After Effects – Essentials

This course runs from 9:00am to 5:00pm on Wednesday 28th & Thursday 29th June.

 

The industry-standard motion graphics and visual effects toolset now brings you better ways to work, connecting your desktop and mobile apps with all your creative assets, so you can create your most stunning visuals yet.

 

Adobe® After Effects is a digital visual effects, motion graphics, and compositing application used in the post-production process of filmmaking and television production. It is primarily used by video editors to create motion graphics and also visual effects. It allows users to animate, edit, and compose media 2D or 3D space with many different built-in tools and third party plug-ins.

 

In this 2-day course, participants will learn:

 

1. The Fundamentals of After Effects

Understanding compositions

Creating and manipulating layers

Building animation

Working with effects

Introduction to 3D

Understanding how to render

 

2. Up and Running with After Effects

Importing elements

Organising projects

Building compositions with layers

Animating with keyframes

Adding effects and graphics

Output techniques

 

3. Understanding Compositions

Exploring composition and project settings

Importing Photoshop files as compositions

Importing Illustrator files as compositions

Viewing files in the comp panel

Understanding Pre-compose

Positioning layers with snapping

Interpreting footage

Keyboard shortcuts for compositions

 

4. Building Compositions with Layers

Defining layers

Creating type layers

Precise typesetting techniques

Creating layer solids and shapes with masks

Creating design elements with shape layers

Layer compositing: Masks, switches, and blend modes

Using track mattes

Precise compositing with variable-width feathered masks

Working smarter by swapping layers

Keyboard shortcuts for layers

 

5. Creating Animation

Understanding animation

Adding and adjusting keyframes

Understanding keyframe interpolation (CC 2014.1)

Understanding keyframe interpolation

Adjusting keyframes in the Graph Editor

The power of parenting

Using null objects

Creating expressions with the pick whip

Creating and adjusting motion paths

Building complex graphics with Pre-compose

Preparing audio for animation

Generating graphics with audio

Working smarter: Navigating the Timeline

 

6. Using Effects

Understanding the order of effects

Generating backgrounds with effects

Generating a scribble effect

Animating strokes with effects

Using adjustment layers

Adding gradients and glows

Saving pan and scan presets

Fixing exposure with Levels

Fixing colour casts with Colour Finesse 3

Masking individual effects

 

Adobe® After Effects CC will be used in class. It is much less applicable to earlier versions of the software.

 

** REGISTRATIONS HAVE CLOSED **