Posts Tagged ‘Chris Meyer’

Author interview: Chris and Trish Meyer

Published by Megan O. Read, author relations manager | Friday, February 26th, 2010

Trish and Chris Meyer

I sat down with lynda.com authors Chris and Trish Meyer, legends in the motion graphics industry, to talk about where they came from, who inspires them, and what the future holds. Here’s what they had to say.

 When did you get started in the motion graphics industry? What was the industry like then? What/who inspired you?

 We got our start back in the early 1990s, which was when motion graphics started moving to the desktop. We were one of the development sites for After Effects 1.0, and used a lot of “1.0” software back then. This was the era where traditional post production houses charged in the area of $500/hour, one gigabyte hard drives were just starting to appear, and capturing uncompressed standard definition video (one frame at a time) to a computer file required a dedicated Abekas hard disk recorder. Desktop-based tools like After Effects were what we call today a “disruptive technology.” Indeed, the reason we started writing books was to help train other desktop motion graphics artists about the right way to do things, so that clients would have no reason to pick a traditional post house over a desktop-based artist. (more…)

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Vignetting with feathered mask shapes in After Effects

Published by Crystal McCullough, executive editor | Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

Vignetting is a classic photography technique involving darkening areas of an image in order to focus the viewers attention on a desired point of interest. In After Effects: Extended Vignette Techniques, Chris Meyer shows how vignettes can also be leveraged in video. He demonstrates how to frame a subject better, fix a poorly composed shot, give a vintage feel, create “quiet areas” to overlay text and other graphics, and how to blend an image over a new background. Vignettes can be created using masking, shape layers, and gradients. Be sure to check out the entire course for more insight and techniques.

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Summer fun (and learning) with lynda.com authors

Published by Megan O. Read, author relations manager | Saturday, June 6th, 2009

megan-head-glasses3

Hey lynda.com peeps! In case you are thinking about your summer vacations now, you might be interested in planning them around some SWEET conferences, workshops and tradeshows, where you can see the lynda.com authors you know and love in person. Here are a few you might want to check out:

Come and see Susan Cline (a new lynda.com author) who is currently working on a handful of highly anticipated Google Apps courses for us. She will be giving a workshop at The International Symposium on Emerging Technologies in Online Education on June 17th-19th in beautiful San Francisco, CA.

After Effects rock stars Chris & Trish Meyer, and Quark guru Jay Nelson will be at the HOW Conference in the always-fun Austin, TX from June 24th-June 27th. 

What better way to end your summer fun than with Flash on the Beach in Brighton UK where you can see Craig Swann, Rich Shupe, Hillman Curtis, Mike Chambers and Lee Brimlow! This conference is from September 20-23rd and I wish I could go with you. So many authors in such a cool location! 

Have fun learning and traveling this summer!

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