Reddit reviews The Art and Science of Digital Compositing: Techniques for Visual Effects, Animation and Motion Graphics (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Computer Graphics)

Zip. As others have said, free tutorials on the web might give you a foundation, but you really don't start learning until you're having to use your brain to solve the problems yourself on a day-to-day basis.

Tutorials tend to give you the solution and tell you which buttons to press, which sometimes leads to a false sense of security. What would be more beneficial is learning the theory behind what you're doing (The Art and Science of Digital Compositing is pretty good for this.)

One book that has helped me a lot is The Art and Science of Digital Compositing. It's a great read that covers a massive range of things to keep in mind when trying to make something look realistic.

Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0123706386/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1473721112&sr=8-1&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=the+art+and+science+of+digital+compositing&dpPl=1&dpID=514f%2BrJTTtL&ref=plSrch

Ron Brinkmann's book should be required reading for compositors, pretty much (and probably is if your course has a reading list).

Also has 100+ pages of case studies.

It's kind of a weird question though. Their work is shown in the films. I assume watching Blade Runner doesn't count towards your credits? If you're researching the technical aspects (ie the "how"), sites like fxguide have interviews on how they made stuff from a vfx standpoint, and the thousands of "making of" featurettes and videos.

It sounds like you're looking to research the artistic considerations (the "why") however. Which is why it's weird because it's generally not vfx making those decisions, and certainly not one single compositor you can reference. It's directors / cinematographers, and is deeply rooted in photographic composition. Reflections is a good book for looking into that.

Read this book.
https://www.amazon.com/Art-Science-Digital-Compositing-Second/dp/0123706386

Compositing is math, understanding the math behind it will help a lot.

It depends on exactly what you want to do as a lot of very different roles can fall under the heading of visual effects. For starters, you might want to try The Art and Science of Digital Compositing which goes into a lot of detail about things like green screens, compositing software, rotoscoping, etc. It also has a number of case studies of professional features and commercials.

I'd also recommend watching the supplemental materials on either The Lord of the Rings special editions, or the Star Wars prequels. These will give you an in-depth overview of the many departments that comprise visual effects.

For anyone else wanting to check it out:

• http://www.digitalcompositing.com/
  
• http://www.amazon.com/Science-Digital-Compositing-Second-Edition/dp/0123706386

Hey, I'm currently in a similar situation myself as a college student graduating next week. You said that you've only been in this for a month? Keep in mind that's still very early on in the game, and people learn at different rates.

You might not be able to cram and force yourself to learn everything you need to know at a faster rate. But that being said, as for multiple roto layers and multiple keys, it's about breaking it down and simplifying the plates to tackle them bits at a time. Sometimes one keyer won't be able to key everything well, so multiple keyers are used and then combined together.

I'd really recommend purchasing these two books (a bit pricey, but may very well be worth the investment):

VES Handbook of Visual Effects

The Art and Science of Digital Compositing

Not necessarily motion designers, but anyone who works with video should read.
"The Art and Science of Digital Compositing" by Ron Brinkmann.

https://www.amazon.com/Art-Science-Digital-Compositing-Second/dp/0123706386

Also Alan Brinkmann's book The Art and Science of Compositing is an incredible resource : https://www.amazon.com/Art-Science-Digital-Compositing-Second/dp/0123706386

Grab Art and Science of Digital Compositing by Ron Brinkman http://www.amazon.com/Science-Digital-Compositing-Second-Edition/dp/0123706386. It'll give you an understanding of linear workflow. It's worth the money.

The Art and Science of Digital Compositing

Comp book: The art and science of digital compositing, by Ron Brinkmann

FX book: Creating 3D Effects for Film, TV, and Games by David Santiago

The node editor is basically an editor for data and operators, and how they relate to each other. It has several different modes, such as the compositor and the Cycles material editor. If you want to know more about the Cycles material editor, read danrich2910 and candreacchio's posts, they covered most of the basics there.

If you want to know more about the compositor, Lord Price does a good (if kind of old at this point) overview here: http://www.blenderguru.com/videos/introduction-to-the-compositor/

The compositor is actually pretty similar to Photoshop or After Effects in some sense, except that it's node-based. Node-based compositing is actually quite superior to the layer-based systems you're probably used to, but for most people it takes a bit for them to wrap their head around it. It's really very simple, you just have a set of building blocks to script out whatever it is you'd normally do in an image editor.

If you want to get really serious about using the compositor, I highly recommend this book: http://www.amazon.com/Art-Science-Digital-Compositing-Second/dp/0123706386

Especially with node-based compositors, it's very helpful to know what it is you are doing under the hood. (I could never really get which input went where on the alpha-over node until I started reading through this and learned about the "over" operator and what was actually going on back there)

In my opinion there are two books one has to read as a compositor. Add tons of online tutorials and a lot of practice and you're there.

1.The VES Handbook of Visual Effects. http://www.varmstudio.com/stuff/miisu/VES.pdf

2.The Art and Science of Digital Compositing. https://www.amazon.com/Art-Science-Digital-Compositing-Techniques/dp/0123706386

Motion graphics is animated graphic design (well, that's how most people understand it- there seems to be more and more VFX creeping in now) so in order to learn how to "do it" I would suggest first learning the basics.

Step away from software for a bit and pick up some books from your local library. I would recommend looking at graphic design first since that's the foundation of what we do; you can animate later. Make sure you understand the why as well as the what - why is typeface X more readable than typeface Y etc.

Angie Taylor has an excellent book for beginners which covers pretty much all the bases relevant to mograph including basic art skillz, video technology and design http://www.amazon.co.uk/Design-Essentials-Motion-Media-Artist/dp/024081181X

Richard Williams' The Animator's Survival Kit should be required reading for anyone thinking about learning to animate http://www.amazon.co.uk/Animators-Survival-Kit-Principles-Classical/dp/086547897X/ref=sr_1_sc_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1421884058&sr=1-1-spell&keywords=the+anmators+survival+kit

and finally when you want to get all complex and dive into the science and application of compositing techniques head over to Ron Brinkmann's book The Art and Science of Digital Compositing http://www.amazon.co.uk/Art-Science-Digital-Compositing-Techniques/dp/0123706386/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1421884147&sr=1-1&keywords=the+art+and+science+of+digital+compositing

Once you understand the basics you'll find that making the software do what you want is the last and easiest part of the puzzle. I'll recommend FXPHD for getting to grips with the most common mograph apps.