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The Core Skills of VFX Handbook has one simple but ambitious aim: to improve the new entrant skills available for the UK’s VFX industry.

The handbook is relevant to both students and tutors; it is designed to assist universities and colleges to raise the standard of VFX courses available and therefore the new talent available in the UK.

Download the Core Skills VFX Handbook:

http://www.skillset.org/animation/qualifications/article_8377_1.asp

Brett Morris has developed 2 very useful iphone and ipod touch apps for motion designers called KeyBox C4D & Keybox AE.

In a nutshell they allow you to search in different ways for any keyboard shortcut in Cinema 4D or After Effects, so a great companion while you are beavering away on your project.

I have 3 FREE apps to give away – 3 lucky people can win these redeem codes for the Keybox After Effects app by clicking ‘like’ on the DazPix facebook page here and saying something (nice) in the comments of the post on Facebook the 3 winners will be drawn at random.

You might also want to subscribe to the DazPix blog in your chosen reader here to get all the latest freebies, news and …..stuff

Here is what the website has to say:

Keybox provides a comprehensive list of Cinema 4D & After Effects keyboard shortcuts for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

• Utilize the visual keyboard feature to practice, refresh and memorize vital commands.
• Explore shortcuts by visual keyboard, alphabetical list, through various function categories, or via the search bar.
• Portable and easy to navigate format.

A cinema 4d experiment / test for an animation using mainly sweep nurbs & HDRI lighting / reflections with some quickly thrown on sound effects, its glossy but rendered pretty quickly.

Shot from the window of my Travelodge hotel room beside a busy road on a grim evening in North Devon using a Canon 7D, 17-55 EFS Lens, gorilla pod, & intervalometer. Shooting every 4 seconds with 2.5 second exposures.

It’s Official! DazPix has moved offices to West London’s Post Production facility Clear Cut Pictures.

We are looking forward to an exciting year of collaboration and growth into the future, working on broadcast titles, animation & graphics as well as feature film and TV Titles, visual effects and cgi.

Clear Cut Pictures is a full service Post facility catering for Offline, Online, Audio and now Motion Graphics & VFX.

They have also been nominated as ‘Best Post Production House’ at the 2011 Broadcast Awards held at Grosvenor House. The animation was made for the event as an introduction to the nominee, and shows some of the shows they have worked on in the past year captured in 15 seconds of branded panel graphics.

The BBC had commissioned a new set for the long running series ‘A Question Of Sport’ consisting of a huge wrap around LED screen with animated visuals to be displayed behind the panellists heads. Unfortunately the 3 shot which was to be used heavily in the edit had major problems. The LED lights were a size which interfered with the pixels in the shot creating an ugly jaggy and blocky halo around each of the Sports Celebrities heads as well as a serious colour dulling, shift and desaturation. The shots were deemed unusable, but we were asked to see whether a solution to save the shots could be found. Using Smoke, Mocha & After Effects we were able to rotoscope and isolate the panellists who were all shot interlaced, and re-composite them over an entirely rebuilt background screen exactly matching the original content. Matching the screens original animation was important to ensure the panellists lighting and furniture reflections were consistent with the background. Even with a successful matte to work with the footage still needed to be severely eaten into to eradicate the nasty black halo from the interlaced footage. Take a look at the video to see the before, alpha and after versions of a selection of shots.

Client: BBC Manchester

A Very Merry Christmas to you and yours, and a Prosperous New Year! Roll on 2011…..

There are hundreds of font sites out there, and literally hundreds of thousands of fonts, some of them thankfully are free. When it comes to selecting something for a specific purpose, or hunting for a font you know the name of already it helps to limit your search to the most reliable sources for freebies before spending your currency on a font you may only ever use once. Here is a list of typeface sites that I find the most useful on a day to day basis, hopefully they will prove useful to you too.

1. FONT SQUIRREL

Hundreds of well sorted and very classy fonts on a smart site, organised into style categories – there is no rubbish on this excellent resource, a real favourite here.

2. 1001 FREE FONTS

Lots and lots of fonts sorted alphabetically and by category.

3. BETTER FONTS

A fair number of free fonts that are nice and easy to preview before downloading.

4. URBAN FONTS

A tidy site well organised and categorised list of 8000 freeware fonts.

5. FONTSTOCK

Another good selection, clear and categorised.

6. FREE-FONTS

A font search facility that will hunt for a free version of a selected font.

7. ABSTRACT FONTS

13,086 fonts and counting, categorised and alphabetised, some very useful fonts here.

8. DA FONT

Massive selection of free fonts.

9. ELE FONTS

Yep, you guessed it, lots more free fonts here.

10. ACID FONTS

Another extensive range to trawl through or search for.

A few other sites with some nice typefaces offered free by the designers

DIVIDE BY ZERO

EXLJBRIS

BLUE VINYL

IDENTIFONT

The process of Brainstorming sounds very painful, and I guess sometimes it can be, but in this article are a few pointers to help you get the most from your brainstorming session and hopefully make it an enjoyable part of the creative process. After all, the idea is always the most vital ingredient to any successful film, animation or graphic treatment, the same with everything we create. Making the ideas flow easily and enjoyably working with your colleagues or whoever you want to bounce ideas off, and most importantly, getting the feedback and fresh input that you need to make your ideas develop, is the key to giving yourself the best chance of achieving the best results.

This advice for Motion Graphics Freelancers and all those who work in Film, TV, Motion Graphics or animation is free to read here and can be downloaded as a pdf file.

There are more Free Articles,  downloads and more here in Resources.