With a new heat wave hitting the Cape of Good Hope down here in South Africa, the best place to be today was the sea, the fridge or … the movie theatre. So we went to see the movie “2012″ by Roland Emmerich – which USA Today called “… the mother of all disaster movies”… and truly so.

OUFFF! Disaster isn’t my cup of tea at all, but with my interest in Design and 3D Animation and being a grand movie freak, I went there for the special effects… and I got more than I wanted! In fact, I needed some time to land after having been swept across all continents by land, air and sea escaping monstruous tsunamis, tornado earth quakes, continental shifts, polar inversions etc etc and this in all sorts of ways the human race literally raced to survive after solar flares had basically set the inner earth core on fire with temperatures rising at gigantic speed and dramatically changing the planet forever.

2012 by Roland Emmerich

Without today’s fascinating and incredibly advanced technological possibilities – and corresponding budgets – a movie like 2012 by Roland Emmerich would very probably never be made.

The storyline isn’t that different basically from what you may remember from “The Day After Tomorrow” – when temperatures over especially North America dropped astronomically within just 7 short days and the President of the USA had to make some difficult and drastic evacuation decisions… Here we have the inversion on a global scale, we also have the ‘warning’ and the initial disbelief of the world’s political leadership in what some scientists from the other end of the world – this time at the bottom of a boiling hot copper mine in India – have to report… until things start happening… literally cooking… California disappears, Yellowstone disappears, Washington falls, the Vatican collapses. . . and there is almost no more place to go, no escape… but for those privileged 400,000 who could pay a ticket at 1 Billion Euros a piece – who of course consider themselves as the creme de la creme of the human race and worth of carrying on the species after three modern “Arks” (… well built in advance for this exact planetary situation, hint, hint… and conspiracy believers are nodding…) would place them together with some representative Master pieces of our Civilization’s Art and Culture – like the Mona Lisa, officially stolen from the Louvre – into a new dawn… to start again from scratch.

The joke for me was that this place – at the end of the movie – this new dawn… was exactly here, at the Cape of Good Hope… in the middle of the current heat wave – and the Drakensberg became the highest mountain on earth. Yeah, life would start again in Africa … and there were surrealistic vistas when, within the total apocalyptic chaos, we see helicopters transporting giraffes and elephants in biblic ‘two’s – so African safaris in the brave new world would be secured… Yet, with so much overwhelming chaos at incredible lengths and with hammering music slashing out at our emotional barometers, one was no longer drawn into the magic, it was too much, too long, too loud, too obvious, and despite the incredible Special Effects – well, less would have been more in my personal view.

I had also been interested in how the Mayan Calendar had been woven into the story, knowing that there was never a prediction of an end of the world but the beginning of a new era or epoche, called the era of “Ethics” – which I would greet with all my heart… but except in stereotypes like “If we stop caring for one another, we lose our humanity” … there wasn’t much of what I would have expected.

So if you are a fan of disaster movies and this is exactly what you expect – then the movie delivers the promise, then this is for you. You were warned!

2012 by Roland Emmerich

With a new heat wave hitting the Cape of Good Hope down here in South Africa, the best place to be today was the sea, the fridge or … the movie theatre.

So we went to see the movie “2012″ by Roland Emmerich – which USA Today called “… the mother of all disaster movies”… and truly so.

OUFFF! Disaster isn’t my cup of tea at all, but with my interest in Design and 3D Animation and being a grand movie freak, I went there for the special effects… and I got more than I wanted! In fact, I needed some time to land after having been swept across all continents by land, air and sea escaping monstruous tsunamis, tornado earth quakes, continental shifts, polar inversions etc etc and this in all sorts of ways the human race literally raced to survive after solar flares had basically set the inner earth core on fire with temperatures rising at gigantic speed and dramatically changing the planet forever.

2012 by Roland Emmerich

Without today’s fascinating and incredibly advanced technological possibilities – and corresponding budgets – a movie like 2012 by Roland Emmerich would very probably never be made.

The storyline isn’t that different basically from what you may remember from “The Day After Tomorrow” – when temperatures over especially North America dropped astronomically within just 7 short days and the President of the USA had to make some difficult and drastic evacuation decisions… Here we have the inversion on a global scale, we also have the ‘warning’ and the initial disbelief of the world’s political leadership in what some scientists from the other end of the world – this time at the bottom of a boiling hot copper mine in India – have to report… until things start happening… literally cooking… California disappears, Yellowstone disappears, Washington falls, the Vatican collapses. . . and there is almost no more place to go, no escape… but for those privileged 400,000 who could pay a ticket at 1 Billion Euros a piece – who of course consider themselves as the creme de la creme of the human race and worth of carrying on the species after three modern “Arks” (… well built in advance for this exact planetary situation, hint, hint… and conspiracy believers are nodding…)  would place them together with some representative Master pieces of our Civilization’s Art and Culture  – like the Mona Lisa, officially stolen from the Louvre – into a new dawn… to start again from scratch.

