Distinction Project

Overview

Taught by motion designer, video editor, and Adobe-certified instructor Kyle Hamrick, After Effects Essentials is your entry point into the industry-standard tool for motion graphics, visual effects, and digital compositing. You already know how to design, but After Effects adds a new material to work with: time. Once you start thinking in keyframes instead of flat layouts, everything from a simple logo animation to a fully composited scene becomes fair game.

Kyle takes a hands-on, project-based approach, and he's upfront about it: you don't need to master every corner of this famously deep app. In his words, about 10% of After Effects covers 90% of what you'll actually use, and this course zeroes in on exactly that, while making sure you understand the "why" behind each tool so you can keep building skills well beyond the course itself.

Together with Kyle, you'll learn how to:
- Confidently navigate the After Effects interface and workflow
- Animate with keyframes, easing, and the Graph Editor for natural motion
- Import and animate layered Photoshop and Illustrator files
- Build animated infographics, titles, and looping promos from scratch
- Composite video with masks, effects, and motion blur
- Cut out, key, and track footage using compositing and tracking tools

Each project builds on the last using a randomized creative brief, so no two students end up animating the exact same thing. You'll progress from your first simple keyframes to full multimedia scenes, building animated bar and line graphs from provided project files and constructing a generative scene using nothing but shapes and effects. Later sections tackle real production challenges like green screen compositing, motion tracking, screen replacements, and a gentle introduction to 3D space and parallax.

By the end, you'll have a reel's worth of portfolio-ready projects and the confidence to open a blank composition and turn it into whatever you can imagine. Let's get animating!

Requirements

- Adobe After Effects installed (sign up for a free trial at https://byol.com/adobeafx)
- Photoshop, Illustrator, and Premiere are helpful for bringing in your own designs and footage, but aren't required
- A modern computer with a decent processor, plenty of RAM, enough storage for project files, and ideally a dedicated graphics card for smoother performance (check Adobe's current system requirements as a guide)

Who this course is for

- Complete beginners with zero After Effects or motion graphics experience
- Photoshop and Illustrator users ready to bring their static designs to life
- Video editors comfortable with Adobe Premiere who want to expand into motion graphics and compositing
- Anyone who has opened After Effects, felt overwhelmed, and wants a clear, approachable path forward

What you'll learn

- How to navigate the After Effects interface, panels, and workflow
- Understanding compositions, keyframes, and the fundamentals of animation
- Working with Transform properties: position, scale, rotation, opacity, and anchor points
- Building smooth, looping animations and promotional graphics
- Importing and animating layered Photoshop and Illustrator files
- Creating and customizing native shape layers
- Building animated infographics like bar, line, and pie graphs using provided project files
- Compositing video with masks, blending modes, and parenting
- Applying and adjusting effects, plus using motion blur for realism
- Creating a generative 3D-style scene using solids, shapes, and effects alone
- Animating text with the Text Animator, synced to audio
- Refining motion with the Graph Editor, easing, anticipation, and overshoot
- Using the Puppet Tool to bring static characters to life
- Cutting out and compositing video with cutout tools and green screen keying
- Motion tracking with point, planar, and 3D Camera trackers
- Replacing screens and adding tracked graphics to moving footage
- Working in 3D space with cameras, layers, and parallax effects
- Efficient workflows for previewing, exporting, and archiving projects
- Multiple hands-on class projects you can add straight to your portfolio
- Quizzes throughout to reinforce key concepts