Last week our good friend Philip Bloom had a contest for a chance to win his new Philip Bloom Signature Pocket Dolly from Kessler Crane. After we saw the quality of the entries, we knew it would break poor Phil’s heart to have only one person win something for their effort, so we pledged a license of Magic Bullet Suite for the runner-up.

The winner of the Philip Bloom Signature Pocket Dolly was Karen Abad, who turned in an amazing video referencing “Green Porno,” Isabella Rosellini’s artistic nature series of short films:

Bloom Porno from Karen Abad ♥s Dinosaurs. on Vimeo.

It’s a good thing she won the pocket dolly, because it’s pretty clear at the end that she already had Magic Bullet Suite.

The runner-up, and winner of Magic Bullet Suite was Petter Misje, with this hysterical and provocative music video:

To Philip with love from Petter Misje on Vimeo.

Congratulations to both of you on your excellent work!

Hey folks – in a moment of perfect calm, I managed to crank out 2 presets that are variations on the same theme. Holographic text. One version has sharp text, the other uses soft edged text to create more of a rounded 3D effect. These presets use Trapcode Form and Holomatrix.

Get the free preset here: http://redgiantpeople.com/Explore/PresetDetail.aspx?PresetId=1524

Get the free preset here: http://redgiantpeople.com/Explore/PresetDetail.aspx?PresetId=1523

If you want to learn more about how I created the look of these presets, check out this tutorial:

In this Quicktip, Aharon Rabinowitz shows you how using Depth Maps to displace Trapcode Form particles can be used to create a 3D Point Cloud Representation of a city.

This tutorial was inspired by the brilliant Trapcode Form work of Jeremy Cox at Imaginary Forces, for the film “Terminator: Salvation.”

Stu Maschwitz’s Rebel Epic for Looks
Give Your DV Rebel-Style footage an Epic Film Look

Using Magic Bullet Looks and his serious color correction chops, Director Stu Maschwitz brings you a set of Looks Presets designed to you give your footage the look of a true Hollywood Epic film. This Guru Preset Pack comes with 25 Looks presets for simulating big-budget film styles, as well as several utility-based Looks presets for creating popular Hollywood film effects.

Get it HERE for just $69.

Harry Frank’s Cinematic Flares for Knoll Light Factory
100 Breathtaking Flare Presets for Motion Graphics and Visual Effects

This collection of 100 Knoll flare presets makes it easy for you to add amazing cutting-edge visuals to film, still-imagery, music videos, motion graphics, and visual effects. If you’re looking to create fresh and exciting lighting effects that will stun your clients and audience alike, this essential addition to your Knoll Custom Lens Library is a must-have.

Get it HERE for just $69.

In a previous QuickTip I showed you how you could share your Magic Bullet Looks presets from app to app and from user to user. But did you know you can do something similar with Knoll Light Factory Flares?

Red Giant Quicktip #20: Sharing Custom Flares Across Apps

In this Quicktip, Aharon Rabinowitz shows you how you can easily share Lens Flares/Custom Lenses you Create in Knoll Light Factory between After Effects, Final Cut Pro, Photoshop (and more) – and how you can share them from user to user. This allows you to quickly achieve consistency throughout your project, even if it spans from print to video.

Learn more about Knoll Light Factory HERE, and Knoll Light factory for Photoshop HERE.

And the Random winner of the Plastic Bullet Contest is @texasmwade. This was @texasmwade’s picture:

The picture also included the following caption:

“This is my entry for the iPad contest! Hoping a hot chick and a bitchin’ 1981 Z28 Camaro are things you guys like! It’s a cool app!”

Thanks! We think the App is pretty cool too. And the good news is, whether we like bitchin’ cars or not – Dude! You won an iPad.

FYI – We used Rowfeeder.com to capture all entries to the contest. After removing any posts that were ineligible (based on the contest rules), we used Random.org to randomly pick the winner from list of contestants.

