What: Hands-on practical course. The afternoon of day 2 allows for you to work on your projects and portfolio.

When: 2 day course.

Time: 9:45am-4:00pm (45 minute lunch break)

Where: London Software Training, Sheep Lane, London, E8 3FA

Our 2 day course will give you a solid introduction to After Effects. Once you have completed the course, you’ll have the skills to understand the After Effects interface to create animation and visual effects for your video projects. Throughout the hand-on course you will be creating engaging projects with the help of the lecturer.

 

Getting Started

• Workspaces – selecting a layout and resetting the windows:
• The Project window, timeline and viewer
• Setting Up Your Database & folder structure
• Creating Compositions – Comp settings
• Essential viewer window settings
• Creating assets within AE
• Arranging objects in the viewport
• How layers work in the timeline window
• Object properties basics – Position, Scale, Rotation, Anchor Point and Opacity

 

Animating

• Manipulating object transforms
• Navigating the timeline, playing scrubbing and zooming
• Simple animation – your first keyframes
• Position animation and Bezier curves
• Manipulating keyframes
• Using the keyframe navigator
• Adding ease to improve animation quality
• Copying and pasting keyframes
• Proportional scaling of keyframes on the timeline
• Using hotkeys to reveal keyframes and properties
 

Adding Effects
• The effect controls palette
• Ensuring that you explore effects completely – good workflow practices
• How effects work with keyframes
• Combining effects together
 

Best Practices & Importing Different Files

• Exploring the interface in more detail, switches, modes and time controls
• Ensuring correct workflow vector files
• The collapse transformations switch
• Importing video footage
• Trimming and time manipulation of layers
• Sorting, finding and working with assets in the project window
• Importing Photoshop files
• Importing Illustrator files
• Layer modes
• PreComps – Why Precomps are vital
• Sending Projects To Others
 

Keyframes 

• Hold keyframes
• Reversing animation
• A simple expression - "Wiggle"
• How Wiggle works - what the numbers do

 

Text

• Using basic presets as a start point
• Text presets – a special case
• Creating your own text animators
 

Rendering

• Rendering & Media Encoder - Best Practices

Your course price includes

• Free group course re-take within 18 months
• Expert teaching from practising architects, designers and software pros
• Hands-on, practical lessons - tailoring of syllabus and work on your projects
• Class recordings for revision and development
• LST certificate of completion for your CV and LinkedIn

Your tutors are designers, makers and architects, as well as software pros. They will guide you on the best way to apply for design roles or set-up a creative business, whilst teaching you all the key technical skills to make your CV and portfolio stand out from the crowd.