All courses / Motion graphics in After Effects
Boring video? Never again
After Effects has a reputation for a steep learning curve, and it deserves it. Most people who try it alone give up understanding it and just follow tutorials, because the program is not a video editor and behaves like no other software you know.
Two days on how it is actually put together — what a composition is, how layers, keyframes and parenting relate — and then on building things: text animation, animated charts, logo reveals, animated subtitles. By the end you have made a Motion Graphics Template a colleague can use in Premiere without ever opening After Effects.
- Length2 days
- FormatOn site or online
- LanguageNorwegian or English
- CategoryMotion graphics in After Effects
After the course you can
Adobe After Effects — beginners
- Build an animation from scratch with keyframes, custom easing and motion blur
- Combine layers with masks, track mattes and blending modes
- Animate vector artwork and logos without them going soft
- Make a Motion Graphics Template your colleagues can use in Premiere, or in HTML5 graphics
- Move work between After Effects and Premiere without rendering unnecessarily
What we cover
The program
How the program is built
- Compositions, layers and the timeline — the mental model that makes the rest easy
- Keyboard shortcuts that speed up your workflow
- The panel layout, and setting up one you can live in
Animation
- Keyframes, and the difference custom easing makes
- Animation without keyframes, using simple expressions
- Parenting, and how much time it saves
- Motion blur, and why it's needed in animations
Text and shapes
- Text animation, from a simple in-animation to a proper title sequence
- Animated shape layers
- Animating vector artwork and logos imported from Illustrator
- Animated subtitles that do not look like an afterthought
Compositing
- Masks and track mattes
- Blending modes
- Basic keying — the green screen footage you actually have, not the ideal one
- Tracking a moving element in the frame
Charts and data
- Animated bar charts
- A route drawn on a map
- Driving a graphic from numbers instead of by hand
Templates for Premiere
- Building your first Motion Graphics Template
- Making it user friendly with Expression Controls
- Exporting the template and getting it into the Premiere library
- What breaks when a colleague changes the text, and how to prevent it
Getting it out
- Rendering and exporting video
- Sending animation straight to Premiere
- Where Lottie and HTML export fit, for web and streaming
The honest bit
This course does not teach the coolest effects, and that is deliberate. Two days spent on the underlying techniques leaves you able to learn the effects yourself; two days spent on effects leaves you able to repeat those effects. One of those is worth more in four months.
Who it is for
Content producers, editors, photographers and designers who are going to make motion graphics, animated titles and simple effects for video.
Prerequisites
No After Effects experience. You should know your macOS or Windows well. Editing or Photoshop experience helps but is not required. One machine per participant with a current version installed — the free trial is fine.
Bring
Bring your organization's logo, fonts and colors. Building the first template with your own brand rather than a demo one is what makes it usable.
Open courses
Prefer a fixed date for one person?
Also runs as an open course at Qross Kurssenter — classroom in Oslo and live online on the same dates.
Also runs as an open course at Institutt for Journalistikk, at Pressens hus in Oslo, with member pricing for the press organizations.
Questions
About this course
Do we need After Effects if we already have Premiere?
It is included in the same Creative Cloud subscription, so most teams already have it and seldom use it. If you are on a single-app plan, the free trial covers the course.
Will we be able to make our own graphics package afterwards?
You will be able to make the pieces. Building a complete, consistent package for an organization is its own workshop, and it is usually better done as a job than as a course — but you will know enough to judge the result.
Is this useful for social media video?
That is what most people use it for now. Text animation, animated subtitles and logo reveals are the same techniques whether the frame is 16:9 or vertical, with slow or fast animations.
Related courses
Related courses
2 daysAdobe After Effects — advanced
You know After Effects.
2 daysAdobe After Effects Expressions
Expressions are code, which sounds worse than it is, because you almost never write it.
1 dayAnimation principles for motion graphics
Everything moves from A to B.
Want this for your team?
Tell me what goes wrong today and you get a written plan and a price back. Two sentences is enough.