Day: Mondays
Time: 18:30 - 21:00
Duration: 5 weeks
Price: £184 (Concessions £110)
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After Effects Introduction

Course Overview
A general introduction to motion graphics and compositing using Adobe After Effects.

After Effects has been used widely in the media industry since it’s release in 1993. As it is not a very user-friendly software, even the huge number of tutorials out there can be beyond the understanding of a novice user. This course seeks to give you the necessary confidence to take your understanding of this amazingly versatile software one step further. This course is delivered through a set of 'real-world' projects to complete in class. With media (provided on the course CD) and comprehensive accompanying notes, you should be able to re-create the projects completed in class at home on your own system.

After Effects Introduction leads on to our new course, After Effects Intermediate.

Course Outcomes
Upon completing this course, you will:
• Understand where After Effects is placed in the media workflow
• Be able to animate the main layer properties of a project over time using keyframes and basic helpers, such as the wiggler
• Be aware of the difficulties of editing in After Effects
• Have a basic understanding of layers and compositions
• Be able to create and edit masks and their properties
• Know how to apply effects to layers and to understand when to apply adjustment layers
• Be able to nest compositions
• Have a basic understanding of expressions
• Have an understanding of the paint and clone tools
• Be able to perform basic motion tracking in video footage
• Be confident in creating and manipulating text
• Be able to use the render queue to export multiple versions of completed work

Lesson Structure
Lesson 1 General introduction to After Effects including its uses, how it handles different types of media, and how it compares to other software packages • The After Effects interface • Beginning a new project • Customising workspaces • Media import settings • The alpha channel • Keyframes • The wiggler • Saving your projects • Making new compositions and adjusting composition settings • RAM preview • Adjusting the stretch factor • Basic editing • the position transform property
Lesson 2 Recap on keyframes •  Navigating between keyframes • Editing keyframes on the timeline • Editing bezier curves on motion paths • the scale and rotate transform properties • Importing Photoshop files with layers • Nested compositions • Project flowcharts • Adjusting the work area • Zooming on timeline • Layer order •  Creating and manipulating masks • Wireframes
Lesson 3 Motion tracking and stabilisation • Solving tracking problems commonly found in footage • Sending tracking data to either layers or effect point sources • Adjustment layers • Finessing masks • The layer anchor point • Image stabilising and nesting
Lesson 4 Adjusting and using the paint and clone tools • Customising and saving brushes • Recap on motion tracking • Introduction to expressions • The pickwhip • Tweaking a project to finish
Lesson 5 Creating and animating text • the character panel • the paragraph panel • Strokes • Importing text layers from Photoshop • Title/action safe guides • Animating text transform properties • Animating text along a path • Selecting and applying presets from Adobe Bridge • Rendering using the render queue

Entry Requirements
Students will need at least a basic understanding of an editing software package and/or another digital media creation software package (for example, Adobe Photoshop,  Illustrator, Flash and so on). Students should be fluent in English.

Tutor
Tom Heycock has a degree in Film Studies from the University of Canterbury and a great depth of knowledge of the digital media world, having worked in the industry for fifteen years as a Video-Jockey, Cameraman, Editor, Motion Graphics Artist, A/V Co-ordinator and Colourist. Clients have included BBC Scotland, ITV1 Network, Camden and Southwark Councils, Glastonbury and The Big Chill music festival.