Adobe After Effects Level 1: Introduction

Adobe After Effects is the industry-standard tool for designing professional motion graphics and digital visual effects for use in film, television, and web video. Motion-graphics professionals, visual effects artists, and other professionals use animations and composites created in After Effects everywhere from your local news station to Hollywood's biggest blockbuster films.

During this three-day training course, students will discover the tools and techniques necessary to create high-quality motion graphics in After Effects. We will start with the basics—importing footage, adding effects, and animating a composition—and then progress to creating a brand-new composition using content from Adobe Illustrator, built-in effects, layering, and transparency. The combination of animated text, layers, and custom shapes will soon coalesce into a full multimedia presentation—and perhaps a cornerstone of your professional portfolio.

Students will learn the secrets behind the movie magic of green screens and special effects—how to utilize masks, keying effects and the Roto Brush tool to create these complex compositions. We will use the Roto Brush tool to isolate objects and either change the background or apply effects to the foreground. Our course concludes with lessons on color correction and 3D camera tracking.