(Part 2) Best products from r/AfterEffects

Thanks for turning me on to Loomis. In return, here's an excellent and fascinating reference on real-world light: Color and Light in Nature https://www.amazon.com/dp/0521775043/

Mark Christiansen has a great book full of very useful techniques for common vfx/mograph/ae stuff http://www.amazon.co.uk/Effects-Visual-Compositing-Studio-Techniques/dp/0321834593

In terms of a good understanding of vfx theory you could do a lot worse than pick up http://www.amazon.com/Science-Digital-Compositing-Second-Edition/dp/0123706386

So the ways that really helped me understand perspective where from Andrew Loomis' books on Illustration, specifically his book "Creative Illustration"
https://www.amazon.com/Creative-Illustration-Andrew-Loomis/dp/1845769287

Here are the only 2 pictures I could find online of the pages I was thinking about, but he has several chapters on perspective in just about all of his books.
Perspective Page 1 | Perspective Page 2

The guy is like an old master of Illustration, and he wrote several books on the subject all of which I think are some of the best out there. Basically though, checking your perspective comes down to a few simple rules revolving around the horizon line. No matter where your objects sit in space, they will share the same relative height to the horizon line. Another thing is that the horizon line is an indicator of the height of your camera. This gets tricky to visualize if your camera is tilted up or down, but all of your objects will still share the same relative distance from the horizon line no matter how much you tilt the camera. The Page 2 link shows examples of wrong and right ways to place your objects in a scene based on the horizon line. People that draw backgrounds for cartoons blow my mind with this stuff

hahaha you guys crack me up, you can buy a green sheet and hang it up on a shower curtain rod, gotta get some lighting still though. I bought this one for 100 bucks off amazon and it works just fine, comes with lighting and 3 different colored cloth backgrounds.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004TSBZ5S/ref=pe_386300_119431220_TE_dp_1

IMHO all AfterEffects computers should have 4 hard drives.

1. OS Drive: 512GB Should be reasonably fast.
   
2. Source Drive: Keep all of your source files on this. I have mine in a RAID with an additional drive for stability.
   
3. Export Drive: This is a relatively quick small drive that you render to. a 256GB SSD would be great for this.
   
4. Cache Drive: A very fast SSD that is 4x the amount of ram you have. Look into getting a motherboard that supports NVMe
   Samsung NVMe
   
   You'd be suprised how much this alone can speed up renders.
   You'll want to put your Windows pagefile on your cache drive, which, if is Windows managed, will be 64GB.
   
   I'm going to agree with the first build in this thread, but look into adding these drives.
   

UpWork and sites like it are shit for a multitude of reasons. Freelancers are internationally competing for jobs on the open internet and the client sets the price, so the end result is a race to the bottom. Then UpWork (or Fiverr or whatever other similar platform your on) takes a ~10% cut of what little you make. Unless you live in the third world you effectively cant make worthwhile money from sites like it unless your just flipping templates and its networking value is basically nil.

Read this book. Network with local business', studios and established freelancers (they may have overflow work).

I haven't used them very often but haven't noticed any lag (this is on the official Apple one).

By the way, if you find a wireless keyboard with numerical keypad, with a similar design/"feel" to the Apple ones, please let me know. The official one is wired, the official wireless one has no keypad. I refuse to spend an extra £50 on a separate keypad from Belkin.

edit: As is always the way, after asking the question I then find the answer myself. This thing looks like it'll meet my needs well.

At work currently i'm using a steelseries rival. it was like 35? bucks. At home i use a logitech g700s.

Steelseries Rival 100

Logitech g700s

Honestly the logitech is leaps and bounds above the steel series, but I just haven't gotten around to buying one for the office to use yet.

Indeed. I was lucky enough to take a couple of animation courses in college and this book taught me soo much. http://www.amazon.com/The-Animators-Survival-Richard-Williams/dp/0571202284

Nishika N8000 is a popular camera for this effect

If you're just starting, I highly recommend this book

what does getting it 'flashed' mean? do I need to 'flash' it to take advantage of CUDA? it's this card -- http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-GTX980-Superclocked-Graphics-04G-P4-2983-KR/dp/B00NT9UT3M/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1417987699&sr=1-1&keywords=nvidia+gtx+980 -- so it's already superclocked.

I'd have to go out and buy a robe. Can I join if I bring potato salad?

This is the camera you want: https://www.amazon.com/Nishika-N8000-Quadrascopic-Stereo-Lenticular/dp/B0014XRI5C

I'm liking The After Effects Illustionist as a general reference and source of explanations for some of the more obscure or confusing effects. This isn't going to teach you a whole lot of technique, but it makes it a lot less daunting when you glance over the available effects, and motivates you to try new things.

After Effects Expressions https://www.amazon.com/dp/024080936X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_RU4kDb20D5D9N

It's older, but all the expressions still work in the new engine. Everyone who uses After Effects should have this book within arm's reach.

Beyond that, probably any book on Javascript.

Here are some brown pants:

https://www.amazon.com/Dickies-Mens-Relaxed-Brown-38x30/dp/B000OGA26M/

https://www.amazon.com/Mr-Coffee-Warmer-Office-MWBLK/dp/B000CO89T8

The Illusion of Life

The Animator's Survival Kit

For anyone else wanting to check it out:

• http://www.digitalcompositing.com/
  
• http://www.amazon.com/Science-Digital-Compositing-Second-Edition/dp/0123706386