good mo. gfx firms/reels that use mainly AE on PC?

[Guest mistahle]

I posted this question on creativecow.net and got bombarded with people who think that I'm trying to diss PC as a design tool. My problem is: I've been using both Mac & PC, but PC mainly for 3D stuff. I can not find any really good mo. grfx firms/reels that utilize PCs as a platform for After Effects. (Distinction: as a design tool, not a special effects tool.) All I have found so far concerning Ae-PC are people who use lots of plug-ins and amazing scripting but the end results are just not any good.

 

Any good links?

 

and please - no Mac vs. Pc war.

[Guest flowrez]

I don't understand what you want to know. Ae isn't any different on mac or pc. An OS doesn't change anything to the quality, creativity or what so ever. It's often about a combination of software what makes people choose for one or the other. So what would be interesting is... in which case does someone prefer a mac and when a pc. OS wise.... well what does it really matter.

Maybe pc people are more 3d oriented, and mac users are more into graphics?

 

 

flo

[Guest firemind]

What a silly question. As if software, let alone an operating system, has anything to do with artistic expression.

[Guest mistahle]

it might be a silly question, but a valid observation nevertheless. Everyone who answered concentrated on the Mac/Pc and how it's got nothing to do with creativity but fail to provide solid examples. I'm curious to know why most mo. grfx designers out there still choose platforms for certain tools? (aside from mac/pc starting point)

[Guest pixel_pimp]

If you worked on a mac for a while, it's tough to get use to having to hit the ALT key on the outside of the keyboard. Versus the Apple/Command key on the mac that is close to the space bar.

[Guest firemind]

Most design schools teach on mac. The entire print industry still runs on mac, there you have it. Most motion gfx designers come from either of these places. There's no objective reason other than habit.

 

Keep in mind there are about 90 times the amount of ppl using a PC over a Mac, meaning over 90 times the amount of crap as well.

 

What 'solid examples' do you require?

[Guest mistahle]

solid examples meaning firms/reels. What surprise me the most is that design education is not a prerequisite to do motion graphics. Of course there are a lot of very talented people out there who do not need any formal training, but also there are a whole lot more coming from the edit side of broadcast/video. Platforms do not matter but typography definitely looks a lot better on a Mac than Pc. Is it not true that more 70% of great design relies on great typography?

[Guest firemind]

Again, what does a computer platform have to do with typography skills?

[Guest mistahle]

not skills. how it looks on screen. same reason why print designers prefer mac.

[Guest Sao_Bento]

I think you're obsessing on platform envy. The explanation for why many of the better motion graphic designers use Macs is simple. Macs were made for creative endeavors ("the computer for the rest of us" as the ad used to read). The Macintosh was the first computer to ship with paint and music applications rather than programming tools. From 84 until 1995 you pretty much HAD to get a Mac to do much in the creative arena, hence the majority of people who began using computers to do graphics during this period bought Macs and then applied the skills they had already developed using the Mac as another tool in their toolbox.

 

Nowadays, the difference no longer exists. As someone who owns four Macs and an Alienware XP machine, I can safely say that which computer you use has absolutely no effect on the quality of work you can create. The only reason to pick one or the other is your preference for how the user interface works.

[Guest igorschmigor]

yep.

The display on screen will be exactly the same on mac and pc, except for the fact that mac monitors by default use higher contrast than pc monitors, but if you like that you can also easily adjust the gamma settings on your pc monitor.

If you edit some text in illustrator and open it with illustrator on a mac, every single pixel will be identical. Absolutely no difference to the look on screen.

[Guest firemind]

Print designers don't necessarily 'prefer' mac. They have to use it, because the print industry is mac based. The print industry being essentially technology-phobic, they'll use what they're used to, which in most cases is Quark 4, Illu 8 and PS 5 running on an OS9 G4.

 

Nowadays with the advent of Indesign and PDF delivery to prepress that too is starting to end, which is wonderful.

[Guest parallax]

Although there is probably a lot of truth to the statement that many creative computer users are Mac based, i think that is now a thing of the past.

I also don't really understand where you get your info from.

9 out of 10 of the reels doesn't state on wich platform they were made, as far as i know. And there are quite a lot in the reels section.

