At my meeting as “the new guy” with Red Giant last week, I took a couple days to explore the city. One of the things I did was head out to Alcatraz to explore fun times to be had on “The Rock”.

I was immediately struck by the incredible textures found all over the island. Not to turn the day into a texture exploration, I snapped a just few decent photos in an attempt to post a collection of textures from the walls of this near century-old San Francisco prison.

I shot more stuff, but you’ll see that turning up elsewhere.

Download the textures here

Dear visitors and loyal fans,

As many of you well know, my current professional career is split between two distinct sides of the same coin. One one side, I mostly spend my days working as a freelance motion designer. This has garnered many memorable experiences of working with tremendously talented people — from my roots, working with the unrelenting post-production and design professionals of Detroit, to Digital Kitchen in Chicago’s cold winter, and on to great studios like Blur Studio here in sunny LA. From National Geographic, to NBC, to TV Land, I’ve seen all the nooks and crannies of the life that a motion designer can see. But I’ve reached a point where adding one more big name isn’t going to improve anything for me, especially my happiness.

On that other side of the coin, I’ve been involved with communities that focus on learning, sharing, connecting and growing as a motion designer and visual effects artist. Graymachine and The Motion Exchange have been very personal endeavors of mine, and I have thoroughly enjoyed learning and growing, side-by-side with you.

When I study the two sides of my career coin, it is now obvious what has always brought me more joy. I’ve learned that happiness is not found along the path of making reality show graphics, sizzle reels, or commercials for sugar water. It is not found in the daily stress of courting new clients, while trying to get existing clients to pay their overdue invoices, while juggling three jobs that are all over budget. It is not found in a job where last minute changes and late nights that keep me from reading my son a bedtime story.

I’ve only been bestowed a small number of gifts in life, among them my wonderful wife and awesome little boy. But, another is my ability to understand the ambiguous, imagine the creative, and bridge the two together. I’m somehow also able to put this process into words for others to understand. But I fear, if I continue to use my talents to create cultural pollution for television, I’ll have little to show as a legacy for myself, nor will I feel like I’ve done much good with my time on this planet. Nearing my 37th year on Earth, it’s time to make a change.
In short, I am largely leaving the world of freelance motion design. I am proud to announce that I will be joining Red Giant Software on a full-time basis. Since this career epiphany hit me last Fall, I had been determined to find a partner that sees eye-to-eye with what I want to accomplish in my career, and support what I value in life. I am so grateful to have been working with this great company for years, and I am humbled to be extended an invitation to join them.
In partnering with RGS, my efforts will be focused on helping you find the right tool or idea for your next job, film or project. And no other company represents this set of artistic set of tools more completely, especially with what we have collectively planned for 2010.  I’m excited to share this new opportunity with you. So, follow me, and I will continue to do what I do here — help others — without the hurried pressure to “get back to work.”

So what does this mean for graymachine?

It means more time to devote to what made graymachine a useful resource for the community in the first place. You’ll see more tutorials, free content, templates and news. But, instead of just seeing it here,  you’ll see it in other places too. You might see some products become exclusive to RGS, and new products mostly be for RGS. But, honestly… how often has something I’ve done NOT centered around Red Giant products?

So, stick around and you’ll see great things. Until then, talk to you soon!

Harry

Introducing Trapcode Particular Presets: Holiday

Red Giant and I got together for a bit of holiday cheer this season. They had an idea to create some festive and useful compositions for the holiday seasons. With time of the essence as the holiday lights are already burning full throttle, I quickly turned around a set of 55 AE CS3 compositions featuring a mix of motion backgrounds, reveals, type compositions, using a number of AE and 3D pre-rendered elements.

Visit Red Giant Software to check out the package

I realize that expressions can be daunting, and some would rather copy and past useful code rather than learn the language. That’s cool with me. Therefore, I’d like to share with you my 5 favorite expressions. These are expressions I use in just about every project, and I consider them to be incredible workflow enhancements.

Download them as FFX presets for AE CS3 here.

Are you looking to learn more about After Effects Expressions? Check out my complete training series on the topic in the graymachine store.

1. Intertial Bounce

Essentially, Inertial Bounce creates a bouncing motion of any parameter from one keyframe to the next, based on its velocity. Being that true “velocity” includes the vector (or traveling direction in 3D space), the bounce happens in whatever direction the object is traveling. This also accounts for scalar or array values, so you’ll find that this expression works just as well on 2D rotation as it does on 3D position. It’s very cool!

This expression is a bit of a community effort. The seeds were certainly planted by the great Dan Ebberts, and then a modified version was posted on mograph.net. Although I’ve made a slight modification to it to make it a little more user friendly, it’s nothing that I will lay claim to as my own code. Nonetheless, it’s a great helper and I use it all the time.

