The Next Venture: Learning Adobe After Effects
As a professional creative, there are an endless number of ways to grow as an artist and help make your designs come to life. One of these programs that I have always been interested in but intimidated by is learning how to animate my designs and ideas in Adobe's motion graphics and visual effects software: After Effects. Through this next series of blog posts, I will be documenting my journey in learning the basics of this software and finding avenues to incorporate its uses into my work.
First things first, I wanted to get a more in-depth understanding of this powerful software. As a learner, it made the most logical sense to have a grasp of what I was trying to achieve in adding this software to my designer's toolkit. I had to ask myself: what does this program do exactly? So far, my exposure to After Effects only gave me a surface-level understanding, but I still had some questions about what the program could be capable of and how it could expand my creativity.
After an initial internet search and in-depth reading of a few articles, I learned that Adobe After Effects provides endless possibilities through video and image compositing to create animations, special visual effects, and motion pictures (VFX And Motion Graphics Software Adobe After Effects, 2022). Uses for this program extend from pop-up marketing ads to blockbuster movie title sequences, and most professional designers are familiar with the program. From moving text animations to digital designs and illustrations coming to life, this program is used to enhance and bring movement to 2D designs. After Effects can be used for various animations such as 2D Vector Animation and Kinetic Typography. However, it does fall short of being considered traditional frame-by-frame animation as it uses manipulated vectors and flat images to create motion. Outside of animation, After Effects can also be used to create special visual effects for videos, such as smoke, fire, explosions, and scene tracking (Plummer, 2021). It is important to distinguish After Effects from video editing or animation software. The typical use for the software is to manipulate images, vector, and video files or artwork imported into the program.
Due to the program's complexity, I determined that learning this software would benefit intermediate to expert-level designers the most. In order to build files within After Effects, there is a requirement to understand the types of files that need to be prepared to be imported into the program. An essential part of using the program is having a solid understanding of exporting the correct types of files with adequate resolution. I believe that my years of experience working with Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator prepared me for the next step of learning After Effects.
Plummer, R. (2021, October 7). What is Adobe After Effects? Retrieved October 20, 2022, from https://www.schoolofmotion.com/blog/what-is-adobe-after-effects
VFX and motion graphics software Adobe After Effects. (n.d.). Retrieved October 20, 2022, from https://www.adobe.com/products/aftereffects.html