# After Effects in a Day (Self-Paced)

Canonical URL: <https://www.creativelive.com/classes/after-effects-in-a-day-self-paced>

## Overview

After Effects opens up a whole new world of motion and animation, and this course gets you creating right from the start. You'll learn how to animate photos, text, and video, layer in music and sound, and pull in files from Illustrator or Photoshop to bring logos and other elements to life in ways that simply aren't possible with static design tools.

It's a fantastic entry point into motion graphics, and if you're ready to go further, our After Effects Course Online takes the program into much greater depth. A little familiarity with Photoshop and Illustrator is helpful, though it's not required. If you'd like to shore up those skills first, our Photoshop in a Day, Photoshop Bootcamp, Illustrator in a Day, and Illustrator Bootcamp courses are all worth checking out beforehand.

## What you'll learn

- Build animations from the ground up, including logos, photos, and other graphics
- Get to know the After Effects interface, timeline, and layer system inside and out
- Pull in an Adobe Illustrator logo and bring it to life through animation
- Create fluid, natural motion using easing techniques that smooth out your movements
- Add professional touches like fade-ins and fade-outs to polish your transitions
- Export your completed animation as a finished video file

## Curriculum

### Section 1

#### Intro to After Effects

- The Project, Composition, & Timeline panels
- Importing a Layered File with all its Layers Intact
- Using Title Safety to ensure TV viewers can see the text

#### Working with Keyframes

- Animating in the Class Names
- Previewing in real time
- Adding Easing
- Sliding Over the Entire Class List
- Animating the Icons
- Animating the “In a Day” Title
- Adding Motion Blur
- Trimming Off Extra Time

#### Outputting to GIF

- Exporting from After Effects
- Making the Animated GIF in Photoshop
- Reducing the Number of Frames

### Section 2

#### Noble Logo Animation: Anchor Points & Animating with Overshoot

- Converting an Illustrator file from CMYK to RGB
- Animating the black square to overshoot its final size
- Changing where the rectangles scale from by moving layer anchor points
- Setting layer in points using the In column
- Keeping vector layers sharp as they scale up

#### Noble Logo: Masking Layers & Parenting

- Pre-composing layers
- Hiding the letters before they animate using masks
- Moving the entire logo away from the rising letters using parenting

#### Noble Logo: Rotation, Fade-Outs, & Rendering

- Adding anticipation keyframes before a major animation
- Animating the Rotation property
- Adding a fade to white using a solid color layer
- How to find missing project files

#### Optional Bonus: Preparing an Illustrator File for Animation

- Resizing artboards & vector graphics
- Setting up layers to individually animate elements in After Effects

### Bonus: HBO Intro Sequence

#### Importing Flattened Files & Adding Easing

- Importing a layered PSD as a merged file
- Isolating HBO logo, Feature & Presentation text using masks
- Creating fade-ins & fade-outs
- Adding automatic easing to slow down portions of the animation

#### Working with Numerous Layers

- Familiarizing ourselves with the Photoshop layout: layers extending outside canvas bounds, guides
- Scaling up each tile using a single null object and Parenting
- Randomizing the order in which the photos animate in
- Orchestrating the exit animation so the tiles fall down in diagonal groups

#### Vector Layouts

- Animating vector shapes using the Trim Paths feature
- Continuous rasterization
- More null objects: animating the three pay television content descriptors

#### Putting It All Together & Adding Audio

- Sequencing multiple compositions
- Animating like an editor: overlapping shots & using blending modes
- Adding audio to a composition

## Pricing

**Tuition:** $425