Customer Reviews

Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects, Vol. 1: The Essentials (3rd Edition, Version 6.5)

5 star:		(37)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a book about THINKING in After Effects. It's one of the best software tutorials I've ever read because it is written from a production point of view. It's not a catalog of features and effects, nor is it a series of technical monographs grouped by functionality and interspersed with a few screencaps (*cough* after effects 5 bible *cough*). It's grouped by things you need to accomplish in production and written simply & clearly with copious full-color screen grabs. Sidebars handle technical detail, workarounds, and asides. What Trish and Chris are doing you is guiding you through work habits they've garnered in 10 years of working with this app in a relaxed, conversational way. Thumbs Up!

Hint for reading this book: When you start each chapter, read all the sidebars and callouts first as a warmup, then go back and read everything.

Now in an updated and expanded second edition which covers version 5.5, Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects Volume 1: The Essentials is an eye-opening, full-color reference and tutorial written for Adobe "After Effects" users of all skill and experience levels. "Learner friendly" step-by-step tutorials effectively teach the reader how to exploit the animation capabilities of the software from layering, to learning how to represent motion paths and velocity, to masking, track mattes, and lighting in three dimensions, and more. A superb "how-to" self-teaching and highly recommended reference for aspiring computer artists and digital video makers, Creating Motion Graphics With After Effects is accompanied with a CD-ROM containing a completed user-oriented and accessible tutorial enhanced with hundreds of movies, stills, objects and audio clips, as well as the tryout version of Adobe After Effects 5.5 for the Macintosh or Windows.

I was a new user of After Effects, and had never used an animation program before. (I do most of my work in Photoshop and Premiere.) After buying two books from the local Borders (including Bolante's "After Effects 6.5") and browsing through a few others, I was about to (1) sign up for a class, or (2) give up. Good luck learning from most of the AE books out there; I couldn't.

So I began searching through the reviews on Amazon and came across "Vol. 1: The Essentials." It deserves the excellent reviews it's received. I'm no longer getting an ulcer trying to learn this program; the Meyers' approach is very logical, the step-by-step tutorials are fantastic, and some of the special effects included on the CD-ROM might be useful future projects.

If you're a new user, save yourself a lot of money and frustration and start with Meyers. This is the book to buy.

I bought this book as a person relatively new to After Effects. Several people pointed me to "Creating Motion Graphics" and I can see why. This book is so stuffed with valuable information. Whether you're new to AE or experienced, this is a valuable training tool.

Instructions are clear and concise. You'll learn everything from the AE interface to mattes, masking, 3D camera work, and on and on... I felt like the book had paid for itself after the first chapter (and I already kind of knew my way around the program).

If you're looking for a good resource to learn After Effects, the Creating Motion Graphics series is about as good as it gets.

This is my second book for AE, i have the first edition and second edition now. It was a great book also.

At first its a little more oriented for begginers but at least they show you how they have done some promos for some places. Now, if they do some effects to a movie, change its color, or just change anything.. they tell you why they wanted to change it. They give you a CD and the book is like an instruction booklet on how to use the CD, they give you instructions step by step on how to make the animation that they did.

I recomend this book!

I have been using AE for about a year and some months with this book I still have learned some new tricks. They also give you Free plug ins from various programs like Boris, Continuum etc.

I am learning AE, and had been going through the CIB from Adobe, and after seeing reviews for this book, decided to give it a try.
What a difference! - I went through just a few examples and learned a lot, far more efficient that the CIB, and with the extra Effects makes this book worth every nickle.
If you are learning AE, BUY THIS BOOK!
(Note that AE 6 is coming out in Aug 2003 - so this will be a little out of date in a few months - but still will be the best set of books out there).

I was a total 100% newbee to After Effects!
This book is great as a guidance/teacher for beginners to learn After Effects THOUROUGHLY.
Sometimes it's even too detailed.

The book is certainly not complex, but don't count on finishing it in a few days.
This tutorial, if well folowed, will take up a month of investing some hours every day.

In my opinion, a very good book if you take the time and effort to read it.
It is not a quick fix!

