After Effects 


5 FOUNDATION SKILLS


1.Tools and Keyframes
Insert the bee

These are the tools

When Bee is dragged into the composition window, you can reposition, rescale, rotate etc. the bee across time. 
In the timeline, dial down the Transform box and alter the attributes:  
It's easier to just drag and the keyframe will adjust to it.



Calvin:  what is this gotcha?  what happens when you get this view?


2. Layers
Add a solid behind the bee. Layer/New/Solid.
Also bring in a video file to create three layers. 




3. Masks
Go over the mask tools (ellipse, circle, etc)
Draw on a solid (or on a movie layer)
Choose a shape to draw the mask, or draw your own with the pen tool..
Masks hide stuff!
Dial down and play with the mask paths (mask properties)
You can duplicate the mask (control D)
You can draw as many as 99 masks on one layer!
Adjust the shape of a mask over time.
(Toward Emotional Maturity is a good film for a first mask.)






4. Animating text

Create a New Composition.

Start with a solid background.

Find the TEXT tool, type some text into the composition window (your name is a good choice) and a new layer will automatically appear.


Select Text layer in the timeline, and open up the layer.


Over to the right there is a separate button called “Animate”…If you don’t see the “Animate” button, click on the first or second icon at the bottom left of the screen and expand the layer switches panel.


Twirl the “Animate” button down and you’ll be able to choose various properties to animate.

Range selector determines which characters are selected by the particular adjustment.

Offset value:  takes the value of the range and shifts it around.

Go to the “Add” menu and you can add additional properties to the original animation.

OR: you can go to the Effects and Presets Panel:


Here's a quicker way to animate text though!

Go to Click on flyout menu (little icon that looks like a bunch of lines) on the right hand side of the Effects and Presets panel:


 

From that flydown menu, 

choose “Browse Presets”


It opens up Adobe Bridge.  You can select from a variety of text animations.

Click to Preview; Double click to apply the effect.





5.Output Movie

Composition/Make Movie
Dialog box:  
Hit RENDER in top right hand corner of timeline


SHORT PROJECT:
Import the DIVING CLIP.
Add a solid background.
Draw a circle mask around the solo diver, and make a mask path that follows the diver until he hits the water. 

Do the same for the skateboard girl

Add some text animation.
If there's time, experiment with some of the other clips in the same way.
Can you play off some of the words spoken in the audio track?
Animate some text (words that connect with the film clip?)
Think about adding elements of the Fish.psd file (in the CMM stills folder).



5 ADVANCED SKILLS

OK GO REMIX PROJECT
SEE Short Movie Clips (on USB drives)




1. Puppet Tool

1. Import the Gyuszi boy image (on USB Drive): which is a layered photo in photoshop with separated "arm" and "body" layers. Import as a "Editable Layer Styles"




Puppet pin tools (thumbtack icon on top tool bar).

Attach pins to the boy's arm (elbow, wrist, top of flower).

Also attach pins to the boy's body (forehead, chest, waist, legs)

Put cursor over the pins, and you get a move icon, and you can move portions of your object around.

For precise movements recorded in the timeline, twirl down Puppet/Mesh/Deform, and each individual pin, which you can animate.


For speedy animation, hold down Control/Command key and you get a little stop watch.

Keeping it hold down and moving mouse back and forth, AE remembers that motion.


Puppet Starch tool: if things are moving that shouldn’t be, you can go anchor them down using the Starch tool.

 


 

2. Applying Effects


Select Layer/New/Solid (effects are often used with solid layers).

You HAVE to apply effects to a separate layer, so adding a New/Solid layer ensures that you’re not messing anything up.  You can’t apply effect directly to the timeline.

Go to Effects and Presets Panel and type in name of an effect. 

Apply Effects in the Effects & Presets panel and then control the effects in the Effects Panel




There are over 200 effects, so if you don't know the name, you may want to browse through them.

All effects have transparent backgrounds to start with.

 

In order to SEE them, you need to activate the checkerboard button at the bottom of the frame (or use a wing-tab command).  

 

It's good to understand all the icons at bottom of screen


 

First, apply some random effects to a solid layer. 

