Ripley... ctaulbee is correct, my position hasn't really changed. "A magician never reveals his tricks." I realize that might seem like I'm hoarding knowledge by not sharing my techniques with the community and I'm sorry if it comes off that way.
The main reason I don't make more tutorials is time. I have a full-time teaching job (which has been made much more stressful thanks to the pandemic), two little kids at home, some paying design jobs on the side (some pretty exciting new horror movie posters came my way), and then there's my feverish hobby of adding new covers to this collection every week (because if I forget something, some folks let me know it... yeah, I know WandaVision just started!). Adding in behind-the-scenes tutorials which give away some of my self-developed secrets is unfortunately not a possibility.
The other reason is that the process is time-consuming and complicated. It starts in Illustrator by recreating the official title treatment in vector format, either by matching the font or (if the font is not available or usable) tediously drawing each letter with the Pen Tool. I then import the vector paths to the 3D Invigorator plug-in in Adobe After Effects, where I add the depth and bevels. Then I spit out the depth, bevel, and front pieces of each 3D object as separate PNG's. In Photoshop, I recombine all of those separate PNG's so that I am able to color, texture, and style each individual side of the 3D objects to my liking. Then I go back to After Effects to create the shiny glow effect using the Trapcode Starglow plug-in, render that back out, and put it into the Photoshop file, tweak the colors, and add some additional lens flares. A typical title treatment takes several hours from start to finish (and then there's the back logo which is often made to match it).
I'm not trying to insult anyone's intelligence or abilities, but I doubt most members will be able to follow all of that even if I did spell it out in a video tutorial. That's also assuming they have access to or a functional knowledge of each piece of software and the third-party plug-ins I've mentioned. If I were to make a video tutorial, I anticipate a lot of "wait... what did you do there?" or "mine's not working like that" from a lot of people attempting to follow the steps. It's complicated, but it works for me, and I'm not sure it would work well for others.
I've had a number of folks (especially now that I'm on Instagram with my design stuff) reach out to me and ask, "what do you use to make your logos/title treatments?" As if it's just a plug-in or some magic button labeled "make cool 3D title treatment." I'm sorry to say it's not that simple.
It's kind of like a beginner craftsman walking up to an experienced architect and saying, "explain to me in 10 minutes how I can build a skyscraper with this handful of nails and wood!"
Again, no offense intended, unfortunately it's just a lot more complicated than a simple step-by-step tutorial would be able to cover.
