My name is John Stanowski. I had been strictly a print and web designer for 17 years before I discovered Adobe After Effects in 2007. Then I realized I had found my true calling. And then I realized I had utterly wasted the previous 17 years! And, then, I realized I really didn’t. The basic design theory, typography, Photoshop skills and everything I learned in those years all add up and will just make me a better motion graphics designer. In fact, I’m somewhat glad it happened this way. After Effects was probably as slow as f**k back then so I most likely would have spent days waiting for renders. Instead I was perfecting my roto skills by cutting out backgrounds in Photoshop. I was whipping out vectors in Corel DRAW and Adobe Illustrator. I was getting in on with pixels in web design. I was making print ads and applying basic design tricks like proximity and Gestalt Theory. I was learning to become a designer without having to worry about codecs, key frames or expressions!

Well, now that I’ve got design covered, I’m tackling … codecs, key frames and expressions. Comps, precomps and 3D cameras. DG Fast Channel, mpeg and Vimeo. Primitives, splines and booleans.

Needless to say, I’m a tad anxious and my head often spins. Because all the while I plunge into the worlds of After Effects and Cinema 4D, I’m still required to keep tabs on print, web, etc. because of the day job.

This blog is about things that I, as an intermediate, find interesting and am sharing with other intermediates.

Please check out my portfolio at JohnStanowski.com.

I’m also a contributor over at AE Freemart.