Introduction

Greetings fans! Or just Ben...this will be my first ever blog/journal I've kept. And yes, I am getting a bit of a late go on this but I'm going to blame it on the fact that my Macbook just died on me and am currently awaiting arrival of a new one that I bought. And the hole it left in my pocket is one I'm going to be feeling for quite a while...

Anyways, if you couldn't tell from the top of the page my name is Jamie. Born and raised in New Jersey, moved to Korea for 3 years, then to Houston, and now to Austin. Guess I started teaching myself After Effects in...sophomore(?) year of high school - when I first started making movies. The one effect in that first film was tracers for bullets...and needless to say those didn't turn out quite that well. But after years of scouring CreativeCow and VideoCopilot tutorials, I like to think I've got a pretty decent understanding of the main workflows in After Effects. I really don't know all that much about expressions and I guess I'm just looking to actually get a real course in After Effects. I'm always down to learn more and improve technique and workflow so I'm really looking forward to this class. Actually, I should clarify and say both classes - the 3d and the VFX & Motion Graphics.

Really looking forward to modeling in Maya and incorporating that into my films, or at least get a grasp on what the process is. I've got the basics of the automated trackers in Boujou but beyond that - actually getting the models into Maya and then the whole multi-pass compositing in AE is all new to me. I've had very very elementary exposure to Nuke compositing (all those nodes are so weird to look at after working in AE...) and a little C4D/Maya. And when I say "elementary" I really mean I did a few tuts in each and have pretty much forgotten everything now...all the shortcuts and menus and whatnot.

Anyways, guess I'll close with saying my dream job is to become a director out in LA and work for a studio. Getting there, I realize, is going to be a hard, hard road, and in order to sustain myself til I get my shot I feel it's necessary to have a good backup. Which is where I think having a hand in VFX, compositing, or motion graphics will come in handy. I've taken many opportunities in helping people out for creating titles or adding VFX into most of my shorts. Included now are a couple of things I've put together...although I don't have a strictly VFX & Compositing reel yet...should probably get one of those up in the next few weeks.

Making of Private Eye: Some steam composites (really smoke...steam doesn't move that way) but pretty proud of the text removal on the Ace of Spades.

The Making of Private Eye from kabraz on Vimeo.

This was the opening and Title graphics for a summer camp I worked for. Since I was there for all 4 terms I just swapped out the footage of the kids doing activities to match the current term. Was pretty pleased with being able to apply concepts from Andrew Kramer's Earth Tutorial and use the CC Sphere to make the baseball (you can see where the seams don't line up a little as it spins by). Camera moves and Shatter were pretty standard too, and I'm sure if I knew an expression I could've donjavascript:void(0)e something with the lights but I ended up just keyframing them...the actual "Camp Olympia" titles used the Trapcode Shine plugin with some rectangle card transition or something that was built into AE. Plus the lens flare...cheesy but I always like using it to give stuff a little zing.






I have no idea if these vids are going to show up...guess I'll find out soon enough. Oh, I should add I have both a Youtube and Vimeo account...in the process of sticking only to Vimeo but actually getting an account under my real name to be all professional and all...(wow I think this is going to be a really long post). So on that note I'll end it here...have a few other clips but maybe I'll post them next time.