This excellent After Effects 7 Pro: Essentials course will teach you the basics of the industry-standard tool for motion graphics and special effects design and production. The course has been created and is taught by an expert instructor, Steve Holmes, an award-winning British designer and animator. As you can imagine, he has an abundance of insider knowledge to share with you, and will provide an excellent education in After Effects. The course focuses on ways to control keyframes, use parenting and time remapping, understand and use powerful masking and blending modes, create mattes, and use adjustment layers to add complex, yet simple, impact to your animations.
Our learning material is available to students 24/7 anywhere in the world, so it’s extremely convenient. These intensive online courses are open to everyone, as long as you have an interest in the topic! We provide world-class learning led by IAP, so you can be assured that the material is high quality, accurate and up-to-date.
Steve Holmes is the creative director of the award-winning Energi Design, in San Francisco, California. With a history rich in design and typography for motion, broadcast and web design, Steve’s experience and the Energi portfolio are highly regarded in the design industry both in Europe and the US.
For over a decade, he has spoken at major design and animation conferences worldwide, and has a long-standing history as one of Total Training’s top presenters, sharing his knowledge of After Effects, Illustrator and Photoshop with the world.
Section 01: Interface, Footage & Animation Essentials
Section 02: Masking, Mattes, Effects & Text Animation
Those who successfully pass this course will be awarded a After Effects 7 Pro: Essentials certificate. Anyone eligible for certification will receive a free e-certificate, and printed certificate.
With this qualification, you are able to fulfil various roles, such as:
PLEASE NOTE: We do not provide any software with this course.
Section 1: Interface, Footage & Animation Essentials | |||
1: THE GRAND TOUR | |||
1. Applying a Mask & Transforming the Properties | |||
2. Keyframing & Easy Ease | |||
3. Layer Effects & Motion Blur | |||
4. Animating & Organizing Layers in the Timeline | |||
5. Working with Video & Track Mattes | |||
6. Inserting & Animating a Text Layer | |||
7. Completing the Animation | |||
2: THE PROJECT PANEL & WORKSPACES | |||
1. Navigating the Interface | |||
2. Customizing, Saving & Loading Workspaces | |||
3. Using the New Maximize Feature | |||
4. Opening & Closing Windows & Projects | |||
5. Working within the Project Panel | |||
6. Organizing Files in the Project Panel | |||
7. Tips for Utilizing the Project Panel | |||
8. Adjusting the Working Color Space | |||
3: THE NEW & POWERFUL COMP PANEL | |||
1. Adjusting the Composition Settings | |||
2. Creating a Comp from Existing Footage | |||
3. Creating a Comp from Stills | |||
4. Working with Multiple Composition Viewers | |||
5. Using the Zoom & Scroll Tools | |||
6. Changing the Preview Size | |||
7. Splitting the Composition Viewer | |||
8. Changing the View Options | |||
9. Selecting Composited Layers | |||
10. Using the Snapshot Feature to Store Frames in Memory | |||
11. .e New Color Channel Viewing Options | |||
12. Adjusting the Viewer Resolution & Pixel Aspect Ratio | |||
13. Exploring the Flow Chart Option | |||
4: THE TIMELINE & PREVIEWING | |||
1. Importing Footage | |||
2. Fitting an Image into the Comp Window | |||
3. Snapping the Position of Layers in the Timeline | |||
4. Introducing the AV Panel in the Timeline | |||
5. Labeling, Selecting Label Color & Arranging Layers | |||
6. Renaming Layers in the Timeline | |||
7. Hiding Layers with the Shy Switch | |||
8. Using the Quality & Effects Switches | |||
9. Applying Motion Blur | |||
10. Zooming, Viewing Switches, Modes & Duration Columns | |||
11. Moving the Time Indicator & Applying Markers | |||
12. Positioning & Trimming Layers Using Markers | |||
13. Previewing Audio & Setting Up a RAM Preview | |||
14. Setting Up a Work Area & a Region of Interest | |||
5: IMPORTING & ORGANIZING FOOTAGE | |||
1. Using Adobe Bridge | |||
2. Importing Movies & Sequences with Bridge | |||
3. Interpreting Alpha Channels | |||
4. Importing Adobe Photoshop(R) Files | |||
5. Interpreting a Photoshop Sequence | |||
6. Using Edit Original & Importing Layer Effects | |||
7. Exploring Importable Layer Effects | |||
8. Creating a Photoshop File in After Effects | |||
9. Importing Adobe Illustrator(R) Files | |||
10. Using Placeholders & Proxies | |||
11. Proxies & the Render Queue | |||
12. Working with Camera Raw Files | |||
13. Using a Proxy with Camera Raw Files | |||
6: VIDEO STANDARDS & THE CLIP PANEL | |||
1. Composition Settings & Pixel Aspect Ratio | |||
2. Fixing Interlaced Video Issues | |||
3. Solving 3:2 Pulldown Issues | |||