Its all assumption IMO

[Guest mistahle]

it has nothing to do with pixel to pixel alignment but Postcript & TrueType,etc. Also, unfortunately, early on in computer history, a lot of fonts manufactured for PCs with same names or rip-off versions of the original names were badly digitized. The difference is not obivious and probadly not that important to motion graphic designers since time-based media is a lot more forgiving. Nevertheless, if you learned typography by tracing letters and spent a whole lot of time with typography, it does matter and it does affect the way you work.

[Guest firemind]

Lol, what complete bullshit. All font foundries these days offer both PC & Mac fonts, there is 0 difference between them. It sounds like you're living in the late 80's dude.

[Guest igorschmigor]

I thought you were talking about display on screen anyway.

Like firemind said, the big font foundries offer identical postscript versions for both platforms. Cheap low quality copies exist for PC, produced by nonames and offered on 1000-fonts-for-free-websites but as a professional you don't have to use them.

Identical Postscript font with identical names by the same company=identical font.

[Guest mistahle]

"bullshit!", stuck in the 80s? wow, pretty strong stuff for just an observation about mo.grfx. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. Numbers, however, do not lie. Maybe the number of firms using Mac & Pc will balance out in the future. Maybe people don't care what software goes on what platform and how it affects your workflow. Whatever.

 

Again, it's only a "personal" observation. It would be interesting to conduct a survey here on mograph, especially among the "rated" sites to get a more accurate number.

[Guest firemind]

Start a poll. I can tell you now that the results will be that most peeps will be working on a mac, which still doesn't say anything about the quality of work of ppl working on a pc. As for your observations, they seem to be based on some rather oldfashioned convictions.

[Guest igorschmigor]

mistahle, what actually makes you think that everybody uses Macs? Where did you make that observation? From what i know big studios usually use both, Macs and PCs. And among the smaller studios and freelance artists PCs are also getting increasingly important in motion graphics, mainly because 3D is being demanded more and more in motion graphics, and the best 3D apps are usually first being developped for Windows, some even exclusively for Windows.

And what firemind considered to be "bullshit" was not your question about "who uses what" but the strange reasons you mentioned why you think Mac is better in certain fields. That typography talk you gave really was rather strange.

So far I only found one site that mentioned the hardware used and it was two Dell PCs used by Renascent:

Dell P4 4300, Desktop, 1gig RAM

Dell c600 Latitude, Notebook, 256mb RAM

[Guest wonhee]

SHYNOLA USES PC

[Guest mistahle]

shynola is a very good example. There is nothing "bullshit" about "who uses what," if you look past the platform envy. Statistics reflect trends, trends cause change. Exactly why PC is a lot more graphic-friendly nowadays. I gather info. the same way most people do, poking around the web, downloading demos, checking out what and how they do it (design in motion, boards, etc...) Is my info. totally accurate? no. that's why I raised the observation in the first place just to prove myself wrong through great examples (that I have not got much.) Also, as I mentioned in the beginning, I too use PC for 3D. Of course, platforms do not matter, and nobody should stick to one nowadays. It's just that when it comes to compositing and mo. design, I, personally, see a large preference for one over the other. It is not about "silly" platform preferral, but about how it reflects the current design trends. About the "strange," "oldfashioned" PC type analysis: I came across in an AIGA journal a while back about digital typography. Is it still true? Arial, the bastard son of Helv., is a great example. Ugly as hell, developed for PC, now even Macs have it.

[Guest firemind]

Like Igor said, my bullshit comment was aimed at your rather misinformed rant on fonts and type usage on a PC. But don't let that stop you from quoting it in all the wrong contexts.

[Guest igorschmigor]

Arial is better than its reputation. You can think of it as a Helvetica optimized for screen display. All Microsoft fonts have a very good hinting for best display on screen at any resolution. For print i also prefer Helvetica, but for screen i often choose Arial. Designers often dislike Microsoft fonts for two reasons: 1. they are too common and overused, 2: they are from Microsoft. But the guys who develop the fonts for them are quite good.

[Guest igorschmigor]

p.s.: you can use Helvetica on PCs too.

[Guest markinchina]

in China,if you don't know how to use a mac is hard to find job.but most graduates only used pc. we use corelDRAW instead of adobe Illustator in PC.

But it dosn't the matter about making better graphic.