well, november is over, and various issues conspired to prevent me from reaching the NaNoWriMo goal. heck, i couldn’t even sniff half of the 50,000 words. however, i am still working on it, so keep the faith, dear reader. i will continue to post progress as it happens.

in the spirit of the u.s. thanksgiving holiday today, i wanted to give thanks to the ae script junkies out there that have shown support of the “book” project. here’s a grab from an early draft of the object hierarchy figure (click for full version):

i needed this figure to help plan out the reference section, but figured some peeps might find it useful. be aware that it’s a work in progress.

happy thanksgiving, y’all! btw, no book work today…gotta plate of turkey/gravy/stuffing/etc. and a green bay game in my near future.

lloyd might be soliciting directly for his wares, but i figured i’d go the iou route …at least until the book comes out. for my friends in the community that want to support this site and my writing/coding madness this month, i’ve added a tip jar* for foamee to the sidebar. oh, and i’m now on twitter, if you feel so inclined to watch me type.

thanks, and <burp>, in advance.

*”tip jar” is the name of an unreleased ae script that’s so pre-alpha it doesn’t even have a ui.

write, write, write … code, code, code … rinse and repeat. inspired by the National Novel Writing Month project, i’ve decided to stop procrastinating about writing a book* and start the After Effects scripting reference that i’ve been threatening to write for a couple of years now. i’m not sure what form this reference will take, but my goal is to crank out as much text and example code as possible this month. wish me luck.

with ~30 days of off-hours writing in front of me, i just hope my writing stays more non-fiction than fiction.

*i’ve wanted to write a book for a long time (>10 yrs), starting in the mid 90s with an Elastic Reality book to the late 90s/early 00s with a Marquee book, both during my Avid days. i think i have better odds this time that my dream of a book won’t outlast the lifespan of the product.

if you develop (or want to develop) scripts for after effects, what do you want to have in a scripting reference and other learning materials, besides the well-known need for more examples? what format of delivery (pdf, web pages, print, etc.) would work best for you? any particular preference for the organization of content? ok to focus on cs3? etc. i’m interested to hear what’s important to you and your workflows.

thanks!