After Effects Jumpstart: Zero to HERO

Who is this course for?

This course is for people new to After Effects. Perhaps someone who wishes to work in the video field or who currently works in the field, or an Adobe application user looking to expand their skills and add effects to video projects. Some students may be mainly interested in creating video primarily for the Web, and others for film, but the majority are preparing more for work in broadcast video. The later part of this After Effects course you will master the concepts and advanced features of this program. It includes many advanced features, including tips and tricks using the latest version.

Objectives

On this course you'll become familiar with the After Effects interface. You'll learn to create animations, work with layers, apply effects, work with masks and mattes. In addition, you'll also learn about type, use color effectively and to export files. You will also go on to learn Keyframe Complexity, graphs, keyframe graphic editor, expressions, render queue, path text, masks, color keying, track mattes, compound effects, Affiliate Marketing motion stabilization and tracking.

Prerequisites

Before taking this course, you should have a basic understanding of your computer's operating system.

After Effects User Interface and Animation

What's a project file & what's in it?
Tools & panels
Workspaces

Basic Animation

Transform properties of layers
Keyframing: making element move
Importing Photoshop & Illustrator files

Intermediate Animation

In depth Keyframe manipulation & interpolation
Graph editor
Motion Sketch/Smoother
Auto-Orient/Motion
Blur
Roving
Keyframes,
Anchor Point/Pan Behind Tool
Panning a large graphic: technique
Hold Keyframes

Layer Control

Keyboard shortcuts
Quality
SlipTool,
Sequence layers
Solo Switches
Looping footage
Image sequences
Frame Rate vs. Time Stretch
Blending Modes
Effects & Solids with Blending Modes
Effects & Presets Panel
Adjustment layers

Transparency

Masks
Shape
Feather
Expansion
Masking with the Pen Tool
Bezier curves,
Mask Shape Interpolation
Mask modes,
Mattes and Stencils
Mask shapes

Type and Titles

Simple Rules of Titling
Basic text
Text animators/range selectors
Randomising
Applying & saving text animation presets
Per character animator

Nesting

Precomps
Editing Precomps,
Locking panels
Render Order
How After Effects put it all together

Exporting Files

Render Queue
Export As/Same Frame As
Pre-render

Keyframes

Different types of Keyframe
Velocity
Keyframe shortcuts
Keyframe graph editor

Type, Draw, Paint

All About Alphas
Working with Photoshop
Dots, pixels & Inches
Working with Illustrator
Plugging in Type

The Matrix

Particle Playground

More On Effects

Production Bundle Effects Round-Up
Compound Effects

Animation Assistants

Additional Assistants
Motion Fun
Express Yourself
Animation & behaviour presets

Keying

Using Keylight

Time and Tracking

Time Remapping
Time Games
On Stable Ground
Motion tracking
Time warp

Expressions

Writing a simple expression
Linking expressions to motion track

Working with 3D

Cameras
Lights
3D layers

NLE Integration

Integration 101
Integration with Nonlinear Editing Systems

Format Issues and Rendering

Video issues
Playing the field
3:2 pulldown
Luminance & IRE issues
Working with D1/DV NTSC
Working with widescreen
Pre-rendering & proxies
Advanced 'Rendering-Render Farm Concept'
What's Your Preference?
The 'Secret Preferences'