Sampled everything I could and twiddled till the sounds were faint ideas of the original waveform. In '89 I entered a Keyboard magazine contest with a piece I called "Integrated". 4 months later I get a Keyboard magazine issue because my hero Vince Clarke was on the cover. In the middle of the mag were the contest winners. I didn't win. But wait, there are runners up. There was little ol' me as part a handful of "almost winners" from around the world. My twiddling fascination has now been engraved onto my soul.

Went to community college for audio engineering in '91. Worked at a studio in Houston. Left that studio to build a brand new studio with another guy. We were commissioned by a well known latin group. The other guy designed the place, I wired the console, Studer, effects, and other components over a period of 6 months with one badly beat up 6 dollar soldering iron from the Shack. I had worn my self out of twiddling for a long time. But wait. Mix magazine features the studio as one of 14 best new studios of '94. Okay then, back to work. Engineered there for a while. On the side I worked on electronic music with my friends. The band that owns the studio heard the music one night and asked if I could do a dance remix of one of their songs. Sure. I heard it. It was 86 BPM. Dance? Well after some serious time compression on the vocals and replacing all the instruments with Oberheim Xpander, Arp 2600, Jupiter 6, and TR 909, we may have a dance number. They put it as an option on the CD single that Sony sent to radio DJ's. The actual single hit no. 18 on the Latin charts, but then started dropping. Then some DJ's started playing the dance version on the radio instead. Then more followed suit. The dance remix hit no.1 on the Latin Billboard charts and stayed for 2 weeks. What did I learn from this? That I have no interest whatsoever in doing dance remixes. But I did enjoy the twiddling involved. But just the wrong thing to twiddle it seems.

My band started playing some shows. A guy approached us after a show and said he wanted to shoot a music video for us. I asked on what format. He said video. I declined. My father has been a news camera man since I was born. I've stared at 3/4" and Betacam so much as news, I couldn't imagine using that same look for a music video. I bought a Super 8mm camera, but didn't know what to do with it. We called the dude back and asked if he'd like to shoot the video on my 8mm camera. We shot the first few days then waited 2 weeks to get the film back from Kodak. I loaded it on the projector. Yuck! Everything was blown out. We decided to carry on without him. So I "directed" it myself. Which wasn't really directing because to direct you need a vision which I didn't have due to severe lack of understanding. But I did know that my dad had a new Mac and an early version of a program called "Adobe Premiere". I was thinking that would be some cool twiddling if we had some film to play with. We shot the whole thing. Projected it on a piece of typing paper while shooting said paper with my old man's Betacam. Loaded that into Premiere. After many crashes and oddities, the video was done. I realized that this form of twiddling with images was a beautiful thing. Something I would think about for the next few years.

In '95 I moved to Dallas to work as a freelance news sound man for the 3 major TV networks. Not my passion, but it was an interesting job. I was an eyewitness to many major news events. But for every cool story, there were ten about taxes, laws, or some other boring element. I can't remember how many times I nodded off staring at the hypnotic audio meters during an interview. Setting a mic level is not twiddling. Must have twiddling.

In '97 a band mate friend of mine, Kahan, from the old days in Houston came to visit me. He asked If I ever thought about film. I said, "yeah, that I did on occasion." He asked me if I'd be interested in doing a short on B&W 16mm the next summer when he's out of school. We both knew nothing about it and would need each others help. He was great at writing and already was an actor at Berkeley. I could, well, twiddle. He suggested doing a short David Mamet script. Sounds good. Who's David Mamet? I bought his book titled "On Directing". Loved it. Changed my view point about many things. Then I read "Rebel without a crew" by Robert Rodriguez. Wow, can that book light a fire. I called Kahan and said, "Stay the whole summer. We're going to do a feature length film on color Super 16mm instead". While Kahan wrote the script, I read every book on lighting, photography, and directing that I could find. I found a guy that was willing to rent us an old Aaton S16mm cam for 2 months within our extremely limited budget. That was a good sign. So when the summer came, I bought a light meter and we did our first 400' test. Got that developed and transferred. Half of it looked absolutely horrible, and half looked decent. So we made notes about what not to do and started shooting the film. After the worst 2 months of my life, the principal photography was done. Kahan and I spent the next 2 years doing the edit, ADR, Foley, re-editing, and recording an albums worth of music for it all on the first blue G3 that came out. In the middle of the project I switched from Premiere to the brand new FCP that had just come out. At the time, my Premiere project wouldn't load when the timeline reached about 45 minutes long. Made an EDL and FCP started up like a champ. The movie went on to get "Best Dramatic Feature" in the one festival we bothered to enter it in. That was a good "real life film school" for us. That film took twiddling on a grand scale I didn't think possible. Sick of twiddling. No more twiddling....please.

