If you work in After Effects, you know the names Chris and Trish Meyer. Those of you who have read either of the Meyer’s books, (After Effects Apprentice | Creating Motion Graphics) or have participated in one of their hands-on sessions, know that the best way to improve your skills in After Effects is to learn from Chris and Trish Meyer. And your best opportunity to do so is at this year’s motion{u}.

motion{u} takes place Saturday, October 10, 2009 – the day before the motion09 kickoff. Chris and Trish’s full-day, hands-on session is limited to 15 people – which means if you are even thinking about improving your After Effects skills – you should sign up quickly!

The cost for this training is only $249. Groups of three or more from the same organization can attend for $229 each (please contact us at for details). To fully participate, we recommend you bring a laptop with the latest version of After Effects installed. If you don’t have After Effects installed on your machine, you can download a 30-day trial from Adobe’s website prior to motion09.

how did you get into motion graphics?

TM: I started out as a musician, then got into desktop publishing after working on a music magazine. Working with After Effects was a natural next step because it was kind of a tie-in between music and print—but it was much more interesting than print. This was in the early 1990s, when there was a lot of interest in multimedia and interactive CDs. The Internet wasn’t quite there yet—but obviously something new was happening. And it really fascinated me. Just as desktop publishing had eliminated the need for typesetters, I could see the same thing happening to big post houses with very expensive equipment—because here was this little program that could, in some cases, do more tricks than they could.

CM: When I started working with After Effects—we were using it from version one, and beta testing it when there were just a half-dozen beta testers—I knew it would revolutionize video production. It was an exciting time, because until that point it had been, “we get to do this work because we bought the gear.” Now it was, “we get to do this work because we can afford a computer and we’re creative.”

when you get a project, what’s the first thing you do? what’s your approach to problem-solving?

CM: First, you have to consider what the client is trying to communicate. Is there a mood they’re trying to get across?

TM: Or is it information?

CM: Are there facts or concepts they need to convey?

TM: Or is it just eye candy? A lot of jobs just need to look pretty and animate to the music. While the music should never dictate what the visuals look like, it should dictate how they animate. So it’s very important for the client to pick the music before you start the animation. But as far as the visual look, there’s no hard and fast rule. Every job is different.

CM: It’s very tempting in motion graphics just to focus on the eye candy aspect. But you really need to start with the purpose of the piece.

TM: Exactly. On Web sites, you can do a lot of flashy animations but you really have to stop and ask, who’s the customer? How will they use the site? How will they get in and out of a page? How many words should be on the page? If you’re doing an opening graphic or animation for a crowd that’s moving around, it will be different than one you’d do for a crowd that’s seated. A seated audience is captive; you’ll have their attention for about a minute before the host comes on. You really do have to take everything into account.

CM: It’s not about, “Is it a cool graphic to watch?” The question is, did it serve the client’s purpose? At a trade show, for example, you need to grab someone’s attention while they’re walking down an aisle, you want to drag them into your booth. In a movie title you’re trying to get the viewer in the mood for the film and what they’re about to watch. For that, a subtle distortion, like the effects we did on the title for Cold Mountain, is more appropriate.

TM: When you’re doing a title for a movie, it’s not as creative as people might think. There are a lot of restrictions on what you can and can’t do. For example, the title can’t be bigger than the biggest star’s name. The sequence of names, and whether a name gets its own card is really important. I can’t just shuffle titles around, or put two names on a card.

CM: It’s an interesting contrast between the Web and film. Film is an older industry; there are a lot of set ways of doing things that you have to learn—as opposed to the Web where a lot of it’s like, “we’re making this up, folks. Let’s see what works.”

in your book After Effects Apprentice, you break everything down into simple steps, which helps remove the intimidation factor for a new user.

TM: That’s why we wrote the book. Our big book, Creating Motion Graphics With After Effects, is a little intimidating. It was written for people like us, not video editors or Flash users who just need to know enough about After Effects to get the job done in their world. High schools were using it to teach After Effects, but it’s not really appropriate for that. So we decided to do a book for beginners that covered all the core techniques and used fun examples. It even has some 3-D and advanced material, but it stops short of being overwhelming. People coming from a background in print or video editing can be a little intimidated by working in 3-D. We try to get them over the fear factor and show how, with minimal investment, you can really change the look of what you’ve created. After Effects doesn’t do full-blown 3-D, there’s no modeling. You’re just moving layers in x, y and z, and adding glows and highlights with the camera. The After Effects 3-D world isn’t really full 3-D.

CM: You’re not making dinosaurs, you’re just making information more interesting.

TM: We like to show people that 3-D isn’t all that scary. We teach shortcuts, tips and tricks that let you move around in 3-D space more easily, and make working in 3-D much more enjoyable. But moving into 3-D isn’t something you do in your first week with After Effects. You need to get all the 2-D basics down first. 3-D it really is more for the intermediate user.

TM: First, you find out what it is you need to teach. And then you find some way of explaining it. A lot of it is based on jobs—we try to teach things that you have to do over and over again. We don’t teach things that you did once for a very strange client on a strange job that you never need to do again. We don’t want people to spend time learning something they’re never going to use on a real job. And we really try to break it down. Especially on Apprentice, every exercise is done in three or four pages. There’s no huge, long exercise where, by the time you’re finished, you’re not sure what you learned. The other secret is, don’t try to make a tutorial out of a real job. Real jobs are really messy. Our orientation is to prepare you for a career in using this program and these tools. We believe in keeping the focus on the core techniques you’ll use on a daily basis.

CM: There’s no need to show every single nook and cranny of a program if you’re never going to use it on a real job. We’re really into a user-to-user way of conveying information. I think it’s a difference between treating users as artists rather than programmers.

TM: Exactly. Our approach is, you’re an artist and you want to learn this. We actually joke that our books are for lazy, busy artists. We want the quickest way and the shortest way to do something.

how and when did you decide to write books about After Effects?

CM: Motion graphics people and After Effects users in particular are a community. It’s always been a pretty tight knit community, particularly in the early days. The first few After Effects books were written by people who didn’t use the program. They were authors who saw an opportunity and learned enough to get a book out there, but they weren’t users. In fact, one of those authors emailed us and said, “I see you’ve been writing articles on After Effects. I’m doing a book on After Effects, but I don’t actually know how to use it. Can I just reprint your stuff?”

TM: I turned to Chris and said this is ridiculous. We have to write a book. At that time, between 1998-2000, post houses were starting to take After Effects seriously and hiring people to work with it. We were afraid they were going to have a bad experience with people who just didn’t really know enough

CM: When a user doesn’t know how to use a program, it’s easy for a client to think it’s not a good program.

TM: We didn’t want After Effects to get a bad reputation because people weren’t using it properly. Also, people coming to After Effects from Photoshop or video editing didn’t know anything about the technical side of using After Effects, of outputting to video with non-square pixels and working with frame rates at 29.97. In the early days, some of the video cards only ran at 30 frames a second. If you have the technical stuff down pat, you can be more creative. You’re not worried about whether the frame rate is right or whether you’re adding three-two pulldown.

CM: We tell you enough technical information so that it’s not a mystery, so that users can understand it enough to know what the technical settings should be—then they can go back to being an artist. Showing people stuff that’s tripping them up—that’s been our driving force in doing the classes and books. It’s hey, this causes us trouble, let’s share it with everyone else so it doesn’t cause them trouble too.

speaking at motion09
Chris & Trish Meyer will be two of the ‘rock stars’ at motion09

10.11 – 10.14 2009 | abq | nm
motion | experience inspiration

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author: Lilian Dregalla
Working Story Creative
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copyright: © 2008 – 09
motion.tv

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