a couple of months back i ran across a web based image processing tool like Photoshop i posted about it here. Today i am here to let you know that that small be it cool website has been outdone a thousand fold and this pro tool set in my opinion is going to change the way we work on the fly and on machines that are not really ours the Aviary Tool set is a free web based app suite that contains 7 apps : image , color , effect , vector , screen cap , image mocap and sound. These 7 free web apps encompass what i believe all the needs of a visual artist of many talents.

I am going to break down every App and tell you what i like about it and such and hope as always this information will be useful in your daily work flow.

Effect Editor – Peacock

I am starting with this App first because I am so amazed with what Peacock is. Peacock is a Node Based Effects Editor for the common man, AND IT IS FREE. A while back the great flocks at dvGarage brought the power of node based image editing to Photoshop in the form of a plug-in called conduit, today The great people of Aviary gave us Peacock.

Image Editor – Phoenix

Phoenix is basically a online version of Photoshop nothing much to tell all the standard futures all thou one thing in particular  my attention and that was the fact that you could make a peacock layer in phoenix kind of like dynamic link layers in after effect and Photoshop orPremier

Audio Editor – Myna

Myna is my second Favorite after Peacock its a fully functional audio editor. You can record tracks right into the web app you can save sessions and even export wave mixdowns. The interface reminds me of audacity a bit but it has functional short cut keys and space bar is play and stop like mostly common in this type of app

There is a lot more that the Aviary Tool set can offer you They have a Color suite similar to Adobe kuler and a Vector App and a simple version of there image app. Go and Check them out you wont regret it

www.aviary.com

Matt Silverman, Creative Director of Bonfire Labs,particularly known as being a roto expert in addition to a motion graphics and visual effects artist. Several years ago, he took it upon himself to enlist some of the best users in the field to construct a set of timeless, concept-based, software-agnostic visual effects training videos.

The links for Series 2 (covering compositing, keying, tracking, paint, and rotoscoping presented by Ron Brinkmann, Stu Maschwitz, and Scott Stewart) are below; watch them while you can:

Masters of Visual Effects 2.1 – Compositing Concepts 1 from Matt Silverman on Vimeo.

Masters of Visual Effects 2.2 – Composting Concepts 2 from Matt Silverman on Vimeo.

Masters of Visual Effects 2.3 – Keying from Matt Silverman on Vimeo.

Masters of Visual Effects 2.4 – Tracking from Matt Silverman on Vimeo.

Masters of Visual Effects 2.5 – Paint from Matt Silverman on Vimeo.

Masters of Visual Effects 2.6 – Rotoscoping from Matt Silverman on Vimeo.

from VideoPro Coalition

Hello,

First let me apologize for not posting in a while,

<usual excuses> work has been crazy, no time , moving , packing and my building got hit by a meteor</usual excuses>.

Now that’s done with here is what’s new. I just wrapped up an animation project that was quite long, no mere 30 seconds or 1 min but a full 3min:40sec of motion graphics. Now in our Mograph world that is a lot, (too much in fact) and i noticed something very interesting; my animation is all the same. I don’t mean the look of my animation, i mean the way small background things behave, like having clouds animate in the background and using “wiggle.expression” to animate them instead of using  keyframes. Or when i animate fractal noise to drive a texture i just go in quick and dirty with a “time*45.expression” and leave . Now don’t get me wrong, these ways of animating have their place but here is where i came across my problem: when you have 30 seconds of sky and you throw a wiggle.expression on there and move on it works, but when you are looking at 4 min of sky all of the sudden you see the impersonal machine behavior of expressions. I started seeing  noticeable patterns for all my animations. All the little things i stopped doing like animating evaluation values or complexity and substituting it by the exact same time*15.expression.

Now it may very well be that i don’t know any other expressions so all of them look the same but i figured a computer has a set number of rules it works by and no matter how you dress it up it will end up using the same set of rules to apply it. So i set out to modify my project from machine driven monotone animation to something with a bit of personality, and let me tell you it was hard going from  this :

expression from Motionscript.com

to this:

But it was well worth it. My animation took on character and a life of its own. Which made me feel more accomplished (and much cooler).