In '99, my buddy Tony was dating a production type girl that worked for a local film company. They shot a lot of commercials. I had never thought about commercials before. Tony was starting to do some early producing. So we teamed up and did a spec commercial. We used the same S16 cam I shot the movie with. With the new spec spot and the movie trailer as a reel, we got some small, direct-for-client shoots through a small production company. Each spot being a littler bigger than the last. Then we did 3 spots in one day for a client that normally shoots their spots through large ad agencies at completely different budgets. This was a little side thing for them. But when the time came for them to do the bigger spots again, they insisted to their agency that we shoot it. That didn't go well with the agency since we were unknowns. We made it through the shoot. The agency loved the spots. Tony and I formed our own company in 2001. Since then we shoot almost non-stop for agencies across the US. But wait! Where's the twiddling? Not much there. Other people are paid to twiddle for you.

While watching inferno operators do magic to film images at the post houses, I realized a passion I had waiting to come out I didn't know existed. I couldn't stop staring at them rearranging nodes, moving sliders, a tweak here, a tweak there. Have I seen the pinnacle of all existence? I think so! Twiddling paradise! How much for an inferno? Oh..well what else is there? Then I played with a friends copy of After Effects. He used it do some minimal web and DVD menu things. I loaded video clips into his machine and twiddled, and twiddled away. It brought back the feeling of being in front of an old modular synth like my Arp 2600. Endless possibilities. After twiddling for days, I had complete garbage, but I understood the concepts of compositing. Since then, I have dived deep into compositing, motion graphics, special effects, and 3D. But alas all as a hobby since I have a directorial job. But I found that I rarely was completely satisfied with how our spots were being done for broadcast. So I started the habit of taking the uncorrected dailies straight off the original DigiBeta and re-cutting, compositing, and coloring the spots from scratch using FCP and AE (and now DS). I think there are times I don't make it that much better or different than the post house did, but I loved getting there; Twiddlers paradise.

Currently Tony and I are expanding our company by building a new 4 story building in Dallas to house our business. We will have a small post facility for our own purposes based around an Avid DS Nitris, AE, C4D, and Pro Tools.

The only last thing to know about me is that I'm 34, i'm a new father, I love twiddling, I hate writing bios in 3rd person, and have a total disregard for grammar and proper sentence construction.

Jerzy Drozda, Jr.

My name is Jerzy Drozda Jr (aka Maltaannon) and I’m a multimedia, motion graphics and vfx artist from Poland. I’ve been in the business since 1997. During this time I’ve created tons and tons of graphics, software, flash applications, websites, videos and other things that involve creative thinking and approach.

In 2006 me and my friends started an advertising agency called Polygon Studio. We deal with 3D graphics, animation, web solutions, DTP, postproduction and compositing for film, commercials and video clips. If you need a professional assistance in any project involving creative thinking in any area of multimedia make sure to get in touch with us.

The tutorials on this website are meant to help other artists find their way around most commonly used applications - that is Adobe After Effects, Adobe Audition (formerly Cool Edit Pro), Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Premiere. I truly hope that this tutorials will be very useful to you, irrespective of if you’re a professional, or if you’re just starting your adventure with visual effects and motion graphics.

Jim Kanter

Jim Kanter is a guy who really wants to share his knowledge. He started the esteemed Digital Film Institute with his wife in the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia, where Jim is currently the Training Director. Jim is a sought-after instructor, and has taught at film schools and universities, training companies, seminars, and IMAGE workshops. He is Apple Certified DV Trainer, Apple Consultant and Adobe Certified Expert and started the Atlanta Final Cut Pro and Motion Graphics user groups.

Jim is an award-winning filmmaker who graduated from the University of Southern California and worked as a cinematographer, editor in Hollywood. He began using digital tools extensively in the mid 1990's. He has worked with clients worldwide including several production companies and tv stations. Big clients include Turner Studios, CNN, HGTV, Home Depot, Georgia Tech, The Weather Channel, the U.S. armed forces, NASA, Scripps Productions, Cox Communications, General Motors, NASCAR, and MCI.

Matt Silverman

Matt Silverman is the Creative Director at Phoenix Edit, Effects, and Design in San Francisco. Silverman has completed work on commercial projects for leading advertising agencies including Goodby Silverstein & Partners, Black Rocket, and DDB Worldwide. Among the hundreds of spots he has worked on, stand-outs include numerous Yahoo spots including the Superbowl airing "Dolphin" spot, First Union Bank’s effects intensive Superbowl spot “Cityscape”, and the Director’s Guild winning spots for Musco Olives. Feature film work includes effects shots on “Scooby Doo” “Hell Boy”, and “Team America”, and title design for the Sundance winning documentary “My Flesh and Blood”.

Besides production work Silverman was a partner in Theory, a software development company which was aquired by Digital Anarchy in 2004. Products include Microcosm, the world's first 64bit lossless QuickTime codec and ColorTheory, a stand-alone application and set of plug-ins for finding harmonious color combinations based on traditional Bauhaus color theory. Theory had also completed contract work for other companies, including the flv QuickTime exporter for Macromedia Flash 2004. Silverman was also instrumental in the early development of the industry leading rotoscoping application, Commotion, while working as the Product Manager at Puffin Designs alongside ILM effects supervisors John Knoll and Scott Squires. Silverman has been a faculty member at the American Film Institute (AFI) in Hollywood where he taught a weekend workshop on rotoscoping, and has been a featured artist in Res Magazine, Adobe.com, and Apple.com.

