What is After Effects?

 In this post, I’m going to introduce you to one of the most exciting Adobe Creative Cloud apps: After Effects! From character animation and incredible science-fiction special effects, After Effects has some of the best compositing features that will upgrade your video productions and presentations up to Hollywood level!

Yes, literally Hollywood level! In 2019, After Effects won an Academy Award for Scientific and Technical Achievement. That’s how great this tool is!

When you become a BYOL member, you gain access to all my After Effects courses as well as my 30+ additional courses on Premiere Pro, Photoshop, Illustrator, Lightroom, and more. As a BYOL member you will also enjoy personalized support, earn certificates, and tackle exciting community challenges. Head here to sign-up!

Motion graphics designers, are you ready for the ride?

Lights, Camera, Animate!

What is After Effects?

After Effects is a 2.5D (or fake 3D, as I like to call it) animation app for film, TV and online video post-production. We can use After Effects for motion graphics and video compositing (I’ll clarify this in a second). It has a considerable learning curve and takes time and practice to master, especially because there are hundreds of effects to explore and a vast range of plugins that add additional levels of functionality to this software. It may feel a bit overwhelming, at first, but trust me, it’s creative heaven after a short time.

Video Editing vs. Video Compositing

Editing and Compositing are both done in the post-production stage. They sometimes overlap but have specific purposes.

Video Editing creates a logical and coherent sequence by arranging and manipulating filmed footage. Editors cut, trim, organize and add transitions to clips in order to ensure smooth visual flow, set proper pacing, and build engaging storytelling. The editing process also involves adjusting color and sound. Premiere Pro is the best choice for this first stage.

Video Compositing seamlessly adds animated visual elements into an image or scene, creating something new and bursting with visual impact. Compositing can include titles, green screen footage (first captured on-set), or awesome special effects like futuristic animated User Interfaces, explosions, or dueling lightsabers! After Effects is your number one Adobe compositing tool!

Getting Started

Projects, Compositions, and Layers

When you start working on a new presentation or video, you need to create a Project. This new Project is your work’s base foundation, a single After Effects file that will hold and organize your compositions, assets, and settings.

Compositions are like pages in a document, they are the effects and animations you will be adding to your presentations or videos. Each composition has an individual timeline and contains specific layers.

If you’re familiar with Adobe and have worked with apps like Premiere Pro or Photoshop, you’re already familiar with the concept of Layers. Layers represent a composition’s video, audio, text, and graphic elements. These are stacked, combined and arranged to create new motion graphics.

User Interface

After Effects workspace is very similar to Adobe Premiere Pro. If you’ve seen or worked with Premiere Pro before, this should be quick and easy for you to adapt to. If you’re new to Adobe, relax and enjoy, it’s all intuitive and so much fun. I’ll quickly break the user interface down for you in five key sections:

Project Panel

The Project panel is placed on the left of your workspace and will help you manage your project’s structure. You will store your assets and manage your compositions from here.

Composition Panel

This is both our project’s canvas and preview window. It’s set in the center of your screen and will be your main visual reference. From the Composition panel you can arrange and edit your composition’s visual elements (from position to attributes), add and edit text objects, among other editing and previewing options.

Timeline

You will spend a lot of time in the Timeline section. This is where most of the action happens, the panel where you manage how elements like video and audio clips, effects, and transitions are chronologically arranged inside each composition. The Timeline presents these elements as layers and each composition has its own set of layers, set by hierarchy, order, and position across the timeline itself.

Tools Panel

You can use the Tools panel to assist your composition design inside the Composition panel. These include Adobe favorites like the Rectangle, Pen, Type or Brush tools, but also some incredible additional features you will love exploring!

Work Panel

The Work panel is placed to the right of your workspace and is where you can find your composition’s elements settings and properties, like Alignment, or Characters and Paragraph for typography, and it’s also where you can discover the real magic in this app: the Effects & Presets treasure chest!

Plugins and Extensions

There are endless options and possibilities for your motion graphics presentations or film compositing projects inside After Effects. However, if your project has specific requirements or if you need to streamline your workflow, there are a vast number of third-party plugins and extensions that can drive this already incredible app to Cosmic Superhero levels.

Countless developers like FXFactory, Maxon, or RE:Vision Effects have created massive sets of incredible tools that power up After Effects video and audio potential, manage color correction, add lighting effects, 3D object integration, captions, and many more features that will provide an absolute professional shine to your portfolio.

Collaboration in After Effects

After Effects allows you to create and manage Team Projects. With this option, multiple team members can work together in a single Project file, directly integrated within After Effects. You will also benefit from an agile integration with Premiere Pro, allowing designers to collaborate across both apps while working inside the same shared Project, and other Creative Cloud online features like Libraries or real-time review tools.

How After Effects transform your creative work

• Customizable Animation

You can bring complex animations to life with the use of keyframes, easing settings, and expressions.

• Visual Effects

Fire, explosions, lightning, are just a few of the fantasy and science-fiction visual elements that will make you feel like you are in the Director’s chair!

• Text Animation

Title sequences, lower-thirds, kinetic typography are animated with surprising visual impact and absolute control precision.

• Compositing Features

Blend any video footage with incredible Computer-Generated Imagery (CGI) elements into a seamless experience with the use of masks, layers, and effects.

• Motion Tracking

After Effects can track objects or camera movement for the accurate placement of visual effects.

• Color Correction and Grading

Adjusting Color, Light, and Contrast will help you keep your video shots and storytelling consistent from start to finish.

• 3D Integration

You can integrate 3D objects into After Effects compositions using third-party plugins like Element 3D.

• Efficient Workflow

After Effects allows for dynamic Team collaboration, delivers an intuitive workspace and simplifies sharing and exporting your projects. 

• Plugins and Extensions

You benefit from a wide array of third-party plugins and extensions that will expand After Effects capacities and elevate your finished productions to new heights.

In my After Effects course, you’ll learn how to: 

• Create incredible motion graphics

• Animate compelling infographics

• Set the adequate video settings for each project

• Export your video easily

• Render your video for YouTube & Vimeo

• Add music to your motion graphics

• Color correct & fix any bad footage

• Use your skills from Illustrator & Photoshop

• Use green screen footage

• Mask like a pro

…and so much more! 

Why should I become a Motion Graphics designer?

Businesses are constantly looking for strategies to become more appealing and efficient to consumers. Video and motion graphics are a key part of this transformation. Brands rely on videographers, editors, and motion graphics designers, to work closely with User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI) experts, to build brand recognition and stand out from growing competition. Video and animation enhance storytelling and create engaging emotional responses, our eyes are attracted to movement and contrasting visual content, like animated logos.

Last but not least, and because design is so much more than advertising and sales, Motion Graphics have transformed creative work. Films, TV shows and even the Music industry rely on motion graphics and video compositing to tell better stories and create incredible live experiences.

What 's Next?

Go further with After Effects by joining BYOL. As a BYOL member, you will gain access to my After Effects courses as well as my 30+ additional courses on Premiere Pro, Photoshop, Illustrator, Lightroom, and more. As a BYOL member you will also enjoy personalized support, earn certificates, and tackle exciting community challenges. Head here to sign-up!

See you in class! – Dan