Intro to After Effects

Due: Tuesday, March 1 @ 1:20 pm

Turn in .gif animations to the hertzfeldt_introToAfterEffects folder.

Download Hertzfeldt character and speech bubble image for today's tutorial, and import it into your AE project.

Make a new composition by hitting Cmd+N (Ctrl+N on PC), selecting “New Composition” from the Composition dropdown menu, or by clicking the icon that looks like a scene inside a filmstrip at the bottom of the Project panel. Settings should be: 1920 x 1080, 24 fps, 30 seconds long. Note that you can access/ change comp settings at any time from the Composition > composition settings menu.

You can have many different compositions (or "comps") in an AE project, and each one has its own timeline where assets (media types like images, videos, character parts, graphics, text, etc.) are stacked. The order matters - top layers are "in front" of bottom layers.

Note the Background color. in comp settings. This is only inside AE and won't export with a video; you can set up a background color by creating a Layer solid. Do that by going Layer > New > Layer Solid; select any color you like, and name it Background (make sure it's on the bottom of the later stack.

Drag the Hertzfeldt into the timeline. The timeline is where you to modify/ animate properties like scale, opacity, rotation, and position. The timeline layers contain have lots of media-specific options, depending also on what you apply - masks, audio, shapes, etc....

(Note that the stopwatch icon appears next to almost everything - almost everything is animatable in AE!)

...On the left side of each piece of media (or layer) is an arrow that can be tipped down. Clicking it will reveal the Transform properties.

Change the scale parameter to 75%.

Let's keyframe Position to bring Hertz in from frame left and exit frame right in 4 seconds. Drag the work area at the top of the timeline to limit playback to those 4 seconds (or use the N key to snap work area to cursor). Note you can easily trim the comp timeline to the work area using the Composition menu > trim comp to work area.

Work area

Add a keyframe on frame 00 to the position parameter, and drag Hertz to the left. Move the cursor to 4:00, and drag Hertz all the way to the right. Your first AE animation!

Now let's give Herz a rotation back and forth, on a regular rhythm. First, use the Pan Behind tool (Y) to move the anchor point (or origin) to the bottom of the shape, so that's the point he rotates around. Make sure to switch back to the main move tool (V).

On frame 00, set rotation to -30, and add a keyframe. Move to 12 frames, set Rot to +30. Important: add easing by right-clicking on the keyframes > keyframe assistant > easy ease.

Now copy/ paste rotation keyframes @ 1 sec, and continue across the 4 seconds.

Now let's give Hertz a text bubble and something to say. Bring the timeline cursor to the center of timeline (2 seconds). Drag the speech bubble image into the timeline, and rescale and position it in relation to Hertz.

Select the Text Tool from the top toolbar, and type what you want him to say. Use the Character menu on the right side to change the color, font, etc. Use the timeline properties to scale and position the text.

Now we'll use the pickwhip to parent the text to the speech bubble, and the speech bubble to Hertz. This causes the child objects to inherit behaviors from the parent layers - pretty cool!

Now let's animate our Hertz along a path. First, get rid of your position keyframes, and turn off the visibility of your animation layers. Make sure that nothing is currently selected, then switch to the Pen tool from the top-left hand tool bar (you can also go Layer > New > shape layer to be sure.) Click + drag on the left side of the Viewer to make your first anchor point, then continue across the screen. (I found it useful to turn off visibility on the animated layers momentarily.) You may need to set the Fill and Stroke to None in the field above the viewer - you don't want to see a new color. Move the anchor point handles to adjust the path. This step creates a new shape layer in the timeline.

6. Switch back to the Select tool (V). Select the shape layer and open it up to reveal the Path 1. Select that and Copy it (CMD + C).

Now in the Hertz layer, press P to reveal the Position parameter. Select the word Position in the Timeline and Paste (CMD + V) to add the path data as Position keyframes. Finally, go to Layer > Transform > Auto-Orient, and choose Orient Along Path. This keeps our object aiming the correct direction.

Follow the instructions under Resources to render an Animated GIF through Adobe Media Encoder (AME).

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