After Effects Training

Our remote, online After Effects training courses are taught by motion graphics expert, Angie Taylor – a motion graphic designer, author and illustrator with 25 years industry experience. Choose from our standard two-day After Effects training courses – all taught on a 1-2-1 basis. Or pick and mix modules from below to make up your own bespoke course.

You can choose from Beginners, Intermediate or Advanced courses in Photoshop. Or, pick and mix modules to make up your own bespoke course. We offer remote, online training for individuals and groups.

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What we cover in our After Effects training

There are four levels of After Effects training available as well as custom courses. You can find example outlines of these courses by clicking on these links.

After Effects Fundamentals
After Effects Intermediate
After Effects Advanced
After Effects Power User.

Each of these is a 2 day course

How does the training work?

Angie will send you an evaluation form that takes a few minutes to complete. This will give Angie an indication of the level of After Effects training you require. She will customise the course to fit your own personal needs. Evaluation form example

Your Instructor - Angie Taylor

All courses are taught by artist, Angie Taylor. Angie worked as a motion graphic designer for over 25 years.

She was a demo artist for Adobe and is an Adobe Community Professional. You can see examples of Angie's work here on her portfolio.

Angie is a lecturer at the Univeristy of Brighton. She has taught children and adults at several colleges, schools and universities.

Angie has several books & courses published on design & animation.

fundamental-after-effects

Getting comfortable in After Effects

An overview of the After Effects interface
Making use of task focussed workspaces
Customising the application preferences
Project settings you need to know about
Creating composition settings presets
Useful, advanced composition settings

Importing Images into After Effects

Supported image types in After Effects
Working with Photoshop files in After Effects
Working with Illustrator files in After Effects
Importing or creating image sequences

Working with video footage in After Effects

Supported video formats in After Effects
How After Effects works with aspect ratios
Adjusting video frame rates and looping footage
Understanding video compression and codecs
Working with interlaced footage and field order

Timing and motion graphics

Importing Premiere Pro animatic via Dynamic Link
Adding comp or layer markers in After Effects
Making motion graphics dynamic with sound effects
Animating elements in time with music

Mastering the five transform properties

Rotation
Scale
Position
Anchor Point
Opacity
Working with 3D in a 2D environment

Applying Effects

Adding video effects layers (Blurs, Color correction etc)
Applying effects to solids (Generator effects)
Creating backgrounds (Fractal noise, patterns, textures)
Using Adjustment Layers to apply effects to multiple layers
Applying shadows and bevels with Layer Styles
Masking effects to isolated areas

Panels

Essential Graphics
Motion Sketch
Smoother
Wiggler
Mask interpolation

Previewing your work

Customising the Time control options
Setting up a disk cache (purging)
Composition panel options (fast previews, region of interest, resolution, draft options, masks, channels, view options)
Timeline controls (shortcuts, view area, zooming, navigating, panels)

Keyframe Assistants

When to use Easy Ease and when to use Continuous Bezier
Time-reversing keyframes and animations
Fixing acceleration issues with Exponential Scale.
Understanding keyframe interpolation
Auto orient rotation options.

2 day course

Intermediate After Effects

Color and channels

RGB, HLS and other color systems
Using RGB channels for color adjustment
Compositing images with alpha channels
Color spaces & color management in After Effects

Presets & Templates

Building a comprehensive preset library
Using Essential Graphics panel to create Templates
Working with Master Properties

Spatial Animation

Creating motion paths
Adding or removing path keyframes (drawing paths)
Four basic keyframe types (Linear, Auto Bezier, Continuous Bezier, Bezier)
Using Hold keyframes to animate sudden changes
Using Auto Orient to automatically rotate objects along paths.
Recording mouse movements with Motion Sketch
Creating randomness with the Wiggler
Physics (Balance, gravity, bounce etc)
Applying squash and stretch to animation

Temporal Animation

Adjusting timing in the Timeline (Keyframe interpolation, keyframe velocity)
Four basic keyframe types (Linear, Auto Bezier, Continuous Bezier, Bezier)
Viewing speed and value graphs in the graph editor
Roving Keyframes in time to even out speed changes
Retiming animations in the keyframe view (Alt-click and drag)
Matching keyframes between properties to avoid glitches (scale and position)
Creating overlapping actions
Going past the pose to create dynamism
Smoother

Shape Layers

Primitive vector shapes
Drawing custom vector shapes
Fills and strokes
Combining shapes
Shape operators
When to use multiple layers
Converting shapes from other applications

Text Layers

Character panel
Paragraph panel
Source text property
Arranging text along a path
adding text animator properties
The range selector
The wiggly selector

Working in the Layer Panel

Spotting Interlacing issues and other errors
Trimming footage in the Layer panel
Best practices for Ken Burns effects (Panning and Zooming)
Viewing effect paths and controls in the Layer panel
Working with multiple viewers

Grouping

Parenting
Nesting
Precomposing
Collapsing Transformations
Layer and render order

2 day course

Advanced After Effects - day 1

Expressions

Rotation linking
Working with 2D properties
Wiggle
Looping
Audio control
Expression controls
Rigging

Keying and Compositing

Using masks to isolate areas
Auto-tracing images and movies
Rotoscoping footage with the Rotobrush
Keying out green screen with the Keylight effect
Creating transparent keys with the Color Difference effect
Matte Correction technique
Auto-tracing movies or images

Working with the Graph Editor

Understanding the speed graph
Animating dimensions individually with the Value Graph
Tips tricks and techniques with the Graph editor

RGB images and channel effects

Blending modes
Mattes and Matte effects
Alpha channels
Channel effects
32-bit/ linear workflows

Combining Effects

Procedural V’s non-procedural effects
Creating Fire/smoke/water with Turbulent Noise
Saving effect presets
Adding color to effects or layers
Distorting surfaces with turbulent displace
Effects that refer to other layers (Displacement maps etc)

Character Animation techniques

Forward Kinematic animation with layers
IK animation
Puppet Tool
Character Animator

Power User

Contact us for details

Advanced After Effects - day 2

3D properties
Working with the 3D view menus
Navigating custom views with the Camera tools
Controlling the Axis modes
Cinema 4D Renderer
Extruding and bending layers

Cameras

Basic camera properties
Using the camera tools to adjust or animate the Active camera
Manually adjusting using position and point of Interest and orientation
Using nulls
Zoom
Depth of Field
Keyframing cameras
Auto-orient options

Lights

Basic Light properties
Light types
Material Options
Shadows

Cinema 4D Lite and Cineware

Importing a 3D object into your comp
Adjusting the render settings of cineware
Editing the file in Cineware
Cineware and After Effects cameras
Creating a new 3D object for your comp
Multipass compositing

Tracking

Masks
Layer Tracking
Camera Tracking
Mocha AE
Capturing camera moves from a GoPro

Rendering and Distribution

Image sequences versus movies
Adobe Media Encoder
The Render Queue
Render Settings
Output Modules
Templates
Watched folders

2 day course

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