1.    make rectangle box/change color to black:  Layer/Solid Settings


2.    to select the box, click on checkerboard and then back to box.

3.    Add Fractal Noise Effect



 4. Then add the Colorama Effect


 

TIP:  Edit/Label = change label color

        If you want to Rename the label: select label, hit “return”


Creating Fire

1.    Select New/Solid (solids are often used with effects…just a blank box of pixels…they’re like a dummy layer you can dump a bunch of effects on).  There are two ways to find effects in AE:

2.    Select Turbulent Noise (and try Turbulent Displace on top of Turbulent Noise)

3.    Turbulent Noise and Fractal Noise are good effects b/c they create random patterns.

4.    Edit EFFECT in Control panel to the LEFT of the screen.


5.    Change “Fractal Type” to “Dynamic Twist”

6.    Increase contrast A LOT

7.    Take down the Brightness of the effect

8.    Open up Transform Area:

a.    Uncheck “uniform scaling” (so you can independently move height and width
b.    Increase height
c.    Go to “complexity slider” and reduce detail

9.    Finally, click Evolution diameter (make SURE you click the stopwatch!) and drag to the right to bring evolution to life, creating a new key frame and turning the Evolution dial. 


10.    PILE another effect on (you can pile one after another):  Colorama

11.    Open output Cycle area


12.Select Use Preset Pallette and select a “fire”

16.Move “evolution parameter: to see fire take shape: every time you spin the evolution it creates a key frame (so pay attn)


 

New Effect: Shatter effect

1.    type in “shatter” in effect box and select effect

2.    go to Shatter Effects control panel, change VIEW from Wireframe to “rendered”

3.    If you open up Camera and “dimension” you’ll see it’s a 3-D effect

 


3. Rotoscoping

 

Tilde puts you in mask mode and enables you to use the pen tool and turn it into a mask.

 

Twirl down to mask

Click on mask path, and the entire mask lights up (and you can move entire mask over image)

Click outside of the mask on the screen area and you’ll get the transparent dots.

Click the inside of the mask and it’ll turn into a means for you to move the whole thing.

 

Yellow dots:

o   If the yellow dot is transparent, you can move the specific dot.

o   If you click on the outside of the mask, it turns into grey/white dots and you move the entire object (beware)

o   If you click on the mask path and all the yellow dots light up, then you can rearrange the mask according to the moving image.


o   If you double click, you'll be moving the entire video clip:  BEWARE!

WARNING: IF YOU CLICK ON THE STOP WATCH YOU’LL RUIN EVERYTHING.

 

Make one layer really black and white and blurry.

Other background not.

 

Add a mask, and it’ll cut a hole

Subtract a mask and it’ll be inside the shape.

 

You want to be on the Pen Tool Plus when you make all the changes. 


Twirl down the Mask Path and make sure you add a keyframe every time you alter the mask. 


4. chromakey:  
OK GO REMIX PROJECT
Drop the OK Go video in a new composition.  Drag the OK Go footage into the timeline.


Go to Effects & Presets:  Type in "Keylight" in the search bar:


Apply the effect to the video footage (you won't see anything happen yet, but look over to the left side of the screen, you'll see Keylight animation controls to work with).

First, select the EYEDROPPER next to the "Screen Colour" option and, with the eyedropper, select the green color (green screen background) in the OK Go video. 
The Screen Colour icon will switch to : 
 
Now check the VIEW menu towards the top of the Keylight menu:  CHOOSE: "Status"

Not everything is QUITE chromakeyed out! 
Since you're still seeing grey (and grey in this case is bad:  you want everything that's now "black" to be totally keyframed out)...you want to boost the "Clip Black" levels up to about "41"
Likewise, you want to reduce the "Clip White" levels to about "86."
Change the VIEW back to "Final Result" (don't go to source--that won't show you what the effect will look like)
You did it! 
5. Nesting compositions 
Bring the little boy puppet animation into the OK Go composition.
Simply drag the gyusziboy composition into your OKGo composition as a new layer.



FINAL PROJECT:
Use the OK Go video footage and edit a video using any of the images you have already created, plus any images we have provided for you.