Author: Duduf

After Effects Software | Technology 

Designing Duik 16 icons: “My” theory

Duduf 1 Comment , , , ,

The “My” word in this title might sound a bit arrogant, but it’s actually quite the opposite. Read next…
Working with icons is new for me – the icons of the previous versions of Duik were not designed by myself – and I discovered how hard it can be to design icons which are: intuitive, clearly “readable” – even when they’re as tiny as only 14 pixels wide – and beautiful. Yes, I’m trying to make Duik16 at least a bit less ugly than Duik15, but this is a bonus, I’m actually working really hard to make it intuitive and quick and easy-to-use.

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After Effects Cinema | Arts | Animation Software | Technology 

Behind the scenes: From illustration to animation!

Duduf 16 Comments , , , , ,

I’ve been very happy to work on Justine Cunha’s wonderful illustrations recently, and I’m going to share my process with you. What’s interesting is that those characters were… Well, illustrations. They were not meant to be animated at all, so it could be a bit tricky to adapt them. The technique I used, Duik in After Effects, seems to be one of the easiest way to do this, animate illustrations, without having to adapt the style.

What’s great with animation in After Effects, is that you work on the actual illustrations, you don’t have to re-draw them. This means they can be very detailed, with textures, shadows and small details, which would be impossible if you had to draw each frame by hand like with more traditional 2D animation.

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Misc. Software | Technology 

Easily transcode any media to any format using FFmpeg

Duduf 2 Comments , ,

When working in motion pictures, it can be a big pain to export/transcode/deliver medias in some formats, and the transcoding process itself can take a very long time. FFmpeg – a cross-platform free software – can help you a lot: it’s lightning fast, and supports any formats you may need, even proRes on Windows platforms for instance. Using it may seem difficult as it’s a command line tool, but I’m explaining here how to easily and efficiently use it!

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Misc. Software | Technology 

Using the command line on Windows

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We’re all used to using the mouse and nice user interfaces when working on a computer, but sometimes using a command line can be very useful! For instance, it’s the best way to encode videos and audio using the excellent FFmpeg, or using the command line renderer of After Effects. I’m going to explain here the basics of the command line on Windows.

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