Check out this video blog from Peter Jackson. It explains many of the nuances of shooting 3D using the latest and greatest equipment and camera technology:

Watch Video Blog Article

You can find more videos for The Hobbit here:
The Hobbit Production Videos

Also check out The Hobbit Blog: Visit The Hobbit Blog

We are on tour this month for Adobe to serve up some excellent training in some of the latest Adobe developments for Acrobat and the CS5.5 product line. These events are scattered around the country. We are taking our Adobe seminar curriculum and tuning it to optimize an agency's workflow. We'll be discussing and demoing everything from 508 compliance with forms to efficiently building digital communication pieces with Creative Suite software, including InDesign, Photoshop, Dreamweaver and Premiere.

We are sending out one of our best Solution Experts. There is no cost for these events and they will fill up fast. If you are interested, please sign up here:

Adobe Education Days - Orlando, FL
November 7, 2011

Adobe Education Days - Ft. Lauderdale
November 8, 2011

Adobe Days Sacramento
August 15-16, 2011 (done)

Adobe Days Orlando
August 22-23, 2011(done)

Adobe Days Raleigh
Sept 19-20, 2011(done)

I often work with form creators that have to design a form in Microsoft Word or Adobe InDesign. I found some helpful tips when designing these pages so that Acrobat Professional will properly translate your form fields. This useful guide that covers most of the guidelines:

Read Designing for Acrobat Forms Guidelines

I don't recommend using the form controls in Word, but rather adding lines or boxes (graphical elements). When you bring this Word document into Acrobat Professional X, run the form wizard and these graphical elements will be converted into form controls for you.

When you are finished creating your form don't forget to extend the Adobe Reader features. In Acrobat Professional X, this feature was moved to the File > Save As... menu item. You will choose Reader Extended PDF > Enable Additional Features. This feature will lock the ability to edit this form, but users that only have Acrobat Reader will be able to Save form data and digitally sign your documents. This is a last step in your forms creation process that you won't want to leave out.

If you are working in FCP, After Effects or Premiere, be sure to check out these free plugins from Red Giant:
http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/products/free/?utm_source=site&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=20110601&utm_content=freeproducts_textlinks

They include the following:
Magic Bullet Colorista Free – uses advanced color wheels so you can color correct like a pro
Magic Bullet LUT Buddy – allows your to share your color correction ideas or import others
Knoll Unmult – removes the black background from footage you want to composite. Great for fire, rain and more. I typically use a blending mode, but this plugin actually converts your background into an Alpha channel.

Good stuff, hope you find it useful too.

I put together a few slides that include some basic CSS rules and guidelines. This document does not include an exhaustive list of every attribute and detail, but serves as a quick guide.

CSS Rules Overview Document

I came across this neat font creation tool called Fontself. There is a full video demo on the front of their site. Probably not a full replacement for a professional tool, but it looks really fun.

Check it out here: http://www.fontself.com/my-fonts/

Updating Presenter 7 to the latest version is crucial. You will need to download and install each patch one at a time.

First, visit this link: http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/product.jsp?product=153&platform=Windows and begin by downloading version 7.01. After you have installed this patch, download and install 7.02, then 7.05; in order.

Next, open up PowerPoint and from the Presenter tab, click on the Help button and select Update. Download and install the updates as you are prompted to. This will update your version to the latest patch available, 7.06.

I know this download process seems cumbersome, but it is currently the only consistent way I have found to update Presenter. You can also download these patches within Presenter, but you will have to keep restarting PowerPoint each time you run the updater. Documentation about these issues is scarce.

Be sure to check for updates within the Presenter menu item regularly. There are many changes occurring right now with Flash Player that may cause your output Presenter files to act erratically from one day to the next. Once you have successfully published and tested a output file from Presenter, you should be in the clear. This issue should not affect previously published files as far I have tested.

UPDATE: Version 7.07 is now out with full support for AS3.0. Read more>
-----------------------------------------------------------
ActionScript Version Compatibility
Presenter 7 ActionScript 2.0
Captivate 4: ActionScript 2.0 or 3.0 (selectable in preferences)
Captivate 5: ActionScript 3.0 only
Connect 7: ActionScript 2.0
Connect 8: ActionScript 3.0

You can run a published Presenter 7 or Captivate 4 or earlier file in Connect 8, because it is backward compatible. You cannot run a published Captivate 5 file (AS3) in Presenter 7 (AS2) or Connect 7 (AS2).

