[Ron Lindeboom]

Hello Mohammad,

First, please understand that our leaders are all volunteers and they do not get paid to offer their knowledge here, freely to our members. They hold “day jobs” and they are often very busy working on projects and so they sometimes take days to write back to me and my wife, and we build this site.

No, we do not think you are stupid and we do not think that you are a terrorist. We have many Arab members and some of our leaders and authors are Arab. Some of the countries represented here in the COW’s leadership team are Syria, Egypt, Iran, Pakistan, Kuwait and others.

We are proud to say that we are a worldwide community of people that work hard to help and to understand one another. While we are indeed human and sometimes issues arise that can highlight our differences as people and the different cultures we all hail from, we are also very committed to working as a worldwide community that may help in some small way to bring understanding between us all. To that end, many of our Arab leaders and members interact and are friends with our Jewish leaders and members. We sometimes joke that we are the real United Nations, without all the mess and expense of the fancy limousines or the diplomats and their high cost parties.

To see our leaders and the countries they represent, please visit:

https://leaders.creativecow.net/

So, please do not feel that anyone here looks at you in the manner in which you expressed. That is simply not the case.

As to becoming a COW Leader, that comes about by the COW Team selecting new leaders from among the people who post answers and help for other members. We watch for those members who are actively helping others and whose posts prove that they are truly helping lead the forum they post to, so we write them and ask them to make it official by joining the team.

We never put up new leaders who have not been involved in the site. We look for active members who have been contributors and who are already leading. So, the likelihood that we will add a new leader who has not been active in the COW forums, is very unlikely. It is not a matter of where they hail from but is due to the fact that becoming a leader in the COW is built on recognizing the ones who are already leading by helping.

We spend many many thousands of dollars every month building a site to help people around the world to be better at what they do. All of our services are free. The only items we sell are the DVDs and that is because we work with our leaders to help them publish and sell their titles. But all our tutorials, podcasts, newsletters, our magazine, etc., are all free. Because of this, we do not get involved in direct sponsorships of students or others that ask us for help. We are already helping many hundreds of thousands of people worldwide and therefore do not have the resources to help beyond that. When we do help someone with direct money sponsorships, it is to help one of our leaders whom we know is in trouble and needs assistance.

As to the way to get DVDs of the Creative COW Master Series to you there in Iran, I do not know. We are only set up one way to work and that is with PayPal. We are a small company that is built up of only 5 people that do all of this and it is a LOT of work and we do not have every option available to us due to us being such a small company.

So, in the end, I do not know what to tell you as to why Andrew didn’t write you back — as Andrew’s company has grown so much that he rarely posts in the COW any longer — or why Aharon Rabinowitz didn’t write you back. I suspect that Aharon is very busy as he and his wife are expecting a new baby and he is working very hard to get things ready for this new addition to their family.

Tim Wilson may interact here in this thread, as he might know more about the politics of mailing to Iran. I do not do that part of the business, so I have no idea whatsoever as to if or how we can mail to Iran. I do know that we cannot mail to Cuba and a few others places. If Iran is one of those places, I do not know.

I hope that I have been of some help in getting you to understand what the COW is and isn’t, and how and why we function as we do.

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom

Remember: Burt Bacharach lied. What the world really needs now is an undo button.

[Ron Lindeboom]

[Dave LaRonde] “…that’s the danger of AE rotoscoping, because you can’t do what you want. Because each Mask Position keyframe represents a SET of mask vertices, you’ll have to change the bad mask vertices for every keyframe involved.”

Ah, Dave, the new Advanced AE Rotoscoping title from the Creative COW Master Series, featuring Pete O’Connell, has some strategies and ways that GREATLY speed up the roto capabilities of After Effects.

If you would like to do a review or just get to know it, please write Kathlyn, Dave, and let her know that you would like a copy. Give her your address.

I think you will be blown away by what’s on the DVD. I sure was.

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom

Remember: Burt Bacharach lied. What the world really needs now is an undo button.