Modify “amp” for the amplitude or how much bounce is present. The variable “freq” is the frequency, or how frequently the bounce occurs. The “decay” is like a friction or mass setting, a higher value means a shorter decay over time.

amp = .1;
freq = 2.0;
decay = 2.0;

n = 0;
if (numKeys > 0){
n = nearestKey(time).index;
if (key(n).time > time){
n--;
}}

if (n == 0){ t = 0;
}else{
t = time - key(n).time;
}

if (n > 0){
v = velocityAtTime(key(n).time - thisComp.frameDuration/10);
value + v*amp*Math.sin(freq*t*2*Math.PI)/Math.exp(decay*t);
}else{value}

2. Autofade

This is nothing brilliant, but it is something I wrote and use all the time. You’ll also find something similar in the After Effects preset “Behaviors” called Fade In + Out, which uses the Solid Composite effect and a custom interface. But, I like a simpler version that I use on Opacity.

This is a slightly enhanced version that I’d revamped since I posted it in the “Auto Slideshow” presets and added the option to use markers. If there are no markers, the transition variable is used (where is says “transition=20″, this is in frames.) If there are *2* markers, the first marker is used for end point of the fade in, and the second marker is used to define the start of the fade out.

//Autofade: Add to opacity

transition = 20;       // transition time in frames
if (marker.numKeys<2){
tSecs = transition / ( 1 / thisComp.frameDuration); // convert to seconds
linear(time, inPoint, inPoint + tSecs, 0, 100) - linear(time, outPoint - tSecs, outPoint, 0, 100)
}else{
linear(time, inPoint, marker.key(1).time, 0, 100) - linear(time, marker.key(2).time, outPoint, 0, 100)
}

3. Snap Zoom In/Out

This is a cool expression to use on text. It creates a “snap” zoom on the in and out of the layer by modifying scale.

//Snap zoom in and out: apply to scale
snapScale = 300; //percent of scale to zoom

trans = 4; //  transition time in frames
trans = trans * thisComp.frameDuration;
inTrans  = easeOut(time, inPoint, inPoint + trans, [snapScale,snapScale], [0,0]);
outTrans = easeIn(time, outPoint, outPoint - trans, [0,0], [snapScale, snapScale]);
value+ inTrans + outTrans

If you prefer to use Z space position instead of scale, try this one:

zoom = 5000; //distance to zoom
trans = 4; //  transition time in frames
trans = trans * thisComp.frameDuration;

inTrans  = easeIn(time, inPoint, inPoint + trans, [0,0,zoom], [0,0,0]);
outTrans = easeOut(time, outPoint, outPoint - trans*2, [0,0,0], [0,0,zoom]);
value+ inTrans - outTrans

4. Y Axis Jitter

This is from Lesson 5 of my expressions series. This creates a random jittery motion in the Y axis. You can modify probability to make or less jitter, and the pos variable to define how large the jitter is.

// Y Axis Jitter
probability = 8 ;  //higher is less likely
pos = 50;

val  = random(-probability-2, 1);
m = clamp(val, 0, 1);
y = wiggle(10, pos*m)-position;
value + [0, y[1]]

5 . toComp

This one you’ll have to watch a short tutorial for here, and you can read a lot more about it at motionscript.com. The idea is that you can apply the equivalent 3D location to any 2D location. This might not sound exciting. But, think of all the 2D parameters out there, like lens flare location, Shine source, beams, etc. It is probably my most commonly used expression.

But, the basic idea is this:

layer = thisComp.layer("Null 1")
layer.toComp([0,0,0])

Note: I intentionally left off the semicolon, as you techinically don’t need it in this case. Therefore, all you need to do is pickwhip your layer where the “layer =” variable is.

The issue of how After Effects uses RAM is one of those topics that seems to get asked just about every forum, at least once a week. I’d like to clarify some of the confusion on this.

The fundamental issue revolves around the following issues:

• Despite the amount of RAM one has in their computer, when launching After Effects the splash window (or the About window) will show a much lower amount being used, such as 3GB.
• Furthermore, there is a preferences panel that gives the impression that one has more control over this RAM allocation, and that there is some magic setting to fix the issue.
• That because After Effects only seems to use 3GB of RAM at best, that having between 2-4GB of of RAM is “plenty.”

Cutting to the chase, and to make you a more informed user, I’d like to present the facts, and then explain them in a little detail:

• You SHOULD have more than 4GB of RAM in your computer
• Your computer most likely can and will use more than 4GB of RAM for After Effects

Currently, After Effects on Mac OS X can use up to 3.5 GB of RAM.  After Effects on 32-bit Windows operating systems (XP, Vista 32) can use up to 3 GB of RAM; however, to use more than 2 GB in After Effects, you must configure Windows XP or Windows Vista appropriately.  For details on this, see Jonas Hummelstrand’s website: (www.adobe.com/go/learn_ae_jonaswindows3gb.) After Effects on 64-bit Windows operating systems can use up to 4 GB of RAM with no special configuration.

