As I gaze once more at the slightly postmodern splash screen and the book-like icon for After Effects CS5, I see the future for the app, for you and for my own books.

CS5 is to previous versions as the rebuilt Bay Bridge will be to its predecessor. It wasn’t designed to take you someplace new, but it lets you travel more efficiently and with far less chance of disaster. Add to that a truly bold, never before seen feature – rotoscoping via a mixture of optical flow and other color analysis – and you get a must-have. Live without CS5 and you’ll soon be wasting your time as much as you would sticking with an outdated system (which won’t run this latest version anyhow).

I’m pleased to say that there will be a CS5 edition of After Effects Studio Techniques. I’m not currently giving an ETA but it is a work in progress. That there is not an extensive volume of features gives me more of an opportunity to rethink the more important mission of the book – to provide solid and inspiring information about how to create shots. Each year or two that goes by between editions brings me a surprising amount of new insight not only as to how the process is best undertaken, but also what people need to know the most, and how to explain it better.

I’m always asked about a new edition of the book whether it’s entirely new or essentially the same book with a few additions. No way will I simply scan the book for what needs to be changed to reflect software changes and send those in. But I also have not changed the fundamental structure of the Table of Contents in five editions, because it actually works. Like 64 bit processing it was designed to scale with changes and revisions and I’m happy that I spent a long time getting it the way I wanted it way back when I spent the summer in Bali working on After Effects 6.5 Studio Techniques.

On this blog I hope to keep you updated with more thoughts and ideas relating to this process as I undergo the process of revising them to provide the best book I have the means to create.