Creative COW Forum Host, Web Writer, Contributing Editor
Mark Simpson Jam Digital Redondo Beach, California USA
Mark is someone who is *really* into After Effects. He
loves learning and passing along what he learns -- and he's one
friendly guy while doing it. Much of what has become the COW's After Effects community finds its genesis in efforts that Mark built into the community in the early days of the COW. Mark's early tutorials were some of our first and he set the stage for what would come later.
Mark
Simpson got started in all this when he did an electrical job (he's an
electrician) for a video production company. He had long wanted a 3/4"
machine for his home recording studio. (A hobby he's been trying to
turn into more than a hobby for about 15 years -- always thwarted by
not having the place to do it (sound control issues vs. neighbors)).
So, he traded some work for a couple of JVC top loaders, and an old
convergence editor.
He started doing an edit job for a
local little league team, but he needed a HI-8 tape converted to VHS,
so that he could get it on his machines, so he went to a friend to have
him convert it. Their first NLE system (Quadra 840, Premiere 4.1,
VideoVision Studio, CoSA After Effects, etc.) happened to be for sale
and Mark ended up buying it. He started doing alot of free edit jobs
for the youth ministry at the church in which he's involved but became
frustrated at the long render times on that system.
So, in less than a year he was considering upgrading his machine.
Instead Mark bought a new G3, a Digital 8 camcorder and also Adobe
After Effects 4. The first day Mark loaded up AE 4.0 and did the
beginning tutorial out of the manual, he was fully hooked. He found
that all the restrictions he ran into in the audio world of trying to
get creativity out of his head and onto tape were removed.
Mark
says: "AE lets me move from imagination to reality almost at the snap
of my fingers. I've become an AE Junkie and I hope to somehow, someday
turn this addiction into my work at home career." When asked if he also
edits video, he replied," Yes, but my passion (actually it's more like
an obsession) is working with AE. It seems like I 'have' to do this. I
just love it."
