Steve Roberts
Motion Graphics Toronto Toronto, Ontario Canada
Steve
has always been a jack-of-all-trades, with the inherent limitations of
the title. His interests range from photography to directing theatre to
new media, but he actually makes a buck doing motion graphics and video
editing for corporate clients. He avoids new media because he hates
having to "publish" something to test it. Ick.
Back
in '96, after struggling to create motion graphics in Premiere
3.something, he downloaded the demo of After Effects 3.1, and after a
week, was hooked. The tipping point was when he realized he could
animate the arm of a basketball player by changing its anchor point to
the shoulder, something that could not be done in Premiere. You had to
rotate the arm and animate its position at the same time, since it was
actually rotating at the elbow in the center of the picture. In a tiny
window. You had to be there.
He's
rather comfortable in After Effects now, but also uses Final Cut Pro
and Lightwave, and is getting up to speed on Motion and Cinema 4D. He
expects to use C4D for 3D motion graphics because of its flexible
workflow. But he won't delete Lightwave just yet. He works on Mac and
Windows, and has no patience with platform wars.
In
his spare time he plays trumpet and studies Tai Chi and Liu He Ba Fa
(Lok Hup Ba Fa in Cantonese). He also enjoys teaching and finds the
students stimulating in every course he teaches. He lives in Toronto
with his wife and too-small-for-an-animator action figure collection.
There's also a large plastic kit of the Starship Enterprise sitting on
the workbench awaiting his attention, but there's little hope of seeing
that baby on the shelf anytime soon. He is a great fan of old Warner
Brothers cartoons, and any other cartoons that have heart, and show
excellent animation craft. He's old enough to remember prime time Star
Trek, the Jackie Gleason show, and staying up to watch Topo Gigio.
When he gets a minute, he'll write a tutorial on something, but Aharon will probably do it first. :)
