Hey, guys. How's it going? I've been into filmmaking for about 2 and 1/2 years now, mainly working in just production. Over last 6 months, I've really delved pretty deep in the post-production, and have been trying to learn as much as possible. I have a pretty good grip on fcp. After I got that down, I moved onto Motion. Motion is a really sweet program, and I think it work great for creating those quick spots, and simple animations. However, from I've seen what AE is capable of... I feel like I'm almost wasting my time learning Motion. I don't own ae yet, but I plan getting it very soon. I have very, very little knowledge on ae. btw, my chief reason for wanting to learn ae is to create commercials and promos. I was hoping you guys could help cut down on researching it. So here's what I'm getting at...

-What dvd tutorials out there would recommend for first starting out with ae?
-What's the be all end all ae websites out there? There so many... basically, what's the sweetest ones?
-are there any particular books out there i should look into getting.
-and lastly, can ae even been used in a fcp workflow?

Thanks so much in advance, guys. I really appreciate your help. Hopefully here soon I can start contributing to ae subjects here.

Peace out.

There are several great tutorials available around the web.

First thing to remember:
AE is a toolbox...it comes with a basic set of them. To REALLY be a true craftsman, you need MORE tools...those come in the form of PlugIns.

There are tons of those. Genarts Sapphire, Boris Continuum, and to find out info all in one place about many of them go to Toolfarm.com...and select "AE Plugins," and doa little research on the ones you need.

Boris is probably the first one to get, though.

VideoCopilot.net has some great tutorials, too along with plugins and pre built titles, graphics, animations, even sound effects that are tremendous time savers. Hope this helps.

also keep your eye out on the digitaljuice.com web site... at various times they offer some
of the AE tools at half price... when they do you just jump on it...

thats how I got my boris, redgiant and title tools...

as mentioned in the previous post... videocopilot is a must... here's a freebee basic training that you will need....

http://www.videocopilot.net/basic/index.html

Douglas,

I really like the AE tutorials by Chad Perkins on Lynda.com. You can get a free 7-day pass by googling "Lynda.com coupons".

Regards, Marc