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Creative Design for After Effects
So I’ve gotten pretty far in my AE learning. I finished all 3 Meyers books and often search the internet looking for tutorials and whatnot. I’ve got an okay grasp of photoshop and am now moving on to the process of learning Illustrator and Cinema 4D. I’ve got a big problem though that becomes apparent every time I go to make things in AE and I’m sure will stay the same even after learning these other programs. I just don’t know the fundamentals of what makes motion graphic work look good!
I know all the buttons and know what all the tools do, but I’d like to learn the “rules” of what makes something a good design. Colors, composition, typography, etc. I know there are colleges and stuff like that, but I went to school for film and spent a TON of money, and going back to take even a couple classes isn’t really an option.
So I was wondering if anybody can recommend an awesome book or something that they think could be usefull to me in making my after effects work look better and help me in the creativity department. I know you can’t really teach someone to be creative, but I think that learning some of these basics of graphic/motion graphic design could help me out. Anybody have any suggestions?
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12 Replies
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Jayse’s Training DVD, Noob to Pro. Hell yeah.
You won’t be dissapointed.
Justin Productions
Tangerin01@hotmail.com
Adobe After Effects 6.5 Professional -
Hey, thanks for the response. Though I’m a little confused on what this is exactly. Are these tutorials that you just follow along with? Are they tutorials that force you to come up with your own design type of thing? Are they tutorials that give you ideas on how to put effects and things together that you probably wouldn’t have normally thought of?
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Hi Sandman,
In my opinion, one cannot find creativity in books or tutorials. You may find an inspiration that could trigger a creative process to help you fulfill (Or envision) an assignment, but then you have to take it from there.
In other words, it is easier to be creative once you have an assignment. What is mostly lacking someone who is in a learning phase like in your case.
In addition, sometimes a tight deadline can even make you to a Michel Angelo. Guess what! It is not because you are a genius, but simply because you have no time to think or lament. Yes! Creativity is also an instinct. Trust me!
It is also very important to show your work and carefully listen to any critic.
Do you have anything you could show us?Just my 0.2 cents
Salut.
Serge -
Hey Serge, thanks for your input. As of right now I have only a few things to possibly show, but I wouldn’t even know how to begin uploading it to a website or anything like that. And most of it is just “special effects” for video, more so than creative “motion graphic” stuff that I want to get better at. But I really agree with the creativity thing and part of it just needing an assignment of some sort.
But apart from creativity, I think I also just need to know what is pleasing to the eye. Kind of like they have the “rule of thirds” in photography, I kind of need something to let me know all the rules of thumb on what makes good design. I want to know what makes certain colors work in certain situations, what makes a composition nice to look at…you know, the kind of things that people would learn at maybe a graphic design school. I just need that ability without having to actually going to school. Perhaps a book that teaches these types of things.
Again, thanks for the help. It’s much appreciated.
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As far as I can tell (I’m self-taught), you learn how the basic principles of balance, hierarchy, contrast, alignment, rhythm and proximity are used in design. Then you look at hundreds of designs to see how those principles were used, consciously or not, and evaluate the relative success of those designs.
Personally, I like these books for concepts:
A Primer of Visual Literacy by Dondis,
Design Concepts and Applications by Cheatham/Cheatham/Owens
Sight,Sound,Motion by Zettl.If you want to see how students create a multitude of solutions to a (sorry, print) design problem, get Visual Literacy by Wilde.
Then go to the Motionographer site to look at the work of other designers. Pick your favourites, from a design perspective and analyze the work.
You might also want to post in the Broadcast Design COW.
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There are a few different ways to approach this, and I’m all too familiar with your pain, as rules of design wasn’t anything I thought about when I started down this road.
Couple of approaches you can take. One is to find a good graphic designer and just ask questions. We worked on a few projects together and I have learned quite a bit from him, about the basic rules of graphic design.
Also there are tons of books that can give help you understand the more formal rules of design, two that I recently picked up might be a good start.
The Elements of Typographic Style
Making and Breaking the Grid: A Graphic Design Layout WorkshopGot both used at amazon, understanding typography and basic layouts, while not required in this business, will IMO, elevate your work to more aestically pleasing levels.
Johnny Cuevas, Editor
http://www.ckandco.net -
i had an art teacher in high school that sang a little tune when asked how to get good at art. the tune went dum do do dum do do dum do do do WOW! first you draw something dumb then you do mor work and work some more and it’s still dumb, then you do more and work more and it’s still dumb, but if you work long enough and hard enough eventually somebody else will look at it and say WOW! he also said: how great you are depends more on how hard to work than the tallent you are born with.
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Visual Literacy is a good one Steve, and even though it is focused on print pieces i think it totally applies to motion design and is awesome for making you look at a design problem and then see how else it can be approached. form, color, and composition are consistent in some way or another across all design, and i think a lot people who get into video and multimedia do so with very little knowledge of design and become simply software operators.
The other design book i really like is The Elements of Graphic Design: Space, Unity, Page Architecture, and Type by Alexander White, really gives a great understanding of the different design elements and how they work together.
chris
i’m not random i’m tangent oriented…
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I just finished reading “Design Basics Index” by Krause. It’s a decent enough book that explains the how and why (with examples of good and bad).
I’ve been doing this for years and the best way to learn is to copy things you really like. If you learn how to emulate the work you love (the ring in the LOTR trailers, for example), you’ll learn how to infuse your own variations to that work and voila, you’ve created something new that was inspired by work you love.
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A wise man once told me that “there can be no refinement without repetition”.
🙂
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