Also, I have planned to start amping up the video production aspects of my world again, after a nice long 8 month run of almost nothing but blogging as my main source of income.  I am attending KieransList.com’s social networking event tomorrow morning, in which I will be meeting with a lot of local business owners and hopefully be producing some more awesome new local content!

Now, I haven’t quit my blogging duties by any means, I couldn’t leave my amazing following… haha… I have a following?   But, I do love my fans and readers, and I have just recently started writing for The Pixel Art, Smashing Magazine and iPhone.Appstorm.net.  Hopefully more is in store for the future!

So if you are reading this blog, because we have met, or maybe you found your way here by means of one of my many internet outlets, and think we might be a good fit… why don’t you take a look at my Demo Reel, or check out my Resume?  If you are liking what you see you can contact me via email found in the sidebar, or my phone number found on both my reel and my resume.

I hope to be making some more entries more frequently here on the blog, but until next time…

confused?

I haven’t updated this thing in a good six months probably.  Reason being, well… the other sites I have been writing on for work have taken quite the precedence.  If you wanna check them out its VideoHive’s Inside the Hive Blog, AEtuts+, CGtuts+, GoMediaZine, and GreyScaleGorilla.  There ain’t much to say for me though, the last couple month’s have treated me well… I got married in July, had an awesome summer… had our honeymoon in Vegas, and now we are about 10 weeks along with another baby due in June!  Thing are pretty nuts around here, so you can forgive me if I don’t update enough.

I hope to spend more time here as the months go on, but alas whenever I say that I disappear for a few months and make one of these apologetic posts and beg for forgiveness, so I will just say, “Until Next Time…”

My newest article at AEtuts+, The Vente AE Tutorial Roundup From Around the Web showcases a ton of tutorial created in After Effects in the last month or so.   Please drop by AEtuts+ and give it some love!

As for other things on the horizon, I may be writing for a couple other sites, possibly helping with some training DVD creation, and quite possibly getting around to doing some tutorials of my own.  Now if I could only find the time to just breathe.

Also, something really worth mentioning, if you haven’t seen them already go to Nick Campbell’s GreyScaleGorilla.com and submit something to his 5 Second Weekly Projects.  Go out and MAKE COOL SHIT!

AEtuts+ has finally launched and has been running strong for a couple of months now.  This is a tutorial site unlike any other out there, because they are user-run, and only accept high quality effects and tutorials.  They have featured tutorials on popular effects like Pierre Michel’s Particular Signature effect, and various, very cool kinetic typography tutorials.

Run by Lloyd Alvarez of AEscripts.com, AEtuts+ is quickly growing to be one of the daily stops for a lot of rising AFter Effects artists.  I have been fortunate enought to have a weekly article that gets released on Fridays on various subjects such as inspiration, tutorial roundups, and informational articles like my latest article this week:  A Concise Guide To After Effects Keyboard Shortcuts.  If you click the thumbnail, it will take you to my author page at AEtuts+ so that you can see all the different articles I have published.  I am working on a tutorial for the site based on the beginning of the RockNRolla title sequence where Johnny Quid pulls out his guns and it shows the name of the movie.  The tutorial will be basically showing how to do the shifting in depth of field, moving in 3D space, and the transition from video to illustration.  =

That’s it for now, so check back often to see when I have new stuff published, and feel free to check out my Demo Reel.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This is a promo for Mondo247.com, they are having a contest so that you can win a bunch of stuff… this spot also uses Andrew’s 3D text technique.

Click here to view the embedded video.

]]> http://toe-fur.com/2009/02/18/new-batch-of-projects/feed/ 0 http://toe-fur.com/2009/02/11/updates-on-my-end/ http://toe-fur.com/2009/02/11/updates-on-my-end/#comments Thu, 12 Feb 2009 03:26:07 +0000 Topher http://toe-fur.com/?p=66 So a lot of things have been happening in the world of  Topher Welsh.  First off I have been a full time freelancer, working from home and onsite for the last five months.  I am part owner in a company that specializes in internet spokesmodels, called internet-spokesmodels.com.  We have a green screen studio in Spanaway, Washington, and it is picking up speed so hopefully I will be a bit busier in the months to come.  I have also been working with a company called Celebritas, in which I have been doing visual effects, motion graphics, and slideshows and stuff like that.  Since I do all of the VFX work from home that also allows me to be a stay-at-home dad to my little boy, Brennan (he will be 16 months old on Feb 11th).

I have also started a website called VisualFXtuts.com… you might have seen it.  I have been getting recognition from a lot of people in the VFX realm, as well being able to make a little side money with the advertising.  The site pretty much posts tutorials, as they come live, and I check around a hundred sites everyday to make sure I get the tutorials on the site as soon as possible.

I have also started a relationship with the good people at Toolfarm.com, and they are letting me write for AEFreemart.com, as well as I will be heading the tutorial section, updating and maintaining that area of Toolfarm.com.

Also, outside the world of video, me and my fiance, Mary Beth, are engaged, and getting married on July 12th.  We have been trying to do it for a year or so, and finally the time is right, with money, with life, with everything, so we are finally tying the knot… so they say.

So to recap, I am working two jobs, writing for 2 websites, as well as being a full time dad, as well as a soon to be full time husband.  Life is good.

It is wierd, because my computer has been fine for the last… well forever, since I installed my Nvidia QuadroFX540 video card like, 3 years ago.  Well, for some reason, it didn’t want to let me work in the timeline.  After about 3 hours of system restore, preference file tweakage, re installing and all that good stuff… I installed a trial of AE CS4.  (I work in CS3) SAME PROBLEM!  But this time instead of just crashing it gave me error messages saying something about OpenGL.

I went back into AE CS3 and went into the preferences, unchecked USE OPENGL… and there ya go.  That was my problem…
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g LKSgflkdigosadjgoiasjdfhogasner0t9 gj3w409fjbsdfngaof2w394843nt3weng4fokendvscskdvafvoaerngoae rfgoaijrfg!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

SO MAD right now… but at least I got it fixed and now I can get back to work.

Moral of the story:  Try the easiest solution first, even if it doesn’t make sense at the time.

Click here to view the embedded video.

So I thought it was pretty cool… I have a friend coming over today and we are going to try to make the Poor Man’s steadicam for $14 so that will be a fun endeavor.  I am also going to have a couple more things coming up like my son and his “Lightning Ball” powers, Boujou motion tracking with 3D text like in FRINGE, and some more videocopilot tutorials.

We have built a pretty sweet green screen studio in my business partner, Earle’s garage.  We have a few too many light than I would like to work with, but its only because we don’t have the money to throw into really nice studio lighting for green screen. We also have a Sony HDR-FX1 which I will probably be shooting all my video with in the coming months so you can expect some cool HD stuff.

I have also began learning some industry standard VFX tools and programs like The Foundry’s NUKE and the Imagineer Products, Monet, Mokey, Mocha, and Motor.  I am also planning on delving into Cinema4D again, and I really wanna learn Boujou and PFTrack, Toxik and some other applications.  My Goal is to be able to start doing anything and everything VFX-ish in a couple years or so.  But to do that you need to know these things, and jesus… they’re freakin deep.

So for now, I will be just freelancing a bunch, and working on www.internet-spokesmodels.com, so if you want to hire me let me know… and if you live in my area (Seattle-Tacoma) and want to be a model for the site, you can get $50 everytime you are chosen to be a site’s model.  And if you want to use our service… go to www.internet-spokesmodels.com and click Contact Us and you can get a quote!

Later all.