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   Training Review
   Creative Background Design
   for After Effects
 
   Trainer: John Dickinson
   Publisher: Toolfarm
   Format: Downloadable Training Packets
   Topic: Editing and compositing training

   Cost: $5 per training lesson

   Website: http://www.toolfarm.com
   Download: Click Here
   Release Dates: October 15 , 2006

   Review Date:
October 15, 2006
   Reviewed By: Jeremy Hanke
Final Score:
9.6

One of the most annoying elements of all the video training solutions on the market is that, in most cases, you’re paying for training on effects or for solutions you may have no need of. This means that you may have paid $300 for a set of training and will only use 50% of the training therein. While you can no doubt learn from the areas you have no immediate need for, wouldn’t it be great if you could just buy the training you needed in precise, economical chunks?

Well, the good folks at Toolfarm have heard your desire and have created a series that does just that. Creative Background Design for After Effects is the first line of Toolfarm’s new After Effects training series. It allows you to preview a number of effects and purchase only the lessons that teach the effects you’re interested in creating. This way you can get exactly what you want and pay far less because you’re only getting part of the training found in one of those big bundles of video training.

How much less? How about $5 per lesson? For less than the cost of a happy meal or a 32 oz. quad shot iced mocha, you can get specific training on exactly what you want to learn how to use. There couldn’t be a more microfilmmaker-friendly training concept than that!

Understandability
John Dickinson is the narrator for this series. He’s clean spoken and easy to follow, choosing a pace that is concise without too fast to follow. Because the lessons in this series are well designed and bite size, he can actually pursue a faster training methodology than he could in a long, involved training walkthrough. This allows a lot of the speed that we noted in Creative Cow’s Serious Effects & Compositing set, without the information overload that accompanied that series. Will have to see how the folks at Toolfarm handle it when they deal with more elaborate types of training, whether they will slow the pace down or whether they can find some other way to not fall victim to the mental overload issue.

To further cover the gamut of folks who would be using the training, Toolfarm includes a .PDF of everything covered in the video training for folks who find it more understandable to read step by step instructions. These .PDF’s are also especially helpful for refreshing your memory down the road.

Depth of Information
For what each training is, it’s just the right amount of information.

For the introduction of this training set, Toolfarm had "Lesson 1: Basic Fractal Loop" and "Leson 2: Award Night" available for us to review. In lesson one, we learned how to create an undulating blue fractal loop like you might see used as a background on Entertainment Tonight with AE 7 and its stock plugins. Lesson 2 showed us how to create a pseudo-3D velvet curtain for awards shows and the like, which slowly shimmers and waves in a soft spotlight.

In both lessons, you learn how to do the main concept of the training lesson and then, to encourage your own growth and experimentation, they include a few variations on the main theme. This can range from changing nebulous blue shapes into a water-themed background or converting velvet curtains into a Matrix-inspired digital backdrop. While some of these variations weren’t my particular cup of tea, the fact that they were there definitely helped give you a greater understanding of what could be tweaked with each training session.

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