Whether your tool of choice is After Effects, Cinema 4D, Maya, Nuke or a video camera – or a mixture of those – you can find some fantastic techniques to improve your creative skills for the year ahead in the tutorials below.

After Effects & Photoshop tutorial: Create cosmic glows and lighting effects with particles

Learn how to produce a stunning particle animation without having to render it in 3D, then discover how to make a striking hi-res graphic from it to flesh out a branding campaign (image above)

Cinema 4D tutorial: Create realistic gold 3D type


Peter Tarka combines hand-made lettering with customised fonts

Maya & Nuke tutorial: Composite a CG character into video footage seamlessly


The filmmakers behind the beautiful quirky short film Gloam reveal how they composited a CG creature into a real-world wood.

Video tutorial: Using projection mapping to film the world's tiniest police chase


The Theory explain how they created their innovative short film involving cops, cars and pico-projectors.

After Effects tutorial: Create generative textures for print


Emilio Cassanese harnesses After Effects to make organic artwork

After Effects tutorial: Animate an indie graphic novel


Lois van Baarle details how she brought Julian Hanshaw's graphic novel The Art of Pho to life online.

Cinema 4D tutorial: Create liquid 3D type


Craig Minchington and Gareth Roberts look at 3D type