Really cool video effects

[salolinkpdig8]

My friends and I have been doing videos for about 2 years, and I have been editing them with Adobe After Effects...We have gotten pretty good....you should check them out...like guys shooting missiles out of their stomaches (RANGERS) or being teleported....
http://davidlipford.com

check it out guys....its pretty cool

[guns1inger]

Having "Super awesome" on the front page doesn't make me think - "Hey, these guys are professional", more "Hey, it's a bunch of kids using the built-in plugins in a pirate version of after effects". And that's what the video's look like. I also like Dave's quote about thinking up effects no-one has seen before and then thinking about how it can be done. Admirable thoughts, but using the plugins to do lightning isn't that original.

Also - think about using a real editor for editing, and leaving AE for effects work. It will increase both productivity, and polish.

[canadateck]

Must have taken tons of time....Nice stuff.

[Karate Media]

Well, first of all, I'm incredibly wary of anyone who comes to a forum and their very first post is a "Visit my site" begging spam.

That said, I did visit -- but only watched "Fatality" and "Plan B" because of the excessively large size of the other files. You may want to download a copy of the free Windows Media Encoder and/or drop the $20+ on Quicktime Pro if you really want people to watch these things. When your "low quality" video is 41 MB, you better be offering the most mind-blowing video I've ever seen if you expect me to download it.

As someone who has used AE for three years, I admire your enthusiasm (it's the most important part of creativity), but I'm not so impressed with your AE skills, to be honest. And I say that as someone who has seen some incredible effects work done by 12-yr-olds with these same desktop tools, which blow what I do out of the water. I don't consider myself to be that great with AE. Admitedly, I use AE for minor animation work, color correction, titling/motion graphics, and other video tweaking (as oppossed to the "effects" work you are attempting), but still, I gotta say -- as previously stated -- I wouldn't be so proud of using stock effects as you seem to be. There are amazing things you can do with AE (even from just your desktop) and you haven't even scratched the surface (and to be honest, neither have I)

Still, I admire your enthusiasm and the fact that you're doing something rather than just talking about it. But I tend to agree with gunslinger about your skills.

[Karate Media]

And just to put my butt on the line, as you have, here's some examples of After Effects in my work (and like I said, I'm not gonna come out claiming how great it is. It's OK, but like I said, there are 12-yr-olds who can do better):

http://karatemedia.com/video/:

*The Athfest 2004 ad at the top uses After Effects to animate still photographs, as well as compositing and titling.

*The Jomo/Lucinda Williams ad uses AE to animate still photos a la "The Kid Stays in the Picture." Also used to animate the album covers.

*The opening and ending of the Chick Piano ad uses AE to create a motion graphic background and animate the text.

Other ads use AE, but I won't bore you with more


http://karatemedia.com/secretmachines/:

I used AE to tweak the video in this interview, to help give a little more variety to a very simple two-camera set up. There are also a couple of animations that use AE, particularly one silly one of a van driving across the US, about a minute or two into the segment.


http://karatemedia.com/video/snowman.html:

Beware, immediately plays quicktime .mov. Nothing impressive at all, but just another AE technique, trying to make video look like an old Super-8 home movie being projected.


OK, that's enough self-centered hijacking of your thread Just wanted to put my money where my mouth is -- even though it's more like small change