Introduction to the After Effects Interface and Animation Workflow

• You’ll be introduced to the After E­ffects interface.
• You’ll learn about the standard animation workflow (starting from scratch or using stock assets this includes created assets from Photoshop and Illustrator), commonly used controls, and keyframes

Communicating with your Audience

• The introductory module of this course draws your attention to the importance of understanding the audience before you even pick up a pencil or move the cursor.
• Drawing on digital marketing best practices for understanding your audience, you will be equipped with research techniques that will inform the design and animation decisions you make in your projects.
• You will also learn about the best practices for posting your animations on social media and the web.

Story Development

• Stories are how we make sense of the world.
• You will develop your storytelling skills and understand narrative development.
• We will also look at some of the tried and tested processes for storyboarding to help create an engaging and delightful animation for your audience.

Working with Layers

• We will teach you about how you can use layers such as text, shape, and others.
• We’ll introduce you to masks and mattes.
• We’ll also give you some tips for acquiring and importing assets

Principles of Animation and Composition 

• You’ll be introduced to the principles that make animation impactful.
• You’ll cover specific topics such as timing, spacing, rhythm, eases, mass & weight, anticipation, and more.
• We’ll also work through key principles of composition such as balance, contrast, and emphasis, among others.

Advanced Animation and Effects

• We’ll take a deep dive into advanced animation techniques and the text animator.
• We’ll also introduce you to various eff­ects and how to make your own transitions and apply them to animations you’ll create.

Audio and Finalising Your Animations

• Audio is essential in adding momentum and emotion to animation.
• We’ll cover how to find copyright-free soundtracks and sound eff­ects, import audio into the timeline, and mix audio and sound e­ffects with fading, leveling, and trimming.
• You will also learn about other codecs that you can use to render animations for diff­erent purposes.

The final stretch of the course will give you the opportunity to create one final video where you demonstrate the skills you have acquired throughout the course.