So, where does the other RAM come in? If you bought 12GB of RAM, was that a waste of money? No!!

When you work with After Effects, knowing full well that it is limited to that RAM that we just spelled out, there’s more going on behind the scenes that you might realize. If you proceed to Preferences>Multiprocessing, you’ll find an option to enable multiprocessor rendering. In fact, you’ll see a very description paragraph as to what multiprocessing actually is doing.

After Effects will “use multiple processes to speed rendering for RAM preview and final output”, ie. rendering.

What are these “multiple processes?”

Behind the scenes, when you render or perform a RAM preview, additional applications launch in the background that you do not see. In fact, the only way to see them is to launch a process viewer. In Mac OS, you can use the Activity Monitor. What you will see are processes called “aeselflink” (AE Self Link.)

These are helper applications that can use up to 2GB of RAM for each CPU. Being that even one “duo core” has 2 CPUs, you can see how this might add up very quickly. A dual quad core computer has 8 CPUs, which can easily eat up as much as 16GB of RAM when rendering. And this doesn’t count any additional programs you might try to run in the background.

If you have a small amount of RAM (less than 4GB), there is a distinct possibility that using multiprocessing will slow down the rendering process. If you lack the RAM for the helper application(s), your computer will use virtual RAM (hard disk space.) This, most likely, will slow the rendering process. This obviously depends on how many CPUs you have, and how much RAM.

So, get that RAM. You SHOULD have a lot of RAM as an After Effects user. For as much as you spent on that computer, having a low amount of RAM will greatly reduce the potential speed of your machine.  This goes for AE CS3 and CS4.

Back when I was working as a freelancer, I got a detailed look into a “day in the life” of many different companies. I’ve noticed a lot of commonalities between them all. More importantly, I’ve seen a lot of common factors that provide a haven for negative energy. Although there are many of these, I wanted to point out the ones I see most frequently, and offer some insight as to why I think they should be avoided.

You Should Be Happy To Have a Job

I cannot stand it when I hear people telling me that employers hold employment over the heads of their employees, with lines like, “You should be happy to have a job.” Let’s get this straight: companies make money with employees. Design is a service-based industry, where employees perform a service, and where the employer charges many times more what is paid to the individual employee. In addition, there is equity in valuable employees that keep clients coming back.

Just like “you are what you eat,” a company is who it hires. Companies should make careful decisions about which people they hire, only selecting the right candidate for the job. The candidate should be able to do the job well in return for compensation. If the job is not done well, then it is time to take action: communicate that the job isn’t up to par, offer more training to the employee, move them to a more suitable position, or let them go. That’s the system that drives the workforce.

The skills of the employee make money for the company, and the company returns the favor with salary and benefits. It’s a two-way street. If an employer thinks that they are doing employees a “favor” by employing anyone, then they are employing people for the wrong reason. If you are are an employer and you’ve found yourself saying this: STOP. This is one of the most toxic things you can say to an employee. It not only shows the lack of appreciation for the skill of the employee, but it shows an ignorance for the reason of hiring someone to do a job. If you don’t value what an employee does for you, then why did you hire them?

In the US, if an employer thinks that providing benefits is a saintly act, consider the following. I provided myself with my own benefits including a PPO health plan, prescriptions, emergency coverage, hospitalization, and $20 copay doctor visits for $140 a month. For a family of three, it is about $500. So, as much as I hate the fact that Americans are literally stuck with their bill of health, the options are out there for individuals. In short, employers aren’t performing miracles by giving you benefits.

I Hate Working Here

If you hate your job, then it’s time to leave.  If you can’t leave, then you should appreciate why you are there, why you are so dependent on it, and get yourself an attitude adjustment.  But, being the “I hate this place” person is poison for the morale of a company.  Just like enthusiasm is contagious, the same goes for negative energy. One person starts saying this, then more and more start saying it. Then content employees hear the whispers of discontent and in turn also become dissatisfied. Who wouldn’t hate working at a place with a bunch of miserable employees? In fact, I’ve been there myself. So, in short don’t be “that person.” If you are saying this, it’s time for an attitude adjustment or a new job.

Is it time for you to go freelance?

The Spoiled Employee & The Free Lunch

“Sushi again for lunch?” Come on people. I am firmly against free lunch in facilities as it breeds nothing but negative energy. First, eating a high calorie lunch every day will do nothing for your health other than ruin it.  I tend to bring my lunch. If I do order, I try to keep the calorie count down by ordering something sensible.

