The Best Training I Ever Had Was on VHS

Back in the 90s we didn’t have an internet filled with a plethora of training videos to learn about image manipulation in the computer, especially those produced by real experts, let alone free. There were a handful however that rose far above the rest and didn’t break the bank: 1) Total Training’s After Effects VHS series with Brian Maffitt, and 2) Masters of Visual Effects VHS series with Forest Key, John Knoll, Ron Brinkmann, Scott Squires, Stu Maschwitz, Matt Silverman, and Alex Lindsay.

On the one hand there was Brian Maffitt, full of energy and most of his tutorials used impractical materials (giraffes with wheels for their feet), but he always delivered on the concepts and provided excellent training. I learned After Effects (version 3 or 4) literally overnight watching those tapes when transitioning from a Discreet Flint. On the other hand were folks like Ron Brinkmann whose monotone voice could put you to sleep if you weren’t fascinated by every last detail of image processing in the Masters of Visual Effects series. But there was nothing mundane about what he was discussing. Those tapes were priceless, and I was lucky enough to convince my boss to spend a couple hundred bucks and get them for us.

Alex Lindsay formed DV Garage some time later. He was able to convince the EI Technology Group to offer a free copy of an older version of ElectricImage with his 3D Toolkit. The 3D Toolkit focused more on the foundation concepts of 3D rather than a specific application, much like the Masters series did. One thing I’ve always told my students is to always consider their foundation studies of the initial concepts much more important than learning the latest, greatest shiny effect making its rounds across the internet.

Now we have an internet filled with free training videos from every one that has a computer and an internet connection. You’d think with all of the offerings it would be hard to decide which training to use. But just like in the 90s sheer volume isn’t what’s important. Even today there are still only a handful of great training opportunities out there if you take the time to wade through the white noise.

Matt posted some of the Masters of Visual Effects videos online years ago so now they're not only digital, but free. Get them here.

The Quantel Paintbox

Long before Adobe and Autodesk had After Effects and Flame there was the Quantel Paintbox. My first job was at The Weather Channel in the mid 90s, and I got to paint with pixels on a Quantel Harriet. The Harriet had a “Ramcorder” (the precursor to the RAM Preview) of 383 frames which allowed for realtime playback and it had a live video out direct to air (which luckily I only had to use once).

My mentor, Eddie, at The Weather Channel told me a story about their first year with the very first Paintbox in use at a broadcast network back in the early 80s. Their in-house art department won 26 Gold BDA awards that year. The serial number on their Paintbox was number 1. MTV was one of the other few early adopters of the Paintbox. We later transitioned to Apple Macintoshes, replacing all of the legacy SGI hardware with much less expensive gear.

Interesting article about artist David Hockney and the Quantel Paintbox here.

ABOVE IMAGE © QUANTEL.

Disney’s Multiplane Camera

During a recent family trip to Disney World for my daughter’s sixth birthday we enjoyed a walking tour through Walt’s incredible journey in a museum outlining key moments in his life. One in particular caught my eye that stated “Multiplane: New Depth In Animation.”

ABOVE IMAGES © DISNEY.

When Walt Disney introduced the multi-plane camera in Snow White it was a game changer. New possibilities gave animators more freedom to bring their scenes to life. With the introduction of parallax scenes achieved a greater, more natural level of depth.

In many respects this technique is still used today, but in a digital variety.

MacPaint: 30 Years Later

Released with the very first Macintosh computer in 1984, MacPaint sold for $195 and included its word processor companion, MacWrite. MacPaint was developed by Bill Atkinson. He was one of the original members of the Macintosh development team at Apple. I can still remember when I first used MacPaint in my high school art class. I painted a surfer catching the crest of a wave. It was crude, but the spray paint can sure did beat painting pixel by pixel with the arrow keys on my Commodore 64. Little did I know at the time, but the desktop revolution was just a few years away. First it will revolutionize print, and next it would take hold of compositing and effects for television and feature films.

ABOVE MACPAINT IMAGE © APPLE USED FOR EDITORIAL AND EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY. ILLUSTRATION BY SUSAN KARE.

In 2014 CloudPaint was released online by Martin Braun. It’s an emulator of the original MacPaint program that will transport you back nearly 30 years to the dawn of the original MacPaint.

The Internship

When you start a new job somewhere, there’s no telling what it will lead to. I heard a story years ago about a guy that answered the phones at Industrial Light & Magic who eventually became a visual effects supervisor there. I don’t work at ILM, but my college internship produced a relationship that lasted nineteen years. Plus we celebrated quite a few accolades along the journey.

In 1994 while attending the University of Georgia for Graphic Design I was fortunate enough to begin an internship with the Georgia Museum of Art, the state’s official art museum. Around that time I was also the Graphic Editor for The Red & Black student newspaper in downtown Athens. Bonnie Ramsey was the Director of Publications and Public Relations for GMOA, and she was my mentor. Bonnie had a deep passion for advertising and identity design. The very first piece I designed was for an exhibition of Art and Margo Rosenbaum’s work. It was called Shout! and I used the ‘o’ as a metaphor for a mouth shouting. Bonnie said when she saw that clever play on typography she knew we would get along quite well. After my internship ended, Bonnie and I kept in touch and nearly every year for 14 years we produced a handful of award-winning, including Best In Show, exhibition catalogs, checklists, and hard and soft cover texts. Bonnie is retired now, and I am pleased that we are collaborating on another project.

I was also fortunate to meet Lamar Dodd in his home one afternoon while he was cataloging his work. I had designed a poster earlier that year which included one of his daughter’s paintings. Per the University of Georgia’s Lamar Dodd School of Art website: “Founded in 1937, the School of Art is named for Lamar Dodd who as a young man in the 1920s traveled from his home in Georgia to New York to be part of the Art Student’s League. There he learned from and worked with many of the luminaries of American art. He returned to Georgia to head the Art Department at the University of Georgia from 1939 until his retirement in 1972. Under his leadership, the department grew significantly. The department was renamed the Lamar Dodd School of Art in 1996.”

Visit GMOA.

Visit the Lamar Dodd School of Art.

“It is Pitch Black. You Are Likely to be Eaten by a Grue.”

Now couldn’t be a better time than ever to be a classic gamer. One thing I remember most about my first computer, the original Commodore 64, was playing Zork, an all-text adventure game set in a magical, fantasy world. I can still hear the sound of my dot matrix printer screeching away as I kept an ongoing transcript of my latest adventure. In 1992 id Software released Wolfenstein 3D, and a year later their Doom series further defined the FPS in all of its gruesome detail.

And who could forget Dragon’s Lair, the animated adventure from animation genius Don Bluth? I spent many a Saturday at Putt Putt Golf & Games and Aladdin’s Castle going through the moves to slay the dragon, Singe, as the crowd of teens around me cheered me on at every move. Now I can take the games around in my pocket and play whenever I like. Zork © Infocom, Doom © id Software, and Dragon’s Lair © Digital Leisure, Inc.

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