COOKIE is UK motion designer, director & VFX artist James Andrew Cook, a senior motion designer for award-winning advertising agency Empire Design in London. Having worked with design, film and advertising agencies for over 15 years, he has built up an impressive portfolio.

His most recent work was on the movie trailer and TV adverts for ‘Senna,’ which won the 2011 World Cinema Documentary Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival. ‘Senna’ tells the story of the late Formula 1 driver, Ayrton Senna, through archival footage of his life, on and off the racetrack. Trapcode Particular helped shape a fast-paced sequence that perfectly complemented a film devoted to speed.

“I’ve been using Trapcode plugins – my favourite is Particular – on practically a daily basis since I first discovered them back in 2004”, James told us. ”From subtle touches – drifting dust to add realism to a project, for example – to dramatic effects like bursts of light and sparks, I’ve always found that Trapcode plug-ins enable me to create new and exciting visual pieces.”

Check out more of James Andrew Cook’s work at:

• http://www.cookiemotion.com/
• http://www.empiredesign.com/

Episode 56: Digital Cosmetics in Final Cut Pro with Magic Bullet Colorista II

In this episode of Red Giant TV, Apple certified Master trainer Simon Walker revisits a tutorial by Stu Maschwitz on digital cosmetics with Magic Bullet Colorista II – He’ll be working in Final Cut Pro, with a focus on getting it done faster.

Watch the tutorial HERE.

Related Links:

• Get Magic Bullet Colorista II HERE.
• Get Simon Walker’s Weddings & Events for Looks HERE.
• Check out Simon Walkers website HERE.

Take a 5 piece band, set them up in a car park, film and edit…simple. And with a little Magic Bullet Looks and Mojo you get simply perfect results.

This is the latest video from Brazilian rock group Alto Refúgio, for their song “Teu Amor ” The video was filmed, directed and edited all by Claudemir Portes. And even more impressively the job was edited overnight.

Claudemir told us: “I’m a big fan of Red Giant Software, especially Magic Bullet Looks and Mojo, its incredible software that gives excellent results. I always use them in my works because they simply make it more professional.”

We love Claudemir’s straight forward approach and I guess it doesn’t hurt that the band is pretty easy on the eye as well!

Related Links

• Alto Refúgio Website
• Claudemir Portes Website

Find a wealth of FREE information and products at RedGiant.com

You know how much it will cost you? How about $0. Yup, we said nothing, nada, zero, zilch. So, you may ask, how good can free stuff really be?

Take a Video Excursion through Red Giant and get a glimpse of what we have to offer from presets and tutorials, to full length training videos and quick tips. Enjoy the benefits of being a Red Giant customer at no additional cost to you!

Aharon Rabinowitz @ Red Giant

Find hundreds of presets and templates at Red Giant People.

Save time and money with hundreds of free presets for your Red Giant Plug-ins. Use the Cell Shading preset with Trapcode Particular or get the Sepia Comic Misprint to use with Magic Bullet Looks, or maybe you want to watch Ink Bleed using Trapcode Particular and Magic Bullet Looks. Get all these and hundreds more free presets for Trapcode, Magic Bullet and Knoll Light Factory online.

Did you know that Red Giant has over 190 tutorials coming in at over 46 hours of FREE video training?

Red Giant TV – Offers full length real world project-based episodes
Quick Tips – Watch short useful tips to help you work faster and more creatively
Video Tutorials – Download getting started guides for all of our products from industry leaders such as Stu Maschwitz, Harry Frank, Simon Walker,just to name a few

Don’t need the FREE training, but would like the FREE software?

Red Giant offers free plug-ins for color correction and compositing.

Magic Bullet Colorista Free – uses advanced color wheels so you can color correct like a pro
Magic Bullet LUT Buddy – allows your to share your color correction ideas or import others
Knoll Unmult – removes the black background from footage you want to composite. Great for fire, rain and more.

So how good can free stuff be? Well, we think pretty darn good!

LA based Parris Patton’s experience as a freelance director and editor spans more than two artistic decades. His artistry has been lent to the music industry with work for The Who and Prince (or was he the artist previously known as at the time?) to name just a few.

Parris recently lent his talents and Magic Bullet Looks to a 3 minute promo for The Vans Warped Tour:

We caught up with Parris who said: “What I really love about Looks is the preview interface and also the overall flexibility of each effect. The Swing Tilt Film effect is awesome and gives some of the flatter footage nice dimension. All the film effects are really great, we shot a lot of super 8 and 16mm sort of music video style with edge bleeds and what not and Looks gives me some great options to stylize the digital media to match that feeling.”

The Warped Tour is a touring music and extreme sports festival held in venues such as parking lots or fields. Vans, has sponsored the tour every year since 1995, and it is often referred to as the Vans Warped Tour.

Related Links:

• A Short Wikipedia article about Vans
• Diversity of Parris Patton
• Van’s Warped Tour

Often when I come across creative artists there are elements of their work that immediately stand out. They may be great colourists, stunning animators, or incredible editors for example. But when I came across Broken Antler recently, every aspect of the work just blew me away.
 
UK based ‘Broken Antler’ is freelance motion director, designer Ben Adam. With a clutch of awards and some very prestigious clients (Jaguar, Land-Rover, Sony, PlayStation, Bentley and Vodafone to name but a few) to his credit, I was excited to find out that Ben was a big Trapcode fan.
 
Ben was recently asked to create the visual effects on a series of films for IBM, along with a conference-opening spectacle. Each film was shot in a different location, then light streams, explosions and fast moving text were added which give the whole production an incredibly elegant flow. We asked Ben to tell us a bit more about his use of Trapcode Particular.
 
