Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects: Volume 2: Advanced Techniques

Rating:
Summary: FANTASTIC book(s) for ADVANCED PRACTITIONERS
Review: First, KUDOS to the DV "Expert" Series for sticking to their guns & continuing to produce & release true EXPERT texts. Far too many books are jumping on the bandwagon, calling themselves "Advanced", & are really nothing of the sort. [Those books] seem to think that walking-thru each option in all the menus somehow qualifies as 'Advanced', or perhaps just giving some high-level/strategic "this is how it works" overview is sufficient. In fact, the true Advanced user *already* knows all this; what they're interested in, is: (1) advanced new ideas, (2) advanced new methods, & above-all (3) speed-in-execution... b/c deadlines are always shrinking. ALL THREE MEYERS BOOKS ("Creating" vol.1, vol.2, & "Producing") DO ALL THREE OF THESE EXCELLENTLY.

Second, if it's not already obvious, these texts are NOT for the "I just bought/acquired AE; what do the buttons do?" kind of user. In fact, these books aren't really even for the "I've muddled-about a few projects in AE & still don't quite get it" user. Instead, these books are for the "I've been using AE for a while, am pretty comfortable with it, & now need to take my work to the Next Level" user. And at this "Advanced" level, the Meyers are FANTASTIC at gradation of material. IOW, they start with the bar high, but don't [continue] to make massive leaps-- they provide multiple Bonus Tutorials graded from "Easy" to "Challenging/Strenuous"... you just have to read that as: "Expert/Easy" to "Expert/Challenging" (whew!). In a field where the highest-level practitioners very rarely spend time 'teaching', it's a pleasure & a gift to have such in-depth, advanced, & truly creative *teaching* material available.... of projects that actually look cool-enough for broadcast in prime-time!

Finally, & this should be obvious but obviously isn't, the differences between AE5.0 & AE6.5 aren't massive. There's been some plugins added, a few more options here & there... but Expressions, 3D, render-order, & animation haven't changed significantly. In fact, my "Creating Motion Graphics, AE4.1" edition has very little which is superceded.

The Meyers are interested in making All of us as skilled as they are, & that is refreshing. Anything you see on the TV made in AE ("Alias" is a great example) can be done in AE4.1, or with AE5.0+, using the methods in this book. By being this unbelievably generous, one would think they would put themselves out of business... but instead, they've overbooked, & their Seminars sell-out rapidly.

The emphasis on putting a "Software Version #" on texts like these comes from Publishers, who really like this visual "born-on date" which would seem to create forced obsolescence & thus sell more books. Nope-- this is backfiring, b/c no one is going to keep re-buying $40+ books when the amount of new information (for each new application release) is at most a single chapter. So instead we're now seeing more "Tips" and "Pro" books which don't reference a version-# at all... the next release of the Meyers books shouldn't either, to avoid confusion.

Me, however, I'll always eagerly await these GOLD STANDARD texts, & buy every one they release. This is the Real Stuff.... enjoy!

Rating:
Summary: Too Much Too Soon
Review: I am amazed that reviewers can characterize this book as the "gold standard." Perhaps there are just not many books on this very complex and difficult program, and readers are grateful for anything that comes along. These authors may be fabulous video artists, and apparently are, but they certainly get low marks as teachers.

The main problem with the first volume of this book is that the authors have no understanding whatsoever of a basic principle of teaching and learning. I mean GRADATION. In elementary school, I learned to read with GRADED readers. That means that the readers started with simple words and sentences and then increased in complexity as we pupils progressed.

Not so with Trish and Chris Meyers. They begin volume one with a chapter called "After Effects 101," an extremely dense and complex tutorial "that will walk beginners through the main features of After Effects." As a newcomer to After Effects, I spent several hours completing this difficult and dense "tutorial."

In Chapter Two they would surely change the pace, or so I thought. No way. They continue throughout the book to present an exhaustive review of ALL the features and nuances connected with each technique they discuss. No gradation here. A good example of how these authors overburden the hapless purchasers of this book is Chapter Three in Part One, which introduces us to the timeline and spatial and temporal keyframes. AE has differrent icons in keyframes to indicate whether the type is linear, auto bezier, continuous bezier, or just plain bezier. This is a very complex situation to begin with, and the icons are not easy to remember. BUT they go on to muddle the waters even more a few pages later by introducing another half dozen icons which indicate combinations off ingoing and outgoing interpolations. They even call their sidebar "Strange Icons." Do we really need to know all of this detail in the first 80 pages of a 400 pp. plus book?