[Ron Lindeboom]

Hi Kevin,

Good call. I have had issues like this in the past and I have found that when I force a rebuild of the prefs file, the issues go away. In my case, I go into the prefs and change a setting or two and close it. This forces the prefs to save my new settings, causing a new prefs file to be saved.

I can’t guarantee it will work for all the issues that Kelly is having but it has saved my enlarging posterior more than a few times in the past.

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom

Remember: Burt Bacharach lied. What the world really needs now is an undo button.

[Ron Lindeboom]

Not presently, other than the basic print functions that are part of your browser/OS.

Nice idea though. It would be nice to have the ability to print threads in the “View Entire Thread” view.

Thanks for the suggestion.

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom

Remember: Burt Bacharach lied. What the world really needs now is an undo button.

[Ron Lindeboom]

Without any idea of what platform you are on, the OS version you are on, which browser you use, which version of Flash, Quicktime, etc., etc., that you are using, it is pretty rough to figure out the issue you are experiencing.

Can you please provide some information?

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom

Remember: Burt Bacharach lied. What the world really needs now is an undo button.

[Ron Lindeboom]

Ted,

This is your LAST warning on the asshole stuff…

I just found this and am now watching you like a hawk.

Try ANYTHING like this again and I will shut off your account — and block you at the IP level where you won’t even be able to log-in to the COW and read it, let alone post in it.

You seem to be the one with the problem to me…

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom

Remember: Burt Bacharach lied. What the world really needs now is an undo button.

[Ron Lindeboom]

Yes, it was an awesome thing to see, Scott. I am always surprised when I see what people come up with in After Effects that breaks all the rules and yet somehow works. Imagination is a powerful thing. ;o)

It’s great to have you here in the COW, Scott.

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom

Remember: Burt Bacharach lied. What the world really needs now is an undo button.

[Ron Lindeboom]

[scott novasic] “You are very confident, I did not know you worked in AE that much.”

I started using After Effects back in November of 1994, when CoSA After Effects 2 was out.

I love AE and it’s one of my favorite apps. I never said that I could make the same kind of effect that you could make in 3D. What I said was that I could indeed make an aquatous looking person in After Effects.

I have found over the years that there is little that I can’t do in After Effects if I set my mind to it. Back in v2, my son created an animation of rose petals opening in After Effects. When people saw it, they thought it was done in 3D. It wasn’t. It was masked layers with the bevel alpha and lighting effects set appropriately and animating the masks to emulate the look of a rose opening. It was gorgeous and he didn’t realize that it couldn’t be done. Some people on the forums told him it couldn’t be. I told him to think the problem through and he’d find the answer. He did and showed it to me the next day.

After Effects has always seemed like one of the most imaginative environments out there.

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom

Remember: Burt Bacharach lied. What the world really needs now is an undo button.

[Ron Lindeboom]

Hi Scott,

When using After Effects (as I was referring to — as a stop-gap version not one that is equal to what can be accomplished with 3D) I can clearly see a way to accomplish an effect that is of a type that he referred to. I Clearly said it wouldn’t match the 3D rendered version but that if I used layers of someone who was shot on a green screen and was keyed and then the same image was repeated upon itself numerous times, I could pull off an effect like this. Not exactly one like that which he showed but one that would be interesting and compelling on the screen. There would be no way to use textures in a grid as you could in say, Maya or C4D. But by combining layers with modes and applying various effects to the layers, I could indeed pull off this kind of effect.

Respectfully,

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom

Remember: Burt Bacharach lied. What the world really needs now is an undo button.

[Ron Lindeboom]

If you want the realism that is in the video that you linked to, then it is going to have to be done with a 3D application.

After Effects can fake it — to a point — but it is going to take some green screened person that is a few layers deep (of the same image on top of itself and blended together using transfer/blend modes) with say water mapped to one layer of the person and then particles or scatterize on another, etc.

It would make for an interesting variant but I am not sure that you could get the effect as in the version you linked to.

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom

Remember: Burt Bacharach lied. What the world really needs now is an undo button.