The secret to creating a great looking effect

[Mylenium]

Actually your biggest problem is your unfocussed approach. In a way you already answered your own question – yes, you need to break down your stuff, both in terms of the timing as well as merely technical aspects. You need to atomize and simply have a clear vision of what combination of which effects will give a certain result. Just like when you edit, you need to know when to use hard cuts, flash cuts and simple dissolves in a manner of speaking. You are possibly simply overwhelmed without realizing that many “cool” effects are pretty simple if you have a tiny clue about which tools were used. Or when you program – do you always look at the big picture when you are optimizing just a function? Most likely not. You should employ a similar approach in your work. Work at one layer/ sub-comp/keyframe at a time and optimize it. When it looks good, move on to the next one. The more “optimized” stuff you have, the more likely it is that your entire project will fall in place and still look good.

Mylenium

[Pour Myl

[Tony Kloiber]

First, I’m assuming your talking about Motion Graphics and not Visual Effects.

If you set out to make “wow” your doing it for the wrong reason. What I try to do is ask not what do I do to make this “great” piece of Mograph but, ask why do I need to make a piece of Mograph. If you can find what it is that you want to express with the piece then this can help you start to figure out what the piece will be like.

A very simplistic example would be is it about anger? Then make it red.

If you take the time to learn or come up with your own ideas about graphic design you can, at first, lean on them and make appropriate Mograph pieces. After a while you can learn to break the rules or expand them to make “great” Mograph.

Just keep making stuff, watching stuff, learning stuff and soon enough you’ll learn that “great” is in the eye of the beholder.

TonyTony

[Aharon Rabinowitz]

You need to approach your projects from the standpoint of telling a story. And if not a story, then a feel.

Too often people just copy an effect, not really understanding that to really make it work, it has to say something or be a part of something that has something to say. Eyecandy gets pretty boring pretty quickly – at least for me.

As far as contructing the look, if you have no real restrictions on how it needs to look (no client, no set logo, no product) I’d start by figureing out the colors. Keep in mind that things look VERY different over a BG vs over black.

And the colors (as TonyTony said) create the mood of the entire thing. The same graphic over blue will have a completely different feel than over Red. Also, to make things more integrated you should experiment with Transfer/Blending modes so that the mo graph elements and the BG mix together instead of being seperate.

Think about ways to create a moving BG. It could be subtle or quite powerful. You never want it to overpower your graphics, but it’s very important for setting the tone.

Also, what sort of sound do you plan on having. Music also creates a tone. And it may help you in feeling out the look for the piece – plus give you good hit points for different animation as well.

This is all advice on the experimental side of things. In real-life, you have more restrictions, but since you want to try new things, take a crack at it.

Oh yeah – storyboard it out to some degree. Decide what happens when before you start animating. Have a set begining and end with regard to time. That will help a lot.

—————————————-
Aharon Rabinowitz
aharon(AT)yahoo(DOT)com
http://www.allbetsareoff.com

—————————————-
Click the link below to subscribe to the Creative Cow After Effects Podcast, and get free AE video tutorials:

https://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=111087911

[David Bogie]

Interesting piece on facing the blank canvas at kenstone.net:

https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/blank_canvas_cotter.html

As others have noted, the most interesting effects are often the simplest. No one is as good at this as Dean Valez and he provides tons of his best stuff free for the ripping off:
https://theanvel.com/

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[Joe Moya]

I have a simular problem… at least until I started to approach this form of art from a totally different perspective.

First, it is ALL about “little steps”. There is no way to get to the finished product fast on the first round. Break the idea down into it’s most basic elements and build each element seperately.

Without the “little step” approach, it is easy to get lost or even worse – get frustrated and fail… it is easy to not be able to find mistake and/or reasons why you can’t achieve a special effect. When this happens, you loose the vision of what you wanted… but, at the same time you can find a new vision. So… it is not all about failure but it also about finding a new approach while searching for your original vision.

I don’t believe minds go blank… but, I do think minds gets lost in the technical aspect of creating a look and vision. Minds shut down because of failure to fulfill it’s vision… or at least that what I try to tell myself… some call this denial… I prefer to call this a failure of technology 🙂

When technology and art are sharing the mindset, I find it very frustrating because I know it can be done… but, the technology is missing OR (and, more frequently the case) the ability to use the technology is missing. Which eventually leads to the old “trial and error” approach toward creating a vision. And,… I don’t about you… but, I find that VERY frustrating at times. In fact, some times it is so frustrating I forget what I was trying to do in the first place.

My secret to achieving results quickly is not in what I see… but, in what I hear. Music defines the project in my case. Music can make up for a lot of inabilities to create special effects… and, it also makes the video much easier to produce and edit. If you approach this thing from a visual appeal first, I find it much more difficult to add the process unless you have even better sound/music.

This is what I mean by little steps. Each group of video (and audio) frames defines a process that is either successful or not…and, if the parts are flawed… then, the whole process will be only as strong as the weakest portion.

Well… that’s my take… Good Luck

FWIW Joe Moya

[Zvi Twersky]

First, I really want to thank you all for taking the time to respond, and with such depth too.

All that you wrote was very helpful.

I want to add some things, but I will not address each of you individually, although you all touched some point of my question.

When I program software (not video editing), I have a clear picture of what I want the program to do. I don’t need to think about how to do it yet. I can even think of something unrealistic. As long as I have a clear vision of what I want this software to… then I’m ready to move on to the next step of breaking things down.

An example might be… I would like a program that will be connected to all the hospitals in the world and would get data about all born babies… height, weight, sex, etc… so at all times I can know things like how many people are in the world, and what is the average weight of all the girls in the world. (Wacho whoever would make such a program :-)))

Forget about the problems like babies that are born outside the hospital etc… (THAT’S the only problem?! 🙂

Or even… I want a program that can grow hands and make me coffee when I whistle. The main thing is that I know what I want and I can visualize the final outcome of my program. I can see myself whistling and hands growing out of the computer, and making me coffee.

Now back to after effects. I was asking more about visual effects because once again, with motion graphics I actually have less of a problem because I am dealing more with visual images and I can picture them in motion. Where with visual effects… I can’t seem to picture from blank, where a streak of lightning might blend in nicely with blue spots that might be rotating around a logo that perhaps will explode into some spinning cube…. (see where I’m getting?)

You see these 10 second logos, or 5 second introduction to a commercial, full of visual motion effects (90% effects and about 10% the words that the artist wants you to read)… and this is where I have the blank mind about where to start.

Some of you said to take it from the top. Ok, so lets say I decide I want my effect to be bright. So I will need nice light. So lets have streaks of light. Now, without any picture of what I’m doing… it’s hard to try to compose any light because you don’t know what else will in the picture WITH the light.

I think the best example would be a logo that you want to create for the beginning of your productions. So there’s no real message you’re trying to get out with your effect. You just need people to see your name, so they should know who produced the movie, and all the rest of the effects is just for the “WOW”, like someone put it here. The “WOW” is where I get lost.

But one of you provided links and I’m definitely going to check them out now!

Thanks!
So with visual effect…