Ex4: Creating and incorporating moving

Opening New Projects

Upon opening the first tutorial for after effects you can see the default workspace that it lands on when opening up a project that already exists. There are multiple different work stations that can be seen and only can be edited and changed once clicked on and a blue box will highlight that section to indicate it is currently in use. When you open a new project from scratch you would instead see a blank screen and you can import your needed files from the project panel in the top left corner and drag them onto the timeline where there are many resources to allow you to animate and edit. In the centre is the composition panel which is the viewpoint from which you will watch the actual video. You can also use the composition panel to edit assets that you may be editing, however this would be easier to do on the timeline as depending on how many files you have imported it can start to become confusing.

Here is the right section of the timeline panel where you can see a visual representation of when assets will appear and disappear as well as what time this will happen at. By scrubbing individual files left and right on the timeline you can determine how long each one will stay on the screen for. This is also where you can see all the time stamps and actions you may have created for each component.

At the beginning of the timeline there’s a blue line called the current time indicator which when dragged along the timeline will display exactly what frame you may want to view at the time. This tool is also useful to scrub quickly over the animation to see it in action as well as pressing play and pause to watch it.

Above this is the left section of the timeline panel which has many different functions to it. On the very left there is an eye button which toggles on and off visibility for when you may want to focus on one aspect but some of the other files become confusing unless they’re turned off. Beside that a colour has been assigned to each component in the composition which further helps with organising them. The position of the layers between each other also determines which ones are on top and which are beneath which can be altered by dragging them up or down.
Here on the left is the project panel that holds all the information about each file once clicked on such as the image dimensions and the file size. you can also organise all the files into folders to help organise your work space as well as re-naming them so you can quickly find what you are looking for.

Getting to know the interface

One of the first actions that should be completed when starting up a new composition is deciding what job task you are going to be using after effects for and choose the corresponding workspace that goes with it. For example if I were to be doing a text-heavy animation than the text workspace would be most suitable, however this project includes a lot of moving image so I will select the standard option and If something changes in the workspace that I don’t know how to revert I can always go down the menu bar and select “Reset layout”.

Beside each panel in After Effects there’s a burger menu that once clicked on will display all the panel specific settings that given area.

Here is the project panel which allows you to store all the files that you may have imported onto after effects. By clicking on the triangle to the left of the file groups you will get a drop down of all he files within that group.

The project panel and timeline work in conjunction so that a file can be easily transferred to the timeline where it can be stacked accordingly. By clicking on individual layers on the timeline you can see the specific item light up with a surrounding white box to let the user know it has been selected.

In the top left corner of the timeline is the timestamp for at which point you will be viewing the project from. This is very useful in order to find the exact timing that you want to change/alter as it can be quite hard to find the right time simply through sliding the current time indicator along.

At the top of the programme lies the tool bar that is very typical and recognisable from the adobe suite package and holds many tools that can be used to add different elements onto the composition. For example, text, shapes, paint brush and the selection tool to select the said elements.

On the right hand side of the screen is the properties panel which handles all the transform options for the separate layers as well as the composition of them. The transform options can also be found under a drop down bar on the left of the timeline panel but those can be slightly less intuitive to reach. To alter ay of these transform tools you can simply click on the respective one and scrub either left or right to change the element to your desired appearance.

Here are the same transform tools but under the layers in a drop down menu. This allows you to create time stamps of your transform tools which can bring the animation to life.

Import Media

Although After Effects is a great place to create your media to use for your moving graphic, you can also import these files from another platform that you have designed it on as well as photographs and videos.

The first way you can import files is through clicking on the file section of the main toolbar at he top and scrolling down to import to which you then are provided with multiple ways you can find your specific file.

Once your file folder is open you are able to navigate through the folders and find whatever element it is you wish to import. Below this there are various settings for how you wish to import it and it’s important that the options align properly with the file type. For example, by importing it as footage you are flattening any existing layers that it may hold from previous editing software, or you can select the option that will instead retain all the layers.

If you wish to import a video to edit on top of you can click the “New Composition From Footage” button which is seen as soon as you open After Effects. After you click import you can then see that the video files in the project panel will have the same dimensions and size as the original file has.

Organising Projects

It’s always important to keep all your files and layers organised so they’re easy to find and change when need be. It also helps your workspace look neater and less overwhelming which can make you production speed more efficient. The first way you can do this is by clicking the drop down arrow on the right side of “Name” which will order them A to Z or Z to A.

After Effects can also allow you to organise the files via colour labels. In the image below the two JPEGs and the AI file were automatically given the same colour tag so i edited it to a much different colour in order for it to stand out from the rest and be easier to find visually when scanning the project menu. I can also access more columns for more ways to organise and edit this panel by right-clicking on the grey area and opening columns which holds editing capabilities such as the date, duration, in point and out point.

Accessing the exact part of the composition you wan is also made easier by the search bar above it.

Building a Composition

After opening After Effects and you don’t want to import any files to begin will but rather build your own composition than it is easiest to press command K to bring up the composition settings. Here you can many of the settings including the preset/resolution that you would like to use and the dimensions of the project. I can also decide how long I want the animation to be and when I want it to end by altering the duration as well as what colour I wish the background to be.

Positioning layers in a composition

When I have selected the layer I wish to edit there will be 8 dots that appear around it which I can drag to manipulate the scale, positioning and rotation. However this can be confusing to do as there might be many more layers on the composition tht are getting in the way in which case using the drop down transform actions may be easier.

Creating an animation

Here I have added keyframes to the text layer so that it fades in slowly as the opacity increases as well as a keyframe to the logo which glides up from the bottom of the composition. Currently the slide in animation looks slightly choppy as the speed at which the logo comes in is always the same so to make it look more dynamic I went into the animation toolbar and selected easy ease for the logo which changes the speed at different points for when it enters the frame.

Animate layered Adobe Illustrator documents

Here I have made a similar animation with the logo lowly fading in however it was created slightly differently. As the owl logo is comprised of many different layers which have been retained on the after effects file it would be confusing trying to add the same opacity keyframes to each layer. To make this easier I’ve copied the background layer and layered it on top of the owl before adding opacity keyframes to the background in order to make it slowly disappear and reveal the owl underneath.

Adding text to a composition

I’ve changed the standard workspace here to a text one as I am mainly editing text here and want to have more text options available to me. With the text functions I’ve changed the font, point size and justification of the logo in order for it to all fit together cohesively.

Animate with text presets

After effects have a large array of presets that you can use for your moving image if you’re not able to create the animation yourself which can speed up the process greatly. Here I’ve accessed the text presets through Adobe Bridge and have clicked through the folders until I found a simple one I liked.

Animate text letter by letter

Make type stand out with graphic elements

As the leaves in this logo are purple and blend in with the background, I’ve used the shape tool to draw a square and position it beneath the logo in order to make the purple leaves stand out above the purple background.