Film Roll After Effects Preset [free download]

As I get older, making my life just a little easier is even more and more important. Not sorry about it. Like shooting with Sony Alphas. Sure, I can get technically “better” footage with giant cameras, but why the hell would I when it’s just so much fun to shoot with a nimble setup!? I love the S&Q. The Zeiss glass. I digress, I spent the weekend shooting on my alpha and I forgot how much FUN it is!

Along those lines, I’ve looked up this editing technique probably a 100 times and I always have to watch long, unedited youtube tutorials. Who has the time or patience!? I decided to make an After Effects preset for the beloved film roll (film slap, film transition, etc.), to save myself, and maybe it will help you, too.

  1. Download preset file (link below)

  2. Put the file in Applications/After Effects/Presets

  3. Add an ADJUSTMENT LAYER

  4. Apply the preset to the ADJ LAYER & move the keyframes to center them over your two layer cuts.

It’s simple enough to make just looking at the keyframes if you don’t want to bother with downloading. Just remember to finesse the speed settings of the bezier curves. I have lots of other AE presets and tricks with more customization that I’ll share if this is helpful.

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Quaranteam

We’re so weird, but kinda made for this quaranteam situation…

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TL;DW

It’s been a really unprecedented year. Zoom is life. Peleton is living.

Mariela started calling our kitchen the quarantina and often just “The Quantina” and then that morphed into “The Can’tina.”

  • we fell into the sourdough bread obsession

    • we have a Tartine related starter that is incredible

    • used it to make St. Louis Bread Co. inspired bread bowls and homemade broccoli cheese soup

    • the best avocado toast in the world

  • we make our own homemade pizzas with even homemade sauce

  • we made sourdough blueberry pancakes from the extra starter

  • cold brew iced coffee is on tap every day

  • breakfast & brunch are better than ever

  • Mariela makes the ABSOLUTE best pie I’ve ever had, still

  • and I took over a bathroom to “cure” my new yoga mat with sea salt for 24 hours. Madness

  • my hair finally has all the multiple identities it needs

  • 2020 is over!!

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She’s the HERO, now!

We celebrated our 19th anniversary in quarantine lockdown and there’s literally no where else in the world I would rather be or who I would rather be with. With all that has happened, I’m grateful to wake up every single day. Even if it is a little groundhog’s day. . .

Like everyone, jobs have fused with life.

The balance is hard. Winter break is usually the only time we can really get into our own huge projects. This project was different than any other though. Mariela contributed most of the graphics, she organized all of the media and really helped to keep the train moving! It was so fantastic!!! (I still want us to work together someday. I mean really work together, instead of both working at home, in the same room, sort of working together! hahahaha)

We had been working in our home studio to create the podcast of our dreams (even adding a dedicated 3rd seat!). I had worked out an awesome workflow of editing so efficiently on my iPad. With three episodes almost finalized…[RECORD SCRATCH] —that studio became our home office. It’s full of work computers, post-its, sketches of work projects and animation pieces scattered around. It’s hard to separate and work on our crazy stories in the same space. So I’ve just pretty much STOPPED working on anything for us and that’s not good or sustainable. I know I have to find a better balance.

That’s my hope for our 2021.

Other random news, I cannot believe it has taken me this long to order a mechanical keyboard. I customized my easy ease animation key with a little good luck black cat key. Now when a layer needs some smoothing I just think to myself—oh this layer needs some Morty. It’s also amazing because I can program the keys to do whatever I want!!! And saving myself an extra key for each animation key frame is so worth it!

Storyboarding Animations with Illustrator on Desktop & iPad [free download]

Over the last few years I’ve worked hard to speed up and minimize my animation production time. At the same time, I obviously don’t want to sacrifice style or quality. I mean, sure I can spend forever on a project when it is basically for me. But employers and clients often think animation happens overnight…yes duh, time is money.

So this is the workflow that I’ve developed over the years. I shared a version of my storyboard workflow here (from 2016). But since then, I’ve expanded my needs and refined my process with each illustration-driven animation project that I’ve done. I’ve updated the template to reflect these changes. Additionally, as many of you know — Illustrator for iPad Pro has finally arrived!!! It feels like I bought the iPad Pro before it was even really useable FOR ME because I do almost all of my designing in Illustrator. (Why? —Photoshop files are enormous and really bog down whatever computer I am using to render animations. I also prefer to use the camera to move around the scenes and lighting with After Effects. I think that’s just because I’m also a filmmaker, so it’s just kind of how my mind works.)

Anyway, I realize there are infinite ways to do these kinds of projects and honestly I have continually tried out different methods. I would love to hear from others as to how they approach this!? I certainly don’t have all the answers, but I like sharing free tools just in case it’s helpful to anyone else.