I did not go to traditional animation school however and the core principals of the art was something i needed to understand well before i could apply them to my animation. Here are some of the resources i found and used to make a learning curve a bit less curvy (?), than it could have been.

A great 3 part article from fuelyourmotionography.com about everything that i just discussed, only written by some one much more experienced than i am.

Part 1, Part 2 , Part 3

Then i came across a very  interesting video by Nick Campbell form Grayscale Gorilla about how not to let your computer animate you.

The Death of the Keyframe – How expressions are making everything look the same from Nick Campbell on Vimeo.

And finally here is a beautiful sample of how manually key-framing your animation can give you 100 times better results

CRAZY ENOUGH – Title Sequence from Jr.canest on Vimeo.

Here are some of the keyframes on that video.

So the underlying point I’m trying to make is – sure you can go ahead and use the built in preset. We all can! But if you really want to stand out from the crowd it’s best to put in the effort to keyframe your animations. After all, nothing that looks awesome was easy to do

That’s all for this time folks. As always i hope that at least one person finds this useful in some way. If you like it, hate it or find it stupid please comment.

Cheers

Lighting Effects

The O Series

Super Cool Abstract Vectors in Illustrator and Photoshop

Really Cool Eclipse Effect in Photoshop

Awesome Digital Bokeh Effect in Photoshop

Advanced Glow Effects

View Full List [here]

Pen Tool:

Photoshop’s Pen Tool: The Comprehensive Guide

Become a Master of the Pen Tool in Under 30 Minutes

Making Selections with the Pen Tool

All-In-One Pen Tool Resource

A Different Pen Tool Technique

View Full List [here]

Skin:

Airbrushing – Natural Smooth Skin

Really Cool Digital Make Up in Photoshop in 10 Minutes

Smooth Skin

Ultimate Makeup

How to Smooth Skin

Remove Freckles

View Full List [here]

The cool People at PSYOP are doing a how to animate series in which they post different break downs of shots they do on there vimeo channel so people will ask them how they did it they will then pick 10 of the best questions and answer them. Cool idea here are some of the shoots check out there channel

This film shows a brief abstract of CG and live action elements used for the creation of the commercial ‘Smith& Nephew’ by Psyop.

This film is about the generation of CG Watersplashes and CG Glass. It shows all rendered passes for composing the final image, the 3D Scenes from a different perspective as well as RnD test sequences. ‘Absolut Dissection’ is a spot by Psyop and Massmarket.

you can visit PSYOP [here]

Found this over at hongkiat.com really good article about B&W Photography Check it out

photo Credit: Jana by LudovicMazet

Monochrome photographs are timeless, especially black and white photographs. They enhance emotional substance and have a disposition of making photos look more artistic.

They can be used on many different scenes as it’s not required to think about all the colors that should look good together and match the amount of light available. And for those who love to play with color, black and white photography doesn’t necessarily need to be boring as there are so many different shades to choose from….

Read the full Article [here]

I came across this amazing Poor mans solution to film scanning. This is my no means a perfect high Rez solution but film scanners are really expansive and this solution can be done at home at a fraction of the cost

What you need

• A digital SLR
• A piece of raised glass, such as a glass coffee table or a picture frame, set on top of books or boxes to raise it up.
• A piece of glossy photo paper without writing on the back. Generally off brands don’t have any writing on the back.
• An off camera flash or a very bright desk lamp.
• A tripod.
• Macro lens recommended but not required.
• Photoshop or another graphics editing package.

View the Full Articale By Adam Everett Miller at PhotoTuts [here]

Aetuts Has a very nice article for new AE users that breaks down the lingo i found allot of this confusing when i first started out and i hope it will help you out guys.

Adam Everett Miller has it broken down for you [here]