J Bills

J Bills is a visual effects artist and designer, originally from Kansas City. Bills began his career in the late-1990's, doing stints upon graduation at the ABC and CBS affiliates in KC as a Graphic Designer. Upon moving to New York for a fresh start in the year 2000, Bills made the rounds as a freelance visual effects artist, working on projects for HBO, MTV, Sci-Fi Channel, Nickelodeon, The Mill, and Imaginary Forces, to name a few - eventually finding a home at NYC artist collective Psyop and teaching visual effects at the School of Visual Arts.

Recently Bills moved on from NYC to take a lead artist position with Peter Jackson's award winning studio Weta Digital in New Zealand, working on films such as Lord of the Rings and King Kong.

Ko Maruyama

Ko Maruyama is a motion graphics designer and lead animator in Hollywood, California. /

After graduating with a fine art degree, he immediately went to work in a broadcast post production facility - learning traditional editing, audio, and working on the "big boxes", Henry and Inferno. After attending a few MGLA meetings, he switched to Adobe After Effects and some other desktop solutions and hasn't looked back.

As a Toolfarm Forum Expert, writer for CreativeMac, contributor to various print magazines and chief instigator at the NinjaCrayon.com blog, he is an advocate of all software and hardware that will allow you more time to doodle, experiment and be creative.

He currently helps to organize the DMA\LA motion graphics and digital art user group in Los Angeles.

Rob Birnholz

Rob Birnholz is owner of Absolute Motion Graphics, Inc., near Orlando, FL. With more than three decades of production and post experience, he’s not only older but hopefully wiser.

Rob graduated from The University of Florida with a degree in Broadcast Production, then began his career freelancing in the South Florida film industry, working on major features and commercial shoots. In the early 1980’s he formed his own video production company shooting, directing and editing high-end corporate projects for clients including PepsiCo and the Knight-Ridder Newspaper chain.

After relocating to Central Florida in the late 1980’s, Rob continued as a freelance Lighting-Cameraman and Editor working on projects ranging from Disney’s “Mickey Mouse Club” to cutting Super Bowl highlight packages for ESPN.

With the advent of desktop editing Rob discovered After Effects (version 1!) and his life changed forever. Shooting and directing faded into the background as Rob focused on new digital postproduction solutions, and his company, Absolute Motion Graphics, was formed.

Working largely in the nonbroadcast arena, Rob loves recreating high-end looks and effects without having the same big-time budgets. He is a frequent guest speaker at user groups around the country, and many of his After Effects tutorials were distributed on the Digital Production Buzz newsletter.

Recent projects have been completed for T•Mobile, Walt Disney World, Kodak, General Motors, Long John Silvers, KFC, Subway, Cricket Communications and The Palm Springs International Film Festival. Rob’s website is at www.absolutemotiongraphics.com

John Kerr, Red Giant Software

Hailing from Oregon, John is a QA and Support Manager and has been with Red Giant Software for just over two years, hence, he is a moderator slash forum expert for the Red Giant Software Forums at Toolfarm.

John has a multimedia background from the University of Oregon and manages support for all of Red Giant’s product line. John is deeply involved in QA of all products and will definitely help put all your questions and software issues to rest.

Tess, Apple-Ninja, and Christina make sure he knows who the boss is.

Robert Sharp

Robert Sharp, is president of Digieffects, a company that has been in the business since the beginning of the "plug-in revolution" which dates back to 1996. Over the years, Digieffects has had great success with software products like CineLook and Delirium and is a staple of post-production houses throughout the world.

In May of 2007, industry veteran Robert acquired Digieffects with the goal of re-investing in product development and accelerating the release of innovative video plug-ins. Robert has over a decade of experience in the digital media industry including management positions with Terran Interactive (makers of Cleaner, now owned by Autodesk) and Canopus (now part of Thomson Grass Valley)

Peter McAuley

Peter McAuley has been involved in the development of state of the art graphics technology for print, video and film since the mid-'90s. Since 1999, he's been a part of the Boris FX team, managing the Boris RED/Graffiti/FX and Continuum product lines.

Prior to working in technology development, he created high-end imagery for print advertising as a production artist in the US and Europe and studied Offset Lithography and Color Theory at Bolton Street College of Technology in Dublin, Ireland. He has worked with filmmaker Hisham Bizri as a colorist, effects artist and consultant on several films and installations, which have been displayed at museums and art-house theaters in the US, Europe and the Middle East. He also enjoys torturing his neighbors with an electric bass, listening to punk, indie, classical and jazz recordings, and watching independent movies.

Nils Schneider, Cycore

Bio coming soon.

Ross Shain, Imagineer Systems

Ross is the Vice President, Sales & Product Specialist at Imagineer Systems. He has almost two decades of creative and technical experience in commercial, broadcast and film post production.

Formerly, Ross was the Sr. Compositor & Designer at Northern Lights Post, Sr. Applications Specialist at Avid Technology and also worked freelance as an effects compositor & designer at Big Sky Editorial.

Ross can answer all of your questions about Mocha, Mocha AE, Money, Mokey, Motor and the rest of the terrific Imagineer products.

Billy G. Woody, Imagineer Systems

Bio coming soon.