I even would suggest starting with chapter 2 and complete chapter 1 after some time, because it is actually a project covering many features which you don't understand yet.

The writers however did this, i think, to motivate you, to show its power and possibilities.

My advice : buy the book and take your time!

Oswald

Many people have written in saying how this is a great book, and it is. Trish and Chris Meyer have been involved with After Effects since its inception, and are acknowledged as the most leading experts in using After Effects and creating motion graphics. But I'd also like to point out to the couple of people who wrote in saying how long some of the instructions are for a single step that they have completely missed the intent of this book. To quote from the book itself: " You may have heard the saying "give me a fish; you've fed me for one day. Teach me to fish; you've fed me for the rest of my life." We want to teach you how to fish."
There is a lot of information given as you go through the tutorials, especially the first ones, because they want you to actually understand the HOW and WHY things work the way they do in After Effects. I suspect these few reviewers are probably reading through the book saying "yeah yeah, just get to the part where I make light rays come through the text".
If you want a cook book, that just tells you "press this button, click here, do this, do that" so that you end up with a "cool" looking animation and not a friggin clue how you got there, then this isn't the book for you. When I first started with After Effects I got a "Quickstart" guide, and that's exactly what it was like. I then bought the Creating Motion Graphics book, and went through it from cover to cover. I now use After Effects in every production I work on.
If you're wanting to really use After Effects, and feel confident with using the program, then this is the way to go. Get all three of the Meyer's books, you'll be so glad you did. The beauty of it is they don't easily become "out dated" because they teach you the principales of creating effective motion graphics. Yes, After Effects is huge, but deep water is nothing to fear, IF you know how to swim.

This book was amazing at teaching Adobe After Effects. After Effects is a highly useful tool for motion graphics and in my opinion a lot better than flash and other competing softwares. Right now, I am just an aspiring filmmaker in high school. I have a small TV show with the local access channel.

I wanted to create cool motion graphics for my show. In my graphic design class, we learned Illustrator and Photoshop, which I found very useful, but we learned Macromedia Flash for motion graphics and animation. As I was making graphics using Flash, I got frustrated by a lot of its shortcomings. Currently at my school, none of the classes use after effects, but the software was on their system due to the fact that they got it in the bundle that included premiere pro, illustrator, and photoshop. Also, I heard about it on the adobe website and judging by how useful photoshop and illustrator were, I decided to get after effects.

So I searched online to see if there were good books on after effects. I tried playing around with it but there's so much that it's nearly impossible to understand it by just playing around with it. The adobe help section is not useful either for getting started. I looked at this book "Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects," and found that it had the most amount of very positive reviews and all of the customer reviews were good, so I decided to buy this book.

It has been extraordinarily useful in getting me confortable with the program and showing you the little things in the program that can make a huge difference and illustrating well how to either avoid them or use them to a great extent. After reading the first couple of chapters, I knew that After Effects was much better than Flash and it got me interested in all the possiblities of After Effects. The book has really helped making motion graphics easy by pointing out the things that are very useful and getting you familiar with the After Effects interface.

This book should be the users manual. It is written well and the tutorials are very useful in finding out after effects and how to use the features to your full advantage. The only downside is that at some parts, there is an excessive amount of text at some parts and some of their attempts at humor fall short, but overall, definitely buy this book. Showing how to create complex animations easily is very beneficial and if you have a hard time figuring out the after effects interface, this book is awesome. Also, if you like Flash or have to use it and are frustrated with it, get the tryout for After Effects and this book and you'll see all that after effects has to offer and how its hugely beneficial.

I won't reiterate the praise that other reviewers have lavished on this book, though I share their sentiments. I just want to note that the book might be a bit overwhelming to absolute beginners. The information comes in a flood. By all means buy this book, but take the time to get familiar with AE's interface first, before launching in on the Meyer's text.

I was an occasional AE user who had to suddenly focus on the software for a particular project. I was delighted to find that the Meyers answered almost all of my nagging, long-term questions about the program as if they had received a printed wish list from my subconscious. I look forward to ramping up my AE skills with their other works.