How to make a motion path

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Course contents
SECTION: 5
Inspiration 4:15
SECTION: 13
Swinging text 10:36
SECTION: 14
Puppet tool 5:54
SECTION: 15
Effects & presets 6:56
SECTION: 17
What now? 3:56

Questions

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Course info

53 lessons / 6 hours

Overview

Motion graphics are an essential part of video creation and editing. From moving titles across the screen to stabilising your footage to smooth out the bumps or replacing a sign in the background. Ubiquitous, subtly powerful, and for the beginner, a bit mystifying. You need to learn motion graphics. You need a tutorial that will help at every step of the way, without leaving you drowning in details.

If you’ve ever made a video, you’ve probably already discovered that it’s all the little extra infographics, titles and animation that make your project look professional – and you’ve probably already wondered which is the right After Effects tutorial that will let you access the potential.

After Effects is the industrial strength tool for putting the motion in your graphic designs and content. It can also appear to be pretty deep, so getting guidance from a pro that understands how to teach, as much as how to use, After Effects is going to be the key that unlocks your potential.

How about a motion graphics tutorial taught by a working professional who just happens to be great at teaching too? Daniel Scott has been working with animation and motion graphics for over a decade and is the founder of Bring Your Own Laptop - they've been helping people learn design and animation all over the world for just as long.

 



 

Daniel, an Adobe Certified Expert and Instructor, will take you one manageable step at a time through motion graphics in a series of small practical projects that come together to unlock Adobe After Effects, animation, and infographics. These tutorials give you the complete foundation that you can build on for years to come. Learn the principles and the specifics of producing content, in a way that you'll understand and remember. And stay awake.

Just 3 hours long, and very hands on, you’ll take on specific tools and techniques one at a time so you can easily comprehend each aspect of the tutorial, and see all the parts of creating motion graphics before you get intimidated by the scale of what you can do. From zero to hero, as we like to say.

You get downloadable exercise files that match the course, so no time wasted trying to match project settings or finding material to work with. And you can use the end results in your own projects or portfolio – you can customise them to suit your needs as you grow in understanding.

To learn motion graphics is to unlock the door on the magic that makes your video or web content stand out in the crowd. Daniel is going to provide you with the motion graphics tutorial you’ve been looking for to get more than your foot in the door – you’re going to be able to create beautiful animation and infographics. You’ll be empowered to use After Effects the way it was meant to be used, and to create your own creative content, even during the tutorial itself.

What are the requirements?

  • This course is for absolute beginners

  • You'll need a copy of Adobe After Effects CC 2015 or above. A free 30 day trial can be download from Adobe here.

What am I going to get from this course?

  • Create beautiful motion graphics

  • Animate compelling infographics

  • Choose the correct video settings.

  • You’ll learn how to exporting your video easily.

  • You’ll be able to create slick type animations.

  • Rendering your video for Youtube & Vimeo.

  • Create titles for interviews.

  • Add music to your motion graphics.

  • Trim & editing video.

  • Add watermarking your video.

  • Fixing shaky footage.

  • Color correct & fix any bad footage.

  • Add a vignette to your video.

  • Learn how to use your skills from Illustrator & Photoshop

  • How to use green screen footage

  • How to mask like a pro.

  • How to animate infographics like bar graphs, line graphs & pie charts.

  • How to use camera to make 3D type.

  • Animating static images using parallax

  • Plus basic character animation.

  • + More…

What is the target audience?

Yes:

  • This course is for people who want to start earning money as a motion graphics designer.

  • This course is for beginners wanting to learn to use After Effects for motion graphics and infographics.

  • No previous After Effects or animation skills are necessary.

No:

  • This course is NOT for people who have a good understanding of After Effects already. This is for new people only.

Course duration 5 hours+ your study.

Daniel Scott

Daniel Scott

Founder of Bring Your Own Laptop & Chief Instructor

instructor

I discovered the world of design as an art student when I stumbled upon a lab full of green & blue iMac G3’s. My initial curiosity around using the computer to create ‘art’ developed into a full-blown passion, eventually leading me to become a digital designer and founder of Bring Your Own Laptop.

