Learning Adobe After Effects

My advanced video editing class had the opportunity for a guest speaker with real world experience to come to our class and talk to us about how he got to where he is today. His name is Jack Hamilton, and he worked on the graphics for Scrabble from last year. His presentation talked a lot about how a workflow is created and Adobe's program called After Effects.

I had been curious about After Effects, but never really had the opportunity to get the program. The chance arose when I got a copy of CS3 Production Premium through my work. I had played around with it, but I had no idea as to how to manipulate everything and work the program correctly.

At the end of his discussion, he provided us to some resources to start learning the program. Videocopilot offers basic and advanced tutorials for every person to learn After Effects. It's also free for the basic training and a good chunk of the advanced. More techniques are covered in DVD's that they sell. I started with the basics and was able to pick up on a lot of features right away. I started watching the videos at 8pm or so, when I decided to shut down the program it was just a few minutes shy of 5am. I was blown away with everything the program has had to offer.

I'm really glad that there was a good tutorial out there for AE. It always seemed like it was a cool program that could accomplish a lot of cool things. I've had to lay back on the videos in the interest of schoolwork, but I plan to watch and learn more as I have the time.