Best of Tuts+ in January 2012

Each month, we bring together a selection of the best tutorials and articles from across the whole Tuts+ network. Whether you’d like to read the top posts from your favourite site, or would like to start learning something completely new, this is the best place to start!

Psdtuts+ — Photoshop Tutorials

Create… read more

30 Incredibly Useful Apps for Video Pros and Novices

The Mac has long been the homestead for effective and easy video editing, graphic design, and video compressing for many professionals and novices alike. If you are at all interested in getting your creative juices flowing, video wise, you will absolutely love this roundup. Many people know the big video… read more

Beautiful Time-Lapse Video Takes You Around the World in 6,237 Photos

Each day, Mashable highlights one noteworthy YouTube video. Check out all our viral video picks.

This stunning time-lapse video puts you in the passenger seat of one man’s almost year-long adventure across 17 countries. In it, you’ll see 6,237 pictures spliced together to create several beautiful, fast-paced montages that surely will… read more

3D Environments from a 2D Image in After Effects

3D Environments from a 2D Image in After Effects

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40 Useful Photoshop Free Plugins And Filters

Traditionally plugins are an amateurish photographer’s best friend who used to take photographs, fired up Photoshop, and applied some preset filters in order to have a realistically professional image. Skilled photographers have been acknowledged to bring plugins into play as a base and after that tweak and include effects to… read more

Designer Spotlight: Interview with MoGraph & Branding Designer Fraser Davidson

Today we have a new designer spotlight, where we interview and feature a member of the design and development community. In this installment, we shine that light on talented motion graphic designer and sports branding specialist Fraser Davidson. If you are not familiar with his work, then you are in… read more

Texture Toolkit 1 & 2

Flavor and Flair at Reasonable Price

Four different Texture Toolkits are currently offered by Digital Juice. I reviewed Texture Toolkit 1 “The Essentials” and Texture Toolkit 2 “Different Strokes.” These are collections of patterns—all high-resolution and most seamlessly repeating—ready for use in your print, Web, animation, or video design work.

Each… read more

4 Ways Steve Jobs & Apple Changed the Music Industry

Max Blau is Paste Magazine‘s multimedia editor, where he oversees all audio, video and photo content on the website. He is also a freelance writer, photographer and videographer. Follow him at @MaxBlau or check out his blog.

During this decade of uncertainty and instability for the music industry, Apple has remained… read more

Majestic Time-lapse Landscapes Will Blow You Away [VIDEO]

Each day, Mashable highlights one noteworthy YouTube video. Check out all our viral video picks.

This spellbinding video is by master photographer and time-lapse creator Dustin Farrell, who took a Canon 5D Mark II digital SLR and created an awe-inspiring work of art.

In his latest work, “Landscapes Volume Two,” the… read more

75+ Amazing Adobe After Effects Tutorials

75+ Amazing Adobe After Effects Tutorials

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Top Freelance Jobs from Job Board – Week 4, September

Looking for a new client? The FreelanceSwitch job board is a great resource of freelance gigs and opportunities. These opportunities are in various fields, from development to writing to design, and come from a wide range of potential clients. The job board is hand-moderated by dedicated staff and volunteers… read more

Free After Effects Templates (20 Project Files) Set #1

Free After Effects Templates (20 Project Files) Set #1

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Photography in Motion : The Creativity of Cinemagraphs

Animated gifs, while being considered the bane of certain one-time popular social networking sites, have long been criticized by the design community. Seen as mere throwbacks to a less mature stage in the life of the internet, and therefore written off by many in the field. However, a creative duo… read more

Adobe After Effects: 50+ Most Amazing Tutorials You Need to Learn

Adobe After Effects: 50+ Most Amazing Tutorials You Need to Learn

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Top Freelance Jobs from Job Board – Week 2, July

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Looking for a new client? The FreelanceSwitch job board is a great resource of freelance gigs and opportunities. These opportunities are in various fields, from development to writing to design, and come from a wide range of potential clients. The job board is hand-moderated by dedicated… read more

Free Stock Video Footage, Flash, Music, Audio, Sound Effects, After Effects, Photos, Vectors | StockFuel

Free Stock Video Footage, Flash, Music, Audio, Sound Effects, After Effects, Photos, Vectors | StockFuel

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True Blood Takes You & Your Facebook Friends Inside Interactive Teaser

Season four of the popular vampire drama True Blood premieres on HBO June 26. To celebrate, the network is teasing the season via an interactive Facebook app.