I recently saw the Black Swan and was very intrigued by the high quality effect work that was done on that film. I found this video on Imagineer's website that I'd like to share. We teach Mocha AE and performing these planar tracks shown in the video are pretty straightforward.

Here's the link: http://www.imagineersystems.com/videos/look-fx-black-swan-vfx-selects/view

I also like to show students some of the green screen magic used on many newer movies. This next site is the work of a small company that uses After Effects as well as other "off-the-shelf" type products to do some major effect work in Hollywood.

Here's the link to Crazy Horse Films: http://www.crazyhorseeffects.com/html/current.html

We are running six seminars the first half of this year sponsored by Adobe and promoted by the Department of Information Resources. Space is really limited, so sign up soon.

I will be hosting a few of these and Miguel will be doing the hardcore LiveCycle training. He recently became a part of the very few that are fully legit LiveCycle ES2 Server trainers for Adobe. I am still an Adobe Certified Instructor for Acrobat. Point is - these are supercharged events with qualified talent.

If you have a need for some Acrobat tips and tricks or if you want to know how LiveCycle can rock your business workflow, these events will be a great primer for you.

For more information check out this site: http://www.lumenbrite.com/dir

Fellow Flash UG member and PHP guru Keith Casey has shared a video and interview with us: http://www.phparch.com/2011/01/lots-of-screens-with-a-lit...

This is an interview with Christian Cantrell of Adobe that covers using Flash Builder to create applications for multiple screens including Android and Apple products using the same codebase.

Motorola and Adobe are seeking original, inventive ideas to convey the exciting possibilities made possible with full web browsing on new mobile devices like the DROID smartphones by Motorola with Adobe® Flash® Player.

This looks like a fun and perhaps rewarding competition: http://www.mofilm.com/competitions/barcelona2011/adobemotorola

Illustrator has been getting groomed for a variety of outputs beyond its original print applications. Check out this new extension for Illustrator CS5. You will also need to update your Dreamweaver CS5 with the new HTML5 extension.

Adobe Lab Illustrator CS5 Extension

For an overview and tutorial on how to use, check out this Adobe TV video: Adobe TV Illustrator Tutorial

I also found this article quite informative: Additional Details

I know this process isn't full baked, but it has some promise.

HTML5 and Flash links
------------------------------------------

Chart showing current supported features:
http://www.findmebyip.com/litmus/#target-selector

More in-depth HTML5 primer:
http://www.sencha.com/blog/2010/05/23/html5-now-with-20-percent-more-internet/

Interactive feature support chart:
http://html5readiness.com/

Apple's page on HTML5:
http://www.apple.com/html5/

Interesting countersuit of the above link by a Flash developer:
http://www.flashlab.com/html5/

Adobe's "Truth about Flash" page, in response to Steve Jobs latest comments:
http://www.adobe.com/choice/flash.html

HTML5 Core specification for those inclined to look more in depth at this standard:
http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/

HTML5 Examples (best viewed in Chrome or Safari): http://mrdoob.com/projects/chromeexperiments/ball_pool/
http://mrdoob.com/92/Google_Gravity_HTML5
http://www.kesiev.com/akihabara/
http://www.benjoffe.com/code/
http://alteredqualia.com/canvasmol/

I recently came across a relatively new technology of mapping 3D artwork and motion graphics onto buildings, walls, etc. This site has a list of videos will help explain this in more detail. If you are into motion graphics and video work, or just appreciate general coolness, you need to check this out:
Architectural Projection Mapping Videos

I assist with the local Flash Platform Usergroup here in Austin. Adobe provides us with a group site to manage our meetings, discussions, etc., but I recently created a meetup group site to create a better experience for users and for us admins that need to schedule meetings and invite attendees. So far so good.

We have some pretty cool meetups coming up and you can check out the Flash Platform UG site here: http://www.meetup.com/flashaustin/

This meetup is not the same as the Flash Meetup group in Austin, if that makes any sense. We have started to coordinate efforts with them to have better attendance and cooperative efforts.

This month we are having a meeting at SpringBox. Free food, beer and a great topic. Come join us!