Working freelance since 2001. My favourite choice for compositing is Adobe After Effects (AE), but I do use Nuke, Autodesk Combustion 2008, and Shake 4.1 by Apple. My work has been mostly involved in television adverts and sponsorships, but I have worked as part of a team on music videos.
My experience has taken me through all aspects of producing an advert, from building animatics to working with the client on the final piece in post, and producing the final master tapes. These masters are done using a FCP Solution with the AJA Kona card, I have also many years experience with the DPS Velocity system by Leitch. I use these systems to bring in edit decision lists (EDL's) and for cutting short form adverts from the supplied rushes. I have knowledge of both Digi Beta Decks and Beta SP and the aging Umatic decks.
Compositing wise I have key skills in rotoscoping, rig removal, keying (green/blue screen), tracking, and colour correcting. I have researched a lot on colour correction as a specialist topic in video and have found this a huge benefit for fixing troublesome shots or producing procedural mattes for difficult situations. I have worked closely with 3D artists to discuss what passes are required for a shot and any extra channels that are required to assist a composite, for example RLA file with Z-depth and object ID included. I am happy using AE with its base effects but do have licenses for the many popular plug-ins, for example the Trapcode suite, Zaxwerks, DigiEffects, and Re:Vision, experience also with the Tinderbox suite. These all add so much more to your original toolkit.,
I'm a very confident user of Photoshop for manipulating still images and building new artwork from reference material. I like to work in a non-destructive manner as much as possible using adjustment layers and layer styles, as well as the use of paths to allow for multi resolution documents. I'm a fan of the wacom pen series and this is my choice of input device I find it extremely intuitive to use and really improves my productivity. I have been for sometime using filterforge to create and adjust filters to create my own looks, and filters to produce tile-able textures.
I have used Maya and Lightwave in the production environment. Examples are building and tracking a 3d pizza box into live action shots, pack replacements, and other 3d props animated to fit with any character animation. I find having some knowledge of a 3d application and a basic idea of the processes involved and technologies a huge benefit in compositing. It allows you to work more efficiently with 3d artists and gives a better understanding to any restraints they come across because of time constraints or large render times. Because of my use of 3d programs I am confident of using 3d in AE, and I do enjoy pushing it to do things that you wouldn’t normally use it for. I also have an all round knowledge of expressions in AE and use this when I feel its required to help automate movement or allow me to set up sliders to simplify animating complex movements.