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Product Description
'"How to Cheat in After Effects" is an easy-to-follow book that lets you in on all of the little secrets to create those commonly needed effects with ease and speed. With clear pictures illustrating the step-by-step procedures, this is the perfect tool for the arsenal of any After Effects user, from novice to advanced' - Michele Yamazaki, Vice President Marketing and Web Development Czarina, Toolfarm.com. This title can compose eye-popping After Effects projects quickly and creatively with dozens of concise, step-by-step tutorials accompanied by vivid 4-color illustration. Covering features new to CS5 such as Freeform AE, Refine Matte, Roto Brush, and more, this book clearly explains how to perform advanced, typically time-consuming tasks in simplified, quick steps. This title helps to: create an entire 3D planet scene from scratch; create true 3D text; make smoke, snow, rain, chocolate, molten gold, and more from scratch with particles; create animated growing vines; fake a tilt shift effect; and, so much more. The companion DVD includes project files allowing you to work alongside the exercises in the book, as well as QuickTime movies displaying the techniques shown in the book. Chad Perkins is an award winning software trainer, as well as a filmmaker, musician, and visual effects artist. He is also the creator/owner of Movies and Computers (moviesandcomputers.com), which provides training in independent filmmaking. He is an Adobe Certified Instructor in After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator, and Premiere. Chad is also the author of the book "The After Effects Illusionist (Focal Press, 2009)". This title helps to conquer your After Effects challenges quickly and creatively with dozens of concise; step-by-step tutorials for performing advanced-level techniques. It contains lavish 4 color illustration and humorous presentation that provide inspiration and keep you engaged in each project. It also contains DVD features project files and tutorial videos, allowing you to watch instruction and recreate the exact projects in the book immediately.
About the Author
Chad Perkins is an Adobe Certified Instructor and Expert in Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat, After Effects, Premiere, and was one of the first in the world to be a Certified Expert in Adobe Encore DVD. Chad also owns Aveconta, an architectural rendering studio that creates photo-realistic renders from AutoCAD drawings and blueprints. Chad served for over two years as the Digital 3D and Animation Specialist at a leading lenticular art creation facility in Southern California, where he produced finished art for Warner Brothers, Paramount, and Disney, among others. True to his passion for movies and animation, Chad is currently directing and producing an all-CGI short film.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book is for the intermediate After Effects user, someone with a basic knowledge wanting to improve and learn more skills. I do not recommend to a beginner, I am a beginner and although it's straight-forward and I followed one of the projects well, I have no idea how to apply it to my own work, only able to do the techniques on the templates it provides on the CDrom.
I can see this being a great book once I understand the basics a little more, if you're looking for a how to book of everything this isn't the book for you, but once you've learned the basic this will be a helpful tool for improving and learning some short cut tricks.
I can see this being a great book once I understand the basics a little more, if you're looking for a how to book of everything this isn't the book for you, but once you've learned the basic this will be a helpful tool for improving and learning some short cut tricks.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
10 reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
A quick and easy visual approach to some fairly advanced techniques in After Effects
3 Nov 2010
Format:Paperback
Chad Perkins, author of the valuable AE reference guide The After Effects Illusionist, is at it again with How to Cheat in After Effects. The focus here - somewhat like in that book - is on how to create some very cool results by tweaking with the usual settings of effects. The difference is that here it's organized into a series of mini-lessons, each of which fits on two facing pages with ample illustrations. So that book works as a reference guide, that you might want to pull off the shelf when you know roughly what you want to do but aren't sure how to get that result with the effects that ship with AE. Here, rather than a reference guide, what you get is a series of quick and easy recipes, that you could pull out and browse for inspiration, or try out one by one in hopes of picking up a new bag of tricks. It would also work as a quick reminder of how to achieve effects you once learned but don't do often enough to have memorized.
It should be noted this isn't really a how-to guide for beginners - since everything in here from the very first trick presumes a reader who knows how to do the basics such as working with layers and keyframing animations. In fact, a lot of the things he shows you how to do should be pretty familiar to most readers who are ready to follow along. If you've worked through Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects, for example, there's nothing here that's really new. What's novel, though, are the ways he puts to use these familiar techniques so as to achieve some fairly awesome effects. Some of them are more gimmicky than essential - but I was hooked from the very first lesson, which shows how to generate a fairly realistic looking fireball using basic effects. It's not all gimmicks, though, and I found his quick and cut to the chase approach to complex problems like color correction quite refreshing. It is much faster to work through than, say, Chris and Trish Meyer's Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects or Mark Christensen's Adobe After Effects CS5 Visual Effects and Compositing Studio Techniques, and what it lacks in depth and thorough explanation it makes up for in brevity and wit. I wouldn't suggest replacing either of those books with this one - since they go into a lot more detail about the inner workings of After Effects and in the long run that's essential - but for the reader who already has down the basics and really doesn't care how and why things work exactly, but just wants to quickly learn how to do lots of stuff, this would be an ideal guide.
