A friend of mine just released a new training series for After Effects and the plug-in Zaxwerks ProAnimator called "Making it Look Great".

The author, John Dickinson is a real life broadcast designer with more than a training background. When he's not fighting kangaroos, he produces commercial and promos for a major station in Australia. Needless to say he does quality work and I recommend his series if you're using Zaxwerks or are interested in this 3D plug-in down the line.

Watch his Promo Video
Product Page

While I'm on the subject of plugging products for friends... Another talented guy, Harry J. Frank has a superb series on Expressions. So if you want to learn more about using them in After Effects this is a great and in-depth series. I think he's working on another series that should be out soon, so keep your eyes open. Check Harry's Expression Training Series.

Of course if Video Copilot has a new product out, I'll probably forget I know either of these guys because you know me I'll sell the shirt off my back :)

How to compress for the web? That is the question. Well, there are a lot of options out there but the main consensus is that you don't want to use your creative programs like Premiere or After Effects to do it. Although you can use great formats like MP4 and H.264, the handling of the compression is not very good.

I use Camtasia Studio to record and export my tutorials in the FLV format (flash video) and the results are great but require some tweaking. The new camtasia studio has some great features although some important ones still missing... Another good standalone app is shown above called Sorenson Squeeze which allow batch processing of many great formats but some need to be unlocked to use them. The one think After Effects does well is exports to Flash Video, but you need to have some flash experience to embed the video for the web.

Our good friend Aharon Rabinowitz has a pretty cool training DVD that covers how to properly compress video using a bunch of different software. He is like that magician on FOX that gave away all of the secrets and he was smart and wore a mask but then he took the mask off and that wasn't a good idea because all the other magicians killed him or made him dissapear. I think that is what happend... anyways.

Check out his DVD if you ever need to that kind of stuff it is good one :)

UPDATE: Here is a link to one of the lessons:
https://library.creativecow.net/articles/rabinowitz_aharon/ITKVS.php

Here is a really great performance by Sam Loya that we decided to cut from the recent tutorial because of time constraints. Also to clarify, nearly all of the video clips used in our tutorials are produced specifically to demonstrate each effect. We want you guys to have access to professional footage whenever possible so when you buy our great products these tutorials will keep getting better :) Hint hint.

NO SPOILERS! Do not reference what you see please.

Watch Video (Viewer discretion is advised: Thematic Elements)

I'm very excited to announce our newest product Evolution.

This new DVD is jammed full of pre-animated decorative design elements and so much more. These elements are over 720p HD at 60fps and ready for any production pipeline. Of course I'm also including several video tutorials and a long list of bonus features you can't miss. Each element is meticulously crafted and animated with extensive detail and quality. We know how long these took to make and believe me it wasn't easy :)

We have a release date set but what I can tell you is the product will be available in less than a month. I can't answer any other questions at this time since the details are still being finalized, however the product page will be online soon.

Here is an image I just finished for the DVD content that uses only Evolution.

This is a very exciting week for some big news and announcements. As you know we are quickly approaching the 50th Video Copilot Tutorial and we will be having a special celebration and we'll also be announcing a brand new DVD that you don't want to miss. (Hint: it is not a sequel to any of our current products)

Of course we have a brand new tutorial this week that should be a lot of fun and may include a special demonstration by yours truly. I hate to be so generic but there is too much excitement and I had to let you know.

And more importantly, I'm going to be Indiana Jones for Halloween :)