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Summary: Creating Motion Graphics
Review: Trish & Chris have managed to put together the definitive guide to After Effects. This books takes a product as complicated and diverse as After effects and makes it easy to understand for the beginner yet still manages to teach plenty of lessons to the experienced user. Being third party developers for After Effects we are frequently sent books to review and rate, and this book clearly stands out from them all as the single most clear, concise and well written of them all. If you are going to buy any book on After effects, make it this one and you won't need another.Ralph McEntagart, Software Engineer, The Foundry.
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Summary: How can you use After effect without having that book?
Review: This book is truly amazing. It gives you useful information on every single page. It is meant for people who really want to get serious with After effect. After reading only a couple of chapters, I was already doing great stuff on my computer. It comes with a demo version of AE 4.1 so you can do the tutorials. If you want to discover the real power of AE, then get that book.
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Summary: Great Book, but also a Tease
Review: This is probably the best book available for After Effects. There is one MAJOR problem however. All of the tutorial files are saved in 4.1 format so unless you're fortunate enough to own the very latest version of this very expensive program, you will not be able to open ANY of the tutorial files! I understand that the author wants to be updated and current, but c'mon, how about saving some examples in older versions too, so us poor people can learn as well.It is so frustrating to read an example and not being able to open it to see what they're talking about. I am still learning alot from it, but it's like having an 8 course meal waiting for you in an expensive resturant and you forgot to bring a tie, so you can't get in, so all you can do is just look at the food and imagine what it would be like enjoying it.
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Summary: Remarkable book
Review: After Effects is a phenomenally DEEP program. Chris & Trish Meyer have been involved with AE and its beta precursors since Day One. They offer an unrivaled viewpoint into the vast possiblities available to AE users. There are so many options within the program that it can be overwhelming. "Creating Motion Graphics" uses a remarkable well thought out layout to instantly cross reference all the material, examples and tutorials that are presented. Not only every motion graphics designer but every textbook designer should be required have a copy.
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Summary: A new reference standard for Motion Graphics artists
Review: Of all the CG books I own, this is one I will NOT part with. Chris and Trish Meyer have managed to pack in volumes of information into 500 pages - no small feat! I was used to buying a book and being able to skim over it in a couple of days, getting all the useful info out of it pretty quickly - not so with this book! Every single page is filled with broad concepts, colorful screenshots, tips and shortcuts. Many things in this book I have not seen documented anywhere else. I thought I knew most of AfterEffects' capabilities - now I know its real power. This isn't a five star book - I'll give it ten stars - a must have!
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Summary: Primarily for novice Mac users with $30,000 to spare
Review: This is indeed a great book for those looking to start using After Effects to throw together motion graphics and snazzy video tidbids up to 30-seconds long. The hard work put in by the authors is quite evident. IT DOES DEAL WITH: Creating animated logos and motion graphics, working in high resolutions, and all the quirks of digital video. For example, did you know that NTSC does not run at exactly 29.97 frames per second? Etc. IT DOES NOT DEAL WITH: the ins and outs of filmlook procedures, or how to use After Effects for advanced practical cinema effects like bluescreen (keying) work, rotoscoping out wires and such, or dealing with After Effects when working with compositions longer than a few minutes. IT WON'T TEACH YOU ANYTHING IF: You're familiar with digital video and you've performed the ubiquitous "Classroom in a Book" tutorial excercises. THIS PRODUCT LOSES TWO STARS BECAUSE: Authors Trish & Chris Meyers apologize early on for including only Macintosh-format screenshots and keyboard shortcuts--quite irritating for PC power users. Also, having to re-link all the source files on the CD tutorials is an unnecessary hassle. There should be two versions of this book, one each for PC and Mac. IN THE END, like all the Meyers' tutorials, this book feels like an advertisement for overpriced plugins that only large studios and industry professionals can afford. Indeed, it's quite contradictory: the first twenty chapters address novitiate issues while expecting you've already got $30,000 worth of software installed on your system!
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Summary: Truly a good book that exceeded my expectations
Review: I have clarified, reviewed, and learned in a matter of hours with this book, things that have (and would have) taken years of savvy experience to learn otherwise. The topics and issues that are dealt with are right on the money. This is the kind of stuff that After Effects users can use practically ----- to quickly transform sessions of repeated trial and error and guesswork into a professional level of understanding and usability. Listen to what everyone else is saying here. This book is a masterpiece in that it takes well experienced information, that you'd only wish you could find in any book or magazine, and lays it all out in a simple and direct fashion-----well worth the money
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Summary: Outstanding - an instant masterpiece!
Review: This is a beautiful and amazing book in both content and style. If you have ANY interest in After Effects you simply must get this book. The tutorials are numerous, thorough, and well thought out. Besides just teaching you the mechanics of how to use After Effects effectively, there is a lot of good information on how After Effects works internally which helps immensely in understanding how to get the most out of the program. The companion CD ROM is a treasure in itself. It contains enough additional chapters and tech notes to fill another book as well as lots of source material to practice with and some fully functional 3rd party plug-ins to play with. In addition to having a great teaching style, Chris and Trish obviously have a lot of real-world experience actually using After Effects to create motion graphics for paying clients. So, as an extra bonus, you get the educational benefit of seeing their design aesthetic, which is pervasive throughout the book. You can't go wrong with this one!
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Summary: Wicked Book on After Effects - Super Dense!
Review: This is the first "TRUE' After Effects book! This amazing tome delves deep into the innards of After Effects. All while giving you a happy feeling of getting information from experts who use the tool everyday in the REAL world. Amazing coverage of all the "gotcha" areas and how to avoid them. Also mentions useful plug-ins in context so that you can more easily see how third party tools integrate into the work flow. Simply the best book on After Effects, and a hard act to follow. This is an INSTANT CLASSIC! ORDER IT NOW!
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Summary: Want to learn? They want to teach.
Review: Just got the Meyers' book today. After seeing a color printout of it at NAB, I'm stunned by how much BETTER the printed book looks--and the version at NAB looked damn nice. If a picture is worth a thousand words, the 8 zillion color photos and illustrations have caused my desk to collapse under the weight. This is a great book, a prototype, a benchmark of how to teach people about motion graphics. Makes me want to go out and set up a course just so I can employ this book. And the inspirational (and illustrated!) forward by Harry Marks (who has always been a mentor to me and folks like me) reminds us how far we've come and what a wonderful tool Dan, the Daves, and all the rest of the fine CoSAfolks have given us so we don't have to book time in expensive post suites. The amazing thing about this book is even the stuff you know (and yes, I know a lot about this program) seems fresh, new, and (most importantly) coherent here. (All this and I haven't even opened up the CD yet.) Wow. thanks. Cool. back to work.
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