My second problem with the free lunch is that it establishes an uncomfortable class structure between those that fetch, serve and tidy up after lunch, and those that receive it. I’ve seen several instances where an employee will treat the poor souls serving lunch like wait staff: complaining about their order, requesting condiments, etc. I know there is a structure to how things work: management, senior staff, assistants, etc.  But, treat please treat your co-workers like your friends, not your servants.

Third, somehow this privilege of a free lunch gets overlooked and treated, somehow, like a burden. I’ve heard this way too many times: “Oh no, that place again.” If you need a reminder, about 800 million people go to bed hungry every night. If you want to complain about getting pita sandwiches too often, you need an attitude check.

I don’t care if you are the most in-demand editor or motion designer on the planet — if you do get a free lunch — be humble about it. Order something small. Thank the person that brings it to you. Clean up after yourself. Realize that you are very lucky to have this privilege. My suggestion: facilities should skip the lunch ordering all together. Take a lunch break and get some air.

The Rumor Mill

Every company has rumors that go around. The more widespread they are, the worse the communication is within the company. As the saying goes, “Communication is worst in the communications industry.” We are always so busy communicating the ideas of others, that we forget to talk to each other, or don’t think that it is necessary.

When I was staff, I remember the circulating rumors about potential bad news. Sometimes companies fall on hard times, that’s inevitable. A company I was with had an open house one week, launching a new web site, logo, facility signage, etc. The next week, it was announced that the company would be closing its doors.  Talk about mixed messages! Companies should NOT let communication happen organically, or assume that people know what is going on.

How a company is going to react to bad news should be public knowledge to the staff. No matter what, there WILL be speculation. Management can either let it spread like a dark cloud throughout a company, or communicate what they can, even if it is bad news. A simple meeting or email with honest answers might be tough to hear, but it’s better than letting employees guess. This guessing game leads to paranoia about employees losing benefits, wages or their entire job. This often stimulates overcompensation: working late, skipping vacations, as well as attempts to “outperform” other employees in an attempt to not be on the chopping block. All of this creates a terrible work environment.

If you an employer, be upfront about bad news and how it will potentially be handled. If you are an employee, skip the rumor mill. If you didn’t hear it from your boss, then don’t spread it. If you DID hear it from your boss, then encourage him or her to tell the rest of the company.

Overtime as the Norm

I understand that, on occasion, jobs will arise that require long hours. However, some places see to make a part of the culture of the company.

If you are content with this, don’t let me stop you. But, being overworked will eventually burn you out. If you are a salaried employee, it lessens what you earn each hour. Even if you are paid hourly, working 10-12 hour days pretty much make you tethered to your job. If your life is work, eat, sleep.. is the job REALLY that enjoyable? How can you do a job well if there is little else to your life than work? Just like a good design needs negative space and contrast, our lives need the same.

Plus, once you have kids, you’ll realize that all that free time that you could have had is LONG gone, and you should have enjoyed it while you can!

This short tutorial covers 3 awesome applications of the toComp expression. This is a very simple and very powerful topic! For even more information, check out Dan Ebberts page on Layer Space Transformations.

Working with a LOT of layers? Often with heavy comps, it would be great to put your current layer at the top of the composition, rather than buried down the list. Shy layers is one solution. A quicker one: select the layer and hit “x”. This will bring that layer to the top of the timeline window.

When you select a layer in the After Effects timelime, there are a lot of shortcuts to display certain properties, like ‘p’ for position, ‘ee’ for expressions, ‘u’ for keyframed properties.  However, what if you’d like to show only one specific property that does not have a dedicated key?

Select the property and use the shortcut combo “ss”, to show only properties that you have selected.

In the tutorial Expressions and External Documents, I showed some ideas on how to use external documents to drive content inside After Effects. The feedback that I’ve gotten from the community is that this technique can be a real timesaver in projects that require a lot of repetitive content, such as bumpers, lower thirds, interstitials, etc.

In the tutorial, with my own attempt at the idea, I fell short on a couple of challenges.  First, because After Effects uses different address structures for Windows and Mac OS X, it’s a little tricky to make one expression that works on both platforms.  Second, as I’ve later found out, the #include function was disabled in AE CS4.

Fortunately, scripting and expressions guru Lloyd Alvarez stepped in to fill in the gaps and provide a solution that works in both CS3 and CS4, as well as both platforms. Let’s take a look at the full Source Text expression:

if ($.os.indexOf("Mac") != -1)
myPath = "/Expressions/";
else
myPath = "file://c:\\\\Expressions\\";
myPath += "data.txt";
$.evalFile (myPath);
eval(thisComp.name);

Let’s take a look at what is going on here.

if ($.os.indexOf(“Mac”) != -1)

In this first line,  $.os is equal to the name of our current operating system. For example, on my computer this displays “Macintosh OS 10.5.6″.  indexOf() simply looks for the content in parentheses. If it finds this, like the letters “Mac”, it is equal to a value of 0. If it is not found, the value is -1. If you’ve not used it before, the term != means “does not equal”.

