Transcripts
1. Intro: Unlock the full potential
of your creativity and learn how to tell a better story with
motion graphics. Hi, I'm Valerie and I'm super
excited to tell you about my most advanced
course yet on how to create viral animations
for social media. To be honest, the main goal
of this course is not to teach you how to create a trendy animations
for social media. My main goal is to show
you the steps on how to deal with complex animation
projects based on the script. Because trends are come and go, but the steps you will learn in this course will stay forever. By practicing these steps, you will be able to apply them to your own
future projects. Even the tough ones
like explainer videos. So by the end of the course, you will learn how to come
up with creative ideas. And you'll gain the
confidence to deal with complex animation projects
to tell a better story. We will start by learning how to analyze the script you
get from the client. And if your client
doesn't have a script, I'm going to teach you how to create one from
scratch using AI. After dealing with the script, I will show you my method on how to come up with
interesting visuals, how to get inspiration, and how to search for
relevant references. You are also going to learn how to make a storyboard
that will guide you throughout the
process and then we'll design the necessary
scenes and illustrated. In addition, I'll
show you how to generate a high quality
voiceover using AI so you can start animating your project in the most
efficient way possible. Once we have that,
we'll dive into after effects and
start animating. I'll show you all my tricks
for timing the animation to a voice over and making smooth transition
between the scenes. Moreover, you will learn
how to create captions, whether by using AI platforms or creating them from
scratch in after effects. Finally, we'll improve
the overall look with basic effects and even add some sound effects before
rendering the final piece. So get ready to have
all your questions answered and take a step further in your motion
design journey.
2. 14 Steps to deliver the perfect project: Welcome, and thank you
for joining my course. Let's start by understanding
the importance of following the steps when working on animation projects
with a script. In this course, our focus
will be on creating trendy, minimalistic motivational
motion graphics video for social media. However, it is important
to understand that these steps are relevant to every project that
involves a script, including an explainer video. Essentially, by
practicing these steps on this particular
animation style, you will be able to apply them to all your
future projects. The most important
thing that you need to remember while
working on a project with a script is that
it's very important to follow the steps
in the right order to make things run smoothly. Don't jump ahead to
the final stages before finishing
the initial steps. For example, don't work on
the animation before marking the scenes duration
on your timeline while hearing the voice over. If you start animating without knowing where
each scene ends, you'll end up adjusting key
frames and timing later on, which takes a lot
of time and effort. Another example is that
you should avoid adding too many effects at the start
of the animation phase, as it will slow down your project and make it
difficult to work on. There are a lot of
other examples, and we will cover all
of them in the course. Pay attention to
the steps and try to stick to them as
much as possible. In the following lessons, we will cover each
step in depth. I hope you are ready for this amazing
learning experience. So let's get started.
3. Useful tricks before starting the project: Welcome back. In this part, I'll show you my process
for working on a script and deciding what visuals to show according to the script. First, when you get the script, read it a few times to
deeply understand it. Next, I like to split
it into scenes. Usually you'll know
when a scene ends by looking for a comma or a
period in the sentences. But before we get into that, I like to add a horizontal
line to separate the script from my thoughts.
