{"id":31627,"date":"2024-10-30T10:24:36","date_gmt":"2024-10-30T17:24:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pugetsystems.com\/?post_type=case_study&p=31627"},"modified":"2025-06-17T09:51:35","modified_gmt":"2025-06-17T16:51:35","slug":"aharon-rabinowitz-getting-real-with-unreal","status":"publish","type":"case_study","link":"https:\/\/www.pugetsystems.com\/featured\/aharon-rabinowitz-getting-real-with-unreal\/","title":{"rendered":"Aharon Rabinowitz: Getting Real with Unreal"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Aharon Rabinowitz: Getting Real with Unreal<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
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School of Motion was a perfect fit for Aharon, an artist who is always working to help educate the community through his own creative experiences and also constantly learning from the community as he takes on new challenges.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Aharon Rabinowitz<\/a> has been somewhat of a household name in the VFX, After Effects, and general post-production industry for the better part of the last two decades. Anyone who knows Aharon, has worked with him, crossed paths with him, or has followed him on his many social media adventures in the VFX community will tell you that he has not only added countless volumes of highly valuable education and information, which he generously shares with this community, but he also injects a sense of humor, fun, creativity, and a unique twist into everything he does.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From his earlier days as one of the founders of the popular AENY (After Effect NY) user group in New York City in the 2000s to when he took over marketing for Red Giant Software in the 2010s, Aharon has tackled VFX education in a clever, unique, and fun way. When faced with the challenge of how to market VFX plugins to a marketplace filled with creatives, filmmakers, and artists, Aharon instinctively knew he couldn\u2019t go about it in a traditional, boring, speeds-and-feeds way typical of so many software companies. So he partnered with an up-and-coming filmmaker named Seth Worley to create what became a series of brilliantly conceived, beautifully shot and produced short films that he knew would have an impact simply because of their high production value and incredible storytelling (and they were funny)! All of these films were produced using Red Giant plugins. The community not only devoured the short films, but also the accompanying behind-the-scenes (BTS) videos that showed them exactly how to create the effects used in each film. It was brilliant, and it worked! And it was a testament to Aharon\u2019s and Seth\u2019s smart, witty, and fun way of demystifying the complex, tackling the insurmountable, and sharing their experience with all who wanted to learn. Even more, as the project grew more ambitious, the community began to take part by helping Seth and Aharon out with challenging VFX shots. So the students became the teachers in the process as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fast forward to today: Aharon is the vice president of marketing for School of Motion<\/a>, a company founded on the premise that the primary way artists learn design and animation tools like After Effects, Cinema 4D, Photoshop, and others is by watching online videos. In fact, it\u2019s more so the idea that the ideal formula for people is striking the right mix of online videos with active feedback from professional artists, and sharing the work and ideas with the overall community. But the problem was that most of the videos on YouTube and other platforms were either giving out incorrect information or were teaching \u201ccool tricks\u201d instead of the foundational principles behind great work. And even more importantly, students were learning in a vacuum with no feedback to help them grow as artists. School of Motion set out to remedy that problem by creating an online school dedicated to one thing: breaking down the barriers to learning, mastering, and working in motion design (and any other creative visual field, for that matter). It was a perfect fit for Aharon, an artist who is always working to help educate the community through his own creative experiences and who is constantly learning from the community as he takes on new challenges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And true to form for Aharon, he set out to tackle his next challenge, the one piece of creative software he dared not touch because it just seemed too complex and designed for a completely different kind of user: Unreal Engine. Of course, Aharon\u2019s way of tackling this challenge was to dive in head first!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI find that one of the best ways for me to learn and stay on top of industry tools is by just trying to make things with them,\u201d says Aharon. \u201cI love seeing the things that people make using the tutorials I’ve shared, or the tools I’ve designed, and I\u2019m very proud of them, but I’m not comfortable standing still. I have an obsessive personality, and it makes me want to constantly try new tools and push myself! So when it came to truly learning Unreal Engine, I thought, \u2018I\u2019m going to make a short film!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that\u2019s exactly what he did!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cI love seeing the things that people make using the tutorials I’ve shared, or the tools I’ve designed, and I\u2019m very proud of them, but I’m not comfortable standing still. I have an obsessive personality and it makes me want to constantly try new tools and push myself!”<\/em><\/p>\n <\/div>\n Aharon Rabinowitz<\/cite>\n <\/blockquote>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Unreal Engine and the Birth of \u2018Metal Heart\u2019<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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\u201cI had never touched Unreal Engine, it was just way too daunting,\u201d remembers Aharon. \u201cIt\u2019s not even meant for what we\u2019re using it for today in filmmaking – it\u2019s a game design platform!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regardless, he knew from experience that there was so much happening in filmmaking today that was being created in Unreal Engine, so he decided to take an online course through his company, School of Motion. \u201cI started out with this 6-hour course called \u2018Unreal Engine for 3D Artists<\/a><\/em>,\u2019 led by the renowned motion graphics artist, Jonathan Winbush<\/a>. This kicked off my Unreal journey. And lo and behold, as a result, one year later, not only had I successfully learned Unreal Engine, but I had also completed Metal Heart<\/em>, my first animated short film produced completely in Unreal Engine. I had done it, my personal mission accomplished! In the process of learning, I began to experiment with complex materials and VFX and ended up partnering with The Pixel Lab<\/a> to release several Unreal Material Libraries and VFX tools.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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