Hello my dear friends! I’m happy to announce that Making It Look Great 5 hosted by myself is finally here. It took me over five months to record the tutorials, edit them, and put it all together, so I really hope you’ll like it. Please support my efforts and hard work by purchasing this product from Motionworks so I can continue to provide you with free content and great products.

See a full tutorial list and purchase the training here
Watch the promo! (YouTube version)

Click on the image above to learn more about the product. It’s loaded with over 7 hours of video training. Learn how to harness the power of expressions in After Effects to make beautiful, complex animations and save time. Whether you’re an After Effects beginner or expert you’ll learn valuable techniques that will make your work look great. Included with the 10 video tutorials are 3 bonus video tutorials: Gyro Extended, Butterfly Man extended and Working with the Presets. MILG5 is also loaded with free plug-ins and presets discussed throughout the lessons.

Work fast, work smart, look great with Making It Look Great 5.

Making It Look Great 5 ($79.00)

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Create a cool-looking gyroscopic element completely within After Effects. Inspired by the work of Mark Coleran, this tutorial includes extensive use of Shape Layers, parenting and simple expressions to create a technical look using almost no keyframes.

Create a slick push pin toy effect as seen in the Radiohead “House of Cards” video. This tutorial shows you how to combine regular footage with Trapcode’s popular Form plug-in to create an eye-popping 3D effect.

Create a reusable retro-style computer terminal animation. Harness the power of expressions, including some undocumented features to change the text content and look on the fly. Learn how to turn a simple typewriter effect into realistic DOS-style computer readout.

Create a realistic and detailed Jumbotron-style video screen. This tutorial includes must-know keying techniques, tips on creating volumetric lights and presets, and ingenious workflow for creating complex looks on a single layer using the CC Composite effect. The advanced CE Screenify effect is also included in the download exclusively for Making It Look Great 5 viewers.

Create the stylish effect where a character suddenly bursts into hundreds of butterflies. In this lesson learn how to create a smart butterfly rig using Trapcode 3D Stroke, control Trapcode Particular particles using dispersion maps, build volumetric backlighting using Trapcode Lux and use the amazing Avidion MotionGrabber effect (not included with the download) to automatically track a layer’s alpha channel.

Master fast and precise color correction techniques using standard After Effects tools including Colorama and CC Composite. In this tutorial learn how to fine tune a look using the Colorama effect as a range selection tool, allowing adjustments to specific aspects of the footage.

Create an infinitely zooming spycam look. This tutorial starts with basic techniques for creating a simple slide show then covers amazing, time-saving techniques for automating transitions between layers using expressions.

Create automated subtitles based on layer markers. This short tutorial demonstrates how to automate subtitle creation.

Create a realistic dripping blood effect without using keyframes or expressions. This lesson includes a great study of precomposing and demonstrates how to use a Photoshop-style brush with the CC Time Blend effect to paint text onto the screen.

Create a funky disco-style animation based totally on sound. This lesson includes a slick technique for creating running lights using Trapcode Form together with the Colorama effect, basic camera movement, techniques using the CC Time Blend and Wave Warp effects and plenty of simple expressions.

More details will be available shortly in the upcoming free introduction video, so stay tuned.

With Motionworks 2.0 launching shortly I guess it will be no longer that few weeks till you get a chance to purchace this long awaited amazing product. I’ve put a lot of effort into it. I’m sure you’re going to love it.

All the best my friends.
Happy AfterEffecting.

I created some functions for preprocessing the posts before they are being displayed on the site. Most of the work was around the Shadowbox engine. Among other stuff I made the Shadowboxer and Shadowbox Gallery Generator.

Shadowboxer scans the post for all links and adds a Shadowbox to them, except some specyfic file types (like ZIP) and the links that already have Shadowbox applied to them.

Shadowbox Gallery Generator introduced a new tag that can be used to automatically generate code for making a shadowbox gallery. Now all that is required to create a gallery is simply uploading the files to a specyfied directory and then using [jdGallery:Name] to create the gallery.

Both functions work great and I’m sure I’ll use them as well when my new site is up.

There is also a good side to all of this. Being forced to postpone the work on the tutorials gave me more time to think about what is interesting and what should the tutorials be about, and I assure you… the things me and John came up with are really going to blow your mind. With that said I’m hoping that MILG5 will start a new breed of MILG training series. Even if it doesn’t I’m sure it will still be one of a kind. Not only we’ll be presenting to you at least 10 unique tutorials, not only you will again see how to make your work look great, but you’ll also learn how to make it work great. You know me – I hate keyframes. I’ve focused on making great looking graphics in the simplest possible way while making them as flexible and reusable as possible. Above that I’ll be giving away some of my upcoming products that are not yet available for purchase, so if you buy MILG5 you’ll be one of the chosen ones to receive some free products along with it.

Since there are at least five more tutorials to do here’s your chance: tell us what you want to see. Please remember that MILG is about motion graphics, not vfx, so keep that in mind when suggesting tutorials. Your requests should also not relate to any Zaxwerks products. We’ve done that a lot already. Instead you may request tutorials on any build-in plugins, expressions, workflow tips, and Trapcode plugins.

Happy AfterEffecting!