Rick Gerard took his first production job in 1969 and has been hard at it ever since. After several years working for local Seattle television stations Rick started a freelance business and has been producing on his own for the last 18 years. Interest in special effects began early in his career. In 1971 he built a digitally controlled motion control camera and light box in his garage to do titles. It was quickly put to use for several local advertisers. An avid pilot with commercial, multi-engine and flight instructor ratings as well as an A&P license, he started mounting cameras to airplanes early in his career. His stunning low level aerial cinematography for Miramar productions was featured in several video albums by David Lanz and Paul Speer as well as Tangerine Dream. Rick and his Cessna 310 produced more than half of the images for the first 'Over Washington' produced by KCTS Television in Seattle and starting tradition of Over Everywhere aerial videos airing on National Public Television. His award winning work in broadcast television for clients like CBS news and 60 Minutes, and experience on seven feature films and three television series has exposed Rick to many ways of solving production problems. Rick is great at thinking of easy and economical ways to 'get the shot'. In 1993 Rick bought his first nonlinear editing system. A D-Vision Pro system running on a 486/33 with 16 MB ram. It worked so well that a romance with digital production began that continues to this day. Soon Adobe Premiere, After Effects and then Commotion were added to the ever growing video production system. Rick moved to Roseville, California in November of 2001 to partner on some new projects with his longtime friend and collaborator, Tom Watson. They are currently working on a not yet fully funded documentary on dyslexia research at the University of Washington Medical Center, a series on WW2 love stories that have lasted all these years, several advertising and corporate video projects and a series of tutorials on how to solve production problems. Hoping to add to the nine Emmys on his mantle and always looking for a good story Rick is hard at work in California. ### Gerard Productions, Roseville, California, USA.

Brand New:

Exploring 3D Possibilities in AE5 Animating the Universal Cow Or Making 2D Planes in 3D space look like 3D by Rick Gerard, Seattle, Washington USA After Effects 5 has some powerful 3D compositing feature and some new tools that makes complicated animations a snap. In this tutorial we will use parenting, expressions and Boris 3D text to recreate the Universal movie opening (sorta). A new way of thinking about layers in AE is required. It's easy to grasp once you stand back from the project a little.

Other articles by Rick Gerard:

Faking An Iris: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Sphere! Rick Gerard explores some methods of simulating a camera lens. In this tutorial, Rick uses the Boris Sphere Plug-In for After Effects.

Making a Real Aperture: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Illustrator! Rick Gerard explores some methods of simulating a camera lens. In this tutorial, Rick uses Adobe Illustrator and Adobe After Effects to create the aperture.

Morphing With Adobe Illustrator Rick Gerard, a frequent visitor and contributor in the Creative COW After Effects Community explores some methods of morphing text using new features in Adobe Illustrator 9.0.