Therefore, this is an if/else condition that says “if the current OS contains the word ‘Mac’,then do the following. So, we have things set up for both Mac and Windows, and we can handle things accordingly.

The next line is what runs if the OS is Mac based, and it establishes the initial path of where to look for the external document.

myPath = “/Expressions/”;

If the OS is not a Mac, and is therefore Windows based, the path will be formatted for Windows.  Note that in Windows, two slashes: \\  need to be supplied to denote a directory, not just one.

else
myPath = “file://c:\\\\Expressions\\”;

Now that we have the path set up, let’s assume that the text document that has our data is called “data.txt”.  What can be done at this point is to add the path and filename together like this:

myPath += “data.txt”;

This is the equivalent of myPath = mypath + “data.txt”;

Then, an alternative to #include is $.evalFile, which fortunately works in CS3 and CS4 as a way to look at the contents of an external file. Then, just like in the tutorial, we can use eval() to have the comp name pass as the the value for the source text, as the last value in the expression. Assuming there is a variable in the data file that matches the comp name, it will be displayed as the source text.

$.evalFile (myPath);
eval(thisComp.name);

To have the expression wrapped inside try/catch to eliminate error messages (such as in the case of the text document not having the correct scene number), here is a version like that:

try{
if ($.os.indexOf(“Mac”) != -1)
myPath = “/Expressions/”;
else
myPath = “file://c:\\\\Expressions\\”;
myPath += “data.txt”;
$.evalFile (myPath);
eval(thisComp.name);
}catch(err){“Not Found”}

For some complete training on After Effects Expressions, and to support the site, take a look at my After Effects Expressions training series.expressions

Download a preformatted text document and spreadsheet

You probably know that the “Pan Behind Tool” can be used for moving a layer independently of its mask.  However, if you keep this tool activated, you can also use it on composition layers.  Grab a trimmed clip with the Pan Behind Tool, and you can slip and slide the clip, while keeping the in and out points the same.  Very useful!

Do you ever notice that lights in After Effects have an Adjustment Layer switch? This switch forces the light to ONLY effect 3D layers below the light in the timeline. Why would you do this?

First, it’s pretty handy to use to light one specific object, like a title. But most commonly, I use this when using Light Emitters in Particular. When you use a Light for an emitter, the Light will effect all your 3D layers.  Solution: make it an Adjustment Light and put it an the bottom of your timeline.

As a freelancer, one cannot have enough sources of income. With more and more clients taking 60 or even 90 days to pay an invoice, additional checks each month can bridge the gaps in income and ease the tough times.

You’ve probably seen the articles that tell you to “Sell your stock footage” or “Sell your ideas” online.  However, in this article I’d like to talk specifics.  How, where, and from whom you’ll be earning these residual checks each month.

Selling Your Animations and Videos

One of the great things about the Internet is that it allows anyone anywhere to easily connect with anyone else.  To the person with ideas and products to sell, this means the easy exposure and distribution. What used to be a handful of large conglomerate stock agencies has exploded into a smaller number of companies for you to pick from and work with to sell your ideas.

Light Flow 3 Pack at Video Hive

One I find interesting is videohive.net. This site sells a very high volume of materials (video, Flash, and audio) from its registered users.  Although the sister sites have been around longer (Flashden and Audiojungle) there is also a great deal of video and animation content available for sale there.  The high volume of sales do yield a decent amount of sales for even the small-time animation content producer.  You earn a cut of 35% on sales of materials distributed exclusively through Flashden payable via Paypal each month.

What to create:  Create high definition animations (720p or 1080i) that are colorful, seamlessly looping, and work well as backgrounds for videos or websites.  Consider a variation of styles: clean, retro, grungey, etc.  Create “sets” of backgrounds that have several color variations.  Each of these will sell for about $5 – $10 each.

Realistic expectations: Post 10 high quality animation backgrounds staggered every couple weeks to once a month. This should yield about $100 a month, or more.

Selling Your After Effects projects

This is a rapidly expanding area, and is the area that I am concentrating on most these days.  Why? Cutting right to the chase: you can easily make $1000 a month if you post just a few projects (about 5 – 6) that people want to purchase.

News Open 01 from Revostock

You may have heard of RevoStock, which sells the above mentioned stock clips as well, but also sells After Effects projects from its producers.  They have been quite successful and are moving a lot of projects. The word has gotten out, and there are a lot of producers flocking to Revostock to make a quick buck.  Don’t make it a get-rich scheme.  Be patient, and spend some time looking at what people are buying and what you can contribute. DO NOT rip off tutorials and submit them as your own.

