Review of Video Co-Pilot's "Riot Gear" Stock Footage Pack
2 replies, posted
(Forewarned, will likely be heavy on technical motion graphics terms at times)
[url]http://videocopilot.net/products/riotgear/[/url]
Late last year, I began an assignment for one of my Motion Graphics modules to make a video piece of about 30 seconds of my choosing; at the time it was only the pre-production work, but I already had a fairly clear idea in my head of what I was going to do and how it was going to look: A 30 second promo for a short film project I was Director of Photography for last summer (One Bullet in the Chamber, a short British gangster film). While I had most of it figured out, I knew that I would have to, at some point, create some pretty tricky ink-drop shots for one of the sequences (A stylised slow motion gun shot)
While I could have gone to the effort of trying to make the shot myself, I didn't have any of the equipment that I would need to create the shots with anywhere near the quality and motion I was exactly after. As a result of this, I made the decision to purchase stock footage.
The process of finding a good piece of stock is torturous and long; trawling over sites with usually quite confusing user layouts, searching for a piece of video that suits your needs for a competitive price. The mainstream outlets (iStockPhoto) were way too expensive for my means, with a 20 second 1080p shot costing in the region of $75.
Thankfully, Video Co-Pilot exists.
For those that don't know (although these days it seems anyone in Motion Graphics knows of it), Video Co-pilot ([url]www.videocopilot.net[/url]) is a website set up by motion graphics designer Andrew Kramer to offer the assets and learning resources that motion graphics designers want, and that he wishes he had when he started out. It's a fantastic website, and almost anyone getting into motion graphics nowadays will at some point find themselves peering over his website and listening to his corny jokes.
Alongside the tutorials, Kramer and his team have produced a range of stock footage, sound, and plugin packs that go to support the website and offer the kind of assets that are key to many video projects. One of these, Riot Gear, had the ink drop shots I was after, and offers much, much more for the very much competitive price of only $50.
For this (really rather low) price I got my hands on something in the region of 120~ assets, consisting of about 60 720p HD video assets and 60~ stock textures, further split down into about 20 ink drops, 20 paint splatters, 5 ink dissolves, 5 television static sequences (best used combined) and 10 ink flows as far as the video is concerned, and about a 30/30 split of grunge textures and paint splatter textures for the stills.
The elements contained are pre-matted, meaning rather than having an alpha channel, they are all matted to black/white, making it easy to key out the colour or use them as track mattes in After Effects with coloured solid layers to colourise them (The exception to this being the still grunge textures, coming in colour as shot or greyscale). The images come in low or high resolution versions, perfect for scalable production depending on output file size or complexity when rendering. A good tactic is to use the low res textures, and then at the last minute replace the files in the project window with the high res versions before render (although this may mess with your scaling depending on settings)
The footage contained is of good quality, with various framerates depending on content, ranging from 60fps for the ink drops and flows down to 30fps for the paint splatters. This gives a good range to mess with when it comes to time remapping without many issues of stuttering or bad interpolation, although After Effects' advanced frame interpolation options will likely let you push it further.
The still images are of fantastic quality, suitable for 720, 1080 or even 2k projects, perfect for adding a bit of texture to vignettes or setting up 3D environments for your comps.
Also included are a set of tutorials that first introduce you to how to use the elements (those that know how to use track mattes need not apply) and another set of tutorials for creating a variety of different title sequences based on the elements.
In conclusion, I thoroughly recommend the package to anyone that requires or know that they may require any of the elements featured in the package. While the price may seem a bit steep when its so easily available to torrent online, it is a disservice to a man who has likely taught you more than a few things about After Effects for what amounts to free if you go and download his team's work.
While I can't show you the sequence I spoke of at the start (currently in the sound mixing stage), I did make this sequence today in a lab to show a variety of different processes (motionSketch (movement of camera), parenting, expressions, mattes, masks for the curious), and used no assets apart from those included in Riot Gear
[url]http://vimeo.com/8865244[/url]
The problem with the products at Video Copilot is that people who buy them or "not" tend to overuse the products when they aren't even necessary. Instead of learning to create their own things, they just rely on stock footage like this.
[QUOTE=onox37;19747356]The problem with the products at Video Copilot is that people who buy them or "not" tend to overuse the products when they aren't even necessary. Instead of learning to create their own things, they just rely on stock footage like this.[/QUOTE]
This is a habit of the designer and not the product; the fact that video copilot could be seen as the zeitgeist of this is only due to its popularity (give me a penny every time you've seen an rgb split just like seen in the twitch pack and it'll pay off my overdraft). In fact, I'd probably go so far to say as this is a result of a hobbyist who isn't studying design who posts his stuff on youtube, rather than the product
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