BONUS STYLE DIFFICULTY LEVEL

TUTORIAL STEP-BY-STEP EASY

1 Getting Animated
A tutorial for those just starting out, teaching importing, managing layers,
and animation of the basic transform properties.

I f you’re relatively new to animating in After Effects, this tutorial is for

you. In it, we will set up a project, import several different types of
footage items, and build a composition using a number of layers.These
layers will have their Scale, Opacity, and Position properties animated,
and will be arranged in time to synchronize to a soundtrack.

Concepts
covered in:
Chapter 2:
previewing audio, RAM Previews
Chapter 3:
keyframing, animating position,
Easy Ease
Chapter 4:
animating scale & opacity
Chapter 6:
managing layers
Chapter 7:
trimming layers, slip editing
Chapter 8:
time-stretching
Chapter 21 (optional):
applying effects
Trail Head Chapter 25:
In addition to using a variety of animation moves, Getting Animated is a importing footage items
good workout for importing various types of footage,including layered Effects Used:
Illustrator files and other After Effects projects. We’ll animate stills to Hue & Saturation (optional)
make them blend in with moving footage, look at an already-timed-out

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 Getting Animated // BT1
audio track for hints on timing, and take advantage of Hold
keyframes to give us jumpy animation moves. About That E
The rotating “e” used in this
open
tutorial was rendered in the
-
3D program Electric Image
GettingAnimated.mov and play it.
(www.electricimage.com).
.
The letter was created in
Preparing the Ingredients Adobe Illustrator using the
font Futura Book, converted
to outlines, and saved as an
EPS file. It was then opened
inside Electric Image using
Zaxwerks 3D Invigorator
(www.zaxwerks.com) –
a great tool that can take an
EPS file and apply any one
of a variety of bevels and
sweeps to create 3D models.

The “e” was then textured

using the aFraktal shader from
Triple D Tools (www.tripled-
tools.com), using a preset
created by Mark Lewno.
It was rendered with an alpha
channel – so you could place
another layer behind it and
Step 3: We’ve done a little bit of work for you ahead of time, still see it through the letter.
in that we’ve selected a piece of music,and “spotted”interesting

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 Getting Animated // BT1
points in the music to time our animation to.This has
been saved off in its own project, inside the same
folder as this tutorial. Select File>Import>File, locate
the Project named BT1_musicspotted.aep, and
click on OK. A folder will be created in your project
with the same name. Twirl it open as well; it will
include a comp called BT1 music spotted, and an
audio file named CM_Downshift.mov (created by
co-author Chris Meyer, including among other ele-
ments percussion from the Spectrasonics Liquid
Grooves CD and guitars from Q-Up Arts’ Heavy
Guitar Library).

ore.

Step 4: Double-click your renamed comp to open it.

It will contain our audio file, with a series of layer
markers and comments already added noting where beats land and Your Project window half way
sections of the music change. If you cannot see the audio waveform at through Step 3: The four footage
items you manually imported, and
this point, select the audio layer and type LL (two L’s in quick succes- a folder holding the composition
sion). Note how certain peaks in it line up with our markers. You can you imported with our music in it.
preview the comp by RAM Previewing (or just the audio by pressing
the period on the keypad). Watch as the time marker moves through
these layer markers and audio peaks, and get a feel for the music.

Once you’re satisfied you have an idea about how our soundtrack is We’ve pre-spotted important
structured, twirl up the Waveform display – it slows down screen hit points in the soundtrack for
you, and placed layer markers
redraws considerably. Zoom in a little on the Timeline window to make to give us reference points on
it easier to place these keyframes more precisely; the = and – keys where we might want to place
along the top row of your keyboard are the zoom in time shortcuts. our keyframes later.