Let's do it together. Great, now let's start
to split the script. First, let's select
the first sentence, copy it, and paste
it below the line. Continue copying the rest
of the text up to the sign. Keep doing this until we
reach the end of the script. This helps us get
a clear vision of how many scenes this
animation will consist of. I found this method very useful in cases where
I don't know what to do and when I don't have ideas to create the animation
for the script. Awesome, we are done
with the first part. Now we need to highlight the important or interesting
keywords in each scene. This will help us come up
with relevant visuals later. In the first line, we
have the word key, which I find interesting and important for
this text line. Plus I know I can come up with an interesting visual for this word in the
animation phase. Next, we have personal growth, which are crucial
words in this line because they're the main
topic of the sentence. Moving on, we have goals, which is the main topic in this text line,
that is the scene. Next, we can mark organized, then we mark the word strong. And things get tough because these are the key
words in this text line. Moving on, here, we can
mark a better person. Now in this text line, we see the word goals again, but this time it's about
reaching your goals, which can be shown differently
than the first mention. Let's highlight
this word here too. All right, finally,
in the last scene, the main topic here is that being disciplined will
make you life happier. Which means that the word happier is very
important in this scene. It's the keyword
in this text line. Great. Now, after we've highlighted the keywords
for each scene, we can start thinking about visuals according to
these key topics. At this stage, I love to find references
across the Internet. Let me show you what I mean. For example, we can head over
to the free Pick website. Now we can take our
important words that we highlighted and find some
good visual references. Let's start with finding some
visuals for the word Key. Note that you might see
different options than mine, because these
websites are always updated and new designs
are uploaded every day. But don't worry, you can find the link for my final
docs document in the PDF file called
Links found in the main folder for the course
you downloaded earlier. Anyway, as you may understand, there are many ways
to show a key. So you need to see
different options and choose what
you love the most. Usually, I go over the first five pages
and decide to pick one. There it is. Since I want my design to be
very minimalistic, I will take a screenshot
of this design for inspiration in the
design stage later on. Now I'll copy the screenshot and paste it below
the first text line. Awesome. Now let's move on
to the next marked word. Sometimes to get
different results, you can use the filter option and ask free pick to show you only vector designs which are designs created
an illustrator. Let's see if we can find
something interesting here. If I can't find
something I like here, let's see what's under
the icons category. Our goal is to find some
visuals that can give us an idea of how to represent personal growth in
an interesting way. Sometimes you won't
find what you need on one stock website,
like therefore, I love to go to Shutterstock
as well and search for the same thing there to see if I find some more
interesting visuals. All right, here I can see some more interesting
options that fit my minimalist visual look. For example, I love this interpretation
of personal growth. Let's take a snapshot of this design and paste
it in our document. By the way, we see this yellow color because of this text that we
highlighted earlier. Anyway, I'll scale this
up and let's move on. Let's copy the next marked word and search for nice
visual references. I will continue to
use shutterstock for this word as well as
for the previous one. I can see here
some nice options, but I love the most, this one. It's simple and looks similar
to our previous references. So I'll take a quick snip of it and paste it
into our document. Awesome, let's move on to the next keyword
that we marked. I'll continue to search
for it on Shutterstock. I love this design.
It seems like it can fit our general design
look that we're aiming for. I will take a snip
of the two options because they both seem
like a nice choice. All right, let's paste it under this text line and move
on to the next word. Let's see what visuals
we can get for the word. By watching others design for your keywords can give you a new way of thinking
about these words. Or even inspire you to recreate some design
in your own way. So feel free to go over this
process when you feel stuck. Anyway, all the options here are boring and not
visually interesting. Let's try to find
something on Prepic. Let's see what we can get under the vectors category first. Remember, our goal is to find some visually and conceptually
interesting designs rather than straightforward
visuals like we see here, such as flexing hands or
bodybuilders characters. Not all of your video
should be like that. Sometimes, like in
our first scene, we can use a
straightforward visual, like we use the key design. But to get the
audience impressed, it's better to use both straightforward and visually
interesting designs. For example, this design may not fit visually
to our project. But we can get a nice
idea interpretation of the strong personality, like in this design, when a strong person is helping
and lifting the weakest one. Sometimes some designs can
bring you a general idea and a new way of thinking to show your audience what the
word strong means. Anyway, let's continue
searching for more references. If we do not find
something better, we will use this one. Let's try to see what we
got in the icons category. All right, now I see
these icons which remind me of the lifting gesture that I saw in the
previous design. Actually, I love this idea
of an uplifting motion. Let's take a snip of this one and paste it
