User Profiles

What tools do you use?

We use Final Cut Pro for editing, After Effects and almost every plugin ever written. We use Mocha for Planar tracking, Silhouette Roto for heavy roto work, Illustrator, Photoshop, Maxon Cinema 4D for our 3D work as well as many other useful tools for creating effects and manipulating video. Some of these include, Particle Illusion, Video Purifier, Bitvice, Boujou Bullet to name a few. AJA Kona 2 and 3 video cards service our many edit suite computers.

How did you find out about FreeForm AE?

Tell us about this latest project using FreeForm AE

This week I was working on a project where a football fan had giant afro green hair (his team's color) grow out from his regular short cropped hair. To accomplish this the fan was shot against blue screen with no afro wig and with the green afro wig. In post it was my job to make this afro grow out of the actors head, expand beyond 100% scale and then snap back to its full size for sort of a cartoon effect on the reveal. To make the transition, it was not just a matter of scaling down the hair material to fit the man's real hair as the shape at the beginning would be so drastically different.

To the table, Freeform, the perfect tool for the job. Take any shape and manipulate it into any other shape in minutes. No scaling required, everything accomplished through changes in the grid structure available in Freeform. Simply determine a grid pattern, which is almost infinitely variable in Freeform, by the way, set one keyframe and start dragging control points until the new shape is accomplished. In minutes I had reduced the giant afro to the exact shape of the man's hair. Now, moving from the manipulated keyframe to a keyframe that was created before manipulation resulted in the desired transition. To create a cartoon over-expansion and retraction we created a keyframe that exaggerated the expansion beyond the natural size of the hair. Within minutes we had accomplished our desired effect with Freeform. I'm not sure how I would have done it with other tools.

Just for fun I tried to do it with some of the other AE tools available like reshape and the results were awful. Freeform was definitely the best tool for the job and gave me perfect results. The client wanted no changes when he saw the final effect.

What do you like most about Digieffects tools?

I like Digieffects tools because they have been around for a long time and I know they will be there when I need an upgrade or if I have a problem with a piece of software. I don't know how many applications or plugins I've purchased over the course of my career where the companies and the products have simply disappeared. Eventually these products can no longer be upgraded and you find yourself looking for a a replacement product or a new way to accomplish something with a tool that you used to use. I have confidence that Digieffects will always be there to help me out and continue to develop new tools for our industry.

Would you recommend Digieffects to a friend or colleague?

I would definitely recommend Digieffects to others. My experiences with their plugin products has always been positive. Digieffects filters were some of the first products I ever purchased when getting into this business and I now own almost every product they make.