Perkins starts out with a series of neat tricks like the dragon flame, and then moves on to manipulation of lights and cameras, and then to creative use of 3d objects (mostly generated in Photoshop), to compositing (with some very helpful sections on using Mocha), and quick animation techniques, and effects with light, several ways to use masks and shapes and particles, to a very helpful set of quick tutorials on color correction, and finally on how to create background layers. It may not be an essential guide to After Effects, but it's a very valuable guide that I know I'll go back to again and again for quick and easy primers on some fairly sophisticated processes.
It should be noted this isn't really a how-to guide for beginners - since everything in here from the very first trick presumes a reader who knows how to do the basics such as working with layers and keyframing animations. In fact, a lot of the things he shows you how to do should be pretty familiar to most readers who are ready to follow along. If you've worked through Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects, for example, there's nothing here that's really new. What's novel, though, are the ways he puts to use these familiar techniques so as to achieve some fairly awesome effects. Some of them are more gimmicky than essential - but I was hooked from the very first lesson, which shows how to generate a fairly realistic looking fireball using basic effects. It's not all gimmicks, though, and I found his quick and cut to the chase approach to complex problems like color correction quite refreshing. It is much faster to work through than, say, Chris and Trish Meyer's Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects or Mark Christensen's Adobe After Effects CS5 Visual Effects and Compositing Studio Techniques, and what it lacks in depth and thorough explanation it makes up for in brevity and wit. I wouldn't suggest replacing either of those books with this one - since they go into a lot more detail about the inner workings of After Effects and in the long run that's essential - but for the reader who already has down the basics and really doesn't care how and why things work exactly, but just wants to quickly learn how to do lots of stuff, this would be an ideal guide.
Perkins starts out with a series of neat tricks like the dragon flame, and then moves on to manipulation of lights and cameras, and then to creative use of 3d objects (mostly generated in Photoshop), to compositing (with some very helpful sections on using Mocha), and quick animation techniques, and effects with light, several ways to use masks and shapes and particles, to a very helpful set of quick tutorials on color correction, and finally on how to create background layers. It may not be an essential guide to After Effects, but it's a very valuable guide that I know I'll go back to again and again for quick and easy primers on some fairly sophisticated processes.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Depends what level you are at
11 Nov 2010
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I have mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, it is geared towards those user's with a bit more experience then the starting after effects user, but on the other hand there is not enough depth to give an experienced user a reason to buy in to this book.
Essentially, this book is great for users who have some experience with After Effects and want to start upping their game a bit. The book is very fast paced (most "lessons" are two pages long with alot of pictures), but because of that fast pace you tend to be told to use "Option A at value X, and Option B at value Y", which in my opinion was not what I was looking for. I wanted to be told WHY I was doing something along with that doing.
In some cases, the author covers something more in depth, but for the most part the details are left out. This is a great book though if you have a certain effect you are looking to do and want to know how to quickly implement it. The non-linear style allows you to jump where-ever you want to in the book.
Essentially, this book is great for users who have some experience with After Effects and want to start upping their game a bit. The book is very fast paced (most "lessons" are two pages long with alot of pictures), but because of that fast pace you tend to be told to use "Option A at value X, and Option B at value Y", which in my opinion was not what I was looking for. I wanted to be told WHY I was doing something along with that doing.
In some cases, the author covers something more in depth, but for the most part the details are left out. This is a great book though if you have a certain effect you are looking to do and want to know how to quickly implement it. The non-linear style allows you to jump where-ever you want to in the book.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Perkins Hits a Home Run
15 Nov 2010
Format:Paperback
For many of us, there are two kinds of books that you can buy for Motion Graphics. One is more theoretical, and one give practical examples. Both are very important, and most people tend to neglect one-side over the other. In terms of After Effects, there are very good books out there that are very technical and very important in your understanding of the product. The 2 best might be: 1) Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects (Myers) 2) Visual Effects and Compositing Studio Techniques (Christiansen). Unfortunately, there is a complete lack of books on the shelves on After Effect (unlike Photoshop) that give good, clever, easy to use examples that are also pratical. Chad Perkin's "How to Cheat in After Effects" is one of those rare books where you will almost feel like you are "cheating" because you're learning great stuff AND having a blast along the way. Chad's greatest strengths are evident in this book: 1) taking the most complicated material and making it easy to learn for the rest of us 2) making motion graphics stuff fun. I highly recommend it.
Jackson Hunt
VP of Marketing
Ser Technology
Adobe Certified Expert (After Effects, Flash, Photoshop, Premiere/Encore, Illustrator).
Author of Examaids (Flash, After Effects, Premiere/Encore)
Jackson Hunt
VP of Marketing
Ser Technology
Adobe Certified Expert (After Effects, Flash, Photoshop, Premiere/Encore, Illustrator).
Author of Examaids (Flash, After Effects, Premiere/Encore)
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