Interface
xplorer2 – The single best file manager I have ever used, and I have used alot. I wish there were anything that remotely approached an equivalent on the osX side of things. (lite version = freeware, more advanced version is shareware)
Launchy / Colibri – Keyboard launching utilities are the single greatest enhancement in interface technology since … (freeware)
TaskSwitchXP – A superior replacement for the Alt-Tab task switcher built into windows
Stickies – Sticky note program, freeware
EssentialPIM – Calendar / ToDo / Personal Organization utility, freeware

MultiMedia
Foobar2000 – Audio player, encoder, ripper, tagger, cataloger, with many more advanced features (freeware)
VLC – Monolithic multimedia player with Matroska support (freeware)
Mediaplayer Classic – DirectShow multimedia player. Best when combined with the Combined Community Codec Pack (freeware)
XnView – Photo viewer / editor (freeware)
wScite / Notepad++ – Text editors for programming and just plain text editing (freeware)

Network
Firefox / Opera – Web browsers (freeware)
Pidgin (formerly Gaim) / Miranda – Instant messaging multi-protocol clients (freeware)
X-Chat 2 – IRC client (freeware)
uTorrent – Torrent client (freeware)
StrongDC++ – Direct Connect client (freeware)
eMule – eDonkey client (freeware)

Security/System
Sygate Personal Firewall Pro – Firewall
NOD32 Antivirus – Antivirus software

[See post to watch Flash video]

Currently (Week 9), I am working on Unicorns stuff. We had a pixilation shoot in the sheep meadow behind Morgan’s house on Thursday, and we have been working on the new edit. The new edit is a revised version of the Trouble With Unicorns script that we all wrote during Winter quarter. The storyline has been altered to accommodate the footage that we have. The total length will ideally be somewhere around 20-25 minutes now, and the message that we originally intended to come across, will hopefully now come across in a more condensed but equally powerful way.

I have been working today on the Dan special effects shot, and in the TUTORIAL SCREENCAST below, there is commencement with a detailing of a novel technique of rotoscoping, and some other various happy things regarding my workflow.

As a resource for anyone that might be interested, here is a small section about how to teach yourself how to use After Effects.

How to get help and teach yourself
The most effective way to learn After Effects is to experiment with it and learn on your own. In accordance with this goal, here are some useful resources.

• After Effects Help File
• Everything you need to know to operate the program is contained in this well-written, intuitively organized, and easily searchable help file. Just press F1 while running After Effects, or click Help / After Effects Help.
• Online Tutorials
• http://www.creativecow.net/
  CreativeCow.net has a great deal of superb and useful tutorials. This link is to a list of all of their written After Effects Tutorials.
• http://www.creativecow.net/aepodcast/
  CreativeCow’s new series of excellent video podcast After Effects tutorials.
• http://wikivid.com/index.php/After_Effects
  a compilation of links to introductory After Effects video tutorials.
• http://nututorials.com/subtutorials/AfterEffects/23001/1/10/0
  categorized After Effects tutorials.
  
• http://www.stephenschleicher.com/
• http://aftereffects.digitalmedianet.com/
• http://www.editorsguild.com/
  an introductory tour of after effects, fortified with example projects
• http://www.toolfarm.com/
• http://www.xtreme-is-back.com/
• http://www.pixel2life.com/
• http://www.ayatoweb.com/
• http://www.videocopilot.net/
  a very energetic after effects instructional video creator…
• http://msp.sfsu.edu/Instructors/rey/aepage/aeportal.html
  a portal to all things AE…
• http://media-motion.tv/
  an excellent and well-trafficked After Effects list-serve.

• Total Training/Lynda.com Training Videos
• These are two great software training video resources, containing ridiculously thorough video training in all things After Effects, conducted by articulate professionals. Talk to the computer center about their subscription to Lynda.com available for the use of interested students.

• Books
• There are many books out there about After Effects, but one of the best is Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects – Volume 1: The Essentials by Trish and Chris Meyer. Instead of just telling you how to perform functions in After Effects, it attempts to teach you techniques for being creative inside the program, teaching you in the context of real-world design problems.

Attached to this post is the After Effects tutorial handout that I wrote for the last workshop I did with Ruth Hayes for SOS: Media, which might be of use to anyone looking for a basic text-mediated introductory reference for After Effects.

Suppress Control

All Cocks Plaster

These videos were created in Adobe After Effects 7.0 utilizing the Expressions, which are just a way to control keyframed parameters in After Effects with a script in Javascript. You can create little ‘expressions’ by using a collection of custom ‘variables’ based on elements of the after effects environment, such as timecode, layer values, etc. Often expressions are used as a way of linking values of parameters together, to make something animate in defined relationship with something else. However there are a myriad of creative possibilities for using expressions in After Effects. Here is what I did to bring about “Suppress Control”.

timeToFrames(t = time, fps = 23.976);
t = random(t,thisComp.duration);

This expression is on the Time Remap property of my main video layer. Time remapping is just a parameter that lets you alter the playback rate and direction of a layer dynamically with keyframes or expressions. All this script is saying is

1). convert the timecode of the current position into its frame-number, based on the given frames per second, and store this value in the variable ‘t’.
2). let ‘t’ then equal a random number between the current value of ‘t’, and the length of the current layer.
This effectively makes each frame in the layer a random frame between the beginning and the end. This has a very chaotic direct-animation type aesthetic to it, because it is a frame-based manipulation, and has no slow changes. In “Suppress Control” I did this for 3 different stacked layers, and then created another expression on the top two that turned the transparency on or off every x frames. Each of these 3 layers was then combined with the layer below it using blending modes. This created an additional chaotic abstraction to the image, because each image is now not only a random frame of the entire video, and not only one of 3 random layers, but each frame is an aleatoric combination of each of the 3 layers (or just 1 or 2, depending on if all the layers are turned on or not), blended into each other to create a strange abstract image. Here is the expression that blinks a layer on and off every X frames.
fr = 23.976;
FrameNum = 2;
Scale = 50
trig = Math.cos(time*Math.PI*fr*(1/FrameNum));
if ( trig > trig/2 ) { trig = Math.ceil(trig) } else { trig = Math.floor(trig) };
trig = Math.round(trig);
trig = trig*Scale + Scale;

1). What is the framerate? (or, how many times per second should this happen)
2). How many frames should each alternation last?
3). How large should the variation in value be?
4). A trigonometry function to alternate between +1 and -1 every x amount of time defined by the framerate and FrameNum.
5). If the result of this function is greater than half of it, round up; else, round down.
6). Scales the value to +Scale, -Scale, and then shifts it up to be between 0 and 2*ScaleI

If applied to a transparency parameter, it effectively makes a layer flash on or off every x amount of frames.

Another cool expression, which is used on the train layer in All Cocks Plaster is as follows:

layTime = time – (inPoint-framesToTime(112));
random(layTime, layTime + framesToTime(10));

This is a very simple expression also applied to the time-remapping attribute of a layer. All it does is, for each frame, choose a new frame between the current and 10 frames ahead of it. So the motion continues on its path, but is randomly jumpy, because it is jumping around randomly in a little box of 10 frames that is moving forwards.