Zaxwerks Blog

Strap on your motion graphics black belt!
Making It Look Great 4 Design and Production Techniques for Adobe After Effects, Zaxwerks ProAnimator and Zaxwerks 3D Flag.
Work side-by-side with senior broadcast designer, After Effects expert and Zaxwerks demo artist John Dickinson, to create the powerful Northstar Martial Arts animation from start to finish.
Topics include:

The key design decisions
Background […]

Ever wondered how the pros get their work looking so sharp? The popular and proven Making It Look Great™ video workshop series has been designed to answer that question. Throughout these in-depth DVD workshops, professional motion graphics designers demonstrate techniques essential to their daily work and give the design decisions and rationale that support them. […]

You may have been wondering what the ProAnimator Importer plug-in that ships with ProAnimator actually does. Take a look a this 8 minute video tutorial and see what you’ve been missing. And if you haven’t been wondering… well… take a look anyway, it’s pretty cool. Have fun.
The eyeball images is by Martin Walls and was […]

In this video tutorial (8 minutes) you’ll learn how to add flare to your graphics by creating the effect of “light” moving across your Zaxwerks ProAnimator or 3D Invigorator objects. In fact it’s not light at all but an animated reflection map… anyway, watch the movie and all will be revealed. Have fun.

Making it Look Great 1: Design and Production Techniques for Adobe After Effects and Zaxwerks ProAnimator is Available now. You can pick it up immediately by download from Toolfarm, or order a DVD here at Zaxwerks.
Throughout the lessons you’ll learn the techniques John Dickinson uses every day as a broadcast designer, and get insight into […]

A little while back we hosted an eSeminar. If you haven’t heard, an eSeminar is a live class taught by an instructor, which you watch in the web browser of your computer. It’s a great way to link people together from all over the world, without ever having to leave home. John […]

With the holidays right around the corner, here are a set of streamer presets to use with the 3D Grid Warp plug-in. These streamers can all be customized and animated in a variety of ways. You can change how tight or loose the ribbon is wrapped; the length and width of the ribbon; […]

Take a look at this recent blog post for a quickstart overview on how Zaxwerks’ “3d Warps” works.
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Working in 3d space in After Effects can be a tricky business at best, and downright confounding at worst. I recently completed a project for a client and dealt with a couple of these issues in a quick, streamlined way using Zaxwerks’ “Layer Tools”. Click here to see how these tools can help you overcome […]

Every middle manager worth his/her mettle needs a nifty, extruded, animating pie chart every now and again. Check out the Quicktime tutorial and AE Project File here and see how Zaxwerks can help make your data look great.