Suggested After Effects Course Outline

1. Fundamentals of Motion Graphics

• RGB Color Model
• Frame Size
• Resolution
• Pixel Aspect Ratio
• Alpha Channels
• Frame Rate
• Time Code
• Interpreting Footage

2. Getting to Know the Workflow

• How After Effects Works
• Overview of panels
• Creating a project and importing footage
• Creating a composition and arranging layers
• Adding effects and modifying layer properties
• Animating the composition
• Previewing your work
• Optimizing performance in After Effects
• Customizing workspaces
• Controlling the brightness of the user interface
• Finding resources for using After Effects

3. Creating a Basic Animation Using Effects and Presets

• Importing footage using Adobe Bridge
• Importing video clips
• Importing stills
• Importing a sequence of stills
• Importing multilayered photoshop and illustrator files
• Creating a new composition
• Applying effects to a layer
• Changing parameters globally
• Creating keyframes
• Keyframe interpolation: auto, continuous, and Bezier interpolation
• Temporal and spatial Interpolation
• Roving in time for spatial properties
• Creating and applying an animation preset
• Previewing your work

4. Working with Masks

• About masks
• Creating a mask with the Pen tool
• Editing a mask
• Feathering the edges of a mask
• Replacing the content of the mask
• Mask interpolation
• Using masks from Illustrator and Photoshop
• Masks for spatial keyframes

5. Animating Text

• About text layers
• Creating and formatting point text vs paragraph text
• Using a text animation preset
• Text on a path
• Animating imported Photoshop text
• Animating text using a path animation preset
• Using a text animator
• Adding properties
• Adding a range selector
• Using a text animator group

     6. Working with Shape Layers

• Adding a shape layer
• Creating custom shapes
• Creating stars
• Default properties of shape layers
• Add properties
• Creating Groups
• Stack your shapes & properties
• Using Brainstorm to experiment

7. Other Effects

• Time remapping
• Motion sketch
• The smoother
• The wiggler
• Auto orient
• Splitting a layer
• Adjustment layers
• The effects and presets panel

8. Distorting Objects with the Puppet Tools

• About the Puppet tools
• Adding Deform pins
• Defining areas of overlap
• Stiffening an area
• Animating pin positions
• Recording animation

9. Rendering and Output

• Creating templates for the Render Queue
• Exporting using the Render Queue
• Rendering movies with Adobe Media Encoder

10. Parenting

• Understanding Parenting
• Simple Pick whipping
• Parenting to a null
• Using Parenting for positioning
• Using Parenting in Special Effects

11. Other Effects

• Time remapping
• Understanding Compound Effects
• Gradient Wipe
• Displacement Map

12. Transfer Controls

• Understanding Layer Blending Modes and how to change those using
  shortcuts
• Using Track Mattes
• Understanding pre-composing and nesting
• Stencil and Silhouette
• Preserve Transparency