This month has been a busy one, not only with the forthcoming celebrations but with learning a brand new skill. Last months seminar provided some groundwork and basics and this month has been dedicated to implementing the new found knowledge. I haven’t progressed as far as I would have liked, however here is a small sample of what After Effects can achieve.

Merry Christmas with After Effects

There will certainly be more training,  learning and practice in the New Year!
I am already looking forward to a busy and rewarding 2012.

In preparation for this weekends Ycademy seminar on ‘Christmas Media Design’  all registered participants have been attending daily calls to become familiar with using the various features provided by After Effects software.

After Effects features

With each training call one becomes more familiar with the various features and how to use them successfully.  As with any new tool that one uses there is always a big learning curve if one is to become proficient. I have never used AE before so this is quite an exciting step  forward to put motion into graphics that you create. At the training call tonite we covered  some good basics, how to create an animation, keying, scaling, positioning, transparency, rendering just to name a few of the functions, enough to create a short 3 second video clip ! Not perfect by any means but a great start to learning Adobe After effects.

Of course there will be more to follow especially after the seminar this weekend. Watch this space…

It  has been a very busy year at Ycademy, with live daily training calls and topic related monthly Seminars. The December one day seminar on the 17th December covering After Effects is the last one for this year.

Preparations have already begun for the Ycademy Media Design Seminar which focuses entirely on working with Adobe After Effects with registered participants attending preliminary sessions. The advantage of attending the preliminary training is you become familiar with what is required at the actual seminar.

Participating in live trainings gives every participant the opportunity to ask questions, sort out any problems and acquire some background knowledge relating to the subject matter.

Adobe After Effects

Using After Effects is a way to create a motion graphic or animation, from a variety of individual media objects; importing them into the software and creating a composition, adding selective effects to produce a dynamic end product. It’s a way of bringing to life the story you want to tell and visually stimulating  your audience.

Anyone familiar with Photoshop or any other Adobe related products will not find After Effects too dissimilar, just an addition to any existing workflow. Creating a clip for Christmas will be a  very festive way to end the year at Ycademy.

We are all looking forward to a very informative and productive Media Design seminar on After Effects by Adobe.

Do you like it?

SlideDeck Pro Slides

It’s been a busy week here working on various projects that I have on my desk. My last post referred to SlideDeck Pro that I installed on my author blog. I also mentioned that I may end up completely changing the look of the jQuery slider. Well this I have done, having been not totally satisfied with the first version.

SlideDeck Pro Slides

As you can see from the screenshot it is a very different look from the previous one and very focused. The slides convey the message, whereas the rest of the site can be very minimalist directing viewers to other less important topics.
The SlideDeck is a very efficient way for any business, or individual, to display his/her business products to the public, where each slide leads to a relevant product page. With this display, marketing a single product or multiple products is just a matter of creating attractive slides. I have a few projects here that I am working on where this will benefit not only the business but the customers too.

More will follow…

Author: Zo Nicholas, Media, Marketing, Publishing. Co-Founder of YORGOO, Ycademy,YORGOO Press and Semiomantics. If you enjoyed reading the above, please consider following future tips and strategies by RSS reader or Subscribe by Email.

New SlideDeck on Zo Nicholas

Following up on my previous email about a new look for ZoNicholas.com I have been working on creating a SlideDeck, a content slider, displaying images on the website instead of the Flash slider I was using before.

SlideDeck Pro

Having attended the YcademY March Seminar which focused on working with and customising the SlideDeck Pro, having gained an insight as to how to deal with the various skins etc and after some testing, I have put together a SlideDeck with a few slides; the first slide, Web Design, 2nd Kid’s Web Design and the last, Graphic Design,  There are still a few minor issues that I need to resolve and I may end up completely changing the look of this jQuerycontent slider, but what you see is how it stands at the moment.

The SlideDeck plugin which intergrates into any WordPress blogging platform made life pretty simple.  In the first instance, no coding is required unless there is customisation to be done. Not only does the SlideDeck display on the main web site, but when a Smart Slider is created this can be intergrated into any blog post just by copy/pasting a simple code. A very attractive marketing feature! The real beauty of this slider is, that while it draws the attention of the prospective customer to the displayed content it still maintains full search engine optimization. That is a real bonus for any business owner. The Pro version that I am using also offers Touch Support for mobile browsers, an important feature on touchscreen mobiles.

Mobile Ready Website

The whole issue of changing from a flash slider to a SlideDeck was instigated by the fact that flash is not clearly seen on smartphones. As more and more people turn to using smartphones with computing ability and connectivity such as the Apple iphone, Google Android and such like, our websites must be mobile ready: this means fast loading, with good visibility and easy navigation. The basic rule applies on mobiles, KISS! keep it simple.

Author: Zo Nicholas, Media, Marketing, Publishing. Co-Founder of YORGOO, Ycademy,YORGOO Press and Semiomantics. If you enjoyed reading the above, please consider following future tips and strategies by RSS reader or Subscribe by Email.