Acknowledgments

Thanks to everyone who has taught me everything I know, in particular a couple of contributors to present or past editions of this book, Stu Maschwitz and Brendan Bolles, colleagues from The Orphanage, where I honed skills using After Effects in a visual effects context.

Thanks for footage and examples to Alex Lindsay and Pixel Corps, Julie Hill and Artbeats, and my good friends and colleagues at fxphd.com, John Montgomery and Mike Seymour, along with the vast worldwide network of artists associated with that site from whom I’ve learned as I taught.

Jeff Almasol (www.redefinery.com), now an Adobe employee, continues to be an invaluable source of After Effects scripts, including the two offered exclusively with this book.

Clients gave me the firsthand experience that went into this book, and some were willing to commit time (and even money) to secure elements or final shots for use in this book’s figures despite no benefit to themselves: Christina Crowley, President of The Kenwood Group; Rama Dunayevich at The Orphanage; Coral Petretti at ABC Photography; David Donegan at Red Bull USA; Tim Fink of Tim Fink Events and Media; Gary Jaeger and Cameron Baxter at Core Studio; Jonathan Barson at The Foundry UK; Fred Lewis and Inhance Digital; Boeing and the Navy UCAV program; Patrick Campbell of Suburban Imageworks; and Matthew Ward of ImageMovers Digital.

Thanks also to the worldwide community of After Effects artists who offered imagery for this book, including Ross Webb at Mars Productions in Cape Town, South Africa; Luis Bustamente and 4charros in Mexico; and Jason Denzel of Argonaut Entertainment. I mined http://flickr.com/creativecommons/ for a few difficult-to-find source stills; a huge thank you to the gifted photographers who voluntarily chose to add the Creative Commons tag to their work: Micah Parker, Jorge L. Peschiera, Shuets Udono, Eric E. Yang, and Kevin Miller.

To the people at Adobe who’ve made After Effects what it is, in particular Dave Simons, Dan Wilk, Erica Schisler, and Steve Kilisky, and to some of the developers who’ve helped me understand it better over the years, including Michael Natkin and Chris Prosser. Thanks to Vladimir Potap’yev for patient responses to questions about color management, and to Peter Constable for kindly reading through passages on that same complex topic.

Thanks to the companies that contributed to the book’s DVD: Peder Norrby, who is Trapcode, Russ Andersson of Andersson Technologies, Sean Safreed of Red Giant Software, Andrew Millin of ObviousFX LLC, Marco Paolini of SilhouetteFX, Pierre Jasmin of RevisionFX, and Timur “Taron” Baysal of Taronites. These were my choices for inclusion because they all provide something vital to effects compositing in After Effects.

Other people who were helpful e-mailing their feedback on various topics include Bruno Nicoletti at the Foundry UK, Dan Ebberts (www.motionscript.com), Scott Squires (www.effectscorner.com), Tim Dobbert at The Orphanage, Don Shay at Cinefex Magazine, and Matt Silverman at Phoenix Editorial. Major thanks this time around goes to Pete O’Connell of Bar X Seven (www.barxseven.com) who dropped me an e-mail describing major improvements he devised for rotoscoping in After Effects; these are featured in Chapter 7.

A huge thank you to Peachpit, who collectively show a strong commitment to producing the highest quality books, in particular Karen Reichstein, who takes great care with comments and correspondence, and Linda Laflamme, whom I trust to tell me when I’m not making sense. Alexandre Czetwertynski is a great technical editor because he cares enough about this work to pay attention to the details.

Thanks to all of the thoughtful folks who have dropped me a line at [email protected]; you’d be surprised at the difference your comments make.