After Effects 5.5 Magic [Paperback]

Nathan Moody (Author), Mark Christiansen (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0735711445 | ISBN-13: 978-0735711440 | Publication Date: March 21, 2002

In the right hands, After Effects can be a creatively enabling motion design tool. With After Effects 5.5 Magic, you can leverage its capabilities. Written by some of the world's top motion graphics experts, this book provides the kind of first-hand advice and practiced techniques that can improve your efficiency and help you hone your skills.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Version 5.5 of Adobe After Effects is much more than an incremental upgrade. By improving on existing features and introducing new ones, the After Effects development team has again created a must-have version for the professional After Effects designer. After Effects 5.5 Magic takes the intermediate to advanced user through a tutorial tour of some of these features, while reinforcing important older tools.

Featuring chapters written by such After Effects luminaries as Fred Lewis, Patrick Siemer, and Dan Ablan, to name a few, there are chapters on film resolution, logo animation, combining 2-D and 3-D layers, motion tracking, and several chapters on live-action compositing. There are also chapters on creating stylistic video distortion and creating and exporting animation for the Web in the form of Flash (SWF) files.

The last third of the book is focused on one of After Effects' most powerful features: expressions. Since expressions are perceived as "programming," many AE designers tend to shy away from them. However, mastering expressions can add a whole new level of design and animation that simply isn't possible without them. Mark Christiansen has written five chapters that explore expressions, starting with their basic usage using point-and-click techniques through more advanced techniques that use custom-written code. Mark has done a terrific job of explaining the fundamentals, techniques, and various applications, and these chapters are worth the cost of the book.

Books in the New Riders Magic series are written by experienced authors discussing advanced features, and target advanced users. Each book offers clean design, concise writing, full color on every page, and countless illustrations. After Effects 5.5 Magic is a worthy member of this important series and a valuable addition to the AE designer's library. --Mike Caputo

Review

"This book is a must-have for any serious After Effects user with the desire to unleash the power of expressions or learn about techniques and tricks of the trade from an incredibly talented group of After Effects users." -Steve Kilisky, Sr. Product Manager, Adobe Systems, Inc., After Effects

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: New Riders Press (March 21, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0735711445
• ISBN-13: 978-0735711440
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 10.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,694,339 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Like so many authors, I reached the point with the first edition of my book where I never, ever thought I would get it done... and I still thought so until about 2 days before I finally stopped working on it. Five editions later, I'm glad I stuck with it that first time - even re-writing a book is hard work, but it has never seemed quite so impossible as that first time.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Elevates your productivity and creativity, July 16, 2005

By 

Mick B "Mick" (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Adobe After Effects 6.5 Magic (Paperback)

This is a great book. It's not for beginners; get the Adobe Classroom in a Book (which has some pretty advanced stuff) and/or Trish and Chris Meyer's book, if you're just starting out.
This book is just what I needed at this point in time: I've wanted some instruction on how to do the more advanced text Presets in 6.0 and 6.5, and this has a lot on that. It also gives you advanced methods of masking, stroking masks, using Illustrator Files like you see on TV cable shows, and advanced 3D methods such as Zaxwerks Invigorator, etc. After 3 1/2 yrs of being at a standstill, this book helped me jump to the level to where I can do most TV commercial and movie trailer graphics, it's weak on effects, however. .....it's mostly how-to, and has almost all of the keystroke commands included. But they don't give ALL the keystrokes, there are times when you have to KNOW already how to do advanced things....but if you're ready for the big time, this book is a big help ...study it carefully.
The authors of this book are creative and brilliant, and present you with lots of awesome tricks that you will not get in other books, and not esoteric ones, like some books have. If you're into AE and have watched TV commercials and movie trailers and wondered "I'd like to know how to do that" this book goes a LONG way to teaching you, very quickly, how to do the really good stuff.
The only limitation is, it's mostly oriented toward "desk" work: working with solids, text,, Illustrator files, and existing video footage. But for these it's great, you can start with a blank composition, and using this book, come up with some high end stuff...not the highest end, but mainstream. Most of the time your potential clients have their own video, logos, etc, and just want you to come up with ideas and put it together, and with this book you will be able to. It's not really good at advanced effects such as shatter, paint, etc. These are hardly covered at all...but then again these aren't mainstream....

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If You Use After Effects, this is a MUST-BUY!, March 16, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: After Effects 5.5 Magic (Paperback)

This book is the best book on AE yet! While the Meyer's book is the best intermediate level book, AE Magic takes AE to the next level. A wide range of sample projects with plenty of hands-on experience across a wide range of project types.

From film resolution graphics to expressions, this book takes you where you want to go. Each chapter ends with a collection of modifications and suggestions that you can use in your own productions.

The multiple authors each detail their areas of expertise, and everyone will find a couple projects worthy of experimenting...

Great book!

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars The worst After Effects book ever, November 16, 2005

By 

Post Supervisor "Alex N" (Dallas, TX USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Adobe After Effects 6.5 Magic (Paperback)

I bought this book thinking it was the update version of After Effects Magic by Nathan Body and Mark Christiansen, whose names I had forgotten and I only remembered the title of the book.
This book does not give you an overall idea of After Effects, it has very cheesy tutorials, not to mention the author's photo on the third page posing like a cheap real estate agent or even a used cars salesman. There is no depth to it, even for beginners it will take you trough the wrong path on what is the essence of the software. The tutorials are really lacking creativity and are not designed to make you understand the power behind AE.
I own 5 books on AE, and I highly recommend the ones by Trish and Chris Meyer for all levels, and for advanced compositing the one by Mark Christiansen "Studio Techniques".
I returned this book the following day. If I had seen the pages on this book online I wouldn't have bought it in the first place. Thanks to Amazon for making it so easy to return items you are not satisfied with.