But now on to 2nd Prize… We’ll anounce the skill-based winners next week. We have to go through them as a team, here at RG. We’ll let you know soon. Thanks to everyone for their great submissions!

Day 7 is the charm I guess! Tons of great last-minute entries for the Plastic Bullet contest:

The contest is over. We will be announcing winners in the next few days. Thanks so much for all the submissions. Great stuff!

With the new iOS HDR photography options, and the new iPods with cameras, we hope to do another contest soon. Stay tuned.

Alright – things are starting to heat up! Tons of entries in the Plastic Bullet contest, and we’re getting some great stuff.We’re seeing kids, creatures of all sizes, architecture, not to mention some bordering on the macabre.

Plus, that rock concert image (or is it a book club meeting?) by @BryanVFX is definately at the top of my favorites so far.

IMPORTANT NOTE: you can use ANY camera to take the picture, it just has to be processed with Plastic Bullet. So break out your Cannon 700D’s with a 15 bajillion MM lens that costs more than a house. It’s all good.

But hey – the good news is, even if you’re not a pro photographer with serious camera equipment,  you still have as much of a chance as anyone else to win an iPad.There will be additional prizes awarded based on quality, but for the iPad, it’s open season!

So if you haven’t already, get yourself Plastic Bullet for a mere $1.99 and ENTER THE CONTEST NOW!

If you haven’t watched our newest getting started tutorials (like the ones for Grinder, Photolooks, and many of our FCP intro tutorials) you may not be familiar with our British team member, Simon Walker,  but he’s kind of a Renaissance man. Aside from working on animation and visual effects, he’s a talented musician, photographer, father, and vigilante crime fighter (though he denies that last one vehemently).

Simon just uploaded  these 5 free Looks for Magic Bullet Looks and Photolooks, which you can find at Red Giant People, our community site for sharing presets and templates. Here are 2 images of those presets in use.

If you’ve ever wondered why our products are so good, I’m going to let you in on our big secret for supreme software awesomeness:

We use our own products.

That’s it. That’s the secret. We create products we love and use every day. And I’m not just talking about Harry Frank, Stu Maschwitz, and myself.

Virtually everyone at Red Giant is creative in their own way, but almost everyone at Red Giant has a real interest in creating art – whether it’s video, photography, or some other medium. Even our QA team and our accountant have a passion for film-making, visual FX, photography or motion design.

Case in point: Joe Kadera – QA Engineer. Below is a tongue-in-cheek, short film he worked on with a friend, as a continuation of a project they started in high school. You can see a ton of work and love went into this enjoyable film-noir short (although – warning: there is a bunch of violence in there):

iPod/iPad-Friendly Version on Vimeo.

About his job and his passion, Joe says:

“Ultimately, I want to be doing something like what I did on Joe Saturday in the movies, that is to say, everything. But I also have more fun working in a small team like I can do with my friends now than I would on a big project. Special effects in general are some of the most interesting things for me to work on.

At red giant, I get to work a lot with the same software I used when I made Joe Saturday, and work with when I do my own movie work, but I get to make sure that it is working as it should for everyone else. Most of my day consists of playing with sliders and writing up bug reports, but I’m pretty good about getting in the zone and it doesn’t bother me as it might some people. Occasionally I create some pretty cool effects while I’m testing that I am able to put into use in my own projects at home.”

You can get some cool behind the scenes footage and other info on Joe Saturday at the official website.

Hey folks – We have a new version of Plastic Bullet! It’s a free update for current customers.

Plastic Bullet Version 1.1 is a major update, with faster developing, higher resolutions, and Facebook and Flickr support! New sharing and resolution options can be accessed through your device’s Settings app.

Get it and learn more here.

Here’s a high-res photo I recently took on my iPhone 3GS (You get even bigger pictures with the iPhone 4). I took it from the balcony that Superman lands on in the original film – The Daily Planet Building. My wife works there. I swear. I love living in Metropolis… er… New York.

Click on the image to see it at Full-Res.