[Tim Wilson]

Oops, thanks for the heads up. I’ll talk to our massive IT department about it.

tw

[Tim Wilson]

[Tim Wilson]

Adobe has chosen the very wise course of not making any changes to its development schedule to accomodate an artificial deadline that Apple sprung on the world with little or no advance notice to developers.

There’s so little major software left on the Mac platform not developed by Apple that it’s difficult to get any comparison for what a gruesome task this is. It’s easy enough for hardware developers to quickly make drivers, and certainly any of the development teams inside Apple had plenty of time to prepare.

But for the few developers of major software left on Mac? As a former cross-platform development dude, I can tell you that this is a nightmare that won’t be passing soon.

By keeping the course of its development unchanged, Adobe guarantees that their software will stay as stable as you’ve come to expect — and rely on — it to be. Apple has made it much more difficult, but the wizards at Adobe can cope.

BTW, I LOVE the idea of using AE 7 in XP via Bootcamp. Mac folks who haven’t dipped into Windows in a while will be pleasantly surprised at the speed and stability of AE in Windows, even on Apple hardware. And the differences between the usability of X and XP aren’t worth talking about anymore.

(Anyone noted the irony of Apple moving to command line interfaces even faster than MS has run away from them?)

Not meaning to start a platform war here — just making observations about how to solve a problem today, using solutions available today. Adobe has already told us its UB revs are coming, but especially if all you’re doing on the Windows side of the boot is using AE, it’s udderly painless.

Also observing that Adobe is right to make the hard choice. Better to do what’s right for its customers in the long run than stumble over Apple’s roadblocks. Better not to chase the quick buck that ultimately keeps them from achieving all of our mutual goals in a reasonable timeframe. The only way to get it right is to do it right.

Best,
Tim

[Tim Wilson]

I’ve done this before, and it’s pretty slick.

Use a noise filter with grayscale output as a displacement map, and animate the amount of displacement to provide the crumpling. You’ll need to experiment with whether the displacement needs to be positive or negative, depending on which part of your image is black and which is white so that the crumple goes in rather than out. (In is better.) Then add a light or two to provide highlights and shadows for enhancement.

Also consider animating the camera view or the 3D orientation of the “paper.” This combines crumpling with a sort of falling over effect. You wouldn’t expect something that crumples to stay in the same orientation. Well, maybe for a can being crushed or something, but certainly not for paper.

To really sell the effect, though, I recommend putting the text on a gray, beige or some similar color background that sort of looks like paper. The text by itself will be too small a surface for anyone to really tell what’s going on, but the paper background will speak for itself.

While you can use any font you like to make it look printed on the paper, handwritten-looking fonts are particularly effective for selling the paper.

Maybe even add lines to make it look like notebook paper, and start with the paper tumbled and rotated to look more like it’s on a desk. This may be moving past what will work for your project, of course, but you get the idea. If you want to sell something crumpling like paper, it helps to provide some visual cues. These can fill in any gaps in your technique — the user gets the idea and fills in the blanks. Something like the idea of persistence of vision….after effects, as it were. 😉

Best,
Tim

[Tim Wilson]

Your client has the right to PLAY the music, for which he pays a blanket license.

Until you explicitly pay for them, NOBODY has synch rights, which is the right to match music to a film or video image for somebody else. This is why everyone plays The Beatles on the radio, but the only time their music has legally been used in an ad is that Nike commercial.

And if you make copies of the ad with the un-cleared music? You also fall afoul of mechanical rights — the right to record and distribute someone else’s music.

Both of these descriptions are way oversimplified. I encourage you to look them up yourself. You’ll get the idea, though. Yes, you should always contact an attorney for legal advice. But even a little reading online will make it very clear that your music needs to be very cleared before you proceed.

From there, a rights house is indeed the way to go. Get a price, tell your client. Then suggest an alternative they can afford. 🙂

Tim

[Tim Wilson]

I think Mark’s right, and I think you made the right call.

I’m clearly in the minority here, but this has been a guiding principle for me: I never, ever give out unique knowledge to paying clients. No effects secrets, no render settings, no tips, or any other secret sauce that I use to differentiate my skillset from my competitors. In some cases I won’t even divulge the precise software I’m using.

The COW is a different story. I’m happy to tell everything I know here because none of you owe me money. 😉

I’ve known quite a few chefs who wrote books, and I don’t know a single one who gave out a recipe exactly as they use it. Why would they? Yes, technique is often enough to separate two people working from the same recipe, but having a better recipe also helps.

The one exception to letting the client peek behind the curtain is if it helps me keep my price high — wow, you spent WHAT for your gear?

I’ve never had anything to sell but my knowledge and my skill (well, and my sunny disposition). I’m not inclined to give either away.

Here’s what I do give away to clients: help with their computers. Help with their home theaters. (Have even helped install both of those.) Help with camcorders, cameras, or any other general purpose gear. Anything at all that will keep me in their speed dial, anything that gives them reasons to call ME. Nothing that takes me out of their billing cycle.

As for the specifics of your situation, it didn’t sound to me like the editor had anything to do with you getting the first gig, so he may not have anything to do with subsequent work. Rather than call the client and say, “Hey, I hope your editor doesn’t think I’m an a–hole,” I’d make it a more general, “Just checking in — how’s that last piece working out for you? Any irons in the fire?”

But if giving away information for free is a dealbreaker, then so be it. The first thing a business operator needs to learn is how to get a client to say yes. Equally valuable over time is knowing when YOU need to say no. Again, I think you made exactly the right call.

Tim

[Tim Wilson]

The native integration between Motion and After Effects is limited. Yes, you can send your Motion project to AE, but without editbable elements. It shows up as a QuickTime movie. Nice, but that’s about the end of it.

If you want to really tie them together, you need to be using software from Automatic Duck. That will allow you to send the Motion project to After Effects where it opens as a comp with the layers rebuilt for you. There are some obvious limitations to this — AE can’t reproduce features that Motion has and AE doesn’t (eg, particles). But if you want to create roughs in Motion and finish them in AE with its more robust toolset (that you also happen to know much better), this is the way to go.

tw

[Tim Wilson]

The native integration between Motion and After Effects is limited. Yes, you can send your Motion project to AE, but without editbable elements. It shows up as a QuickTime movie. Nice, but that’s about the end of it.

If you want to really tie them together, you need to be using software from Automatic Duck. That will allow you to send the Motion project to After Effects where it opens as a comp with the layers rebuilt for you. There are some obvious limitations to this — AE can’t reproduce features that Motion has and AE doesn’t (eg, particles). But if you want to create roughs in Motion and finish them in AE with its more robust toolset (that you also happen to know much better), this is the way to go.

tw

[Tim Wilson]

[silversurfer] “Thanx, Tim… but Who’s John?”

Meant Jack from The Foundry (amazing plug-ins, buy them all).

Sorry about the boo-boo. Maybe Jack is one of those folks whose given name is John???

🙂

[Tim Wilson]

Gary’s right. You need full approval before you burn anything to disk.

For review, I still prefer VHS or very, very small QuickTime/WMV files for approval — with a watermark in both cases, something like “For your approval,” or “Draft.” Nothing that suggests they’ll rip you off. 🙂

To add to Gary’s point, I never turned a final version over to the customer without them paying me first.

The speech goes something like: if it’s not approved, I’ll fix it before I burn it. If it’s approved, you have to pay me before you take it home. (Or whatever your terms for payment – you get the idea.)

Once it leaves your hands, though, they can do what they want with it. They paid for it, so it’s theirs. That’s why you need the full payment first.

tw