I’ve needed a better way to display the script for each storyboard. It’s helpful for my stakeholder’s review process to be able to read along. At the same time, I cannot share enormous AI files with people that don’t use AI, so I needed a way to print to PDF and display the storyboards without modifying the size of each artboard. Obviously, I want to keep each Artboard at 1920p.

  • So I’ve created artboards within artboards and labeled them accordingly in the template as “SCRIPT”.

  • Each animatable object must be on it’s own root layer (for After Effects), so keep that in mind and stay organized with descriptive names. I tend to make a huge mess in the design phase and then spend an evening partially watching TV and renaming layers. It doesn’t interrupt my flow as much, but whatever works for you.

  • The final process is to split the main AI file into individual .eps files for each artboard, skipping the SCRIPT artboards.

  • Then you must open each .eps file in AI and save as AI.

  • Then you can just start pulling in each organized scene into After Effects.

It sounds like a lot, but an animation is exactly that
—a lot!

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Organized Script Artboards

When I have a version ready to share, I export to PDF by selecting “by artboards” and using only the artboards labeled SCRIPT. These are just the larger artboards that will print the script beneath the design in PDF.

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Big Picture of Little Pictures

Having storyboards means I can zoom out and see the big picture. I design my whole animation project in this way, so that I can maintain a cohesive style for each project (or at least try).

And now —all of this translates to the ipad with the brand new Illustrator for iPad app! Yay! You DO need to setup your project on a computer (because it’s an Illustrator Template .ait filetype). Save it to your Creative Cloud documents. Then, like magic, you can work on these giant projects with a tactile Apple Pencil instead of being chained to a desk.

Happy animating and designing, graphic friends!

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P.S. If you find these tutorials and tips helpful, please consider donating a few dollars to our adoption fund!

Silent Movie Silent Film Title Card: Free Download

Back by very popular demand...my free silent movie title card!  

by Farrin N. Abbott, CopyCatFilms

by Farrin N. Abbott, CopyCatFilms

 

Please note: I am a professional video producer and I do not appreciate major brands, networks and professionals using my design WITHOUT crediting me as a source. You see, I created this design because there was a lack of available options. I spent many days getting it just right and as a result I decided that something so common should be widely available. I decided to share, asking for credit when used. I would also appreciate a comment with a link to your work. It's not required, but I would like to see the creative ways it has been used around the web.

And as many people have over the years, please feel free to ping with links of use that you discover, Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries (s2 ep9) -- I'M LOOKIN' at YOU. Have some class.

Also note, I am not interested in helping you format this for a powerpoint or changing any feature--unless of course you are looking to hire me. I'm sorry but that's just reality.

Here are the links to download. And here is the link from 2010 with lots of creative examples where it's been used. Thank you all for sharing and making the internet a creative and inspiring place to work!

Photoshop Versions (AE version is too big for hosting these days):

Silent Movie Title HD

Silent Movie The End Title Card HD

Silent Movie The END Title Card NTSC DV Widescreen

With respect,

Farrin N. Abbott CopyCatFilms

P.S. If you find these tutorials and tips helpful, please consider donating a few dollars to our adoption fund!

Illustrator Storyboard Template | Free Download

*UPDATED VERSION HERE*

I love finding holes in the internet that I can fill. I searched for an Illustrator template after discovering that is precisely what keeps causing me such huge delays in the design process when moving to After Effects.  In my efficient obsessions, I keep trying to skip that step and then my projects immediately become:

  • a tangled web of graphic files that are hard to visualize at one time

  • impossible to create a more cohesive style

  • hard to reuse elements

Sure I create color schemes and burn through post-its like a monster, but I want to be able to see them all together.  I know others do this and quite well I should add, but I've really been researching the workflow of others as well as my own and realized today that I just keep skipping it...

So this is my new workflow plan:

Workflows-storyboard

Workflows-storyboard

Anyway, I decided to make a 1080p video size animation Storyboard Template for Illustrator to force myself into this habit from now on. Thought I'd share.  Maybe someone will find it instead of spending their Saturday night formatting a grid with script notes!

If anyone finds this helpful, I'll be back with an update on using a variation on this workflow to work with Keynote animation projects...soon.

By the way, I put the scripts on one layer and backgrounds and swatches also on their own layers in the template setup so that the export to After Effects or split to their own files will make it all a little cleaner. That is THE goal in this life, right.

Use the Illustrator export "Save as" feature to split the artboards into individual scene files to make animation within After Effects possible (because the damn dynamic link is still 10 years away from dynamic).

Cheers, F

Puppet Intro: Real HouseDyke

:: work in progress :: A first puppet…brought to life with a little 90's inspiration (song remix by yours truly). I'm still working out some of the kinks before I can launch the full puppet project, but I'm addicted.  All of the images are hand-drawn from photos. Can't stop, won't stop now! Being a "day person" has taught me that I'm a terrible housewife, but I'm a pretty good HouseDyke…typically capable of fixing just about anything.  "Just about"..."Most of the time."

Even if there's a struggle...