Monthly Archives: October 2007

Adobe After Effects – Simple Creativity #26

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Adobe After Effects 8.0.1

Adobe After Effects – Simple Creativity #26: Evil Face in the Sky

I don’t know how it started, but my wife gradually became obsessed with Buddhism stuff in the last 5 years. She even bought a human-size Buddha statue last year. I asked her why, and she said it was for our safety. Que?? Anyway, she begged me to take her to the center of Buddhism, Thailand, last month.

Her obsession over Buddhism scared the hell out of me. I had to do something. When we arrived at a big temple in Bangkok, I told her that I had to go to men’s room. And I left her alone with Buddha statues. Then I went to a place where she could not see me. And I pulled MacBook out of my backpack and launched Adobe After Effects CS3. In a matter of 8 minutes or so, I created an evil face in the sky. And I heard her scream instantly. I went back to her pretending that I knew nothing about what happened while I was gone. She was terribly horrified and wanted to go home immediately.

Ever since we came back, she hasn’t talked about Buddhism. And she has thrown away all her religious items.

The following video tutorial shows steps to design a drawing with clouds, using Adobe After Effects CS3. The video clip used in this tutorial comes from Internet Archive. The original clip is compressed with MPEG, and we re-compressed it with H.264 beforehand. Continue reading →

Boris RED 4.1 Samples: National Geographic

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Boris RED 4.1

When you want to deal with objects in the 3D space, Boris RED can be as powerful as Adobe After Effects. In fact, we always wanted to have a motion effects application like this one that would allow us to create a introduction scene of National Geographic without third-party plug-ins. So we used Boris RED this time to create introduction scenes, hoping to make them look like that of National Geographic. Continue reading →

Mac Software Review: Boris RED 4.1

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Boris RED 4.1
Mac software review

If you edit films digitally and/or work on visual effects, you must have heard of Borix FX. It’s a company that is famous for its Final Cut Pro and Adobe After Effects plug-ins. Its product Boris RED is a stand-alone application similar to After Effects. Boris RED is used for motion effects. It’s available for Windows and Mac OS (PPC and Intel Macs). Compared with After Effects, Boris RED is somewhat oriented for 3D visual effects.

Let me first mention that Boris RED is not so cheap. It’s priced at US$995. It’s as expensive as Adobe After Effects CS3 Professional, which is priced at US$999. Good news is that Boris has a free trial version, which is fully functional for 2 weeks. In order to use it on a trial basis, you need to register to get a trial license and then download the installer. The installer will let you install the stand-alone application (Boris RED Engine) plus plug-ins for Avid and Final Cut Pro if you want. Continue reading →

Learning Graphic Editing Basics with Adobe Fireworks CS3 05

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Adobe Fireworks CS3

Learning Graphic Editing Basics with Adobe Fireworks CS3 05: Making Selections

Compared with Adobe Photoshop, Fireworks doesn’t offer many selection tools. For example, Photoshop allows users to use Color Range. Color Range is effective in making a layer-wide selection in terms of colors. And there is nothing in Fireworks that is equivalent to Photoshop’s Color Range. In addition, Photoshop has Magnetic Lasso Tool, which is also color-differences-sensitive. And there is nothing in Fireworks that is equivalent to Photoshop’s Magnetic Lasso Tool.

On the other hand, Fireworks allows users to make many different shapes. And you can actually convert these shapes to selection.

This short video shows several different ways of making selections beyond uses of Magic Wand and Marquee Tool. Continue reading →