To access the app, visit the show’s Facebook Page, “Like” it, and navigate to the “Immortalize” tab. When you click on… read more

40 Excellent Adobe After Effects Tutorials

40 Excellent Adobe After Effects Tutorials

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HP Z210 Small Form Factor Workstation

Entry-Level PC

HP introduces their newest workstation line with the Z210, available in Convertible Minitower (CMT) or Small Form Factor (SFF) models. The Z210 is designed to be an entry-level workstation for budget-minded folks working in photo or video editing, education, and similar fields. New Intel HD integrated graphics are… read more

The 25 coolest tutorials to learn Cinema 4D

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I LOVE Cinema 4D. Easy and powerful. Enjoy these great tutorials ;)

How to Make A Ribbon Wall Graphic in Cinema 4D

Transformers Titles in Cinema 4D

SLOW MoDynamics

How To Make A Metal Logo Type in Cinema 4D and Photoshop

How To Make The Cherry 7up Look With Cinema… read more

Inspirational Tutorials to Sharpen Your Artistic Skills from Vectortuts+

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If you’ve been looking for some ways to freshen up your vector skills with an artistic twist, then we have a great selection of tutorials for you! We have handpicked a selection of tutorials from the Vectortuts+ catalog with a focus on artistic output and techniques. If you’ve ever… read more

How to Animate a Vector Character in After Effects with Aetuts+ and Ben Mounsey

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We’re proud to announce that Vectortuts+ author Ben Mounsey has teamed up with Aetuts+ to create "Breath Of Life" a five part series on how to animate a vector illustration with After Effects. You may remember Ben from his fantastic Core Art Skills Series, and excellent illustrator tuts. Now… read more

Top Freelance Jobs from Job Board – Week 2, May

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Looking for a new client? The FreelanceSwitch job board is a great resource of freelance gigs and opportunities. These opportunities are in various fields, from development to writing to design, and come from a wide range of potential clients. The job board is hand-moderated by dedicated… read more

Are You a Pixel Warrior (Freelancer) for Hire?

Front image by Terese Nielsen

Article By Paul Hebron

According to Wikipedia, the term “freelance” was first used by Sir Walter Scott in Ivanhoe to describe a “medieval mercenary warrior” or “free-lance” (meaning that the lance isn’t sworn to any lord, not that it’s available free of charge). The term was recognized… read more

After Effects CS4 Tutorials: 40 Creative Tips

It has been almost six months since my last post on After Effects tutorials titled: AE Tutorials: 50 Superb Must Have Effects. Since then I have been scouring the web in search of fresh new Adobe After Effects CS4 tutorials for you to try out. I… read more

A more affordable Adobe CS 5.5

Source

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Rotobrush Tool in After Effects CS5

The Rotobrush tool in After Effects CS5 automates the tedious task of selecting an object from each frame over the duration of a video clip. In this tutorial, Tom Green shows how easy it is to select the subject from one clip and drag it onto a new background.

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Save Money, Enhance Your Freelance Business with Stock

Credit: chrisdlugosz on Flickr

Yep, I’m going there. I’m going in front of a crowd of freelance professionals and suggesting the use of stock, and I’m not just talking about photos. I’ve been a freelancer, and have been among freelancers long enough to know exactly what follows the mere mention of… read more

14 Mobile Themed After Effects Project Templates

14 Mobile Themed After Effects Project Templates

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What is the Preferred Operating Systems of Designers?

The ever-changing culture of web design has grown into a wild array of sub-standards. Over 20 years now designers from all over the world have contributed their brilliant ideas to the World Wide Web. Software is often an afterthought from the consumer’s end, but when you’re at the front lines… read more

Kinetic Typography: Design in Motion

As a graphic design blogger, I subscribe to Google Alerts for such terms as “typography”, and practically daily, a post pops up containing “kinetic typography” in the headline. Is this a new trend?

