Level up your motion design skills by mastering animation curves in the graph editor.

Learn animation fundamentals, how to analyze motion, and how to read and manipulate the graph editor to create more realistic, interesting, and professional looking animations.

The graph editor can feel like an intimidating math tool sandwiched in design software, but avoiding it is the biggest mistake that holds beginning motion designers back.

While you intuitively know a lot about math and physics–likely all you need for animation–just by living in this world, you just need to learn how to apply that to your animations. That’s what this class is for.

Achieving realistic motion is the focus of this class, but when you understand how to control the motion of your animations, you can push the boundaries for a dramatic or cartoony effect, that’s playful and full of personality.

We’ll talk through definitions to give you the vocab to communicate with other motion designers. And, you’ll put these concepts into practice with a fun exercise and class project.

While this class uses Adobe After Effects, the knowledge you'll gain can be applied to any form of animation, whether it uses different software or is hand-drawn.

What you’ll learn:

Animation fundamentals including, timing, spacing, temporal and spatial interpolation, and different kinds of keyframes
How to adjust the motion path of an animation
How to read the value and speed graphs within the graph editor to understand what they tell you about the spacing of an animation
How to adjust the value and speed graphs in the graph editor for more realistic animations
The differences between the value and speed graphs and when one is better to use than the other
How to think about motion like an amateur physicist and professional motion designer
How to create smooth, abstract animations (i.e. not driven by physics)
Pro tips for working in the graph editor
When to use time-saving plugins to adjust animation curves

Who this class is for:

This class is for you if you’re comfortable with the basics of setting keyframes to create animations in Adobe After Effects. While many of the concepts discussed in this class apply to animation in general, I’ll be using After Effects to demonstrate them and complete the class project.

What you should know before taking this class:

Adobe After Effects basics like creating compositions, setting keyframes, rendering, etc.
How to connect (parent) layers and properties
How to apply an effect to a layer

New to animation in After Effects? Check out my beginner classes first:

Bonus: Learn exactly how I animated the line art flowers discussed in video #21.

After this class, check out my other classes:

Find me online:

Mark Piper

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