Creative COW Forum Host, Web Writer, Contributing Editor
Andrew Shanks
Auckland, New Zealand
I am a Visual Effects Compositor/Supervisor based in Auckland, New Zealand.
I
was born into a theatrical family, and quickly scampered away from a
childhood on stage to being behind the scenes (lighting/sound), which I
found more fascinating. This progressed to camerawork at theatre and
high school. Stop motion at age 13 was probably my first dabblings with
effects of any kind, …and from there things grew (incorporating special
effects ranging from horror makeup to small pyros in our skits).
I
ended up leaving school and becoming an editor (despite camera work
being my passion at the time, it was the only career path in
television/film I was able to get into). That led to me becoming a
freelance editor (I got into the business just as non-linear was really
getting going, it was an exciting but scary time, exciting due to the
things non-linear allowed you to do, …scary because the hardware was
being pushed to the limit and hard-drive arrays would fall over
frequently, taking out days of work).
When
I got into non-linear editing, the first programs I learnt in tandem
with the editing apps, were Adobe Photoshop and CoSA After Effects
(yup, I learnt on the version before Adobe bought AE), …these we'd use
for basic titles and graphics, ….but in my spare time I'd use them for
effects on our home made skits (which we had continued to do when we
left high school). One of these comic skits, involving a giant chicken
devouring people in Auckland city, was seen by a friend of mine who
happened to be Post Supervising a new teen comedy series, ....he put my
name forward to the vfx supervisor, and before I knew it, I was heading
up compositing for the show (I also got thrown in the deep end when the
vfx supervisor fell ill and I ended up having to do my first on set
greenscreen supervising day, scary but great experience).
That
was 5 years ago, since then I have moved from television into doing
work for feature films as well, and have gone from compositor to
supervisor (although I have to admit I prefer the hands on of
compositing, …so much so that if I am on set, I have rigged up a system
so I can take a camera feed and do keys in my laptop and do test comps
in situ for the director, ….just so I can do my hands on work). In the
past 3 years I have started doing a mix of local and overseas
productions (Disney and BBC/SPP being a couple of my more prominent TV
clients), including recently starting to do remote work on US feature
films.
In
my work I use a collection of tools to get the job done. My two
compositors of choice are After Effects and Shake (each has strengths
and weaknesses, so being able to jump between them both is great). I
also use Photoshop for matte painting (set extensions), Syntheyes for
tracking/matchmoving, Softimage XSI for basic 3d animation (and 3d
particles) as well as particle illusion for 2d particle animation.
I
have been on Creative Cow since the beginning, and have found it a
great community, …when you are a beginner it's a great resource to ask
questions of your peers (something I did a lot of, way back then), and
as you become more experienced you start to give back to the community
by answering the questions you can. This is what I enjoy about the Cow,
a pooling of knowledge, a place to share ideas and tackle tricky
problems.
You can find Andrew Shanks hosting in Creative COW's
Apple Shake forum.
In this article Creative Cow Leader Andrew Shanks plans to go through some of the software options for checking greenscreens on set (Lensfeed, Veescope and Conduit Live).
Going beyond the one click keying technique most beginners use, this tutorial from Creative Cow Leader Andrew Shanks shows a common technique and includes tips for other ways to tackle pulling a key.
In this video tutorial, Creative Cow Leader Andrew Shanks demonstrates cleaning up DV/HDV chroma compression artifacts in Shake to allow for better keying.