Kinetic typography is defined by Wikipedia as “an animation technique mixing motion and text”. Designers will either use… read more

Exclusively Incredible 40+ Adobe After Effects Tutorials

Exclusively Incredible 40+ Adobe After Effects Tutorials

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Top Freelance Jobs from Job Board – Week 1, March

Looking for a new client? The FreelanceSwitch job board is a great resource of freelance gigs and opportunities. These opportunities are in various fields, from development to writing to design, and come from a wide range of potential clients. The job board is hand-moderated by dedicated staff and volunteers from… read more

Learning at the Speed of Technology

If you’ve been using design software for as long as I have, you will no doubt have more than a few obsolete skills up your sleeve. Those of you who have mastered the notoriously difficult QuarkXPress will know what I mean. Dropping to a 25% market share, behind InDesign, many… read more

Best of Tuts+ in January 2011

The first month of the year was a very busy one for Tuts+. Here’s a catch up of the Editor’s picks from each site in case you missed them!

Cgtuts+ | CG & 3D Tutorials

Coding a ‘Blueprint Manager’ in 3DsMax – Day 1

This month, Anton Vasilescu began his amazing three-part… read more

Boris Continuum Complete 7 AE

MORE THAN 200 FILTERS FOR AFTER EFFECTS

Boris Continuum Complete 7 AE (BCC) for Adobe After Effects and Premiere Pro brings more than 200 filters to Macintosh and Windows versions of Adobe’s CS5, CS4, and CS3 suites. This latest version features 11 new filters, including an audio-driven keyframe generator,… read more

Careers in Vector Illustration and Design

Want vector to pay your bills or an extra piece of income with your vector illustration and design skills? Then you’re in the same boat as me, as I want to know more about careers in vector too! Check out today’s article that asks the question to some big names… read more

3D Text Animation in After Effects

This 3D Text Animation project gives viewers a chance to learn about the new per-character-3d animation option in After Effects CS5.

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Massive Collection of Best Photoshop Tutorials from 2010

Photoshop has given new pinnacles to creativity of designers all around the globe. They are free to create astounding effects that can accomplish almost anything one can imagine. Many artists have shared their creation process through quite a number of tutorials and articles. Today we present to you the best… read more

Most Common Mistakes in Screencasting

When people think about how to start screencasting, they often forget that screencasting is not only a very interesting way of showing something quickly, comprehensibly and easily; it’s also a way of advertising their products. It’s a shame to see how many websites out there lack a beautiful looking screencast,… read more

Alignment Tools in After Effects CS5

Aligning visual elements inside a project is very important. Franklin McMahon goes over some of the alignment options in After Effects, including the new Align Layers to Composition feature in CS5.

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Convert A Still Photo Into 3D Animated Stained Glass – Vector Premium

Today we’re collaborating with sister site Aetuts+ in bringing you this two-part Premium tutorial. Rob Birnholz will demonstrate a technique for converting a still image into a dynamic 3D animation. Highlights include prepping an image in Photoshop, vectorizing via Live Trace in Illustrator, using the knife tool, converting paths to… read more

Best of Tuts+ – November 2010

Did you know that there are now ten Tuts+ sites and the Tuts Marketplace? If you didn’t get a chance to check them out in November here’s a look at the top articles from each site! Aetuts+ – Adobe After Effects Tutorials from Beginner to Advanced. Unfold A Magical Pop… read more

Illustrator’s Live Trace: Sketch to Vector

In this post we will take a drawn design, scan it and clean it up in Photoshop, then trace it using the Live Trace feature in Adobe Illustrator. Live Trace was introduced in Adobe Illustrator CS2 but is still a powerful tool available in Illustrator CS5. This process really gives… read more

Quick Tip: Create High Tech Style HUD Rings in Illustrator

This Quick Tip tutorial will show you how to make high tech style HUD rings in Illustrator. The same effect can be easily achieved in Photoshop with "Polar Coordinate". However, "Polar Coordinate" is not available in Illustrator.
So we will be using a different approach here to achieve the… read more

FxFactory 2

PLUG-IN MANAGEMENT SYSTEM FOR MAC

FxFactory 2 may be the future of Adobe After Effects plug-ins. The concept will be familiar to anyone who has tried the Apple iTunes Store. First, you can download FxFactory for free. It’s a plug-in store that, like iTunes, has some free products and… read more

Keyframing in After Effects CS5

Make your animations smoother and easier using After Effects CS5’s powerful new auto-keyframing feature.

