Lynda.com January News

Happy New Year from all of us at lynda.com! We’re starting out the year with a wide selection of new audio courses, a set of Deke McClelland’s masking and compositing courses, and a new Creative Inspirations documentary on award-winning children’s book illustrator, Ed Emberley. Whether continuing your education or starting out with a new resolution to learn more in 2012, we look forward to being a part of your year.

Get in the mix with audio courses

This month, we’ve released three more courses in the rapidly expanding Audio segment, including some hands-on training for working in Logic Pro and the introduction of our new series, Foundations of Audio: Compression and Dynamic Processing with Brian Lee White . The special “Get in the Mix” exercise files that accompany the latter actually allow you to open the course and follow along from within your own digital audio workstation. It’s exciting to watch this segment grow: covering a wide range of topics, exploring new approaches to teaching, and (as always) bringing in the best authors and industry luminaries to make sure our members get top-notch training.

We are constantly adding new software training courses and inspirational documentaries to help you reach your creative and career goals.

Photoshop masking and compositing series expands

If there is one way to improve the look of your Photoshop compositions, it’s learning how to make impeccable selections and finely tuned masks so that you can create just the look you want. With this month’s addition of Photoshop Masking & Compositing: Hair , Deke McClelland tackles one of the toughest yet most common masking problems, human hair. And of course, Deke doesn’t limit himself to blonde hair on a solid background, but goes after the really tough stuff so that you’re prepared for anything (and any hair color and background). With the combination of the two earlier offerings in this collection—Photoshop Masking & Compositing: Fundamentals and Photoshop Masking & Compositing: Advanced Blending—you’ll soon find there are very few Photoshop selection challenges that are beyond your grasp.

New Creative Inspirations: Ed Emberley, Children’s Book Illustrator

“The big thing is feeling good about yourself,” says artist Ed Emberley, subject of our latest Creative Inspirations documentary. “That's more important than the art project.”
Ed Emberley has encouraged generations of children to draw, by giving simple tools and showing them that they can have fun doing it. In our latest Creative Inspirations documentary , we hear how Ed began his career as an award-winning children’s book illustrator, how he came to be the voice for helping children (and older artists) overcome their own fear of drawing, and how he continues to seek new artistic adventures in the digital age. Aside from having a wonderful whimsical style and passion to share the creative process, Ed firmly believes in life-long learning, and is a true inspiration in more ways than one.

Join us at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival

lynda.com is again sponsoring the Santa Barbara International Film Festival which starts on January 26, 2012. We are incredibly honored that two of our own documentary films have been selected for screening at the festival, and we hope you’ll be able to attend one of the showings. Ticket packages are still available on the Santa Barbara International Film Festival site.

The films we will be screening were produced by lynda.com as part of our Creative Inspirations series of documentaries. The first is Marian Bantjes, Graphic Artist . Intricate and imaginative, the work of graphic artist Marian Bantjes has made indelible impacts on the design industry. This biographical documentary provides a close look at an artist—and impassioned TED speaker—who transformed her work and life midcareer by leaving her client-focused design company and moving to an island off the coast of Vancouver to create art from her heart. Design-world luminaries speak to Bantjes’s capacity to surprise the viewer, and her tendency to create beauty “the hard way.” A tour of her home studio reveals the sense of wonder and joy in her illustrations and allows us to peer into her artistic process as she creates her signature work.

Next is our film Stefan G. Bucher, Designer, Illustrator, and Writer. Thousands of fans have watched Stefan Bucher create monsters out of ink blots on his Daily Monster web site. This documentary takes us inside the unusual mind and work habits of the popular and prolific artist. From being a published illustrator at age 12 to designing for the prestigious Wieden+Kennedy ad agency and Madonna’s Maverick Records, Bucher leads us through galleries and print shops, and to the drawing table where he creates his monsters. Frank, funny, and laser-focused, Bucher reveals his “monastic” work habits, which often find him walking the streets of Pasadena in the middle of the night, and explains how his work aims to “reverse the chaos of the world.”

And for the third year in a row, our crews will be covering the four major discussion panels taking place at the festival. These panels have historically included all the major players who will be in contention during awards season. See the last two years’ panels on lynda.com.

Going to NAMM?

lynda.com will be at the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) Show in Anaheim, California, January 19-22, at booth 4711.

Until next time, Happy New Year, and happy learning!

—Lynda