A chat with AE trainer Chad Perkins

Chad Perkins chatted with Lee Stranahan recently:

"Chad Perkins is one of the world’s leading After Effects trainers and experts, through his books and online tutorials on places like Lynda.com. In this wide ranging interview we discuss cool stuff in After Effects that many users miss, how he got started in training and how today’s short attention spans..."

There's more on Chad's work at Adobe TV and referenced here at AEP, along with several news notes on Lee Stranahan. Tip Squirrel hosted Chad's article Scott Kelby, Andrew Kramer, and the Decline of True Art not too long ago.

It should be noted that before free training exploded all over, Brian Maffitt's Total Training was the "cheatsheet" for AE, particularly for in-depth explanations of many filters now built-into AE -- like WaveWorld and Caustics (mentioned by Chad). One fav was the Particle World demo on what each slider did with settings displayed onscreen. Motionworks posted a different example last year; see CC Time Blend FX with Brian Maffitt.

CG Swot interview with Todd Kopriva

CG Swot posted an MP4 of his June 23rd interview with Todd Kopriva, documentation lead for After Effects.

See also A history of After Effects from the AE Team, a video of a trip down memory lane with David Simons and Dan Wilk, both original CoSA After Effects team members, and current Adobe After Effects Engineering Manager Chris Prosser. And Motionworks posted a PDF on the story of CoSA by After Effects engineer Dave Simons, which was originally published in an edition of Creating Motion Graphics by Chris and Trish Meyer.