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10 Stories Beautifully Told With Animated Typography [VIDEOS]

The power of the written word should not be underestimated, and while we are used to coping with more visual data than ever before, sometimes something as simple as text can cut through the white noise and make a big impact.

We think moving type, or “kinetic typography” is a good… read more

AE Tutorials: 50 Superb Must Have Effects

It has been almost six months since my last post on After Effects tutorials titled: After Effects Tutorial: 60+ Kick Ass Effects. Since then I have been scouring the web in search of fresh new Adobe AE tutorials for you to try out. I am confident that these 50 superb… read more

5 Free Animated Slideshows

By Melinda Rainsberger

We’re all guilty of using the Ken Burns effect at some point. Multi-photo slide shows are difficult and unwieldy. Some programs come with presets for image slideshows, some just make it very easy to apply a standard piece of animation to many images. Carousels, image sliders, fade/zoom transitions,… read more

Color Control in After Effects CS5

Franklin McMahon discusses 3 features in After Effects CS5 to help improve the color in your video clip: 1) Levels, 2) Vibrance, and 3) the Color Finesse 3 plugin.

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Useful Adobe Photoshop Techniques, Tutorials and Tools

As web designers, we always have something new to learn. Over the last decade our workflow has changed dramatically — it’s become more sophisticated and highly diversified. Not only do we have a much larger variety of improved tools to use; there’s also an endless stream of new techniques emerging… read more

Holomatrix

TIMESAVING EFFECTS PLUG-IN

Holomatrix is an After Effects plug-in that does one thing well: It gives footage that produces ghost-like, scan line, holodeck, and “help me Obi-Wan Kenobi” looks. It’s an unusual plug-in because it’s not listed in the Effects menu. Instead, it’s applied by choosing Window>Holomatrix, which then applies… read more

Designer Spotlight: Henk Dawson

Henk Dawson works out of his home office in Seattle were he’s lived most of his life. He earned a degree in graphic design from the University of Washington more than 20 years ago. After a short stint at an ad agency doing desktop publishing, Henk discovered his love for… read more

Eye-Candy For The Weekend: Particle Animation Music Videos

Just like a couple of weeks ago, this weekend again we’ve got something unusual and creative to lift up your spirits and challenge your creativity over a lousy Sunday. Particle animation is a beautiful concept from motion graphics. Using specialized software, you can simulate the movements of particles depending on… read more

Upcoming Web Design and Development Conferences in 2010

At the end of last year, we published a comprehensive list of web design and development conferences that might be of interest to Smashing Magazine’s diverse readership. Many readers commented and added links to other conferences and events that weren’t listed, some of which were added to the post. Using… read more

Trapcode Particular 2

GREAT PARTICLE SYSTEM PLUG-IN GETS EVEN BETTER

Regarding Red Giant Software’s Trapcode Particular 2.0, I could basically end the review with an emphasis on the “2” (meaning 2 is better than 1) but I’d really get in trouble with the layout team. Seriously though, if you use Adobe After Effects, you… read more

Desuade Partigen 2

POWERFUL PARTICLE EFFECTS ENGINE

When I need particles, I reach for Partigen 2. Though it only works inside Flash, I export its animations for After Effects and Premiere Pro projects. Why am I gaga over Partigen? Because it gives me total control over every facet of particle creation, emission, and lifespan…. read more

15 Developer/Hacker Women to Follow on Twitter

This series is supported by Rackspace, the better way to do hosting. Learn more about Rackspace’s hosting solutions here.

Everyone should know at least one woman who can code her way out of a wet paper bag.

While women developers, computer programmers and hackers of all stripes are by far outnumbered by… read more

Motype 1.2

TEXT ANIMATION PLUG-IN FOR MACS OFFERS MORE OPTIONS

After Effects has such a powerful built-in text engine, what more could an animator need? Noise Industries has answered that question by taking a close look at existing features and augmenting them with their Motype 1.2 plug-in.

