The National Film Challenge begins this weekend. The Crew of Funk will be spending the weekend writing, shooting, editing, and blowing our brains out. Donations of energy drinks, fruit smoothies, and cookies are most welcome.

Before then, though, I will hopefully have finished my first After Effects tutorial. Here’s what we’ll be building:

Finished Blue Orb

A rotating glass orb. An element for a motion graphic. Not so secretly, an element I’ll be using in a project I’m working on. Though I haven’t decided if I’m going to use this, or the same thing built in Blender, instead. If I use the Blender version, though, I’ll make a tutorial for that, too.

Also, check out Jamendo.com. Jamendo is a site that hosts music licensed under Creative Commons. Which means, among other things, you are free to download it. Yes. For real.

I’ve been looking through their library in preparation for the NFC. Some of the music is also freely licensed to be used in other art forms. Including crazy weekend video productions. So yay.