4. Making Insert & Overlay Edits | |||
5. Working with Split Layers & Extracting a Work Area | |||
Section 2: Masking, Mattes, Effects & Text Animation | |||
1: PARENTING, NESTING & TIME REMAPPING | |||
1. Setting Up the Car Speeding Along Comp | |||
2. Adding Wheels to the Car Comp & Rotating .em | |||
3. Introducing Parenting, the Pick Whip & Parenting to a Null | |||
4. Common Challenges with Parenting Elements Together | |||
5. Working with Nested Compositions | |||
6. Pre-Composing & Animating the Car | |||
7. Enabling Time-Remapping vs. Time-Reverse Layer | |||
8. Time-Remapping, Frame Blending & Time-Reverse Keyframes | |||
9. Easing Keyframes & Time-Remapping Audio | |||
10. Using the Graph Editor to Time-Remap Slow Motion Footage | |||
11. Sequencing Layers & Time-Remapping a Nested Comp | |||
12. Easing In & Adjusting the Speed in the Graph Editor | |||
2: INCREDIBLY COOL MASKING | |||
1. Introducing the Masking Tools | |||
2. Animating a Mask to Reveal Text | |||
3. Using Guides & Feathering Masks | |||
4. Adding & Subtracting Masks | |||
5. Creating a Circular Mask | |||
6. Adjusting Masks on Photoshop® Files | |||
7. Pasting In Masks from Illustrator® | |||
8. Correcting & Controlling Mask Interaction | |||
9. Time-Reversing Keyframes | |||
10. Creating a Morph Target in Illustrator | |||
3: INTRODUCTION TO EFFECTS & PRESETS | |||
1. .e Snow Effect | |||
2. .e Fast Blur Effect | |||
3. Creating & Saving Animation Presets | |||
4. Using Fast Blur to Change the Depth of Field | |||
5. Using the Color Emboss & Snow Effects | |||
6. Creating a Chrome Reflection in a Pre-Comp | |||
7. Changing the Blend Mode & Sharing Presets | |||
4: MATTES & LAYER BLENDING MODES | |||
1. Using Layers as Mattes for Other Layers | |||
2. Using the Luminance of a Grayscale Image for Transparency | |||
3. Creating & Pre-Composing an Animated Matte | |||
4. Manipulating Transparency with Layer Blending Modes | |||
5. Using RGB Channels for Convincing Mattes | |||
6. Transitioning between Comps with a Stencil Alpha Matte | |||
5: TRACK MATTES, ADJUSTMENT LAYERS & EFFECTS | |||
1. Applying a Luma Track Matte | |||
2. Duplicating a Layer & Replacing It with a Matte | |||
3. Looping Multiple Layers Using Apply Interpretation | |||
4. Introducing Adjustment Layers in Photoshop | |||
5. Using Adjustment Layers to Blur & Colorize | |||
6. Using Layer Blending Modes | |||
7. Bringing in Illustrator Files to Use for the Title | |||
8. Creating a Custom Luma Matte | |||
9. Creating a Custom Adjustment Layer | |||
10. Animating a Mask on an Adjustment Layer & Adding a Blur | |||
11. Animating a Blur & Adjusting Transparency | |||
12. Adjusting the Timing of an Animation | |||
13. Pre-Composing Layers into a Nested Composition | |||
6: CREATING & FORMATTING TYPE | |||
1. Text Effects, Panels & Workspaces | |||
2. Creating a Type Layer | |||
3. Selecting, Aligning & Building Type Layers | |||
4. Populating & Scaling Type Layers | |||
5. Formatting Text with the Character Panel | |||
6. Changing the Stroke, Fill, Height & Width | |||
7. Adjusting the Tracking, Leading & Kerning | |||
8. Baseline Shift & Other Character Properties | |||
9. Using the Paragraph Panel | |||
10. Paragraph Panel Fly-Out Menu Options | |||
7: BASIC TEXT ANIMATION & PRESETS | |||
1. Introducing the Basic Text Animation Presets | |||
2. Applying Text Animation Presets to Animate In & Out | |||
3. Animating Text Properties: Scale & Inter-Character Blending | |||
4. Adjusting Rotation, Anchor Point Grouping & Alignment | |||
5. Animating the Tracking & Adjusting the Line Anchor | |||
6. Positioning & Animating Text on a Closed Path | |||
7. Animating Text on an Open Path | |||
8. Animating Text on a Spiral Path | |||
9. Animating a Paragraph on a Path | |||
10. Introducing Wiggler & the Wiggly Selector | |||
11. Adjusting the Wiggly Selector Options | |||
12. Taking a Closer Look at the Wiggler | |||
13. Adjusting Correlation & the Temporal & Spatial Phases | |||
14. Setting Up for Temporal & Spatial Phase Animation | |||
15. Animating a Bullet-Time “Matrix”-Style Effect | |||
16. Saving an Animation as a Preset | |||
8: OUTPUT & EXPORT | |||
1. Exporting a Flash™ Movie for the Web | |||
2. Previewing in a Browser & Changing Frame Rate | |||
3. Saving a RAM Preview & Exporting Multiple Movies | |||
4. Changing the Render Settings | |||
5. Changing the Output Module Settings | |||
6. Adding Multiple Output Modules | |||
9: PREFERENCES | |||
1. Looking at General Preferences | |||
2. Setting Preferences for Nested Comps | |||
3. Setting Preferences for Layers & Colors | |||
4. Setting Preview Preferences | |||
5. Setting Display Preferences | |||
6. Setting Import & Output Preferences | |||
7. Setting Up Grids, Guides & Labels | |||
8. Memory, Cache & Video Preview Prefs | |||
9. User Interface Colors & Auto-Save Prefs |