I find myself using it most often… read more

Interview with Joao Oliveira

Joao Oliveira, is a portuguese graphic designer and illustrator, based in Porto. Abduzeedo takes pride in featuring such an young and talented creative. You will def see him more often from now on.
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1. First of all we would like to thank you for taking the time to provide abduzeedo.com… read more

40 Revisable Commercial After Effects Templates

40 Revisable Commercial After Effects Templates

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Beauty Box

SKIN RETOUCHING PLUG-IN SAVES TIME

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And the beholder is my client who expects me to iron out every wrinkle and erase every blemish. Until I stumbled on Beauty Box, I resorted to laborious frame-by-frame adjustments or gross, unrealistic softening. Beauty Box, a plug-in… read more

Wallpaper of the Week #106 – Fabio Sasso

The wallpaper of this week is an image I created for a project where the client asked me to play with lens flare. I know it’s the most hated filter ever but we can create really nice thing with it as long we avoid the default settings. This image is… read more

10 Creative and Inspiring Video Infographics

We live in a complex world, with complex ideas, concepts and issues. As such, sometimes a complex issue can be better understood with the use of creatively designed infographics rather than using the written word or spoken language.

The most popular type of infographic is the simple flat image, I… read more

30 Professional Adobe After Effects Tutorials

30 Professional Adobe After Effects Tutorials

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Key Correct Pro 1.1

ULTIMATE GREENSCREEN COMPANION

The key with greenscreen (no pun intended) is blending the foreground and background elements seamlessly so the greenscreen becomes undetectable. The composite needs to have a clean alpha, the right amount of detail, colors that match, no tint on your subject, and just the right amount of softness… read more

I Can’t Believe it’s Gone Premium!

Tuts+ Premium just got more awesome. Cgtuts+ and Activetuts+ have now joined our Premium program. Your Premium Membership already grants you access to the best and most in depth Photoshop, web development, vector, audio and After Effects tutorials and files. With CG Premium and Active Premium, you now have access… read more

Photoshop CS5 Review

THE LATEST VERSION OF PHOTOSHOP HAS SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE

Photoshop is now 20 years old and in its 12th version. One wonders how many new features can be added to such a mature program. Photoshop CS4 had some nice new additions, but its new feature list seemed to be shorter than… read more

After Effects Tutorial: 60+ Kick Ass Effects

In the last few months I have written a couple of posts about motion graphics. Although I have only dabbled in After Effects, it is still one of the things that intrigues me most. After Effects is a really cool software that allows you create vibrant motions graphics just like… read more

The Perfect Office #33

We’ve seen some great gadgets and equipment for designers. So many cool stuff, that we could actually assemble infinite perfect office spaces! Every week we’ll assemble a perfect office, and we’d like you to help us. What equipment would the perfect office have?

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Not only gadgets and equipment, but also furniture,… read more

Great 3D Work by Rodolfo Roth

Rodolfo Roth is a 3D artist from Porto Alegre, Brazil. He has been doing some incredible works for Santa Motion, a super cool studio in Porto Alegre. Rodolfo has a major in Graphic Design and despite his young age, he has more than 8 years of experience in the CG… read more

Adobe Creative Suite 5 Brings Sexy Back

Adobe will unveil its new Creative Suite 5 on Monday April 12th at 8AM PDT, just a few hours from now.

You can catch the official launch online here, however, if you can’t wait, we’ll be revealing all the juicy details before the official launch… right now!

The Adobe team kindly invited… read more

90+ Smoking Cinema 4D Tutorials and Best Techniques

Cinema 4D is a 3-D application that is popular amongst matte painters in film production, largely due to the BodyPaint 3D functionality. It is equally popular amongst motion graphics artists, thanks to its excellent integration with compositing application pipelines, and a very artist-friendly, customizable workflow and interface. It has been… read more

Print Magazines for Web Designers, Digital Artists, and Photographers

Although much valuable information for all sorts of web and print professionals can be found online, it is often difficult to weed through all the noise and find good quality content. I believe it’s vital that professionals in different creative fields supplement their online learning and research through well-edited and… read more

Animate Paint in After Effects

Franklin McMahon experiments with the paint tool in After Effects and demonstrates how to paint on top of a video using overlay with a color mode.

This video requires Adobe Flash Player.

