Click on the image above to watch his title animation
Stan Arthur, is a full-time video producer for Stetson University College of Law. Initially Stan was hired as a Multimedia specialist. “It took me several years to convince the university I could produce their informational films in-house.” But once the opportunity was presented to him Stan took it and ran, and has since produced over 75 short films and two feature-length documentaries.
In his outside freelance life, he has also done music videos, commercials and was one of five finalists in a nationwide filmmaking contest in 2007. Stan tells us, “The contest was executive-produced by Spike Lee, and he even hosted the finals in New York City. I didn’t win, but man, what an experience that was.”
Stan began using Zaxwerks ProAnimator after having given up on another well-known 3D program. “After a few days I had had enough. I didn’t get the language and with my schedule I didn’t have the time to learn it.”
“Then I watched a promo video for ProAnimator and I was sold. I was pretty impressed that as soon as I typed out a text object it popped right into the 3D scene already with a bevel. I think it took me about 5 seconds to “TRY” camera moves, even before I applied styles or colors. It was too cool!”
ProAnimator gave a big boost to Stan’s production value and, after watching the tutorials on the Zaxwerks website, his work quality raised even further. “It’s easy to get started but anyone who’s interested in more than basic 3D title animations should watch the tutorials.”
Now Stan adds 3D effects no matter what the budget. “Its always fun when you get to do a 3D animation for a small company. There’s nothing like turning those jobs around in an hour with something that dazzles their socks off. ProAnimator makes that possible.”
“I recently did a job where I had to recreate a company logo from a business card. Their logo was a TV remote so it was unlike anything I’d ever done. I created a rectangle in Illustrator that had 12 holes in it, configured like the remote’s buttons. I opened it in ProAnimator and tweaked the bevel on the holes. Then I made a sphere, scaled it and positioned it under and poking up through the bottom left hole, to look like a remote button. Then I duplicated the button and filled up the holes. I really couldn’t believe how quickly it came together.”
“I also had to add the company name flying in. I decided to render the final movie in two passes, the remote and the company name, so I could adjust the timing in After Effects. The other pieces consisted of a starfield, a planet Earth and some radio waves. The final sequence made the remote look sort of like a spaceship flying slowly in from the bottom of the frame, heading for Earth. It looked amazing and the CEO flipped over it.
“I think the really cool thing about it is that I was able to create it while sitting on my sofa, watching Sunday football, using a rather modest laptop. The combination of ProAnimator, After Effects and Illustrator has enabled me to say, ‘Yes, I can do that’ to any job request.”
“ProAnimator is unique because it bridges a gap between artists and techies. It makes it incredibly easy for a guy like me to get what’s in my head up on the screen. I don’t know any other application that can compare.”
“Currently I’m working on a 20 minute travelogue film that was shot in seven different cities. In the past I just did standard title slides. This year I took establishing shots of each city and inserted organic-looking 3D titles like you see on the show ‘Fringe’. It worked like a charm and took very little time to create.”
“I love doing the unexpected for clients. With ProAnimator it’s very easy to exceed expectations. (laughs) As you can tell I’ve become a Zaxwerks Evangelist.”
