The mobile version of Video Copilot is now online! It's not going to change the world but it may give you something to do while you're waiting around town.

One day I was sitting in my doctors office and realized the blog and forum were a bit slow to load over a phone network. I talked to my developer Patrick and said "Let's make a mobile version of the website!", he promptly asked "What's a website?" After sorting that out we moved forward.

The challenge was to make the blog and forum easy to read and load quickly from mobile devices. Our forum is currently set up with PHPbb and there isn't a mobile template available so we had to "recreate" the layout and port the information. We brought over essential buttons and function but left out some of the clutter. Same goes for the blog.

The tutorials are really secondary because of the practicality of following along on such a small screen and load times are inevitably long. I decided to select 10 of the shorter tutorials plus the entire Basic Training Series. We may add additional tutorials in the future if things pan out.

Just type https://m.videocopilot.net from a mobile device and your in!

Here's a fun project file that adds an anamorphic stripe and star around the standard AE lens flare. The layers are linked to the position of the Flare, so everything moves together. You can change the color from the "FLARE" solid effects control to create a golden sun or even a red sun. Have fun, just don't look directly at it.

Download Project File (AE CS3)

In other news, I feel much better and I won't need the computer speech program after all.

Although I've been a little under the weather this week, I still spent a healthy amount of time developing content and ideas for the site. 2009 is going to hold many surprises and more tutorials than any other previous year. Not to mentions the products in development will blow your mind! Possibly in a literal sense... wait, that's too obvious. Oh well.

Now if my voice doesn't come back soon, I'll have to type everything up and use one of those computer speech programs. Not a bad idea...

There are definitely more interesting things going on around here (can't say more) but here is some cool news for people with internet phones or within walking distance of Radio Shack. Our web developer Patrick is finishing up a lite version of your favorite video website so you can check us out on the go. We plan on offering some of the shorter (10-20 min) tutorials in a smaller iPod format but mainly it will be a great way to check the blog and possibly forum, if we can sort a few things out first.

I'll let you know more soon.

There have been a few questions about the lighting setup for the recent HUD Tutorial so I thought I would write a quick break down of our shoot. I didn't have any actual set photos so I recreated it with a graph, complete with 1 eyeball.

Basic Setup:
The camera is setup at eye level inside a dark room to ensure the background stays black. A diffused, low-power light sits underneath the cam looking towards the subject's face while another light points down from behind to illuminate small highlights. View Result

That's about it. Oh and don't forget to press record.