Scott Novasic
Forum Replies Created
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Hi Brian, This is Scott.
If you were asking about my reel, I use the ‘standard’ software.
– illustrator – photoshop – AE –For 3d I use Electric Image (im their most recent featured artist on their website) also some Maya and im just starting to train in Cinema. EI is my favorite, but I am learning Cinema because it is used by such a large amount of our industry. It makes sense. I use Particle illusion a lot as well.
Plug ins – where do I start – Sapphire are my favorites, best quality.
All the trapcode stuff, Knoll LF Pro, Final Effects, Damage & Delirium,
I could go on but you get the picture.Where I have invested a lot of money, is in some of the visual effects
footage and source material. I have over 300 gigs of source files, animations and special effects footage I call on for compositing or achieving an effect.SuperNova
Animation & Visual Effects
Scott Novasic
Los Angeles Ca
web:https://web.mac.com/finaleffects -
All good points Jake. I use the 8 core 3.2 with 16 gigs of memory. Memory is so cheap that its worth getting the 2gigs per core.
…….
I will only add this as the BIGGEST reason to get more cores and memory
AND megahertz. 3d rendering. My 3d package sees each core as its own computer so I get virtually an 8 times speed increase. C4d\Maya are all multithreaded apps so thats good. When an HD rendered 3d scene takes close to 10 minutes a FRAME, the mghz saves hours on top of hours.SuperNova
Animation & Visual Effects
Scott Novasic
Los Angeles Ca
web:https://web.mac.com/finaleffects -
I have done it with an animation text expression in AE. And I have done it by hand matting 30 some letters (sample on my demo reel) If there arent too many letters I prefer to do it by the hand made approach so you can customize your individual letters as they fly off. Have a few letters maybe be more playful than others. A particle system cant give you that personal motion that hand animating can. If you dont need that, a particle system is fine.
SuperNova
Animation & Visual Effects
Scott Novasic
Los Angeles Ca
web:https://web.mac.com/finaleffects -
its hard to tell how well done it is from that heavily compressed sample.
BUT, he wore a shirt and jacket that are ‘real friendly’ for rotoscoping.
My guess is just some good roto work with a nicely mounted (not sure how) camera.Very interesting…
SuperNova
Animation & Visual Effects
Scott Novasic
Los Angeles Ca
web:https://web.mac.com/finaleffects -
I responded to your rather dramatic statement that you wouldn’t edit anything more than 10 second with AE. Ive been using AE for 15 or so years. And it still amazes me that you try and say that AE has no transition or trimming support? Are you really serious. 50 to 100 decisions? Thats a SMALL number of layers\edits in most of my work.
Pre comping and any number of other techniques allows me to easily handle MORE layers and effects efficiently in AE. Not to mention that the types of things most editors do is handled in faster than realtime in AE. As I write this, I am at roughly 50 layers for the first 5 seconds of a 15 second national spot for a toy company. I am rendering my adjustments in about 10 seconds for a full 5 second realtime preview. Thats with heavy layering, compositing AND effects!Ive worked in Flame\inferno, and other tools suites on spots with clients present. I was less than impressed with what could and could NOT be done in those environments. I can handle MORE things than that in AE with more flexibility, and now days every bit as fast.
If you would have read my original posting carefully, I recommended FCP for editing (for most projects) and AE for Animation and Effects work (for most projects) I did not mislead anyone. There just arent absolutes in our business. Clients, especially in this economy are finishing effects heavy spots in all types of ways. If you are unaware of how to edit lightning fast in AE, stop bye my LA studio and ill give you a demo, and yes with over 100 edits\layers.
Again, imho – FCP is the BEST for editing, it wins the prize.
It is my belief and experience that for short work, 60 secs or less, AE is very capable of doing everything you need and EVEN more.
Please, maybe we should agree nicely to disagree if necessary.
SuperNova
Animation & Visual Effects
Scott Novasic
Los Angeles Ca
web:https://web.mac.com/finaleffects -
“I don’t think I’d touch an edit more than 10 seconds long with AE”
Im sorry, but thats just not a fair way to portray things. I have cut hundreds of mostly 30 and 60 second spots in AE. There is no ‘magic’ to a cut a fade and color correction. A lot of editors I have met try and portray their craft as technically difficult. Im sorry, but it is not. What IS DIFFICULT and what makes good editors, tends to be their artistic timing and pacing abilities. The good ones instinctly know and have a feel for how to handle footage. I do truly admire the good ones.
…..
I have a LOT less concern over an effects artist doing an edit, than I do an editor doing a high end special effect.SuperNova
Animation & Visual Effects
Scott Novasic
Los Angeles Ca
web:https://web.mac.com/finaleffects -
trying to autotrace a logo in illustrator tends to be a pretty in-accurate way of doing what you need. You can also ‘auto trace’ things in photoshop and export those paths to illustrator, but that too tends to have some problems. Your not going to like my advice, but its what I choose to do and have done hundreds of times in my career. You should hand trace the elements on your own. Photoshop lets you do that, but illustrator is better equipped imho. The effort you put in on the ‘front end’ of a project tends to ripple quality wise throughout the project in my opinion. Or, in other words the tired old phrase “garbage IN, garbage OUT”
…
Good luck and start drawing…. 🙂SuperNova
Animation & Visual Effects
Scott Novasic
Los Angeles Ca
web:https://web.mac.com/finaleffects -
in a super simplistic way…
If you think you like to do EDITING with a little animation and some effects work sprinkled in. Get FCP\motion.
If you want to do ANIMATION and FX work with the ability to do a little editing here and there as needed. Get After Effects.
The longest projects I felt comfortable doing entirely in after effects were music videos 4-6 minutes long and My demo reel, 5 minutes long.
For longer form work, FCP is the way to go. However, this is simply opinion and I am giving what I consider to be generalities, NOT the rule.
Good luck, both are industry standards and outstanding software.
SuperNova
Animation & Visual Effects
Scott Novasic
Los Angeles Ca
web:https://web.mac.com/finaleffects -
Its funny. Using After Effects for 15yrs roughly, and I find motion
terribly limiting. It is ‘counter intuitive’ to the way animators tend to work in both 2d and 3d. simple keyframes are the language of most animation software. I admire apps like motion for trying to re think things some. But the reason it has such little adoption among pro users, I feel, is because it has too many limitations, and presets look like, well, presets. As far as speed goes, after effects would render the project in question at FASTER than realtime. So, speed is not an issue to consider. One issue I personally think of, is, if you are looking to do this kind of work and more adventurous stuff in your career, its always nice to use and get more used to the industry standard applications.I look at it this way. why try and catch fly with your hand (motion) when you could use a large net instead. AE 🙂
SuperNova
Animation & Visual Effects
Scott Novasic
Los Angeles Ca
web:https://web.mac.com/finaleffects -
your ai file is being transformed into a 3d object. Invigerator creates these models based on the shapes you provide, not the color of those shapes. You color and ‘texure’ your image within the invigerator interface. When my regular clients give me logos to convert, they take out all the blends and strokes and give me solid shapes, which work best.
Also, try setting the extrusion depth way down to 1. See if you are still getting spikes.
SuperNova
Animation & Visual Effects
Scott Novasic
Los Angeles Ca
web:https://web.mac.com/finaleffects