After suffering through the first hundred pages of this rather unforgiving tome, I bought Lynda Weinman's ADOBE AFTER EFFECTS 6: HANDS-ON TRAINING, a book which--like all the HOT series from lynda.com--is a model of clarity as well as user-friendliness. Lynda's book definitely DOES understand and implement the principle of gradation and also uses less stuffy terminology (e.g., "speed graph" rather than "velocity graph"). The only plus of this book over Lynda's is that it has colored illustrations.

Finally, why are these authors still selling their books for AE 5.5 when the current version is 6.5? Does it take almost a year for them to update their books or does the publisher just have an overstock of outdated books it wants to get rid of? At least Lynda Weinman and Peachpit have updated her book to version 6.

Rating:
Summary: More of the same essentials for begginers
Review: I found the "editorial reviews" to be a little bit biased given they also contributed to either the book itself, another book by the same authors, or have collaborated with the authors. That being said, Chris and Trish Meyer are two of the most influential Motion Graphics trainers in the industry. They know their stuff and are open to feedback, comments and the like. For example, Chris and I recently corresponded regarding the Volume One book. He was really responsive, professional and considerate. You can't beat that kind of value.
This book picks up where the first left off. I call it, more of the essential skills you need to be a professional After Effects motion graphics producer. This book is for BEGINNERS. Anyone with little to moderate experience might find Volumes One and Two to be a bit beneath them. The way I look at it, Chris and Trish are just being thorough. They have several books out that address the entire motion graphics production creative and technical process. This book falls in between Volume One and After Effects in Production.

Rating:
Summary: More of the same essentials for begginers
Review: I found the "editorial reviews" to be a little bit biased given they also contributed to either the book itself, another book by the same authors, or have collaborated with the authors. That being said, Chris and Trish Meyer are two of the most influential Motion Graphics trainers in the industry. They know their stuff and are open to feedback, comments and the like. For example, Chris and I recently corresponded regarding the Volume One book. He was really responsive, professional and considerate. You can't beat that kind of value.
This book picks up where the first left off. I call it, more of the essential skills you need to be a professional After Effects motion graphics producer. This book is for BEGINNERS. Anyone with little to moderate experience might find Volumes One and Two to be a bit beneath them. The way I look at it, Chris and Trish are just being thorough. They have several books out that address the entire motion graphics production creative and technical process. This book falls in between Volume One and After Effects in Production.

Rating:
Summary: Not only an AE goldmine, but a Flash life-saver too!
Review: I have both of the Meyer's previous books on AE because they are the gold standard in useful AE information. I've learned more practical and applicable info from those books than any other AE source, and their stucture and info layout is head and shoulders above 99% of most of the other graphics related software books I've bought over the years.

I come to AE with an illustration and Flash animation background, so I was a newbie to the world of desktop digital video production for broadcast. The Meyer's have cleared up a world of questions that have cropped up along the way.

But, on to the specific reason for my glowing assesment of this new title:

I needed to composite an animated character, created in Flash, within an AE comp. My problem was that, after following Macromedia's instructions for exporting the animation with an alpha channel, every tiime I brought it in to AE, the alpha would not work, leaving me with an un-wanted background color. I searched high and low through the Flash documentation, the web, even posted my question on Macromedia's Flash User-to-User forum, but no one was able to answer this question.

Enter Creating Motion Graphics, Volume 2.

The complete problem and solution (setting the background color of the Flash movie to a transparent color - THEN exporting as video) is explained in clear and concise detail on pgs. 276-277.

If I had any hair left, the Meyer's would have once again saved me from pulling it all out.

When I find solutions to Flash problems in a book for AE, that even the Macromedia user-forums don't touch, I take it as a pretty strong indicator these folks know what's important, and why.

Of course, this doesn't even touch on the value of the other 398 pages (I just got the book and haven't had time to really read in depth yet), but you get the idea.

Buy the book. Period. And invest in the other two - if you're interested enough in this stuff to lay out the $$ for AE, you'll get a BIG return on your investment in all 3 books.

Rating:
Summary: Possibly the best computer graphics instruction in print
Review: Trish and Chris Meyer have done an outstanding job on the entire series of Creating Motion Graphics. Learning graphics software from instructional books is an unappealing task, and through painful experience, I have learned that most are not worth the paper they are printed on. This series is a stunning exception to that rule. The style is thorough yet straightforward, building skills progressively from chapter to chapter, tutorial to tutorial. All three books in the series are packed with demonstrations of all the technical aspects covered, and each example builds upon what has been covered in previous chapters and tutorials, allowing you to absorb and integrate the techniques through experience using them.