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88 Ultimate Round-Up of Photoshop Photo Manipulation Tutorials

When it comes to Image editing or photo enhancement, Adobe Photoshop is usually the primary option to consider. However, the software package itself is a quite hard to learn — and extremely hard to master.

Display beautiful images is a potent element in web and graphic design, where there is less… read more

Interview with Dan Noe of Noe Design Studios

I recently had the opportunity to interview multi-media designer Dan Noe. Many DesignM.ag readers have probably seen Dan’s portfolio site for Noe Design Studio showcased at various design galleries or blogs. Dan works at Screenscape Studios in Des Moines, Iowa. I hope you’ll find Dan’s insight and experience to be… read more

Inspiring 3D and Motion Works by Marcelo Souza

Marcelo Souza is a 3D Animator/Generalist from Brazil with more than 12 years of experience working at all stages of the production pipeline. From the pre-production to the final compositing. Passing through the modeling, rigging, shading, lighting texturing, animation, editing and post production of the piece. As he says”In Brazil… read more

Sites of the Week #89

For this Sites of the Week we have selected some great sites such as Kodu and Glitch. Also we’re featuring the new site for the Future of Web Design, by Carsonified and much, much more! As usual we would love to hear from you, keep sending your suggestions to us… read more

70 Ultimate Cinema 4D Tutorials & Techniques

Today we share a very comprehensive round-up of Cinema 4D Tutorials. Cinema 4D is a modeling, animation and rendering application that is noted for its flexible interface and ease of use. It is capable of procedural and polygonal/subd modeling, animating, lighting, texturing and rendering. Movies like Monster House, Spiderman 3,… read more

Beautiful Motion Graphics Created With Programming: Showcase, Tools and Tutorials

When you hear the word “creative”, what type of profession comes to mind? Maybe a graphic designer, painter, sculptor, illustrator, or writer? It’s unlikely that you would consider a “programmer” when thinking of creative fields of work. But programmers have the potential to be creative and come up with ideas… read more

Top Articles On The Web Design Billboard In January’10

A perfect layout, A Good Design and Nice Resource can produce a creative output. Layout, textures, typography and patterns are used more often than one may think but the outcome of different combination can result verity of excellent designs. Professionalism is built upon knowledge and experience. However, When it comes… read more

Interview with Chris Leavens

Chris Leavens is a talented vector artist born and raised in Pennsylvania who now resides in Los Angeles. He graduated with a BA in film and video and initially worked in the film industry. Later Chris decided to take a break from the film biz and began working as an… read more

25 Design Freebies From Blogs You Should Read

This week’s roundup is loaded with tons of brushes, fonts, wallpapers, tutorials, textures, icons and a grungy three column WordPress theme. Just click on the images or link sources to download the freebies you like. Scroll down and enjoy!

Weekly Design Resources Roundup

Fonts

Fresh Free Fonts l Abduzeedo

Free 28 Days Later… read more

Best of the Week #101

It’s time for our best news of this week, the first one of 2010. We have a lot of graphic and web design, a bit of architecture, ads, tech news, awesome reads and other crazy stuff! So take a look at the links we’ve selected for your inspiration and to… read more

50 Excellent Adobe After Effects Tutorials

By Nousheen Aquil

This post presents a round-up of Adobe After Effects Tutorials for your visual effects and motion graphics-related work. After Effects is getting popular as the industry of Computer Graphics and Digital Motion is growing. With After Effects, you have choice to generate dynamic and expressive motion graphics with… read more

Layers TV: Episode 117

New episodes coming January 6th! In this previous episode, Corey shows how to encrypt Acrobat documents that you want to password protect. Special guest Jason Scrivner demonstrates how to create falling snow flakes in After Effects.

You can download each episode by subscribing to the podcast on iTunes.

… read more

Layers TV: Episode 116

Where have Corey and RC been? The guys come on to talk about the new format and the new episodes coming January 6th! In this previous episode, RC uses After Effects to create an animated title that can then be imported into Flash as an FLV file. Corey demonstrates how… read more

Enter the Ginormous Christmas Giveaway

In less than 2 months, the Design Informer has grown by leaps and bounds. I can take all the credit for the growth but that wouldn’t be right. The reason why the blog has done so well is because of the readers. I just want to thank you for all… read more