[John Cuevas]

I prefer tablets that have a few buttons on them. You can map certain functions to those buttons and that can be handy.

Otherwise I’m just a big fan of tablets, great for roto work and it’s just a lot less stress on the wrist if you have to do this all day long. I use my mine for for everything, AE, Avid, Photoshop…. Strangely we have 4 edit bays at work and 4 different tablets(just bought them at different times. This is the one I like best one, for now, until the next new one comes out.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

It looks like there was some time-remapping, perhaps multiple shots that the editor was transitioning to/from in the square-crow sequence that can be executed by precomping the layers and dissolving between shots. As far as the effects though you can accomplish this pretty easy.

Add CC Motion Tile to your layer and check the Mirror Edges option. Add a shift Channels effect. Now duplicate your layer twice, for a total of 3 layers. You want to make each layer display only one color channel. So for the top layer -> Shift Channels change the “Take Green/Blue” to Full off. Do this for all three layers so you have a Red/Green/Blue layer. Now change all the layers tranfer mode to screen.

Finally just animate the Motion Tile center for each layer very quickly. Add a start keyframe, move 5-6 frames forward and add an end keyframe. Now in the middle add a keyframe that moves the video. Do this for all 3 layers, but don’t move them all the exact same.

You might also add some motion blur to taste.
I made a simple example project in case my explanation was unclear: 4050_rgbsplitfolder.zip

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

If this course is being set up to get the people up to speed as quickly as possible(corporate/promotional) I would focus on: type preset/animators, keylight, rotoscope brush, basic color correction, transitions and the stylize effects(fun and easy).

The presets window also many backgrounds and pre-built effects that can be easily manipulated with brain wave. Of course this is just a basic list of effects, obviously the priority would be to get them to understand how AE works first.

Good luck,

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Also, if you just need your shape layer to be a mask, you could just put it above the layer you want to mask and change the bottom layers track matte to alpha matte.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Select the shape layer, then on the menu bar Layer -> Auto-trace.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

You could build that in AE – probably pretty easy when the CS6 version comes out. The simplest way to build something like that would be to create it all in a 3D app, but there are different approaches to accomplishing something like that.

You could build the text document in illustrator, save it as an .AI file and bring it into zaxwerks and animate in AE. Zaxwerks probably would be overkill, it includes a lot of extra features(bevels and multiple materials that wouldn’t be necessary to create that video.)

Or build the entire thing in AE in a precomp and then use Shapeshifter to extrude it. Check out the tutorials and previews over at Mettle, it’s a pretty cool plugin.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

My favorites are the Trapcode Plugins, that you can get at red giant(they have some really good tutorials on using them too and all of there stuff.). Also you can get trial versions of all of them before you buy. If you register at red giant(Red Giant People) they have tons of useful presets and fun things to download there too.

I also use the Mettle Shapeshifter plugin alot.

Another favorite is Optical Flares

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Andrew David did some tutorials for the Cow about the various methods extruding text in AE, including one where he discusses the powerful zaxwerks plugin. Zaxwerks can actually take 3d objects from other programs and import them into AE, you can then use the AE camera with the objects. But if you were going that route you might as well animate the object in 3D Max, use the plugin Max2AE and bring the camera data into AE.

Mettle has a couple of great plugins for extrusion in AE, Shapeshifter and Freeform(the basic version comes free with AE).

Finally CS6 will be able to fully extrude and ray trace shapes and text!!!!

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

You need to use the Pan(P) behind tool to move your anchor point to the center of the object you would like to rotate in 3d.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Lock the masks you want to hide, then go to Layer -> Mask -> Hide Locked Masks

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.