Overview

A step-by-step tutorial that will walk beginners through the main features of After Effects.

Some like to learn a new program by studying the manual first; some prefer to jump right in and start using it. This chapter has been created for the latter crowd. It consists of a step-by-step tutorial that will give you a quick tour of the After Effects interface and many of its core features.

We designed this tutorial to give you an overview of how you might put together a project in After Effects, teaching you what you need to know as we go. As we will be covering a lot of ground, we're going to be giving relatively brief instructions. Don't worry that you're missing something; the remainder of this book is dedicated to the details, options, shortcuts, and inner workings of everything you will be doing here, and more.

Play the movie DarkMotives.mov to see what you'll be creating in this tutorial.

The Tasks

You will be creating an opening title sequence for a mythical detective show with forensic overtones called Dark Motives. To familiarize yourself with the various scenes, play the finished movie, DarkMotives.mov you'll find it in the Chapter Example Projects>01-Example Project folder.

Each Part will focus on a different section of the opening, which is then assembled into the finished piece. By taking this modular approach, you don't have to build the sections in the order they appear in the final, and you can...