November 2020 After Effects Community Recap

[Rameez_Khan]

Community Highlight:

Hey community!

In this month's community highlight, we want to give a shout-out to Rick Gerard (@Rick Gerard). Rick is the most prolific contributor in the After Effects community with more than 20,000 posts. His responses are comprehensive and contain visual examples. If we were to put together his posts, we'd end up compiling a book on After Effects. It's an honor for us to feature him! Let's take a minute to read about Rick's journey and celebrate it.

Rick Gerard - winner of 9 Emmy and several other awardsRick is an experienced Director of Photography, Producer, Editor, Director, and Visual Effects Supervisor who started working in film and television in 1970. He has worked on everything from news and documentaries to feature films and television series. Very early in his career, he became interested in graphics and visual effects. He designed and built a motion control animation stand that he used for creating flying logos and 2.5D animations on Photographs in 1975. As soon as personal computers became available he started experimenting with the new nonlinear editing systems being developed by D-Vision, Media Composer, and Avid. His journey continues and he has no intention of retiring because he loves to make movies.

In 1994, he purchased After Effects 2.0, added it to his Media Composer workflow, and started producing his first digital visual effects and motion graphics. By 1995, he was part of the Adobe After Effects Beta team and has been happily working with After Effects ever since. He has also been a part of the beta testing teams in the development of many 3rd party plug-ins and video compression technologies.

Rick has received nine Emmy awards and numerous awards for commercials and industrial films. He has also developed and certified several aerial camera mounts and flew cameras for the National Public Television series “Over Washington” and for a bunch of music videos produced by “Miramar Productions” for artists like Tangerine Dream. His clients and employers include KIRO TV (Seattle), KING TV (Seattle), KOMO TV (Seattle), Nordstrom, Honda Automobile, Weyerhaeuser, Boeing, National Geographic, Paramount Studios, Universal Television, and a host of others. He was also asked to speak at the National Association of Broadcasters Post Production World Conference three times and continues to enjoy teaching and presenting workflows for visual effects.

He is available for personal consultation, freelance work, and group training. He is also starting a training series on After Effects called “Clean Up Your Act.” which he hopes to release around Christmas.

Super posts from November:

1. What Nerds know about Separating Dimensions in After Effects by @Mathias Moehl:

This is a very helpful tutorial from Dr. Mathias Moehl, a long-time ACP, and a very familiar face in our community. 

2. Makin’ Social Media buttons for Essential Graphics by @ShiveringCactus:

@ShiveringCactus is relatively new to our community but has been posting tutorials weekly in November. Kudos to them for their engagement in the community!

3. Create a precomp / Essential Graphic to display YouTube Comments using After Effects by @ShiveringCactus 

4. Creating a preset to make text look like a Twitter post - including the logo by @ShiveringCactus 

Top three troubleshooting topics from November:

1. Unspecified drawing error in After Effects 2019 on macOS Big Sur

After Effects 2019 isn't compatible with macOS Big Sur. If you want to continue using After Effects 2019, make sure you're running it on a compatible OS.

2. Wacom Intuos failure in After Effects

Some of our users have reported that their Wacom tablet stops working after using it for a few minutes in After Effects. We're investigating this issue. If you're interested to work with the After Effects team directly in resolving this problem, send a private message to Rameez Khan.

3. How to fix "Display Acceleration Disabled" in After Effects

Follow the troubleshooting steps given in this article to fix this problem - How to fix Display Acceleration Disabled

Top three how-to topics from November:

1. How to extend a composition in After Effects

2. How to mask a donut (with a hole), that is moving... sync the inner and outer mask

3. Working with hand-drawn animation in After Effects

Previous editions of our community recap:

October 2020

September 2020

August 2020

[Rick Gerard]

Thank you for the honor. I'm glad I can help.

[Mo Moolla]

Rick I would be very interested in the plugins you helped develop and also the aerial camera mounts you developed

Mo

[Rameez_Khan]

We're fortunate to have you!

-Rameez

[Mathias Moehl]

So exciting to hear about your journey, Rick!

[Rick Gerard]

Thanks for your comments and your support. If you have a few minutes, here's one of the videos that shows some of the things I shot with my aerial camera mounts. The footage is from my Cessna 310 with an Arri 16SR on the nose. We could shoot for 10 minutes then had to land, change magazines, and clean the lens.

[DarseZSzabo]

Congratulations on what must be a continually interesting and challenging career Rick.  For those of us who have not had your breadth of experience, it's a reminder that there's no limit to what can be done.  If you do have down time, here's hoping you enjoy it with the knowledge that your work has inspired many.

[Towerguy]

Such well deserved recognition for one of the most knowledgable and generous people I have run across in any forum - we are lucky to have you Rick.