into our document. Now as you can see, a new page was created
automatically. Since we got to the end of
the first page to fix it, you can go to the File menu. Click on Page Set Up, and make your document pageless. Great. And now we can
scale this down a bit and continue finding references for the rest of
the marked words. Let's try to find something interesting for
things get tough, I will start to search for
some ideas in free pick. First we can reset the
filter to see more results. I don't see something
interesting here. Let's try Shutterstock here. And either in these situations, we can go back to basics and search for some
inspiration on Google. Let's paste the keywords
here and go to images. I already can see some nice
visuals here before deciding, let's see some more results. All right, I can't find
something interesting, so let's go back to the
reference at the top. I will snip this visual and paste it with the rest
of my references. Awesome, let's move on and see what we can find
for a better person. Let's use free
pick for this one. Let's see what we
will get in icons. I love this option, not
because of the visual design, it's because of
the uplifting idea like someone starts small
and goes up and gets bigger. I think it explains very well the concept of
being a better person, like a bigger
version of yourself. But before deciding, let me check for more
options on Google. All right, can't find
something interesting here. So let's go back
to free pick and take a snip of the
icon we found. Let me just scale this down a bit and let's move
on to the next one. In this one we get
the word goals again, but this time it's
about reaching goals, not just striving for them. Let's copy these two words and find some relevant visuals. Can't find something
interesting. Let's try Shutterstock. This one looks interesting. Let's see if we can
find a better option. I love this interpretation of
flying towards your goals. We can enter this design and scroll down to see
similar options. I love this visual concept, so I'll take a snapshot of it. Later on, I will think of how to create a better
visual for this scene. One that fits my
minimalistic visual design that I want from my animation. Awesome, so we've reached
the final keyword this time. Instead of copying it, we won't copy this word. We can just write happy in the search bar to
get more results. I think we can show this using a simple smiley face
or just a smile line. I'll snapshot this
minimalistic smiley face and add it to my document. Great, everything looks awesome. Let's just name this
document before moving on, we can call it
discipline mood board or just discipline script. Before moving to
the design stage, I love to check my mood board
once again and see where I can add more references and scenes that need
more visual ideas. For example, in personal growth, I feel like I missed some
visuals for the word personal. Because in this scene, it's very important to
show personal growth, not some company or
institution's growth. Therefore, I will take some time to find another
visual reference. We need to find a visual to
represent the word personal. Let's search it on
shutter stock as well and come back to
free pick if needed. I think I can find some
better results here. For example, I see a very similar design to the word growth that
we picked earlier. But this time it
comes with a person. Like it's growth in his mind
which can fit our scene. I will add this visual to my
document as well. All right. I'll just paste it beside
the references for the first text line
and scale it up a bit. If I go back to
free pick and see some icon designs for this text, I can see that a lot
of times there's an entire person silhouette shown beside the growing graph. Maybe we can use this
information later on as well. Therefore, I'll add this
visual to the document two. All right, let's recheck all the references
one more time. If we're good with the results, we can move on to
the next stage, which is creating
the storyboard. See you in the next one. It's going to be super fun. But before moving on
to the next part, I highly recommend taking a ten minute break to
refresh your brain. You can also do some
light stretches or make yourself a
good cup of water. These all are going to help you concentrate more
for the next part.
4. Script analysis and Moodboard Creation: Welcome back. First up, I'd like you to download the
main folder for our course. We'll use it soon to grab
some assets for our project, but for now, let's set it aside. I want us to learn how to start a project like
this from scratch. The very first step for a new animation project is to create a new folder
on your computer. Let's name this
folder discipline because that's the main theme of the animation we're
going to create. Now let's enter this folder. And now you should create
four more folders inside it. The first one we will call where we'll keep all our
after effects files. The next folder we need is for our designs that will
create for this project. Then let's make
another folder named Assets to store all the
graphic assets we'll use, including files we download
from the Internet, sound effects, and so on. Finally, let's create the
last folder named finals, or we'll save all
our final renders, meaning the finished animations. Now let's go into the Assets
folder and place it here. Now, open the Assets folder from the main course folder
you downloaded from me. Here you can find all
the assets I used to create the final
animation for now, let's just copy these
files right here and paste them into our newly
created assets folder. Awesome, we can close
this folder for now. Now let's see what we got here. Here you can see the script and other files we'll use
throughout the course. For example, in the link file, you can find all the
websites we'll use in this course and
links to lessons from the ultimate beginner's Guide to after effects that I
specially created for beginners who want
to learn in depth about the topics and
