you and I are going to dive right into after effects now and we're going to take it slow. But the way that I've laid out this course is to really make it practical. So in this lesson we're going to work our way around after effects, I'm going to talk through the different panels so that you feel a bit more comfortable. I know how daunting it can be when you open up after effects for the first time, there's so many buttons and titles and panels that are confusing, but I'm not going to make this course one of those courses where I just sit back and tell you okay this button does this, this button does that, this button does this this button does that because that's not a great way to learn throughout this course, you're going to be working on many projects and then full real world projects and throughout that you're going to be learning different tools, different effects. And so I really encourage you just to work through each of the lessons they build upon each other. And so by the end ...

of this course you should feel comfortable working on real world projects in after effects if you come across a button or a panel that you're confused about feel free to let us know and to post a question in the Q and a tab of the course. Otherwise we might answer that question later on. So just keep working through when you open up after Effects for the first time, you'll probably get a pop up the start module that asked you to start a new project, you can see here that I have a number of projects that I've worked on in the past. Once you've been using after Effects for a while, you will see all of these projects appear here 1st. When we're starting, we're just going to click new project and that's going to open up after Effects like this. I'm using the Adobe 2017 version, Creative cloud version of after effects. If you go up to after effects up here in the title menu and you click about after effects. This is how you can see the version I'm using version 14.2.1.34. It's the 2017.2 release when after effects updates as they usually do once or twice a year, they add new features. I'll be updating this course really though, no matter what version you're using, especially if you're using a Creative Cloud version, you're After Effects is going to look very similar. So just click in the middle to get out of that menu. The next thing you want to understand is the layout. One thing to know is your After Effects layout might look a little different than mine right now and that's because there are different workspaces. If you go up to window and then workspace, you'll see that there's different workspaces because there's different panels that you might want to use to do different effects, but you might not necessarily need them open all the time if you're not working on that kind of thing. For example, if I click motion tracking, it will bring up this motion tracker panel on the right hand side. But if I'm not doing motion tracking, I might not need that panel open. So to get on the same page, go to window workspace and then go to default. This will be the default view that will be working through in this lecture. And moving on. Alright, let's get acquainted with After effects in the top left. You have your toolbar and your menus. A lot of the things that we do in after effects with buttons within the actual program down here can be done through the menus up here. A lot of these options are grayed out right now and that's because we can't do much without starting an actual project below that we have the toolbar. You don't see all the tools right now until we start a composition and a project. But you'll be using a lot of these different tools in this class. Most of them actually. And this is really what we use to create our own effects and animations on the left hand side is the project panel. This is your basic documents folder for your project. If you've used adobe premiere pro in the past, it's very similar. This is where you can import media and graphics, you can organize things, you can add, you know everything from music to illustrator files. Everything you can organize in your project. And this is also where you'll be creating different compositions which in after effects a composition is basically an individual video that you're working on. An individual graphic and individual sequence. So if you are accustomed to adobe premiere, pro think of a sequence as the individual video you're working on in after effects. It's a composition. The way that these panels sometimes work is that you have the main tab and then behind this you have another tab. So here we have the effects controls tab. This is where you'll be adjusting a lot of effects once they're applied to your footage. So that's the project window or panel in the middle. You have your composition. Once we started a new composition which we'll be doing shortly, you'll see this is where you actually have your project on the right hand side. There's a number of panels just by clicking on them, you can open them or close them. So we have the effects and presets preview audio. These are all things that will be looking at in the future. And then down below you have your timeline and this is how you start creating your actual projects to take it to the next level and see more of the options where we're going to have to start a new composition and we're going to do that. Coming up next

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Understand the After Effects Workspace

Understand the After Effects Workspace

Lesson Info

2. Understand the After Effects Workspace

Lessons

Class Updates & My Favorite CC 2020 Updates

Understand the After Effects Workspace

Starting a New Composition

CC 2018 Update - Starting a New Composition from Footage

Adding Media to Your Project and the Timeline

Using the Basic After Effects Tools

Create a Perfect Circle, Alignment, and Shape Colors

Working in the Timeline

Layer Properties

Quiz: After Effects Basics

Animating in After Effects

Position, Scale, and Rotation Animations

Tips to Make Your Animations Look More Nautral

Using the Graph Editor

Challenge - Bouncing Ball

Solution - Bouncing Ball

Quiz: Animating with Keyframes

Working with Solid Layers and the Ken Burns Effects

Working with Shape Layers, Strokes, and Paths

Adding Layer Styles like Drop Shadow, Bevel, and Gradients

Shape Effects - Trim Path Animations, Wiggle, and Zig Zag

Quiz: Shapes and Solid Layers

Track Matte Animations - Make Layers Appear and Disappear

Using Pre-Compositions to Group Layers

Easily Reverse Complicated Animations

Playing with Time

Blend Modes

Stabilize Shaky Footage

CC 2018 Update - Previewing and Favoriting Fonts

CC 2019 Update - Responsive Design Time

CC 2019 Content Aware Fill

CC 2019 Create Motion Graphic Templates

Quiz: Important After Effects Skills

Intro to Motion Graphics Projects

Clean Lower Third

Logo Reveal Animation Bumper

Colorful Transition

Text with Mask Path Animation

Text Bubble Animation

Weather App 1

Weather App 2

Weather App 3

Quiz: Motion Graphics Projects

Flat Animation Challenge

Phil Designs his Flat Animation Scene

Animating Fireworks with the Repeater Effect

Removing Green Screen Background

Adding a Background that Matches the Foreground

Adding Motion to a Still Image with the Puppet Tool

Adding Movement with the Ripple Effect

Quiz: Flat Animation Challenge

Intro to 3D

Swinging 3D Text Animation

Build Out Your 3D Composition

Animating Our 3D Scene

Create Stars in After Effects

Quiz: Green Screen (Chromakeying)

Using the Rotoscope Tool

Cleaning Up Your Edges

Finishing Our Rotobrush Animation

Quiz: 3D Animations and the Camera Tool

Easy Screen Replacement with Masks

Replacing a Screen Version 2

Screen Replacement with Mocha

CC 2019 Update - Native Mocha AE Plugin

Quiz: Rotoscoping

Using the Puppet Pin Tool

Animating Your Puppet Pins

Animated Blinking Eyes

Adding Perspective with Animated Clouds

CC 2018 Update - Advanced Puppet Pin Tool

Quiz: Screen Replacements

Applying Text Animation Presets

Create a Page Turn Effect with CC Page Turn