So, Pro Juice Series 1 is well underway and many thanks to all involved! So far we've filmed 6 audio tips, 6 video tips, and a number of interviews with animators, music producers, mixer/mastering engineers and designers.

The editing is underway and we've got a couple more interviews and feature segments to shoot over the next month. There's also a bunch of showcase music videos, animations, experimental works and behind the scenes segments that have been provided by artists in Norway, France, Columbia, Brazil, Indonesia and at home in Australia so we're spreading the Pro Juice flavour right across the globe.

Click on the link and join the Pro Juice Facebook page to see some photos and images from the forthcoming 6-part series.

And for those of you who have been missing the regular, tuts, textures, spotlights and cool links… don't despair. When the series is in the can and the editing is complete, the online site will once again be rocking with fresh content for all!!

In this tutorial from Pro Juice, Nick takes you through the steps of creating an energy ball with the Particle Filter in Adobe After Effects.

Using a layer of smoke, blurs, colour correction and some masking techniques, Nick shows you how to create the energy ball, give it a burning hot spot, animate it to fly towards the camera and reflect off the nearby fence.