After Effects opens up a whole new world of creative possibilities, and this course gets you animating right away. You'll learn how to animate photos, text, and video, add music and sound, and even import layered files from Illustrator or Photoshop to bring logos and other elements to life.
This course is a great entry point into motion graphics, and if you're ready to go further, our After Effects Course Online covers the program in much greater depth. Some familiarity with Photoshop and Illustrator is helpful but not required. If you'd like to build those skills first, our Photoshop in a Day, Photoshop Bootcamp, Illustrator in a Day, and Illustrator Bootcamp courses are all great options to explore beforehand.
What You Will Learn
- Animate graphics like logos and photos from scratch
- Get comfortable with the After Effects interface, timeline, and layers
- Import an Adobe Illustrator logo and bring it to life with animation
- Create smooth, natural movement using easing techniques
- Add polished transitions like fade-ins and fade-outs
- Export your finished animation as a video
Course Outline
Section 1
Intro to After Effects
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The Project, Composition, & Timeline panels
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Importing a Layered File with all its Layers Intact
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Using Title Safety to ensure TV viewers can see the text
Working with Keyframes
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Animating in the Class Names
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Previewing in real time
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Adding Easing
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Sliding Over the Entire Class List
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Animating the Icons
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Animating the “In a Day” Title
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Adding Motion Blur
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Trimming Off Extra Time
Outputting to GIF
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Exporting from After Effects
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Making the Animated GIF in Photoshop
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Reducing the Number of Frames
Section 2
Noble Logo Animation: Anchor Points & Animating with Overshoot
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Converting an Illustrator file from CMYK to RGB
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Animating the black square to overshoot its final size
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Changing where the rectangles scale from by moving layer anchor points
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Setting layer in points using the In column
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Keeping vector layers sharp as they scale up
Noble Logo: Masking Layers & Parenting
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Pre-composing layers
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Hiding the letters before they animate using masks
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Moving the entire logo away from the rising letters using parenting
Noble Logo: Rotation, Fade-Outs, & Rendering
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Adding anticipation keyframes before a major animation
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Animating the Rotation property
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Adding a fade to white using a solid color layer
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How to find missing project files
Optional Bonus: Preparing an Illustrator File for Animation
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Resizing artboards & vector graphics
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Setting up layers to individually animate elements in After Effects
Bonus: HBO Intro Sequence
Importing Flattened Files & Adding Easing
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Importing a layered PSD as a merged file
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Isolating HBO logo, Feature & Presentation text using masks
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Creating fade-ins & fade-outs
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Adding automatic easing to slow down portions of the animation
Working with Numerous Layers
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Familiarizing ourselves with the Photoshop layout: layers extending outside canvas bounds, guides
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Scaling up each tile using a single null object and Parenting
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Randomizing the order in which the photos animate in
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Orchestrating the exit animation so the tiles fall down in diagonal groups
Vector Layouts
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Animating vector shapes using the Trim Paths feature
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Continuous rasterization
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More null objects: animating the three pay television content descriptors
Putting It All Together & Adding Audio
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Sequencing multiple compositions
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Animating like an editor: overlapping shots & using blending modes
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Adding audio to a composition
This course is available for 30 days. You can choose when to start your access period. Once you activate, you will have 30 days to complete it (access the course materials, quizzes, projects and videos). You may request one extension of seven (7) days. Other extension requests will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Videos are not downloadable.