What to create: Create clean, usable, well designed projects.  Pay attention to detail.  Make them easy to modify by precomping elements that need to modified by users, and labeling them clearly.  Take a look at the the top sellers and see what is popular, what people want, and want people will pay money for.

Sell Training Products

This by far has the most potential, and yet is the most work.  A good teacher that can explain things is golden, and people will certainly pay for it.

Granted, reputation is certainly earned.  So, it might take some time invested on your part in the form of free tutorials, developing a presence on the Internet as a moderator or frequent helper on the various design forums, and writing your own articles and blog posts to get your name out there.

Also, don’t expect to be able to teach perfectly the first time you try it.  Recording tutorials is a lot harder than it looks. Stay out of tangents, do not over-explain, but do not under-explain. It takes time.  This is why you really must spend a lot of time recording free content, to fine-tune your skills as well as earn a following.

A great intermediate step that will get you some cash right up front is to author a tutorial for AE Tuts.  The existing community of authors is a great mix of experts.

What to create: Keep on top of the tutorial community. Know what is out there so you are not duplicating efforts.  Choose topics you know very well and that you can explain well.  Produce tutorials that are goal oriented, that have an aesthetically pleasing result, so that your viewers want to get all the way through.

Realistic expectations: Depending on your training, how long, how well, etc. expect to make anywhere from $100 to $2000 per month.  To keep your momentum going, try to release a new product for sale every 4 months, and hold the interest of your audience by releasing free tutorials in between.

Sell! Sell! Sell!

So, if you take the steps to create an awesome downloadable tutorial that everyone will want, how does one handle e-commerce options? Enter the commerce partner e-junkie.

E-junkie provides all of the tools you will ever need to provide shopping cart links, receiving payment, and most importantly: getting paid.  I’ve used them in the past and will continue to do so for some new things that are coming down the pipe.  I highly recommend them!

Overall, you can look at these as investments in your time just like you can invest money. A very small amount of time can blossom over a year into an easy thousand dollars a month.  More time will equal more money.   Unlike the stock market, however, these won’t deplete and leave you high and dry!

So, you’ve got some skills, done the tutorials, have a half decent reel and are thinking about going freelance.  How do you make the leap of faith to become a “hired gun” in the motion graphics world? Visualize Your Competition, and Strive to Be Better

You should take the time to get to know your competition.  This can be done in a number of ways, but it starts with classifying your competition based on location, experience and expertise. Check online to see their reel. If you can, ask around about their reputation.  Where are they working? How often?  This industry, even in the biggest of cities, is surprisingly small.  It doesn’t take much to find out about local freelancers in your industry, much less combing the reels posted at places like mograph.net.
Once you get a fix on your competition, you’ll be able to highlight stronger areas to potential clients, like being a strong editor, or perhaps you are also an illustrator and can make some strong style boards, or maybe you are a real techy person and are a whiz at scripting. Whatever your strong areas are, you should champion them to your potential clients in your introduction letters, in your resume and in conversations.  Certain jobs will come up that might need a certain mix of skills, and when you have the right formula, you can be a hero to a new client.

Also, when you are juxtaposing yourself to your peers, you’ll find the areas in which you are lacking.  For instance, how’s your typography skill? Is it time to get to the local art college and take a course? If you are lacking technical skills, there is a ton of training out there that you can purchase to get your skills up to par.  Obviously, there is a great deal right here at graymachine, but visit other places like:

videocopilot.net
motionworks.com.au
totaltraining.com
lynda.com
fxphd.com

Everyone has their own specialty, and you’ll always be stronger in some areas than others. However, being weak with your tools is one way to ensure that you don’t get a call back from a client.  What I always do: visualize the perfect version of what I should be as a mograph designer, and try to come as close to that ideal as I can.

There’s Always Going to be Someone Better Than You

Considering everything I’ve said so far, understand that no matter how far you progress, how great you are, or how many clients you have, there will always be someone better than you.  Take a deep breath and repeat: that’s okay!!!  We need these visionaries to give us inspiration and ideas.  And as great as they may be, you’ll still have skills that they don’t.  Look at the works of Kim Dulaney, Anthony Furlong, Carlo Vega, or Mate Steinforth as your mentors that you may or may not ever meet. But, don’t fall into that “Oh, I give up” mentality just because someone is more awesome than you think you might ever be.  Take it one project, one reel, one day, one design book at a time.  When you occassionally stop and evaluate yourself, you’ll see progress and that’s exactly what you want.

Remember, it’s good that there’s always someone better than you. when you’re hungry, you work harder.  If your satiated, you become complacent.

