The list below covers links to techniques that have been presented during lessons in the course you are taking. They also relate to common production steps for all sorts of animation and motion-creation media.
To start a project and composition
When you use After Effects, the program involves an overall project, an [aep] file. You establish the project, give it a name, and save in a folder with connections to source media. As part of that AE project, you will then create what is called a Composition or “Comp.” It’s similar to a Sequence in Premiere, or a Symbol in Animate. This is where you will add layers (images, sequences, movie files), composite the layers and arrange imagery, make modifications like scale, position, rotation, and opacity changes, add effects, and so on.
Importing images: stills & sequences
These are notes that explain the necessary steps to import single images, like photographs and digital artwork, plus image sequences, such as drawn animation and stop-motion. You will import movie files in the same way as still images.
The page also includes notes on changing the duration of images.
To interpret footage
A legacy convention has been to refer to media as “footage.” The reason is, in the past, the length of physical 16- and 35-millimetre film stock was typically measured in feet (like 100 feet). After Effects therefore refers to media — images, sequences, and movie files — as footage.
Once you have imported an image sequence, you will have to “interpret the footage,” to specifically define the frame rate of the time-based media.
Adding colour and gradient overlays to layers
There are simple methods that you can employ to add colour and gradients of colour and/or tone to elements or layers in a composition.
To make a solid layer
In addition to colour overlays and gradients, you can work with solid layers of colour, for composition and image creation, and for visual effects. Solids are useful!
Layer transformations, like flipping orientation and time modifications
Further to adding overlays, gradients, and solids, there are many kinds of simple, immediate changes you can apply to layers, to transform position scale, rotation, and opacity. You can also flip the orientation, horizontally and vertically.
You can also make timing modifications to movie files and image sequences, such as the speed of movement. You can reverse the motion, and insert freeze frames and holds.
To make contrast and tonal adjustments to layers
When you use a camera of some kind to capture sequences of images and movie files, of physical drawings and objects, you will likely need to modify the range of tonal values — in other words, adjust the brightness and contrast — before you continue with compositing and applying visual effects.
The steps are simple and immediate.
Colour key notes
An interesting feature of animation and media production is to remove colours from footage. For example, if a puppet is animated in front of a green screen, a “colour key” effect can be applied, to remove the colour. The region then becomes transparent. Once you have done this, you can then place or composite the animation layer with background and foreground layers, to create visually complex compositions.
Links to additional practices with After Effects
- Using the Render Queue
- To make a mask
- Keyframe animation
- Compositions for panning backgrounds
- 3D layers
- Notes on cycling elements of character animation
- Camera moves
- Creating transitions between scenes