After Effects in Production

"By showcasing a variety of artistic techniques, After Effects in Production is a natural follow-up to Creating Motion Graphics." - Steve Kilisky, Senior Product Manager, Adobe After Effects

Take your After Effects skills to a new level! Twelve step-by-step tutorials, designed by industry professionals, explore a variety of approaches as they teach useful design concepts and production tricks. The tutorials highlight the significant new features introduced in After Effects 5.0 - including 3D space, cameras, lights, parenting, and expressions. Each carefully structured project presents the "why" behind the steps, so you can adapt these techniques to your own motion graphics work. Many of the projects contain timeless concepts that can also be executed in After Effects 4.1, so that the maximum number of users can learn to master this industry-standard application.

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 CD 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.

Topics include:

• Mastering the new 3D space features, including lights, cameras, and orientation
• Employing parenting, precomposing, and expressions to group layers
• Refining animations with keyframe assistants, expressions, and velocity curves
• Universal design concepts that can be applied to any version of After Effects