After Effects in Production

Book excerpt: Take your After Effects skills to a new level! Twelve step-by-step tutorials, designed by industry professionals, explore a variety of creative approaches as they teach useful design concepts and production techniques. Updated for After Effects 6.5, this new edition covers the most significant Version 5 and 6 features including 3D space, cameras, lights, parenting, text, animation presets, paint, and expressions. Each carefully structured project presents the "why" behind the steps, so you can adapt these techniques to your own designs and motion graphics work. All contain timeless concepts that will be of use for many years to come. After Effects in Production also contains six case studies of commercial projects created by award-winning studios such as ATTIK, Belief, Curious Pictures, The Diecks Group, Fido, and the authors' own studio, CyberMotion. These detail the integration of After Effects, 3D programs, live action, and a variety of animation techniques, revealing the artistic concepts behind the spots as well as the inventive techniques used to execute them. The enclosed DVD contains QuickTime movies of each of the final animations, allowing you to step through them frame-by-frame so you can examine them in detail.