Subscribe
I recently did some freelancing in NYC and I worked on some ads for a few Broadway plays. These are technically unfinished I guess, since they weren’t finalized by the clients before I left, but they got to the point where I wanted to include them on my site.
First is La Cage with Kelsey Grammer. The key for this came out really good, I just wish the subjects were chicks instead of dudes.
La Cage from Michael Szabo on Vimeo.
I also did some rough work on an idea promoting a play with Denzel Washington, it’s called Fences:
Fences – Example from Michael Szabo on Vimeo.
I’m not sure if I’ll put either of these on my reel, since I don;t know if they are approved and finalized. So I’ll just leave them in Vimeo/Blog purgatory for now.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
read comments (0)
After Effects is king of 2D animation and compositing. It’s been around since the early to mid 1990s when I was working on coloring books instead of color corrections. I first used it probably around version 5.5 and I barely new what I was doing. But as my knowledge of general computer and video principles increased, I became quite adept at it. I’m probably in the top million After Effects users on the planet, elite company.
But then there’s Motion, Apple’s relatively new, competing program. Motion 3 came out a couple years ago and added some advanced features that closed the gap some. I used Motion everyday at my last job, so I got to learn it rather thoroughly and decided to write a little compare and contrast based on my experience. Here we go:
After Effects has Motion beat when it comes to:
If you get stuck on a project using After Effects, you can find some sort of tutorial, message board post, or plugin that will help you get the job done. Motion just can’t compete with the knowledge and help that’s out there with just a Google search. This is a HUGE deal because if you’re like me, sometimes you wonder “Hey, how did they do that?” and you look it up and then you’ve got another page in your playbook.
It’s a little better than it used to be, but Motion cannot touch After Effects in terms of the extra power you can add to your application by adding plugins from 3rd party developers. Sometimes it’s claimed that you can just add the same After Effects plugin to your Motion directory and it will work within Motion. My answer is no. Expect bugs and unreliability.
Motion has After Effects beat when it comes to:
Motion does a good job of being stable when rendering out your composition. After Effects has always been pickier when it’s time to make your final file. I can’t tell you how many times After Effects has crapped out during a render because of insufficient RAM or a codec issue or because it’s low tide right now. When I render in After Effects, I simply walk away and don’t dare touch my computer until it’s finished. Motion is much smoother and stable during a render. It crashes a 100 times less than After Effects and you can actual check your email, load a web page, etc. while your rendering without your computer hating you forever. And the speeds are similar, obviously it depends on the composition, but I’ve never found one to be much faster or slower overall on the same system.
This is the part where Motion laughs in After Effects face. RAM previews sometimes don’t require any rendering in Motion, you can literally hit the space bar and watch your work play, even if it has filters and effect on it. The audio plays uninterrupted right along with it as well. A lot of times in After Effects I just render out a whole movie instead of a RAM preview because of impatience or stability issues. Motion practically plays in real time, and it can store more frames in a RAM preview even if you actually have to render one.
Moving Between the Two Programs
I am fully capable of switching between the programs and not messing up what I’m doing because I think I’m in the other program. I know you’re impressed. The one thing I have seen people struggle with is difference in the key-framing controls. In After Effects, once you toggle on key frames for a certain a parameter, the instant you change a value on any frame that isn’t already a key frame, and new key frame is created. It doesn’t work like that in Motion. In motion you have to set the key frame first, and then change the value. It drives After Effects disciples crazy. It’s just a different way of doing things, it makes sense either method. In general, people struggle with the different keyboard shortcuts and contextual menus, but obviously those are going to vary between programs and you just have to suck it up and remember them.
Overall
I would recommend Motion to anyone who needs to get a project done fast. If more support, power, and sophistication, go with After Effects. They both get the job done, but Motion will never be able to overthrow the firmly entrenched After Effects.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
I felt my home page was in need of a bit of a makeover, so I created a new welcome video. I consulted my Xbox for inspiration and decided to create a Guitar Hero style video for my site. After doing tons of interactive research while observing the details and nuances of the game, I did my best to recreate the look and feel of the game with Cinema 4D, Photoshop, Motion, and After Effects. If you’ve never seen or played Guitar Hero (or even more awesomer, Rockband) then I suggest you head down to somewhere like Best Buy and take the floor sample for a spin.
Motion Graphics Hero: Guitar Hero Style Intro from Michael Szabo on Vimeo.
I’m pleased with the way this came out. It’s good to know that all of my research and hard work payed off.
I’m planning on doing more welcome videos to the site every so often. I’ll either have them play randomly if I can figure out how or I will have a way to cycle between them.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