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Popping Scale
Step 5: Press Home to return the time marker to the beginning of the
comp (time 00:00). Twirl open your Sources folder, select the footage
item CM_PlanetE_loop, and type Command+/ (Control+/) to add it Snap Draggin’
to your comp, automatically centered and starting at the current time. Remember you can hold
You can scrub around the Timeline window by dragging the blue time down the Shift key while
marker; the Comp window will update to show how the “e”rotates over dragging to make the time
marker (and almost everything
time.This will provide the background for our intro. else moveable in the Timeline
window) snap to items such as
Step 6: To emphasize the three percussion hits at the start of our markers, keyframes, and layer in
music,we’re going to make this rotating logo jump out at us in time with and out points.
these hits. Return the time marker to the beginning of the comp.
With CM_PlanetE_loop selected,

type S to reveal its Scale parameter.

Click on the stopwatch icon to the left of the word Scale in the Timeline
window; this enables animation and sets the first keyframe at the
current time and value.
Since we want our letter to jump, we will use Hold keyframes.
Make sure this first Scale keyframe is selected (it will be high-
lighted), and then select Animation>Toggle Hold Keyframe.
Then click on either the X or Y Scale parameter in the Timeline
window to highlight it, type in “30”, and hit Return.This will enter a value For the first keyframe, click on the
of 30% for both X and Y. Press Shift, and drag the time marker until it value for Scale’s X parameter, enter
“30”, and Return (above).Then key-
snaps to the next layer marker on our soundtrack layer – this should be
frame Scale with Hold keyframes
at 00:12 in time. This lines up with our next drum hit. Enter 70% for (below), causing it to jump forward
Scale.Then move to the next layer marker at 00:24, and enter 100%. in time with the music.

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 Getting Animated // BT1
Forward the time marker to the next layer marker, labeled 2 at 02:04
(you may need to zoom in the Timeline to see this).Then hit N to set the
end of the work area here, and perform a RAM preview of your anima-
tion so far by hitting 0 on the numeric keypad.

Flying Up Text
Step 7: For our text, we’ve chosen a quote from
Confucius: “Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees
it.” We have already typeset this as two phrases in
Illustrator, with each word or line of text on its own layer.
For the first half of the saying, we’ve decided to make it
zoom forward over our rotating letter,fading out as it gets
close. And to make it more interesting, we’re going to
make each word in this first phrase zoom up individually.
To do this, we need to get each Illustrator layer in as a
separate layer in After Effects. Use File>Import>File, and
select everythinghas.ai from the
Sources folder. Before you click OK, change the Import
As popup at the bottom of the Import dialog to
Composition, then click OK. A composition plus a folder both named Step 7: To import an Illustrator file
the same as the file will be added to your Project window. Delete the as a composition, don’t forget to
set the Import As popup to
comp (we won’t be needing it), make sure the new folder is in your “Composition” in the Import File
Sources folder, and twirl it open. It contains three footage items: one dialog (above). After you import it,
for each layer of the Illustrator file (and line of text). throw away the resulting comp,
and moves the folder of layers to
Step 8: Line up the time marker with the soundtrack’s layer marker your Sources folder (below).
labeled “2” at 02:04. Select the three Illustrator layers you just imported
and type Command+/ (Control+/) to add them to your comp, then
Command+U (Control+U) to set them to Best Quality. Since Illustrator
art automatically creates an alpha channel, you’ll be able to see the
rotating character behind them in the Comp window.
These layers may not be sorted in the Timeline window in the order
you want them to appear. Hit F2 to deselect them, and in the Timeline
window drag the one that starts with everything to the top, then drag
the one that starts with has underneath it, and then beauty should
be layer 3.

Step 9: We’re going to start each word successively on the next three
drum beats, and want the last one to finish by the time the body of
the music starts at the soundtrack’s layer marker 3 (time 04:08).We also
want each word to be on for the same amount of time.

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 Getting Animated // BT1
Rather than work out the math, since we know the timing we want
for the third layer (start at the third drum beat at 02:28 and end at
04:08, let’s save some time by trimming all three layers to this length,
and then simply offset the starting points for the first two.

