This month, we talk with Sean Safreed, the co-founder, owner and manager of Red Giant Software, publishers of Trapcode and makers of the popular Knoll Lens Flare and Magic Bullet Suite. Before starting Red Giant six years ago, Sean worked as a product manager for SGI, Puffin Designs and Pinnacle Systems.
This past summer Red Giant acquired the video effects tools of Digital Anarchy. Are you looking to acquire more tools in the near future?
No, we’re not in acquisition mode right now. Jim Tierney, Digital Anarchy’s founder, had approached me at NAB, though at the time, the deal we eventually put together was the furthest thing on our minds. He felt he was spread too thin. He always knew he wanted to keep the Photoshop side of his business-it’s always been closest to his heart-but he also knew he needed to devote more time to it. We discussed different scenarios and closed the deal on July 1.
What are your initial plans for these plug-ins, which include such favorites as Data Animator, ToonIt! and Psunami Water?
First, we’re retesting everything. With Data Animator, for example, we simply wanted to make it faster. We’re planning to update the engine to accommodate Intel Mac support and we are looking at a few other enhancements. The Data Animator 1.5 release is really about making the tool more robust and better at handling different formats. We will save OpenGL acceleration and live content for a major rewrite in the next version. For ToonIt!, which is licensed from Toonamation, Red Giant took over Digital Anarchy’s original publishing deal with them. We’ve also now made sure that it can be used on every platform, including Avid.
Will they retain their original names?
No, we’ve made some changes. We wanted to make sure they fit better with our existing tools, so we’ve renamed some and repackaged others:

Data Animator is now Red Giant Datamator 1.5
Psunami Water is Red Giant Psunami 1.3
ToonIt! 1.1 is Red Giant ToonIt
Knoll Spark Pack is now Knoll Light Factory Spark
3D Assistants Pro is now Red Giant PlaneSpace 1.3

We also decided to roll Resizer into Instant HD and Instant HD Advanced. The one plug-in that we didn’t rename is Text Anarchy. But we did some bundling. That tool now ships with Geomancy and Anarchy Toolbox filters.

What’s your overall objective in upgrading these products?
What we try to do with every one of our products is to release them on all the hosts-maybe not right away, but eventually. Psunami 1.3, for example, is now available for Final Cut Pro and Motion. Datamator 1.5 now works with After Effects 6.5-7.0 on Mac OS (PowerPC only) and After Effects CS3 for Windows (XP and Vista).
You’ve been lucky to work from the beginning with VFX superstars, such as ILM’s John Knoll and The Orphanage’s Stu Maschwitz. Is that one of the secrets to your success as a company, now among the largest plug-in providers out there?
We definitely have always worked best with folks who have as much artistic talent as they do skills in software development. Peder Norrby is another prime example of that. We know how to package and sell plug-ins, with our all-host approach and our strong engineering and QA [Quality Assurance] team. It makes our users happiest when everything works better together. And we’re pretty proud of the fact that we’ve always had and continue to have great technical support. We’ve got more than 100,000 customers at this point and we’re always adding more. Psyop in New York City recently ordered 60 copies of Trapcode, and we’ve just sold seat licenses to NBC Universal and to Sky TV in the UK.
What else is in the works?
We are close to beta on both versions of Magic Bullet Looks 1.5, which feature all the individual plug-ins for After Effects. We are planning a $99 version called Quick Looks that will give folks the power to apply the preset library of Looks but not the editing power of a full version of Looks. Quick Looks will be out by the end of the year. Looks 1.5 is slated for early February.
For more information about Red Giant Software, visit www.redgiantsoftware.com.