Know How to Drum Up Work

First, when entering the freelance world and have few or no clients, you’ll want to focus locally.  You’ll want to send out communications to your former colleagues, peers, and employers, spreading the word that you are now freelance and actively seeking work.  You’d be surprised how much your peers are willing to spread the word for you and send referrals your way.  You can do this with an informal email, or if you find it suitable, a phone call. Keep it brief and professional. Highlight what you can do, what you are very strong at doing and direct them to your reel.

Second, you should gather a list of local post production & motion design companies, and start going through them, extending communication that you are freelancing in the area.  This yields anywhere from callbacks within 15 minutes, to companies that provide no response.  Getting a response not only depends on your communication skills and your portfolio, but how busy the company is.  Sometimes places are in need of freelancers but use tools that aren’t in your arsenal (perhaps Flame or Quantel eQ).  Don’t take it personally if you don’t get a call back.  However, keep them on a routine mailing list that updates them as your reel progresses and your client list grows.  It may sound silly, but a strong way to pique interest in companies is to work for their competitors.  Word gets around quickly when this happens, and it will cause your bookings to increase and your rate to rise.  This is one of the reasons I keep my linkedin.com profile up to date with all of my freelance clients.

Third, start combing the active job forums.  This is where you’ll find the best opportunities, and the most competition.  It’s great to find an ad looking for someone that is looking for someone exactly like you.  The problem is, you’ll be in competition with all the other people that will see it as well.  So again, be brief and professional, highlight your strong points and thank them for their time.  The job forums I’ve found to be most useful (here in the US) are:

Motionographer jobs

Mograph job board

Know one local to you? Please post it in the comments.

Fourth, network like crazy!!  You need to get yourself to industry social events, like AIGA mixers, company parties, etc.  You need to be in the faces of those that you want to work for.  Get their business cards, get their IM names, and build your potential client database.  Good motion designers will start to easily find work after landing a few jobs, and the word starts getting around.   Once you get connected, stay connected.  It’s something that you constantly need to maintain and build upon.  If there is a client you’ve not worked with in a while, you should jump at the opportunity to attend one of their social events.  I can’t stress enough how much of an influence it has to simply be “in the face” of clients, when trying to land work with them.  When you do this, build a positive social reputation. You want your presence to be a positive experience for your clients.  Don’t don’t criticize others, or gossip.  It will always come back to you. Speak as if the whole world can hear you.

Fifth, if you are still having problems finding clients, perhaps it’s time to seek out a few busy motion graphics mentors.  Now, I can’t say that this will always work out, as many  are not able to subcontract based on contractual obligations.  But, you can try to offer up your services at a rate low enough for bigger names to subcontract work.  Can you handle roto work? Type out 100 lower thirds? Set up some basic camera moves? Search for stock images? It can be very helpful for someone to take over tasks like these.  So, if you comb the internet for some busy designers and kindly ask them to help, you might get lucky and end up with a great mentor with some great projects that you can help with.

Need more ideas? Here’s 101 of them from freelanceswitch.com.

Be Ready for Any Opportunity

The second you decide to become freelance, you need to lock down all the things that will be needed to quote and land freelance jobs. I am surprised when I talk to budding motion designers how little of this has been thought through. This includes:

• Business Cards
• A Portfolio (hard copy and online versions)
• A day rate
• An invoicing system

To be a professional, you need to look like one. This means having business cards to hand out, and having a portfolio somewhere other than vimeo or youtube.  Check this excellent set of tips from motionographer on setting up your portfolio site.

If you need to quote a job, get your day rate ready.  So this always leads to the question, what to charge?  This varies so widely based on location and experience, it is hard to even write about it here.   However, for someone entering freelance work with few clients and little reputation, you’ll most likely not be charging much over $400 / day.  If you have clients to draw upon, and you are in a large area like LA or NY, you’ll certainly be charging more (and probably not reading this article).  Ultimately, your goal is to not get laughed out of a job.  I’ve been staff at places where freelancers charged $600 / day and they seriously lacked the skills to match their bills, and they were not called back.  I’ve also gotten quotes from recent graduates with rates topping $500, which, in my book, is way too much.  Charge what you can, know what you are worth, but make sure your value matches your rate.

When it is time to send a invoice, many take the route of using Word documents to send invoices.  I tried this at first, but I quickly got confused as to what I had already billed.  Also, I had a hard time pulling reports for my earnings and billings.  After a few jobs, I realized that I need an invoicing system.  I use freshbooks.com.  I really like using an online system that allows me to enter my time, send invoices, check reports, from anywhere in the world.  I recently upgraded to accommodate more clients as I finally topped the 25 client limit!

Know When to Make the Switch

If you are thinking about going freelance, then you need to approach it with caution.  First, you need to have savings tucked away for about 3 months of expenses. You might (or might not) suffer a large drop in income for a few months, while you build your client base.