Step 10: Go to the third drumbeat at 02:28, select all three layers, and
press [ (left square bracket) to move their in points to this time.
The Long and

Now move to the out point at 04:08 and press Option+] (Alt+]) to Short of it…
trim all three layers to this frame. When you import Photoshop
or Illustrator files as Comps, the

With all text layers still selected, type S, then Shift+T, to reveal their Source Name column displays
Scale and Opacity parameters. Turn on animation for these two prop- the original layer name and the
erties for all three layers by dragging your mouse down across their filename. To rename a layer to
something short and snappy,
stopwatches in the Timeline window.
select it, hit Return, type a new

Re-select these three layers, set the Opacity for one to 0% (the other name, and press Return again.
three will follow).

Step 11: We like to time a lot of our animations to musical durations, Step 10: Using the timing of the
to lock them in better with the soundtrack. From scaling our rotating third text layer (02:28 – 04:08), trim
all three text layers to end at
character earlier, we learned that the initial drum hits are 12 frames 04:08, and set them to 100% Scale
apart – so let’s use this as a first guess for our fade out durations. Back and 0% Opacity. (In Step 12, you’ll
up 12 frames in time – Shift+Page Up to back up 10 frames, then hit the set their starting Opacity and
Page Up key twice to back up 2 more frames – and enter Opacity val- Scale values.)

ues of 100% for our three text layers. If all three text layers are still
selected, you can enter this value for one and the other two will follow.

Step 12: Now go back to the start of this musical phrase (time 02:28),
and enter a nice beginning Scale value for all three text layers. We
thought 40% worked well; you can try that or enter your own value.

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 Getting Animated // BT1
Step 13: Finally, spread these three words out in time. Press F2 to
Deselect All.

Line up the time marker to the layer marker at 02:04 (remember to
press Shift to snap to markers). Select the everything layer, and press
the [ key – it will now jump to start at this new current time.

Line up the time marker with the layer marker at 02:16, select just
the has layer, and hit the [ key.

The beauty layer can stay where it’s at (starting at 02:28). Step 13: Each line of text now has
its own animation, offset to start
Move the time marker to 04:08, and hit N to reset the end of the
with each drum beat already
work area to this point. RAM Preview the result: You should have a marked for the soundtrack along
nice, staggered zoom and fade for each word. the bottom.

When done, twirl up the parameters for each of these layers; we’re
going to need the space in the Timeline window later.
Now that we’ve finished our first group of text, it’s time to tell you
about a little trick we exploited.You may have noticed that as the text
scaled towards you,the top and bottom lines also traveled up and down
the screen, respectively – and you didn’t even have to set any Position
keyframes.This is a side effect of scaling: If an object does not start out

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 Getting Animated // BT1
in the center of the layer, the more you increase its scale, the further
from the center it will seem to travel.Worked great for us here, but this
can be a source of real frustration if you’re trying to carefully balance
Scale and Position. Fortunately, you can control where the “center” is
around which you scale – it’s called the Anchor Point (discussed in
Chapter 5). We’ll be working with this more in Bonus Tutorial 2. But in Quotable
the meantime, we have our own tutorial to finish here… The Confucius quote came from
the Nature Conservancy book
“The Quotable Nature Lover”
Fast Movies & Slow Text (edited by John A. Murray,
Now that we’ve finished our tricky text animation,the rest of this project ISBN 1-55821-942-0).
is relatively simple.

Step 14: Align the comp’s time marker with the soundtrack’s layer
marker named “3 bass” at 04:08 – that’s where the body of the music
kicks in.Then go to the Sources folder in your project,select the footage
item AB_EstabMixedCuts.mov and type Command+/
(Control+/) to add it to your comp at this time. Grab the
ribbed area of the work area bar (just above the time ruler)
and slide it so that it overlaps the second set of text as well
as part of this new clip. RAM Preview to see how it works.

Step 15: The cut looks good, but the footage moves a bit
slow for the driving pace of the music underneath.This clip
is relatively long – 10 seconds compared to 16 seconds for
our entire composition – so let’s see if we can get away with
speeding it up.
Make sure AB_EstabMixedCuts is selected in the Timeline
window, and then select Layer>Time Stretch. Enter a Stretch
Factor of 50% (stretches smaller than 100% speed up play- To speed up the playback of a clip,
back), and make sure the Hold In Place option Layer In-point you need to enter a “stretch” value
smaller than 100%.
is selected, so we won’t lose our timing for the beginning of
this clip. Click on OK (or hit Return), and preview again to see
if you like the change; it looks like an improvement to us.