The joke for me was that this place – at the end of the movie – this new dawn… was exactly here, at the Cape of Good Hope… in the middle of the current heat wave – and the Drakensberg became the highest mountain on earth. Yeah, life would start again in Africa … and there were surrealistic vistas when, within the total apocalyptic chaos, we see helicopters transporting giraffes and elephants in biblic ‘two’s – so African safaris in the brave new world would be secured…

Yet, with so much overwhelming chaos at incredible lengths and with hammering music slashing out at our emotional barometers, one was no longer drawn into the magic, it was too much, too long, too loud, too obvious, and despite the incredible Special Effects – well, less would have been more in my personal view.

I had also been interested in how the Mayan Calendar had been woven into the story, knowing that there was never a prediction of an end of the world but the beginning of a new era or epoche, called the era of “Ethics” – which I would greet with all my heart… but except in stereotypes like “If we stop caring for one another, we lose our humanity” … there wasn’t much of what I would have expected.
So if you are a fan of disaster movies and this is exactly what you expect – then the movie delivers the promise, then this is for you.

You were warned!

Read more…

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Animation for Beginners with After Effects

Since Disney’s hand-drawn animation, nothing has changed when it comes to the basic principles of animation. The success of Disney was not just in the design of Mickey and friends but in the way the characters were put into motion.

At Saturday’s Ycademy Seminar we will explain the

and see, how to apply them with After Effects.

Acceleration and deceleration is created with Easy Ease in and out functions is AE. The effect creates fluid motion.

Anticipation designs the action leading to the actual movement, like the backwards swing before hitting a ball with a golf club. Anticipation prepares the viewer for the action which will occur. Surprise actions can be more effective without anticipation.

Squashing and stretching blows life into a volume. The rule is, not to change the volume while designing the effect: a vertical squash goes with a horizontal stretch.

Objects tend to move along an arc, rather than along straight lines. In After Effects we animate along a path.

Straight Ahead Action refers to drawing frame by frame, while Pose to Pose refers to designing first the key-poses and then filling in the frames in-between, hence the terms of “keyframe” and “tweening”.”

Staging refers to the act of drawing the audiences attention to important actions or events in the movie. It has to do with camera positioning and handling and composition.

Well placed exaggeration can make movements more interesting.

Follow Through refers to the motion of objects after the action while Overlapping Action means that an action does not have to stop when or before another starts.

Secondary action makes the principal action more interesting. While the principal action may be a man walking, secondary actions could be arm swinging, movements with the head and so on.

Speed of action impacts on perception and emotion created. One of the most difficult principles to master, often expressed with the distance between two keyframes in After Effects.

This does not really refer to After Effects but to other programs you may use to draw objects, such as Photoshop.

Objects need to be appealing to draw in the audience. This is not only true for animated characters. The best animation is not eye-catching if what you show is not designed in an appealing or charismatic way.

After Effects is not just about motion, it’s about expression, design, appeal and emotion created. An animation designer is therefore a multi-tasker and the best are multi-talents!

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Christmas Card 2011

As the Festive Season is rapidly approaching, it’s time to think of how to wish “Merry Christmas” and  a “Happy New Year 2011″ . Here’s a first Christmas Card 2011 for YOU – I just loaded the tiny video clip on YouTube!

Christmas Card 2011

The above Christmas Card 2011 was created using Adobe After Effects in preparation of this year’s final Ycademy Seminar 2011, taking place in the form of an online Workshop this coming Saturday. We will focus on creating Christmas Greetings using Adobe After Effects. This spiffy program is at the base of so many beautiful animations we see on TV or any film related stuff.

Time to learn how it all functions and then to get good at it! Watch this space!

PS: I can only create a small version as I am in desperate need of more RAM and not only that as my dear old machine is concerned… This will happen in the near future! Can’t wait myself :)

After Effects Openers for Global Sports

Two simple and bold openers for Global Sports US. The opener will be used on the Season 2 fashion presentation clip by Listen Up London.