“Trapcode rocks! I find myself using Trapcode more and more with each project and the more I use it the more I discover I can do. I find that it can help take quite a staid subject and help bring it to life. This was definitely the case with IBM. I worked closely with the director and producer at Glover Films and fellow designer Paul Trewartha to create the exploding lights and light streams that would interact with the films. The idea was to visualise the data streams that the films were talking about and also link it to the logo, which used nine coloured lines of dots to illustrate nine different sections of the business. It was the dots and colours in the logo that gave way to the inspiration of having these lights exploding in the shot. Like thoughts being ignited by inspiration or data being used.”
 

Be the MVP with these game-winning motion graphics

Create stunning High Definition sports motion graphics in seconds with 25 unique templates spread across 5 action-packed broadcast quality themes. Sports Graphics pack brings the fidelity and immersion of 3D motion graphics to your own sports broadcasts. You can easily insert your own logos, pictures, videos and text. Change the color scheme and tweak the Trapcode Suite effects to complement the rest of your package.

• Learn about Sports Graphics for Trapcode Suite
• See examples of Sports Graphics presets
• Buy now from our online store
• Learn about Trapcode Suite

Grand slam & slam-dunk features

This package contains 25 unique templates that were designed to appeal to a wide variety of sports broadcasters. The After Effects projects feature Trapcode Suite effects that are fully editable.

• Quickly insert your own text, logos, color scheme, photos and videos for instant animation.
• Each template was created in 1080p at 30FPS, and have alpha channel transparency during transitions for easy compositing.
• Cinema 4D was heavily utilized for premade elements, giving this pack a high fidelity edge which rivals current professional sports graphics.
• The templates also feature Knoll Light Factory lighting effects, and ship with both live and rendered versions of the effects.
• BONUS: Includes 20 Magic Bullet Looks presets for sports film color treatments. (Requires Magic Bullet Looks, Quick Looks or PhotoLooks.)

“I began editing exactly 12 years ago and there have been many changes in editing since then. It is so much easier now to produce professional work that would have been cost prohibitive before. I first used Magic Bullet with the initial Mac version which gave me all the ‘looks’ I needed.

But what I discovered with Magic Bullet was a very strong and stable plugin and most importantly it was affordable for freelancers like me. Magic Bullet gave me all the tools I needed to achieve the same results as the big studios. I continually use Magic Bullet Mojo and Magic Bullet Looks but also use them at the same time. The mix gives quite incredible results and as I’ve said before ‘gives nice accidents’.

Jason Arber, the director of Magnesium, had been following my work for some years. He saw a little experimental film I made using a lot of macro shots so he asked me to produce the trailer for Magnesium. ‘Magnesium-Project’ the trailer took about 3 weeks to edit but a lot of time was spent setting the scenes and I actually had to source the mechanical arm myself from a lab in Germany”.

Pierre’s most recent work above is a a trailer for a movie called Magnesium. Magnesium, ‘named after the metal skeletons that give the biodroids their strength’, is a high octane, action thriller that moves quickly between scenes exploring the relationship between man and machine and explosive action sequences full of gun battles and bloody violence.

Pierre’s talents bring an almost sensual feel to the trailer and every time I watch it I see something special and extraordinary in the lighting and typography.

Check out Pierre’s site for more of his work.

Learn more about:

• Magic Bullet Mojo
• Magic Bullet Looks

Episode 55: Color Grading on a Deadline in Final Cut Pro

Let’s face it, sometimes, it ain’t about art. It’s about doing work and getting paid. And sometimes it’s about doing work fast and getting paid. In this Episode of Red Giant TV, Apple Certified Master Trainer, Simon Walker, will talk about Grading on a deadline. And hey, maybe with the help of Magic Bullet Looks, he can bring some of the art back into it.

Watch the Episode HERE.

We probably don’t need to introduce the award winning company Blind to anyone in the production industry. Their cutting-edge campaigns for brands such as Xbox, Showtime, and recording artists including Gnarls Barkley, and Justin Timberlake have given them a reputation for producing consistently compelling and creative concepts.

The Ravonettes are also a band with a reputation for strong concepts and called on Blind to produce the video for their track ‘Heart of Stone’. The video, which is set in a fantastic illustrated world, portrays the epic journey of a heartbroken man rambling across a unique and beautifully stylized landscape.

We were delighted to discover that Trapcode Shine and Particular played a part in shaping this remarkable and emotional piece of work and we asked Blind to elaborate on their use. Lawrence Wyatt, Lead compositor for Heart Of Stone told us:

“With a richly stylized world and concept it was important that we give it a sense of atmospheric detail and for me that comes from attention to natural light and its interaction with objects and characters in the scene. Using Trapcode Shine we were able create light-ray effects giving the exterior shots a warm and hazy atmosphere. These rays also helped to better marry separate elements together like the 3d sets, cg characters, and matte painted back-plates all of which shared and interacted with these lighting effects. We used Trapcode Particular for two different elements. One was for creating small random gnats around vegetation and the other was for creating water pouring out of massive tubes. Really simple technique of exaggerating motion blur and speed to get the scale right. Although we used a lot of stock footage effects, Trapcode Particular really came in handy in helping fill in the gaps and make custom effects for specific shots.”

You can check out the full story here along with the storyboard and other fascinating insights as to how this stunning piece of work took shape.

Related Links:

• Blind’s website
• Heart of Stone story boards/style frames+
• The Ravonettes

Learn More about:

• Trapcode Shine
• Trapcode Particular