Sharing and teaching are a huge part of who I am. As a certified Adobe instructor, I've had the honor of winning multiple Adobe teaching awards at their annual MAX conference. I see Bring Your Own Laptop as the supportive community I wished for when I was first starting out and intimidated by design. Through teaching, I hope to bring others along for the ride and empower my students to bring their stories, labors of love, and art into the world.
True to my Kiwi roots, I've lived in many places, and currently, I reside in Ireland with my wife and kids.

Downloads & Exercise files

Download Exercise Files

Transcript

Hey there, in this video we're going to look at a 'Motion Path'. So we've kind of made them already. You have a look through this animation, if I click on this, that is the motion path. So that's following along. If you've got one like me, already created, what you can do is, you can click on this dot, and you're looking for-- so you clicked on the squares, right? Then you're looking out for these little, sneaky-- They're hard to see. I totally understand if you're finding it painful to see because I do too. These little dots here.

If I grab this guy, there's the little dot. If I grab it, I can edit this motion path. If you've ever used Illustrator before or any sort of anchor point tool this is going to be easy enough, you can start doing it. Watch him, click him. Click him. That means it just kind of changes the way it edits. Sorry, the way he floats in this path. So instead of just going straight across, watch this. Kind of follow along, if you need more control, say you need him to do something over here, what you do is, you get him to do what you want. Up there. So I know, in my time limit, about there, what I'd like to do is twirl it down. Thank you, Bank of Ireland. Let's twirl this down. And let's go to here, so we're here on my key frames. And I'm going to put in a 'Position', 'Scale'. Ah, 'Position' 'Key frame'.

And you see, if I move along, now there's another little square. So this square is kind of our anchor point, and the line has to pass through it. These little guys on the outside, think of them as gravity, like little moons, they kind of drag the line, it has to pass through the anchor point, but these little moons pull the-- tug on the lines. So you can mess around with here.

Let's say you didn't have-- you want to have a start with one, so what I'm going to do is, I'm going to turn my 'Position' off. If I click on this key frame-- be careful when you click this stuff, it wipes off all your key frames. This is what I wanted a moment ago. So I'm going to put my timer back to here. And I'm going to turn it off. They're all gone. So I'm just going to create one by-- create a motion path to get started with. What I'm going to do is drag it along to the end. And I'll physically drag my tiny little speck. The scale's all the way down, that's why he's tiny. And then I'm going to-- oops, I'm going to put him back here. 'Undo' it.

So, don't forget, I'm going to turn it off, then turn it back on. So it's starting to record again, I've got my first key frame. Then this guy, he gets smaller and smaller. Out here, I'm going to move him till here. Nice. And you watch. Here he goes, and then he moves along there. And it's pretty much the same, right? It just means, instead of having the bins that are already there, if I click on any of these guys look out for the little dots, and I can play around with this. To add more key frames put your play here, where you want it to be a key frame, so you can see, my little guy's lined up there. Add another diamond. And move it around.

One thing we haven't done yet is the Oriental path, because at the moment it's kind of following along and it's kind of weird. It's not changing direction, if you know what I mean, just kind of like going sideways for bits of it. So what we're going to do is, get him to Oriental path. And what we need to do is, you saw, I actually stuck it on the layers, go to 'Layer', 'Transform', and there's one in there called 'Auto-Orient', click on that. Turn 'Orient Along Path' on, and it's going to kind of work, watch this, click 'OK'. And I scroll back. It's kind of moving along the path, not quite how I imagined. Here he is now, permanently going sideways. You can see, it's kind of adjusting as the path goes along.

So what I'd like to do is, get him back to the beginning. And what we need to do-- you can see it's kind of lined up weirdly to the edge here, so he's following it as he jumps on to the line there. So what we need to do is adjust him here. So, right back at the beginning here we're going to grab our 'Rotation' tool. I'm going to click and drag him. What we want to do is kind of like, you see, my line kind of comes out there, I'm going to zoom in. You can see, it kind of heads off that way. So what I want to do is make sure he's lined up with where the trajectory of that line heads away. You have to play around with it, but now, if I zoom out, hit 'Space' bar, it kind of does what I had hoped he'd do a bit more. Following along the line, he loops along. My Octopus. Let's hit 'Space' bar, hit 'Save'. And that is motion paths in After Effects.

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