———— 13 September 2008 ————
My Motion 3 mentor Mark Spencer has produced a new video tutorial explaining how to animate a photoshop document’s layers in z-space. He’s posted it to the Pro Video Coalition website. 
Mark’s brain and collected works are required ingesting for all FCP and Motion users, so drop that beer and get hoofin’ over to this awesome video toot!
proactively • peter
***UPDATE***
Based on viewer feedback, Mark has posted a redux of this tutorial. Click through here for the awesomeness.
———— 20 August 2008 ————
First seen (by me at least) on Mark Spencer’s site, this could be one of the coolest collections of Motion master templates around.
Available for purchase here, I will most likely be putting these in my edit suite. If you are wondering what the hell are Motion master templates?? the answer is the best thing since sliced video clips.
Motion master templates essentially nest a motion project in your Final Cut Pro timeline and contain drop zones and text fields that you can edit in FCP. In addition, you can open them up in Motion and customize them to your heart’s content. Two words: awe-some.
For me, the best way I learn is to see someone else do something and then copy it shamelessly while adding a slight tweak (isn’t that the definition of originality?). So purchasing 100’s of working hours of master templates and then having the felxibility to customize them just so a) saves me the time of creating them from the ground up and b) let’s me see how they were made in the first place.
Imagine an After Effects guy nesting his project into your FCP timeline. Hey says “Sure, go ahead and resize the text and change out the video in the windows as you see fit. And if you want to change the colors of the 3d strokes, go right ahead.” He then comments on the cold front that came in last night and what a pleasant change the ice storms are for this region of hell.
If you want to learn more about Motion templates (and Motion 3 in general) I can’t make a higher recommendation than Mark Spencer’s two Motion 3 tutorials from Ripple Training. Fast Forward walks you through the interface and Deep Dive focuses exclusively on 3D.
holy crap these toots are frickin’ awesome 
They’re available for download so you can just impulse buy them right now. Kind of like the Matrix but without the coaxial cable jacked straight to your brain.
proactively • psyched as hell about these master templates I’m getting • peter
———— 9 June 2008 ————
Ok, if you haven’t already checked out Mark’s awesome website, why not check out this Vimeo embed of his new Motion 3 Ken Burns tutorial:
If you think this rocks, and you want to get your Motion 3 learn on for real, you have to check out Mark’s Motion 3 tutorial series from Ripple Training.
proactively • Motion 3-ing • peter
———— 25 April 2008 ————
Mark Spencer was the trainer for my Motion 3 T3 in Santa Monica back in October 2007. He’s the first guy to cram 3D compositing into my brain. He was very gentle.
If you haven’t visited his website applemotion.net, stop what you are doing right now and click that link dammit. You’ll be amazed by all the free motion tutorials he’s posted. Really, you will be. Things like
Using Motion Templates in Final Cut
And if you’re an After Effects person or beginner or whatever and you want to get up to speed on Motion 3, check out
I’ve worked through this and it’s unbelievable that this dvd is only 99 bucks. I mean, don’t high end compositors make 100 bucks an hour at least? And this thing has like 10 hours of awesome training content. Instantly gratify yourself and buy the digital download. If for some reason you don’t want to take your humble narrator’s word for it, here’s a no-compromises review from Ken Stone.
If you’re already familiar with Motion 3 and want to dig in and learn all you can about the new 3D features, check out
I’m on lesson 4 and so far this training is the best thing that has ever happened to me in my entire life. Again, instant gratification download right here.
I don’t get a dime from these sales, but I do get a lot of feel-good karma knowing I’m pointing you towards an awesome trainer who will expand your mind without the use of hallucinogens or other questionable substances. And if for some reason those download links are lagging for you like they are for me, check out the homepage for Ripple Training Motion DVD’s.
proactively • spinning my 3D compass in perspective view • peter
———— 10 April 2008 ————
For those of you who don’t know who Ron Brinkmann is, check out his blog here. Mr. Brinkmann was cool enough to include a few pages pre-release in pdf format. Awesome.
His new book will be a must have for the remaining Shake users out there, as well as all the Nuke, After Effects, Cinema 4D, and Motion people as well. New spells for the spellbook, indeed.
Thanks to Deke Kincaid for the heads up on the fxshare newsletter.
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