video

15 Essential After Effects Tutorials for Beginners

Learn After Effects Today, For Free! 15 Essential After Effects Tutorials for Beginners Want to pick up Adobe After Effects basics quickly? There’s no better way of learning a new piece of software than by sitting back and watching some video tutorials from pro users revealing their secrets! So, grab a coffee and a notepad and get ready to learn something new with our list of the best basic After Effects tutorials! Try After Effects for Free Use the link below to access a trial version of Adobe’s incredible motion graphics software. What is Adobe After Effects? Want to know what After Effects is? Brian Maffet from Total Training gives us a short intro, explaining why it’s an essential software tool for video creators. He touches on its flexibility to offer simple-to-use non-destructive color correction, video compositing and motion graphics whilst maintaining the high level of fine-tuning required by broadcast…    read more 

How to Use Video Blending Modes

Using Video Blending Modes to Remove Black Backgrounds

8th February 2022 |

Need to remove black background from your VFX footage? Often with overlay video effects such as snow, fog, glitch and flash fx the files will have black backgrounds. This is due to pre-keyed video formats (which include transparency) having incredibly large file sizes and issues with software compatibility. Sometimes you might have green screen backgrounds, where you would need to use keying effects to create transparency, but in cases where you want to remove a black background the simplest way to achieve this is to use blending modes. Blending modes change the way your effect layer displays over the footage beneath by, in short, only showing the bright or the dark areas depending on the setting. Add or Screen modes will only display the light areas, effectively keying out the blacks. This is useful for VFX overlays which are generally bright elements on dark backgrounds. Conversely, Multiply or Darken blending…    read more 

25 Free Animated Backgrounds for PowerPoint Feature

25 Free Animated Backgrounds for PowerPoint

Need some awesome animated loop backgrounds to use in your next corporate PowerPoint presentation? Here’s 25 of our finest loopable animations, all HD definition and totally free to use. These are perfect for adding instant color and motion to title and logo slides. They’re also ideal for powerful quotation slides – when you really need your message to stand out. TIP: As loop ready video files you’ll need to know how to set up video looping in PowerPoint. Luckily we have a blog post which takes you through this process here. Visual stimulation greatly emphasizes your messages, and it keeps viewers engaged. You may also want to use Flaticon’s logo in your slides as a way of adding personality or branding to the slide show. This will help you stand out from other presentations, and can be a great way to make your content more memorable. Well, onto the freebies!…    read more 

Adding Video to Powerpoint Title

How to add video to PowerPoint slides

Ever needed to spice up a dull slide presentation? Microsoft’s PowerPoint has long been the go-to app for quick and effective slideshow creation, but are you doing enough to keep the attention of your audience? What’s the quickest way to turn your tedious AGM data presentation into an engaging production for the whole office to enjoy? Video is the answer and, thankfully, it’s a breeze to include. Why use video in PowerPoint? Making sure the facts are right, the spellings are correct, the slides are in the right order – these are the things crucial to a successful presentation. But slideshows can be a bore, let’s face it. And most slides are cobbled together at the last minute. This is where the right graphics, and the inclusion of video can do wonders to elevate your creation. It’s important to think of video as an enhancement to the on-screen information, and…    read more 

Using Adobe Fresco for 2D Animation

How to create traditional 2D animations using Adobe Fresco

Have You Tried Adobe Fresco yet? Fresco is a digital painting app from Adobe, specifically for tablets. It includes both pixel-based painting as well as vector drawing tools. We especially like the new Live Brushes which behave like real watercolor and oil, mixing and blending together as they would in the real world. In this short video workflow tutorial, Sydney-based motion designer and illustrator Ben Marriott shows us how he animates simple, painted elements created in Fresco using an onion-skinning technique. To start with he sketches the outline of his frames using the pencil tool, then creates each painted animation frame on a separate layer, exporting the layered file as a PSD, from Adobe Fresco. Use After Effects to quickly sequence animation frames After importing the layers into After Effects he then trims them to one frame each and sequences the layers across the Timeline. To complete the hand-drawn look…    read more 

How-to-make-a-YouTube-intro-easily

How to make a YouTube intro for free

A beginner’s guide to making YouTube intros without spending any money! Making your YouTube channel look fantastic starts with the branding. Let’s look at YouTube intro templates. You’ve just got a groovy new YouTube channel up and running, or could do with some new awesome branding on an existing channel – how about a cool, animated logo intro to top and tail your videos? A professional looking video intro does wonders for your channel’s credibility. Often because people often make snap judgements on your content within the first few seconds of a video. A poorly made intro sequence can cause viewers to assume the rest of the video will be second-rate, even if your video production is first-class. So, how do you create professional looking YouTube intros with little, to no experience with animation software? And, also, how can you do this for free? Contents: Creating intro sequences using Adobe…    read more