Step 16: Let’s not forget the second phrase of text! This
time, we’re going to bring it on and zoom it up as one unit,
so we don’t need to bring it in as separate layers. Select your
Sources folder in the Project window, type Command+I
(Control+I), select noteveryone.ai, and hit Import (Open).
When importing a layered Illustrator
You’ll be presented with another dialog box to choose a layer; leave at
file, you have the choice of import-
its default: Merged Layers. Now all three lines of text in this file will be ing just one layer, or all layers
merged into one footage item. merged into one footage item.

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 Getting Animated // BT1
Step 17: Place the time marker back to 04:08 – the start of this section
of music (and our AB_EstabMixedCuts footage) – and type Command+/
(Control+/). Type
S followed by Shift+T to reveal its Scale and Opacity para-
meters. Enable keyframe animation for both of these. Enter the same
Scale value as you used for the individual words (40%).

Step 18: We’re going to keep this group of text on screen longer (par-
tially because there’s more words to read – five versus three, plus the
attribution to Socrates), so a more languid animation pace is probably
called for. As part of this, we’re going to fade the text on.
Set the Opacity for this layer to 0% at its start.Then notice that we’ve
placed another layer marker on our soundtrack at 04:24, just past the
“3 bass”marker – this is for the next major beat in the music. Locate the
time marker on top of it by holding Shift as you get near it, and set the
Opacity for noteveryone.ai to 100% – this will be our fade up timing.
A new keyframe will be created automatically. Adjust your work area to
cover this new animation, and RAM Preview
if you like.
That’s the start of our text animation; how
and where are we going to end it? First, we
need to decide how long these layers are
going to be on screen.

Step 18: We have our first main footage item

in place, and have started animating our text
over it. Footage courtesy Artbeats/
Establishments Mixed Cuts.

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 Getting Animated // BT1

Pacing & Panning

Counting the layer markers attached to our soundtrack, we see we
have four sections between the start of our AB_EstabMixedCuts
footage above (at marker 3), and marker 7 where the driving portion
of the music ends.So let’s divide those four sections up evenly between
our two main clips.

Step 19: Line up the time marker with the soundtrack’s layer marker 5
(at 08:16), select CI_LoggingTrucks in your Sources folder, hit
Command+/ (Control+/) to add it to your comp,and then Command+Q
(Control+Q) to set it to Best Quality.We picked this image as a juxtaposi-
tion to the nice pan around the trees before it.If you like,adjust your work
area bar to cover the transition between these two cuts,and RAM Preview.

Step 20: Still images, such as CI_LoggingTrucks, can be a bit of a let-

down after seeing moving footage. Fortunately, this image is larger in
size than our composition, which means we have the option of pan-
ning it inside the Comp window to give it some life.

Steps 20 & 21: To give some action

We want to give the impression of the trucks coming down the road, to our still photo, we animated its
so we’re going to animate this photo’s Position. First, position the layer position to have the trucks travel
down the frame. You can see the
so that the trucks are roughly centered in the Comp window, and
Position path drawn here in the
reduce its Scale until you can see all three trucks comfortably.With this Comp window. Logging trucks
layer selected, hold down the Option (Alt) key and use the = and – keys photo © Corbis Images.

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 Getting Animated // BT1
on the numeric keypad to adjust the Scale in increments of 1%; add the
Shift key to go increments of 10%. Another approach is to make sure
the layer is selected, type S to reveal its Scale value in the Timeline win-
dow, and click and scrub this value directly while watching the Comp
window. A Scale of about 70% seems pretty good to us.
Drag the photo around the Comp window to get a good initial fram-
ing, with maybe just two of the trucks visible and shifted left. Hit P to
twirl down Position, and enable keyframing at this time (08:16).

