Blog by Eran Stern

NEW DOWNLOAD – Dust Specs

Eran Stern — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 14:01:03 +0000

Reality is never bright and clear as we would like it to be. Pavements have cracks, roads are bumpy and the air is filled with tiny particles which, of course, are part of the complex oxygen that we breathe. In addition, there are all sorts of dust and specs noises in the air which also appear on film and video footage, due to the nature of the film material and the light conditions. However, When creating computer graphics, the result is always clean and sterile without all the real sense of nature, especially when you combine video, text and 3D rendered animations.
Therefore, most composting apps, such as After Effects, offer some tools to help you add (or remove) Grain from selected videos. This of course helps to get a more realistic results but sometimes it’s still not enough. Regardless of that, the appearance of the “Dust Specs look” has recently become very popular and many also use it to give some character and a special look to their videos.

So here is a free After Effects project, that uses the built in CC Particle World combined with a few additional effects, to create a layer of dust and small particles. You can use the results as is by rendering the project and adding the video using a blending mode of Add or Screen. A more advanced option is to open the project, change it to your preferable resolution (the project currently is in HD 1920 × 1280) and then add your graphical elements and take advantage of the fact that the particles are “living” in three-dimensional space – this should give more depth to the result.

Here are two examples of the use of various video footage (courtesy of Unlimited Stock Media) and text integration in 3D space.
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Download Project

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BTW – If you’re here, may I invite you to check my latest mini product as well.

NEW TUTORIAL – Mind Trip

Eran Stern — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 08:16:58 +0000

The first edition of this 2-part video tutorial delving into the mind of a woman. Learn how to create a tunnel vision effect by applying a few After Effects tricks such as time remapping, motion blur, blending, and color correction to footage from artbeats.com. This cool technique can be used on it’s own or in conjunction with Part 2 (coming soon).
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Watch Tutorial
Download Project
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After Effects CS5 – 2 New Tutorials

Eran Stern — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 06:03:34 +0000

As you’ve probably heard, Adobe has announced today the latest, anticipated, new version of After Effects.
A ‘must have’ release, born from hard labor and love from the AE team in Seattle. After reading the delightful features-list on the product page and on some of your favorite websites, it is safe to assume that you don’t need more reading materials, however you might be after some new tasty tutorials – and this is exactly what I have for you. Before going into that, I must say that if for some reason you skipped the last cycle – you don’t want to miss this one. In my opinion, The CS5 release is one of the most important releases for most of the tools in my set. Just to name a few: Premiere Pro, Photoshop, Illustrator and Flash – got enormous improvements and clever artistic technologies. In Some cases, the new features will change the way you work with those applications on a daily basis.
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If you want to see some of it for yourself, why don’t you jump to Adobe TV, where you can find great tutorials from the industry leaders. I also had the honour of presenting two new features for AE CS5 myself, watch them here by pressing on the thumbs above and below.

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For more exciting updates, watch this blog as I’ll do my best to post more info and pictures from NAB10, where I’m right now. If you’re here as well, come and say hello. I’ll be at the Plugin’s Pavilion and also at the MediaMotion Ball Party.

Free Download – Cinematic Intro

Eran Stern — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 13:55:18 +0000

This free download is courtesy of the talented Andreas Bierwirth. Andreas is a freelance motion designer artist from Germany.
Many of you know Andreas by his cool title: AEdude, which is a also the name of his web project. Although the number of projects he offers are not as many as on other sites, each project is carefully made with great attention to details, and this yields a high-quality final result. There are some really amazing stuff there.
As most of you know, there are plenty websites that offer After Effects Templates which can be modified and used in your own productions.
Not all sites offer the same level of content, and usually you can’t really tell until you try it yourself. As always, if you want the best content, you usually need to pay a premium price for it. So if you don’t want to compromise on quality yet also want a decent price, you should defiantly check out AEdude.com.
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Download Project

For best results please read the instructions inside the project file

New Tutorial – Look Ma, No Wires

Eran Stern — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 10:55:54 +0000

In this new tutorial we’ll explore a clever technique for shooting flying fairies in front of a green screen without the use of a crane and wires. Of course it won’t apply to every situation but when it does, it can save you lots of $$$’s and it’s also a lot of fun as well. This shot was kindly given to me by the talented artist Eyal Be and it is part of a pilot for a new fantasy comedy show created by Eyal Be and Nimrod Ben-Moshe, Watch the full trailer.
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Watch Tutorial

Finally, its done…

Eran Stern — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 06:48:09 +0000

I thought to share with you my recent project. I’ve been working on this forever now and its finally done. A new training DVD for Premiere Pro. Hold your horses! its in Hebrew
This is by far the most comprehensive training I’ve ever recorded – 14(!) hours of EVERYTHING you need to know about Adobe’s main editor.
Since I’ve been working with Premiere Pro on a daily basis, I’ve grown to love and appreciate its approach to video and sound. I know that you may not agree with me, but for me it is still the #1 NLE of choice.

This promo below was made using my other favorite tool – After Effects plus couple of plugins such as Boris Continuum Complete, Trapcode Form and Zaxwerks Serpentine. I’m very proud of this product, having worked on it for such a long time, and the promo came out pretty nice as well, if I may say so myself. So although its not in English, I thought it’s still worth sharing. The background movie, BTW, is a free download courtesy of my dear buddy Carl Larsen – check it out here.
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So in case you’re planning to re-visit your Hebrew Sunday school and want to impress your teacher, here’s a quick look at the Promo for this product:
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An overview of students work

Eran Stern — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 12:00:54 +0000

Another semester has passed, and it’s time to show off my students achievements.

These are the projects results of my students at the Visual Communication department at Shenkar college. The assignment was to design a package for a broadcast channel or a Television show of their liking. They were asked to come up with a logo and bumpers, credits look and a program loop/schedule. They used Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator for the Logo design and After Effects for motion and composting.

Now its time for you to judge the results for yourselves

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New Tutorial – Slow Motion Stills

Eran Stern — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 09:14:12 +0000

In this video tutorial I’ll demonstrates a clever method to create extreme slow motion video using few still frames. This fine result can be achived using a 3rd party plug named Twixtor Pro from RE:Vision Effects.
The credit for this method belongs to the fine artists at JCS Post Production. This is one of the biggest post houses in Israel which creates cutting edge motion graphics and special effects. Most of JCS work is focuses on 4 major niches: Commercials, TV channel branding, TV programs, Video attractions training films. I want to thank the kind people at JCS for providing me this commercial. I’m sure everyone can learn something from this cool technique.
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Watch Tutorial
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New Tutorial – Bionic Lab

Eran Stern — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 16:47:57 +0000

A new tutorial on Artbeats.com which involve screen replacing using Mocha for AE, motion graphic design, text animation and some color correction treatment. All done using great clips from the enormous collection of Artbeats taking advantage of the newly addition libraries from Footage Hub
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Watch Tutorial

Busy working…

Eran Stern — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 19:22:15 +0000

Hi guys, a short post just to let you know that my plate is pretty full these days. So updates are a little slow for the English site. I’m working on a few projects, trying to juggle, or should I say wiggle, work and family at the same time. I am working on a new Hebrew training DVD, nurturing the new Hebrew Post Production Forum at the site, and also organizing a user group meeting for my Israeli talented crowd which will take place, for the first time, in Tel Aviv next week.

There’s more happening, but at this stage this is what I can reveal. Anyway, just to let you know, I’m planning to publish a new cool tutorial for Creative COW which hopefully will be ready for the holiday season and maybe another one just after that, who knows?! I guess only god.
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