After Effects 5.5 Magic

Rating:
Summary: Creating Motion Graphics is better
Review: 'Creating Motion Graphics' is a much more complete and useful read. This book isn't bad, but if you're going to get one book, get 'Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects'. I bought 'After Effects 5.5 Magic' first, but I can't say it really helped my skills very much.

Rating:
Summary: After Effects Magic Indeed!
Review: After Effects 5.5 Magic is a great book for those of you who already have a minimal basis using Adobe's After Effects. This book has great step-by-step tutorials walking you through interesting and creative projects. The book was written collaboratively by well-established professionals that work with this program in the field. I also liked that this book tackled some easy to understand expression problems. I don't know how to write code, but the tutorials made it easy to understand relationships between layers and their properties with easy to understand java script.

Rating:
Summary: Creating Motion Graphics is better
Review: AFTER EFFECTS 5.5 MAGIC
Nathan Moody, et al
PUBLISHER: New Riders
REVIEWED BY: Barbara Rhoades

BOOK REVIEW: After Effects is a program I have never used. If you are a user, this book will walk you through many different affects that it can do. Do you have Photoshop or Illustrator files that you want animated? After Effects will tell you how to do it. Want to make movies or add audio? After Effects can.

These are only two of the things this program can do for the composite artist. The chapters are laid out clearly and with graphics to help explain what you are reading. There are notes and tips throughout each chapter and a CD with all the files needed to work through what the chapters are telling you to do.

The chapters are printed with enough white space and a good font size so you will not get eyestrain while you learn. The book provides a good basic learning technique for anyone that wishes to get started with AFTER EFFECTS 5.5

Rating:
Summary: Book for Composite Artists
Review: AFTER EFFECTS 5.5 MAGIC
Nathan Moody, et al
PUBLISHER: New Riders
REVIEWED BY: Barbara Rhoades

BOOK REVIEW: After Effects is a program I have never used. If you are a user, this book will walk you through many different affects that it can do. Do you have Photoshop or Illustrator files that you want animated? After Effects will tell you how to do it. Want to make movies or add audio? After Effects can.

These are only two of the things this program can do for the composite artist. The chapters are laid out clearly and with graphics to help explain what you are reading. There are notes and tips throughout each chapter and a CD with all the files needed to work through what the chapters are telling you to do.

The chapters are printed with enough white space and a good font size so you will not get eyestrain while you learn. The book provides a good basic learning technique for anyone that wishes to get started with AFTER EFFECTS 5.5

Rating:
Summary: Awesome book for intermediate users
Review: Don't get this as a beginner's book - you'll be lost in the first example! Instead, think of this as fodder for your next work of art AFTER you have a handle on the basics. I got several great tips that created ideas that I was able to implement on my own. Great complement to the Trish & Chris Meyers AE books.

Rating:
Summary: well worth the money
Review: i got this latest edition from newriders a couple of days ago and pretty much haven't beeen able to put it down.

its set out like all the other magic series books with each chapter writen by a different author, each of which seem to be fully capable

none of the tutorials are linked to each other and each are very different, they all go into great detail and explain everything step but step but also tell you exactly why they are doing what they are doing it, which encourages you to think more lateraly about other uses for each tutorial that you do

The book intoduces u to alot of the more advanced features of after effects, the ones that sounded great on the box but you have never actually got round to using, from expressions to the 3d rendering engine. It'll help take your work from
pretty good to a more proffesional level. Its not the be all and end all when it comes to after effects books but its is well worth spending you money on if your an after effect user looking to move the bar up a bit

Rating:
Summary: Magic is a good name
Review: I have been using After Effects since before Adobe bought it. I thought I knew alot, until I read this book. New ideas and concepts on animation itself and even the new stuff with expressions and 3D. Great book if you are new or old to the program. Some parts are hard to read and I saw a few typing errors in the expressions chapters, but all in all, well worth the money. I highly recommend this book.

Rating:
Summary: After Effects Magic
Review: If you're new to After Effects, I could not recommend this book. Better to go with the After Effects Classroom in a Book.

If you are a self-starter and don't mind doing some investigating, then you may love this book. The reason I'm qualifying my praise is because I'm in the middle of it and I'm having some trouble making these projects work the way they claim to. This book is not an step-by-step, procedural kind of
tutorial. They give it to you in broad strokes, and also expect you to finish some of the projects by simply describing the last few steps in a single paragraph, so you have to backtrack and see what you've already covered, and apply it to the rest of the project.

It does teach some pretty cool things, and what you learn, you learn well, because it can be painful to figure some of these projects out. They don't hold your hand here.

At the end of each project are some brief paragraphs describing variations you can do. I expect to do these eventually. I believe in reading a book three times, so maybe by the time I've done that I'll have mastered it. They do seem to know what they're doing - and they also assume that you do.

Rating:
Summary: After Effects 5.5 Magic
Review: This book is craip! a waste of money.

Rating:
Summary: If You Use After Effects, this is a MUST-BUY!
Review: This book is the best book on AE yet! While the Meyer's book is the best intermediate level book, AE Magic takes AE to the next level. A wide range of sample projects with plenty of hands-on experience across a wide range of project types.

From film resolution graphics to expressions, this book takes you where you want to go. Each chapter ends with a collection of modifications and suggestions that you can use in your own productions.

The multiple authors each detail their areas of expertise, and everyone will find a couple projects worthy of experimenting...

Great book!