Step 21: Line up the time marker with the soundtrack’s layer marker
7 (at 12:24), adjust the Position of CI_LoggingTrucks in the Comp
window to taste, pulling the trucks down and to the right so they seem
to be travelling down the road. Be careful not to drag the photo so far
that you start to uncover part of the comp’s background. You might
need to increase your Scale slightly from your first guess to cover for a
larger movement. While the time marker is at this second keyframe,
trim the end of this layer by typing Option+] (Alt+]).

Set the work area to cover your move,so you can preview it.To set your Step 21: We’ve panned the
work area precisely, hit N while at this second keyframe to set the work Logging Trucks layer using two
Position keyframes, and trimmed it
area’s end point,then drag the beginning of the work area to somewhere to end at 12:24. Set the work area
during the AB_EstabMixedCuts shot, so you can preview the transi- to cover this clip and a bit from the
tion between them. RAM Preview. layer before, and RAM Preview.

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 Getting Animated // BT1
Step 22: It’s a matter of taste at this point, but we personally find the
transition between the two a little abrupt, especially since each one
lasts over not one, but two measures of the music – you could begin to
wonder why there isn’t a hard cut on every downbeat. So let’s soften
this transition.
Go to soundtrack marker 5 (08:16).With CI_LoggingTrucks still select-
ed, type Shift+T to twirl down its Opacity parameter, and enable key-
framing for Opacity.Set its value to 0%,since we’ll be fading this layer up.
You’ll notice we already placed another layer marker on our sound-
track one beat after marker 5; let’s use that for our fade duration. Line
up the time marker with this layer marker (at 09:02), and enter an
Opacity value of 100% for the CI_LoggingTrucks layer. RAM Preview,
and tweak the timing of the second keyframe if you please – just make
sure you don’t place it past the end of the AB_EstabMixedCuts layer;
otherwise, there will be nothing to crossfade from.

Step 23: Time to tie up loose ends. Locate the time marker to the
place where your second Opacity keyframe for CI_LoggingTrucks
ended up. We want to maximize the zoom up for the text, so enter a
Scale value of 100% for the noteveryone.ai layer at this point in time,
just as this layer disappears.Then select both the noteveryone.ai and
AB_EstabMixedCuts layers, and type Option+] (Alt+]) to trim their out
points. Keeping layers trimmed like this prevents them from acciden-
tally appearing on screen later when we don’t want them, and also can
save rendering time.

Step 23: We’ve edited our two main footage items, with a cross dissolve at their transition.
We’ve also trimmed any layers not to run past when we need them.

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 Getting Animated // BT1

A Snappy Ending
Step 24: Time for our grand finale. To be symbolic, we’ve decided to
use a hand in a “halt!” pose immediately after the scene with the log-
ging trucks, timed with when the music suddenly ends. Locate to the
soundtrack’s layer marker 7 at time 12:24, select the footage item
DV_TheBody_hand in your Sources folder, and hit Command+/
(Control+/) .Set the work area to
extend to the end of the comp, and RAM Preview.
Step 25: Same problem as with the logging trucks before: A still
image can be boring – so let’s animate it. The music ends with three
punctuating drum hits; let’s have the hand strike three different
poses on those hits, echoing the jumping animation of the “e” at the
start of our project.
With the layer DV_TheBody_hand selected, type P followed by
Shift+S to reveal its Position and Scale parameters. Enable keyframing Zoomin’ in Time
for both. Select both keyframes, and then select Animation>Toggle Remember you can press the =
key (on the keyboard, not the
Hold Keyframe. This will make the action jump between keyframes,
keypad) to zoom into the
rather than smoothly interpolate. Timeline and see more detail.
For this first keyframe, reduce the Scale to make the hand nearly as Press – to zoom back out.
small as you can while still covering the Comp window, and shift its
Position to some point you like.Then move to the second ending drum
hit at 13:07, and scale it up a little from there, stopping short of 100%.
To make it appear as if the other hand has come up (the left hand,
instead of the right), mirror it horizontally: Click on chainlink icon To mirror a layer horizontally, give
it a negative Width, while keeping
(Aspect Ratio Lock) next to Scale in the Timeline window, and put a
its Height positive. You must first
minus sign in front of the first Scale parameter (X Scale).This will swap disable the Aspect Ratio Lock
the left and right sides, and flip horizontally.Adjust the Position to taste. switch (circled in red) to do this.