I can only say from experience that what worked for me in easing the transition of full-time to freelance. was to go through a few overbooked months before I left my job.  I started networking while still employed, stating that I was available to potential clients.  I focused on landing small jobs, being fulling open that I was still juggling a full-time job, but had a firm date that I was leaving.  It was a tough couple months, where I felt like I was working all the time.  But, when I left my staff job, I had some momentum already going and I was already building a client roster.
It’s All About the Reel

When it is all said and done, when you follow all the tips and advice I’ve laid out, it’s really all about what you can showcase as your best work.  You can network, shmooze and send emails, but if your reel is weak, then it’s a lot of wasted effort.

Take the time to get a critique of your reel.  If you want an HONEST, no-holds-barred critique, post it at mograph.   If it is bad, they will tell you.  Don’t take it as a slap in the face, but an honest opinion from a group of people already doing what you are trying to do.

Radium Glow is a powerful new glow plug-in collection from Red Giant Software.   This suite of plug-ins has enormous control over glow area, color, glow shape, and much more.  It promises “pinpoint control over the glow, with editable shapes that can generate precise outlines or create glimmering points.”  So with all this control and with such a big name behind it, should it be a part of your plug-in arsenal?

Radium Glow delivers everything that it promises: detailed control over various glow effects delivered via its three different plug-ins: Radium Glow, Radium Glow Lite, Radium Glow Edge.  To see where Radium Glow has the edge over the built-in AE Glow, I tried a few comparison tests, using motion graphics samples and some high definition footage.

Radium Glow on Motion Design Elements

First, I tried some basic glow effects from the Retro Graphics tutorial. To do this, I tried to do similar adjustments the same parameters in both effects: radius, intensity and threshold, adding additional Falloff and Quality adjustments in Radium Glow.  In the image on the left, you can see how Radium Glow delivers a much deeper glow at 8 bpc than one could ever hope to achieve with the Adobe AE Glow. In fact, AE Glow flounders here and with much tweaking, delivers, at best, an weak glow effect.

Also note: I see no significant changes in Radium Glow when running 8, 16 or 32bpc; the output seems to look very consistent.

So, what are the pros and cons to run AE at a higher color depth, versus Radium Glow at 8 bpc? One can shave off a modest amount of render time by staying in 8bpc with Radium Glow, but after several tests the render time differences aren’t significant between Radium Glow at 8 bpc and AE Glow at 32bpc – I even had charts and graphs planned!

However, one huge disadvantage to Radium Glow is a flicker in the glow that happens with moving objects.  And to be fair, I sat with the plug-in for an hour using both Radium Glow and Radium Glow Edge to produce a nice glow effect on my text, rendering in 1:1 Quality.  On any given frame, it looks great.  But, once it moves, in this example that I am using, the glow flickers very badly. In several tests with slowly moving, sharp graphical elements, I had this same flicker.  However, my AE Glow that ships with my copy of After Effects does not do this at all.  This is kind of a disappointment and is probably a deal breaker for many motion designers.

Radium Glow on Footage

So, how does it handle footage?  This is actually where Radium Glow shines.  I tested both Radium Glow and Glow Edge on some time elapsed footage of headlights and tailights. With some playful tweaking, I  got some fantastic shimmering glow effects.  The Glow Edge effect is much better at sort out the high-contrast areas in an image, like lights against a road.  Unfortunately, it lacks a Glow Layer input to define glow color.  I experimented with having Glow Edge output to only one channel, and then layered effects two on top of each other to get different colors and effects, especially when modifying the Radius and Threshold.  I had a lot of fun with this and I’d like to try to work these kind of glow effects into a project very soon.

The Verdict

I think what Radium Glow promises and delivers with gusto is exactly what might hold it back from being a plug-in you’ll see on the box of most motion artists and editors.   Its precise control takes some knowledgeable tweaking to produce great results.  Personally, I’ve not been able to get flicker free results on small motion design elements, so I’ll be sticking with AE Glow for this kind of thing.  That said, once you get a grasp on it, it’s got fantastic control that will yield awesome looking glows on your footage and perhaps, final renders.

As for me, it’s a welcome addition to my tools, and I hope to see some improvement in the area my one and only (yet a biggie) complaint: the flickering.  For only $99, it’s worth a download of the demo version and trying it out. Before you do that, watch through John Dickinson’s tutorial: Getting Started with Radium Glow to answer most of the questions you’ll have on the plug-in before you first use it.

Summary: Red Giant Radium Glow

Pros:

• Detailed glow control over glow color, masking, and channels
• Custom glow shapes
• Great results in 8 bits per channel color
• Overbright protection
• Viewable map of glow area
• Reasonable price of $94 at Toolfarm

Cons:

• Glow flickers with small graphic elements
• Limited color control with Glow Edge