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After Effects Happy New Year

Tonight at YorgoLive we will focus on editing Inkman’s Christmas After Effect Template. This is a first simple adaptation; in fact the project can be further transformed namely by changing colors and backgrounds. The goal is to become familiar with simple changes of an existing After Effects project.Of course we will show participants how to embed the movie into a Facebook page for sharing with friends and fans.

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Christmas Media Design at Ycademy

The Ycademy Seminar in December will focus on Christmas Media, namely on working with Adobe After Effects.In stead of producing static Christmas cards participants will be able to add motion, sound and other effects to produce a stunning customized Christmas Clip.

The above draft for a UVUYO video is a typical example for what After Effects can do for you.

The Christmas Media Design Seminar will take place on December 17, 201, starting at 1 pm London time and closing at 9 pm London time.

As we have only one day available for the December Seminar, we will use all Daily Call sessions for an introduction into the secrets of After Effects. All pre-seminar calls will be recorded as well and video tutorials will be made available to seminar participants.

Acquire enough After Effects related knowledge to be able to work with After Effects templates and to customize, adapt or modify them.

All participants will create a customized Christmas Clip.

Participants need Adobe’s After Effects, preferably CS 5.5 64 bit version, however CS4 running on 32 bit will do.

For Customization, you may want to use some of your family photos or, if you create a business clip, some business related pictures , screen-shots or graphics.

All other materials, namely professional templates, will be provided.

Special Christmas price: $45

Discounts as usual for Ycademy Pros.

Click to get your Ticket

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With a simple image/photo editor you can create your own web effects. These editors often come as software with your digital camera, or you can choose from the many that are freely available online. 

Simple Web Effects

For the  purpose of this exercise in creating a simple web effect I am using  Paint.Net.

Step 1.
Open your photo editor, and open an image you want to select a region from. Go to the ‘Tools’ and choose the selection tool to cut out the section you require, then go to ‘edit’ and ‘cut’. Go to ‘File’ new, and open a clean white area, then right click  and paste. You now save this.

In this instance I selected a section of roof tiles on a house.

Roof tiles

 Step 2.
Now open this new image and on the top toolbar go to Effects.There find ‘Distort’ and use the Tile reflection. I increased  the tile size and decreased the curvature.

Web effect with tiles

This of course can now be used in many ways. Just by going to ’Adjustments’ and playing with the Hue /Saturation ( I increased the saturation to 200) I ended with this result.

Web Effects with tiles2

These images can be used in a variety of ways as background or whatever you choose. Its simple and lots of fun.

This tutorial is based on a recent Custom Photo Blog Theme Development for WordPress on the base of Semiomantics XO. The Solutions apply to most any clean WordPress theme whereas some of the style sheet syntax may vary from theme to theme.

The Goal of the exercise was to build a site which will display on mobile platforms as well without the use of WPTouch Pro for example and which offers the possibility to navigate without zooming on mobile phones.

This gave us the opportunity to style the Main Navigation (horizontal menu on top of the site. As we are on a photo site we thought about using Menu tabs with images and rollover effects which can be achieved either with sprites or as individual images.

We opted for a solution without sprites in this case considering that the difference will not be material on this site.

The screenshot shows the rollover effect as it has been taken while the mouse was hovering over the CONTACT tab.

The Menu Normal View and the Hover View show the same picture, whereas we put a transparent black layer (85% alpha) over the image for the Normal View. Also the font changes from white to blue.

On other sites we used black and white images which evolve to color or simply two entirely different pictures or text labels.

The question we will answer here is:

First of all we create a menu from the WordPress dashboard under Appearance –>Menu.

We call this main navigation ‘Main’. Now, and this is important, open the Screen Options on top right of the screen and tick all options, namely the Advanced Menu Properties.

Click to see large version.

These allow you to configure your menu items further, for example you may open the link in a new tab or window, you may define the link relation, add a description and important for us: you may define CSS Classes!

These classes allow us to style each list item in the menu individually by defining the corresponding styles in the custom syle sheet.

As you can see from the above screen-shot, we created a menu tab for FREE B&W PHOTO FEEDS. We expand the tab in the back-office to see all properties and we create a CSS Class which we call “navfeed” (You just type in the name of the class, not the “.” (dot) which you will use in the CSS Style-sheet only.).

Repeat this procedure for  all menu items creating for each a CSS class (or multiples).

If all tabs will be styled in a uniform way, you may use the same class for all; it is however likely that you wish to create individual styles, namely if you use different images and width of the tabs.

