After Effects Apprentice

Real-World Skills for the Aspiring Motion Graphics Artist

Chris Meyer, Trish Meyer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781317244356
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

Whether you're new to After Effects and want to get up to speed quickly, or already a user who needs to become familiar with the new features, After Effects Apprentice was created for you. With 12 core lessons including a trio of projects combining After Effects with CINEMA 4D Lite, you'll learn how to tap this program's vast potential – whether you create motion graphics for network television, corporate communications, or your own projects.

Fully updated to cover the major new features added in After Effects CC, this edition of the book presents a professional perspective on the most important features a motion graphics artist needs to master in order to use After Effects effectively. You'll learn to creatively combine layers; animate eye-catching titles; manipulate 3D space; color key, track or rotoscope existing footage to add new elements; and use effects to generate excitement or enhance the realism of a scene. Easy to follow, step-by-step instructions guide you through the features, with explanations of the "why" instead of just the "how" behind each technique. You'll learn more than just the tools; you'll learn skills that you can immediately put to work expressing your own ideas in your productions.

USER LEVEL: Novice–Intermediate

Topics include how to:

• Animate, edit, layer, and composite a variety of media.

• Manipulate keyframes and the way they interpolate to create more refined animations.

• Use masks, mattes, stencils and blending modes to add sophistication to your imagery.

• Create, animate, and extrude text and shape layers.

• Explore 3D space, including using CINEMA 4D Lite.

• Use tracking and keying to create special effects, such as replacing screen displays.

A companion website at www.routledge.com/cw/meyer makes available for download all exercise source material and After Effects CC project files required to get the most out of this book.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Getting Started
• Pre-Roll Exploring the After Effects landscape
• Lesson 1 – Basic Animation Building your first animation while you learn a typical After Effects workflow
• Lesson 2 – Advanced Animation Manipulating keyframes to create more refined animations
• Lesson 3 – Editing Layers and Effects Learning how to trim layers and enhance them using blending modes and effects
• Lesson 4 – Creating Transparency Using masks, mattes, stencils, and keying to cut out portions of a layer
• Lesson 5 – Type and Music Animating text and working with music are essential to motion graphics design
• Lesson 6 – Parenting and Nesting Grouping layers to make them easier to coordinate
• Lesson 7 – Expressions and Time Games Using expressions and playing with time
• Lesson 8 – 3D Space Adding a new dimension to your animations
• Lesson 9 – Track and Stabilize A key to visual effects work is removing or re-creating camera movement
• Lesson 10 – Paint, Roto, and Puppet Exploring Paint, Roto Brush, and the Puppet tools
• Lesson 11 – Shape Layers Creating, animating, and extruding vector-based shapes
• Lesson 12 – CINEMA 4D Lite Integrating a 3D application into the After Effects timeline using CINEWARE
• Appendix Perfecting your renders, as well as dealing with other video issues
• Resources, Production Credits
• Index