...and I’m an explanimator–I write, illustrate, and animate educational animations.
I’m a self-taught motion designer, striving to help you learn motion design more efficiently than I did.
This video series is broken down into the basic building blocks you need to learn After Effects.
I know that all of the new buttons, toggles, panels, and menus can be a lot to remember. So, each short, to-the-point, video in this series includes a visual guide of written instructions, screenshots, GIFs and more.
The goal of these videos and visual guides is to not only get you up and running in After Effects for the first time, but to serve as an easy reference when you need a quick reminder. If it's been awhile since you used After Effects, it's easy to forget how to do things you once knew how to do. This can stall your project and be unnecessarily frustrating.
Bookmark this page so you can reference it when you need it!
In this lesson, you'll learn how to choose your project settings to get started on the right foot. You'll also get a tour of the user interface.
Most animation projects involve artwork from Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop as well as audio files and other types of media. This lesson is all about importing files and staying organized.
Keyframes are the basis of most animation in After Effects. In this lesson you learn how to set and manipulate keyframes and get an intro into two important animation concepts: timing and spacing.
This lesson is all about working with text, including how to create, style, and animate it.
While complex illustrations are better handled with Illustrator or Photoshop, there's a lot you can do with the native shape layers in After Effects. Learn how to create, manipulate, and animate shape layers.
An anchor point is where on the layer all transformations happen from. Knowing how to manipulate anchor points is key to achieving the animation you’re going for.
Parenting is a way to connect layers or properties. In this lesson, you'll learn how and why to use parenting and how to utilize invisible layers (nulls) as controllers.
The ability to animate artwork from Illustrator is key to creating beautifully designed animations. This lesson covers the ins and outs of working with Illustrator files inside After Effects.
In this lesson, you'll learn how to add effects to layers and compositions. Plus, you'll learn what adjustment layers are and when they can be useful.
Masks are a way to control where a layer is visible. In this lesson, you'll learn when masks can be useful, different ways to create them, and how to animate them.
Like masks, mattes are a way to control the visibility of a layer, but since mattes are a separate layer, they open up more creative possibilities. Learn all about mattes in this lesson.
You've created an animation and now it's time to export it so it can be viewed outside of After Effects. This is called rendering. Learn the settings to render your file for eyeballs outside After Effects.
GIF files can be useful on the web because they can be made to loop forever. This lesson covers different ways to create GIFs from your After Effects animations.
