So one of the products I’ve been most excited about in the last few months is the Extreme Drive from Rampant Design Tools. They have a few drives, all with various products at various price points – reasonable price points at that – but the Extreme drive piqued my curiosity for a few reasons. Everybody who has watched my web show, RFShow.tv, knows that we have a good relationship with Rampant Design Tools. I like the company, the people who run it and the products.
Damn, those products are handy.
They make awesome effects that I use in practically every project I work on. They help to speed things up and really keep my margins healthy. I drill that point in whenever I can because it’s important – I might be an artist in my free time, but we’re in business to make money.
The Drive
So at first glance, you’ll see that this bus-powered USB 3 portable hard drive is very slim, and I can tell you that running with a current gen MacBook Pro it’s very fast as well.
So hardware wise, it’s perfect for it’s job. That job, is delivering it’s amazing contents. And that content is plentiful….
The Content
So, just how plentiful are we talking about? Very.
Not one or two or even ten volumes of Rampant’s tools… my count puts the drive’s count in the neighborhood of 70 products, with nearly 9,000 of Rampant’s amazing clips on board.
Are they the only company making amazing drag and drop tools? In one word, yes, and here’s why I say that.
There are a few companies putting out products in the same playground as Rampant, but none of them can deliver the volume of products Rampant does, and they don’t have the 3-time Emmy Award winning team creating them that the Rampant tools have.
They are simply the best, most brilliantly devised and created, and they’re totally original. I’ve used other products, and quite frankly many seem to be cheap knock-offs of Rampant’s libraries.
Plus they’re created in the US. This isn’t a knock to those artists out there making incredible tools in Europe, Asia, or wherever. If you’re making your own tools, awesome. It’s just the trend to devise a product and farm it out to a team in a country who pays a fraction of what it costs to develop something here. That kind of business drives down the margins and prices and hurts everybody in the long run.
What’s on the drive?
This drive is a veritable treasure trove of awesome effects
Well, some of my favorites are their light effects, including hard and soft light overlays, light leaks, speed lights, dark lights. There are also mattes to toss over footage, grunge transitions, frost, smoke, fire, dust, and one of my favorites, GunFX. There’s just way too much fun to be had with that one.
Beyond that you’ve got hundreds of flares, audio tracks, cloud chambers, ink, graffiti, sketch lettering and symbols, and a recent addition….textbacks. Pre-created background elements for title treatments, greenscreen videos, and more.
As a product review there isn’t much you can say. I want a red hard drive instead of a black one? I mean, I’ve been a fan of Rampant since I first came across them at NAB, and their work is amazing.
If the work is amazing and I can get ALL OF IT on a single high-speed hard drive, there is literally nothing I can complain about. It’s a huge set of products with no massive download. No messy product keys.
I can put their entire library in my pocket; take it and a laptop to Starbucks and work.
If there was a way to give it an 11 out of 10 I would, as this is nearly a decade of hard work jammed into one speedy little hard drive.
Try it! You won’t regret it.
Russ Fairley
RFShow.TV
