Adobe After Effects Beginner (2023): Creating Simple Animations

Name: Adobe After Effects Beginner (2023): Creating Simple Animations
Author: Calvin Gaunce

Learn the steps for creating simple, impactful animations in After Effects, from project creation to keyframing a custom animation

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Course: On-Demand

Hello, my name is Calvin Gaunts, and in these lessons you will learn how to create a new project and composition, import assets, and build an animation. We'll explore keyframing and concepts around building compositions and working in the timeline. I've created a fake company called KittyCareHub with its own logos and branding guidelines, and for these lessons we'll develop a logo animation for KittyCareHub's online videos. Let's imagine they produce video content on catcare for their website. So let's go ahead and open After Effects from the Adobe Creative Cloud application. When we open After Effects, we will see any recent projects that we've worked on, which is helpful. We can open a project by file location or create a new project. So we'll create a new project, and before we do anything, let's save it. So Control-Shift-S to save as, let's call this AE beginner simple animation. Now front and foremost here, we have two buttons that After Effects gives us to create a new composition. One is creating a new composition from footage, so if you are working with video footage, this may be a good option for you. Your composition settings will match your footage settings. For us, we'll click here into a new composition. We are not going to be working with footage in this one. Let's call it KittyCareHubLogoAnimation. I like to name my compositions pretty much exactly what they are. For the sake of this lesson, we'll stay inside of this basic window or tab in the composition settings. You can check out Advanced and 3D Render, if you'd like, but not necessary for our purposes here. After Effects provides a lot of presets for composition settings. Really your composition settings are determined by what your end result is. Is this going on a broadcast? Is it going to the internet? If it's a broadcast where geographically is it, there are different standards, different preferences for resolutions, frame rates, all of these things you need to consider. Might as well go ahead and get it right now because if you have to fix it in the end, it could be a problem. So for our sake, KittyCareHub is an online resource. They want their videos in 1920 by 1080 HD, 30 frames per second, which matches this social media landscape HD preset. Let's make the duration 10 seconds. I don't think we'll go any longer than that, and it will probably be much shorter. This resolution half here, this does not mean that our resolution will be half of what we specified. This is for previewing. We can change the starting timecode if we want. If we wanted it to start, let's say, at the timecode of specific footage associated with this project, that's not the case for us. We can also change the background color if we'd like. And now we have a new composition. Stay tuned for the next lesson where I'll show you how to import assets and create composition layers as we begin building our KittyCareHub logo animation. Thanks for watching.

Beginner Provider : Calvin Gaunce 5 Lessons · 33m in English

Course Description

In this course, Adobe After Effects Beginner (2023): Creating Simple Animations, you will learn how to create a project and composition, import assets, create composition layers, and create animations with keyframes on layer properties. By the end of this course, you will be able to create your own custom motion graphics for a variety of purposes by animating basic layer properties like scale, position, and rotation. Visually appealing animations don’t require complicated effects and techniques, but often are made by a creator who understands the fundamentals for smoothly keyframing an animation. In this course, you’ll move forward in your journey to becoming that skilled creator. Through hands-on lessons and practical exercises, you’ll unlock the essential techniques for crafting motion graphics. Equip yourself in your motion graphics journey by harnessing the power of keyframes and learning how to manipulate essential layer properties.

What You'll Learn

Create a new project and composition in Adobe After Effects
Import assets and create composition layers from them
Work with keyframes in the timeline panel
Manipulate basic layer properties like scale, position, and rotation
Build a custom animation using keyframes on layer properties

Key Takeaways

This beginner course teaches how to create simple animations in Adobe After Effects (2023) by keyframing basic layer properties.
Visually appealing animations often come from understanding the fundamentals of smoothly keyframing rather than complicated effects and techniques.
The course covers the workflow from creating a project and composition, importing assets, and building composition layers to animating with keyframes.
Through hands-on lessons and practical exercises, learners practice the essential techniques for crafting motion graphics.
By the end, learners can create their own custom motion graphics by animating properties such as scale, position, and rotation.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is this course for?

It is a beginner course for those starting their motion graphics journey who want to learn how to create simple animations in Adobe After Effects (2023).

What will I be able to do after completing this course?

You will be able to create your own custom motion graphics for a variety of purposes by animating basic layer properties like scale, position, and rotation using keyframes.

What topics does this course cover?

It covers creating a new project and composition, importing assets and creating composition layers, an introduction to keyframes and their purpose, working with the timeline and keyframe interpolation, and creating basic animations using layer properties.

How is the course taught?

Through hands-on lessons and practical exercises that help you unlock the essential techniques for crafting motion graphics.

What skills will I gain?

You will gain skills in project design, key frames, and layered systems.