Jon Shimon won a free master class through Live Design. He has a choice of going to the 3 day lighting, sound or projection classes in New York City. I believe his choice is projections, and I might be next in line if he can’t go. (so watch your back Shimon)

If you have been to VideoCopilot.net then you know exactly what I am about to say….
Andrew Kramer is a great source to learn and/or help expand your knowledge of Adobe After Effects.
If you do video editing and like creating visual effects, I recommend Adobe After Effects.  I have used Final Cut Pro and its companion Motion and find them limiting in comparison to this software.  I am also an avid PC user and that might have something to do with it.  But back to the topic at hand:
Video Copilot offers many stock effects and footage DVDs for sale that are …

Well the CES ended last weekend and one of the topics to come out of the showroom floor was 3D in your home. Many LCD and Plasma TVs coming in the option of 3D should be available to you some time in 2010 and many are allowing you to pre-order them already. They all pretty much require you to wear some sort of glasses. Some are basic cardboard polarized glasses and others are powered glasses that actually link top the TV to shutter each lens as you watch. I also heard that there was one TV …

Turn a sketch into an actual photo…”Say what?”  A hand full of researchers have teamed up to develop a program that will interpret a sketch that you make on their software, surf the internet for pictures, and stitch together the parts to make a realistic photo of the original sketch.  The project is called PhotoSketch.
They haven’t released a version of this yet.  They have, however, released the code that does this process (I am sifting through it right now, pretty neat).  According to their site a demo is being created.
How could this be put to use?  In digital media design …

Dataton recently released its newest version of WATCHOUT in August.  This is a media playback software designed for presentation and live entertainment.  This happens to be one of my favorite multi-display software, due to it’s timeline control, cueing, and ease of multi-display configuration.  There have been some major updates since the 3.5 version of this software.  The amount of control given to the designer allows them to rely less on their editing software (like Adobe After Effects and Final Cut Pro) and gives the designers the ability to edit major functions right on the control computer.
The list of tween tracks …

As many of you know, much of my research is based on projections/digital media in live entertainment. I have worked with shows in the past that dealt with Holograms on stage (see 4d Art‘s performance of Shakespeare’s La Tempête).
First I must set the rumor straight…Holograms (i.e. Star Wars “Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi, You’re My Only Hope”) do not exist. The representation of 3D images in 3D space using just light is beyond our means with the concepts of physics that we as humans understand. Please prove me wrong, then let me in on the research (I could …