Now we just style the menu from the XO design tab as much as possible: fonts, font color and size and hovers if you wish. Our example shows that we have spread the menu over the full width of the page simply by adapting the fonts and font sizes, right from the XO Design panel.

Once done, take a screenshot of the menu and load it to Photoshop or any other image editor where you dispose of rulers to measure the width of each tab.

In our example, we are using 4 tabs with different width, the page width being 980 pixels.

The tabs have the following width:

1. navhome:       157 px
2. navfeed:          459 px
3. navcontact:    280 px
4. navy:                 84 px

Total, 980 pixels.

We wish to separate the tabs leaving a space of 1 pixel between them; we therefore decrease the with of 3 tabs by 1 px each to create the space for the spaces (this is getting smart, huh).

If you use Photoshop, you can just design your menu bar and slice it then accordingly, If you go one by one, you just create individual pictures of the same height and the width as defined above.

As we like to use the menu layout from XO, we will use the font definition from XO; the images we create will serve just as background pictures for each menu tab.

Our XO Settings for the menu are:

• Font: Quicksand
• Font size: 32 px
• Font Color: #FFFFFF (white)
• Hover Color:  #0000FF (blue)
• Background: #000000 (black)

These settings result in a nice menu which we will expand with an image. The height of the menu is 80 px at present and we wish to expand it to 182 px by adding an image.

There you go! Now let’s fit everything together!

Finally we open our CSS Style-sheet and define the newly created classes.

As you see above, our classes are:

navhome, navfeed, navcontact and navy.

The corresponding classes in the Style-sheet will be:

.navhome

.navcontact .….   a dot in front of the label defines a “class” in the CSS Style-sheet.

Also, as these tabs contain hyperlinks, we will create the classes

.navhome a

.navcontact a .…  and so on.

This way we will then be able to create the hover pseudo classes:

.navhome a:hover .… and so on.

Now we just type into our style-sheet whatever result we want to achieve, in our case this looks as follows for the HOME tab (the others are similar, except the width and image reference).

.navhome, .navhome a {background: url('http://bw.photorss.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/navhome-o.png') no-repeat !important;height:130px !important;}
.navhome a:hover {background: url('http://bw.photorss.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/navhome.png') no-repeat !important;}

.navfeed, .navfeed a {background: url('http://bw.photorss.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/navfeed-o.png') no-repeat !important;height:130px !important;}
.navfeed a:hover {background: url('http://bw.photorss.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/navfeed.png') no-repeat !important;}

To this we add the little 1 px space:

.navfeed  {margin-left:1px ;}

That’s it!

Hope you enjoy and let me know about your results by commenting here below.

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Testing Visualization Features on XO 2011

How far can you push visual effects without messing up your code completely or without getting a low YSlow score?

I wanted to test excessive visualization on Semiomantics XO for WordPress.

Visual Features on Semiomantics XO

For the purpose of the exercise we have loaded a java based large image slider (980 x 278 pixels) in addition to the featured default slider. Then we have added a flash driven Cubing 3D slide show, slicing images up to 50 times. To round up the picture, we just added a YouTube clip.

Above the top of the page and below the next section just underneath the menu:

Surprise, surprise, the page opens and loads smoothly (a fast line is an advantage of course) and best of all:

YSlow returns an A 91 score in spite of the visual exuberance.

Conclusion

Properly configured and coded, Visual Elements hardly harm the performance of XO 2011 by Semiomantics.

Have a look at the test- site in action as for the time being all these features are still visible.

Author: Yorgo Nestoridis, Media Marketing & Publishing, Founder of YORGOO Publishing, YORGOO Press and Semiomantics. If you enjoyed reading the above, please consider following future tips and strategies by RSS reader, Email delivery, or Kindle subscription.

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New Adobe CS5 Master Collection

It’s smashing, exciting and a milestone, the new Adobe CS5 release! no reason to try to describe all the new goodies wrapped up in the new pack, just go and have a look at the launch presentation at Adobe. Product delivery to the public is expected to start in May.

The single most important reason to buy CS5

If you watch through the various presentation clips, you fill see that for every product being part of the CS5 Master Collection Adobe presents 5 main characteristics. I was wondering, what would be my synthesized single best reason to switch from CS4 to CS5.

With CS5, Adobe introduces eye-bleeding cool features, and loads of them. However one main argument is that the somewhat oldish programs like Photoshop, Flash and After Effects become much more productivity oriented and user-friendly.

