It’s 4:37 a.m. and your project is almost finished. You run a full-resolution rendering out to video for final review, and there it is – your live-action source footage is stuttering, the moving text looks blurry, and the motion tracked effects are not staying aligned to their targets.

I’ve been there plenty of times: it’s really late (or early depending on how you think about it), I’m tired, and my project just sucks. All because I failed to properly set one little option. And now all I have to do is figure out what option it was that I overlooked.

Even with all the excellent on-line help resources available, often I just wanted to keep a simple reference at hand to flip through, guiding me toward the resolution of my problem. That was the impetus of this book – an easy-to-follow, sufficiently detailed, cheat-sheet to get me back up and running, and back to bed.

For Beginners with Experience

This Easy Guide is not intended to teach the complete animation neophyte the basics of film and video functions and techniques – it is aimed at the user who understands the basic concepts of video production and operation. It’s meant for editors, broadcast graphic artists, 3D animators – the people who already are exposed to everyday motion graphics or animation for video but have not had any or enough hands-on exposure to After Effects. It’s for people who both want and need to use After Effects.

Though there are countless useful features in After Effects I wished I could have covered in more detail (or included at all), I had to keep the scope narrow enough to keep it an Easy Guide. Inside I’ve discussed what I and some other advanced After Effects designers feel are the critical features for day-in and day-out broadcast and animation production: the fundamental aspects that make us better artists as well as make us money.

Author Polishing Forehead

This is Not a Windows Only Book

I have chosen to use the Windows-OS interface for this book because it’s the primary Operating System I use for After Effects and for my 3D animation programs. There is no insidious reason or snub intended by my using Windows screen grabs.

If you are a Mac-OS user, as you progress through the book all screenshots should be fairly representative of what you’ll see on your monitors, but with different colors, fonts, and frames. The only change you’ll need to keep in mind as you read is the Keyboard Shortcut Keystroke differences:

•   Windows-OS ‘Alt’ = Mac-OS ‘Option’

•   Windows-OS ‘Control’ = Mac-OS ‘Command’.

For most instances, these simple substitutions should suffice.

Be Not Intimidated

At first click After Effects may look intimidating, but users quickly become drawn in to its web of creative tools. Soon, you can’t live without it and find yourself unaware of the hours you spend designing cool new projects to one-up your nearest competitor. But most people simply find it’s fun to use – and that’s reason enough to know it.

This is not your single function book where each feature is discussed in detail one after another – the overall style of the Focal Easy Guide for After Effects is more practical versus theoretical. I’ll introduce the key settings to ensure your work looks right. By knowing in advance the technical nuances of After Effects, you’ll be less likely to run into some of the more common stumbling blocks that frustrate novice (and many intermediate) designers. You’ll discover the interface and key functions used within the production workspace. Then you’ll progress to building simple compositions where critical daily features are explained. Finally, you’ll move into the advanced feature-set of After Effects. As you progress through each chapter and section you should grasp an ever-increasing array of tools and capabilities. Hopefully you’ll learn enough to expand upon this book’s lessons to grow beyond what is provided herein.

So read on and find out why After Effects is so compelling and discover a program that will well and truly change your life.