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 Getting Animated // BT1

Now move to the third ending drum punctuation at 13:18 in the Three different “poses” for our
timeline. Click on the X Scale value, type “100”, hit Tab to move to the Y hand, using Hold keyframes for
Scale and Position.
Scale value, type “100”again, and hit Enter, flipping the hand back to its
original pose. Position again to taste. RAM Preview your results, going
back and tweaking the positions and scales if you like.

Step 26: To finish off our composition, we just need a simple fadeout.
We’ve decided to time it to start with the very last “pop” in the sound-
track. So locate to this layer marker (14:12), make sure the layer
DV_TheBody_hand is still selected, and type Shift+T to add Opacity
to the twirl-down list. Enable keyframing; that will place a keyframe at
100% Opacity at this point in time.Then go to the end of the comp (hit
the End key), and set the hand’s Opacity to 0%. Double-click the ribbed
section of the work area bar to reset it to cover the entire comp, RAM
Preview, and pat yourself on the back for a job well done!

The Timeline window for the finished composition. Double-clicking on the ribbed center of the work area bar
(circled in red) will expand the work area to fill the entire length of your comp.

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Refinements
Although this was a fairly entry-level animation, there are always ways to refine your work
further. If you already have some experience using After Effects, or want to revisit this
tutorial after your skills have improved, here’s a few suggestions for tweaks to explore.
Several are already incorporated into our BT1-GettingFinal.aep project,if you want to see
what we ended up with.

To help lift the text off their respective background images, add Effect>Perspective>
Drop Shadow to these layers.

You can enable Motion Blur (Chapter 9) for all the type and animating still layers, to fur-
ther smooth their motion.

If you have the Production Bundle, you can make the type zoom evenly, rather than
appear to slow down as it gets closer. Select the Scale keyframes for each of the text lay-
ers, and apply Animation>Keyframe Assistant>Exponential Scale. If you don’t have the
Production Bundle, select the first Scale keyframe for noteveryone.ai and apply
Animation>Keyframe Assistant>Easy Ease Out.

The pan in the footage AB_EstabMixedCuts picks up speed from a stationary position.
Some might find this distracting. Select this layer, open Layer>Time Stretch, and change
the stretch factor to something like 67%.Go to the time of your second Opacity keyframe
for CI_LoggingTrucks, re-select AB_EstabMixedCuts, and hit Option+] (Alt+]) to retrim
it.Then press I to move to this layer’s in point. Move your cursor carefully to the blank area
at the end of the layer bar for AB_EstabMixedCuts until it turns into a two-headed arrow,
and drag this section to the left, watching the Comp window. This is a “slip edit” which
changes what section of the underlying footage clip you are using, without changing
your edit points in the comp (this technique is discussed in more detail in Chapter 7).
Slip this clip until the pan has clearly started by time 04:08.

A better motion control camera move on the CI_LoggingTrucks footage would

include a zoom and a pan. To do that, you will need to animate Scale and Anchor Point,
in place of animating Position.This technique is demonstrated in Bonus Tutorial 2.

The still image DV_TheBody_hand is a little more turquoise in color than the footage
before it, resulting in a slight mismatch in tones. Add Effect>Adjust>Hue/Saturation to it,
and tweak the Hue parameter to make it more green; reducing its saturation helps too.

Perhaps you felt just our symbolic “stop!” hand was too vague – come up with some text
of your own (we used the font Adobe Bernhard Modern), and animate it over the end to
finish off the thought. After all, the point of this book is not to teach you to paint by num-
bers; it’s to teach you how to paint, so you can create your own motion graphics.

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