Re: Nuke or Shake for newbie compositor

As Pete says, for eye candy After Effects (AE) would be a good option.

I split my time between compositing for film and for TV. A lot of the TV shows I have done in recent years have been kids/teen action/comedy which have had all number of scifi/supernatural plots, as well as taking the mickey out of a lot of pop culture icons. Generally I have found After Effects to be king for this type of fast turn around stuff where you have to come up with looks quickly while the director is lurking over your shoulder. The timeline interface is also good in these situations as you are usually wanting to align elements in time quickly.

For film work Nuke/Shake are better bets as you can really get down and dirty with your comps (but your eye candy plug-in range is a lot smaller and in some cases higher priced than the AE counterparts). With kids shows in the past couple of years I have had Shake as a backup to AE, so when I get the odd shot that is a bad key, or just being a pain to integrate in AE due to one thing and another, I can pop it into Shake and sort things out.

As with any software, i'd recommend maybe downloading the demo/trial of AE and Nuke, have a flick through their manuals and see which workflow, as well as features, seems to be best for your needs.

Goodluck,

andrew