Adobe CS5 will definitely make professional tools available to a wider audience and grant a smoother and much more effective workflow. This is where individuals, Home Business Builders, free lancers, designers and developers will find a true possibility to run a media design, development and publishing business as a one-man show. Or, there will be less need for outsourcing, coding, sharing to get a better result faster.

yn

Yorgo Nestoridis Media Publishing

Adobe CS5 from the point of view of Ycademy

Ycademy, our online Educational Arm has been organizing trainings, workshops and seminars focusing amongst others on Web design and Web site development with Photoshop for some time and we are aware of the difficulties Photoshop represents for the average part-timer or newbie. However with some smart add-on actions, filters and plugins, Photoshop became accessible to average computer users. The new CS5 however makes things much easier in as much as complex manipulations can be executed in just seconds, such as moving, replacing or deleting objects from a photo for example whereas as the case may be, Photoshop will automatically replace the object with the appropriate hypothetical background. Smashing!

Whether you use Lightroom or not, the new Photoshop CS5 is a highly efficient image editing tool, not just for graphic designers, but also for Photographers. The interaction of the various tools provided in the CS5 Master Collection or in any CS5 Pack for that matter, provides a fantastic training environment where I am sure we will have new opportunities to help many people to become familiar with professional tools, cutting edge technology and the joy of exceptional results.

CS5 is in the trend: visual expression has become part of our day-to-day language due to the proliferation of mobile devices and social networks. Amongst all the internet users there will always be a good number who  are reaching out for quality, style and the best possible image or branding. Adobe CS5 is a bundle of tools allowing anyone using it to communicate better and in more creative ways. I am looking forward to explore CS5 with our first training group in June.

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Adobe CS5 from the point of view of Semiomantics

It has never been and it still is not Adobe’s cup of tea: semantics! The proliferation of more visual communication provides increasing challenges for Semiomantics and in fact our way to optimize editing and publishing of visual content and media (images, movies, sound) has still a long way to go and a brilliant future ahead. In short: the more visual content customers publish, the more they will have the need to use Semiomantics tuned scripts to reach Google Top 10or to show up on Bing’s top end. More important even: Semiomantics Approach to Facebook with the new Semiomantics Flash module, which will be released in May, will open completely new perspectives for agents and customers.

Adobe CS5 from the point of view of YORGOO

YORGOO, focusing on free traffic and free leads will wake up soon, simply because we come close to the end of a long development of new content for YORGOO, focusing namely on social networks and Search Engines in the broadest way. YORGOO will remain a starting point for online Marketing efforts and help people to connect quickly with environments where the people are, where the target customers are looking for products and where people interact. The YORGOO approach will remain a no-profit no-ads program and oriented towards all those who want to start an commercial online activity with limited means and high perspectives.

More soon.

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Adobe CS5 from the point of view of ChiHosters and Hosting South Africa

More media and more sophisticated media, more creativity and more creation, faster internet lines and computers entail larger file sized and more media oriented hosting needs. At ChiHosters and Hosting South Africa we have planned ahead; entrusting large freely accessible networks with your copyrighted media is not the safest way to protect your interest. Hosting your originals on your own server or host in a reliable way is a necessity for professionals as well as for many security conscious individuals. We are providing the most cost effective solutions in the industry, namely for small enterprises and individuals. Expanding the activity to high end hosting services are under discussion.

Adobe CS5 from the point of view of YORGOO Media

A year ago we have stalled the YORGOO Media development for different reasons, namely because we were not satisfied with the WordPress MU development as well as with the hosting capabilities we had. With the release of WordPress 3 and the possibility to provide advanced media streaming, YORGOO Media is high on our list of priorities since it will provide highly efficient Semiomantics signed publishing solutions to the over 70 000 YORGOO subscribers.

More shortly.

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Adobe CS5 Ripoff Pricing Policy

As other companies, such as Microsoft, Adobe has a discriminatory pricing policy, privileging the American Markets. Why the heck should Adobe Products cost more in Australia and Europe than in the USA? Funny, that such a high tech company, with a global approach has such a narrow, short sighted pricing policy. It’s comparable to the pharmaceutic industry and there we know what the natural reaction of the markets are. If anyone from Adobe reads this: tell your boss, time has come to change your rip-off attitude, the global market is looking for global pricing.

More about Adobe CS5 pricing shortly.

Author: Yorgo Nestoridis, Media Marketing & Publishing, Founder of YORGOO Publishing, YORGOO Press and Semiomantics. If you enjoyed reading the above, please consider following future tips and strategies by RSS reader, Email delivery, or Kindle subscription.