functions I'll discuss. Now let's open the script and start working
on our project. When I start working
on projects like this, I like to copy the scripts from the PDF file provided
by the client, then go to Google Docs and paste the script
into a new document. This makes it easier to make
important notes and share the document with the client for any changes or notes
they might need to add. Using Google Docs allows
both me and the client to work on the document
simultaneously online. But what if the
client doesn't have a script and asks if
you can provide one? Don't worry, I've
got you covered. Before we continue
with our project, I want to show you a great way to generate short scripts for these kinds of projects using the free version of ChachiPT. Let's do it together
now, just for practice. First go to Chat GPT and
create a free account. Then you need to tell
Cha GPT what you need, which is to write
the right prompt for it to generate
the best result. Let's enter the Assets
folder and open the GPT file I prepared
for this lesson. Copy this text and paste it
into the cha GPT input field. Now let's talk about how
to interact with chat GPT. First, you want to
specify the profession. In our case, a script
triter specializing in viral social media videos be as specific and
detailed as you can. Then ask it to generate a 100 word text about discipline or any
other topic you need. After inserting all
the information, hit the Generate icon. Now let's wait a
couple of seconds. At this stage, I like
to copy the text and paste it into a new
Google Docs document. Then I go back to ChachiPT and ask it to rewrite it in
a more specific way. Maybe in an optimistic
tone this time. But you can choose
any tone you want. Like serious, dramatic, funny, casual, motivational, and so on. Now I usually ask it
to shorten the text by 50% so I can get a shorter script that fits
into a 22nd time frame. Now copy this text and paste it into the
doc we just created. Now to get perfect results, I usually read the two scripts
and try to combine them. Taking the most interesting
parts from each. I'm looking for the most
interesting words because that way I can create a more
engaging animation later on. These are the exact steps I took to create the
script for our project. Great, and now I
want to show you another way to come up with
good text for your animation. Or at least get
inspired and find a good reference for an
interesting motivational topic. Let's close this file and cha GPT and head over
to a site called Brain. You can find the
link in the PDF file named Links in the
Assets folder. The cool thing about this
website is that you can search for any famous
person alive or dead, and it will show you
all their quotes. For example, I can search
for Salvador Dali's quotes. Now I've got all these
beautiful quotes which I can use to
create an animation or get an idea for a
motivational topic to create a whole new
script based on this quote. All right, let's close
this website and get back to our script
to start working on it. The first thing I do when I receive a script from a client, I check if their request for a 12 to 22nd animation
is feasible. This step is crucial
because if the text requires more time than
the client expects, they need to be informed
as it means more work. Therefore, I copy the text and go to a website
that converts words to time to see
how long it will take for a voice over
actor to read it. If you don't know
what 0.3 minutes is, you can copy this information
and paste it on Google. Then write in seconds. This helps ensure
we don't plan for an animation longer
than 20 seconds, making us ready to
start on the project. After confirming the
animation's duration, we begin visual research. This involves
immersing ourselves in animation similar to
what the client wants. That is, to watch a bunch of similar animation references.
You can find online. It's important to fill your mind with these animations for inspiration and to understand how your final
product should look. Seeing various
references helps us know which videos
perform better and why. The goal is to find visually interesting ways to represent concepts without being too
literal or too abstract. Finding the right
balance for creativity. This approach helps set the visual direction and
enhances the animation's appeal. Because this way you'll
get a good sense of which visual direction to
take your imagination. Plus, when you look
at lots of examples, you can figure out which videos are more successful than others. From my research, I found certain accounts that
really stand out. And then I tried
to understand why. It turns out that animations grabbing more engagement
are those with conceptually interesting
visuals rather than direct illustrations
of what's being said. For instance, instead of showing a flexing arm or a muscular figure when
talking about strength, think of using images that spark the imagination without directly
depicting the narrative. It's way more
captivating to explore abstract visuals for
simple concepts, But it's crucial not
to get too abstract. Finding the right
balance between straightforward and
unique visuals is key. And that's exactly what
we'll dive into next part. See you there. It's
going to be awesome.
5. Storyboard creation: Welcome back. In this part, we need to sketch out all of the scenes we've
outlined in the script. You can use a blank sheet
of paper and a pencil, but I'll do it on my ipad
using an app called Procreate. This lets me share what I'm doing while I
draw the scenes. The key here is not
to get bogged down in details or aim for perfect
accuracy while sketching. Focus on the overall look and
feel of the animation and keep referring
back to the script and our earlier
design references. Let's start with the
first line of the script. First off, draw some
vertical rectangles to represent the resolution
of Instagram reels, Youtube shorts,
or Tiktok videos. Now we can begin sketching the first scene
according to the script. I imagine starting the animation with a large key at the
center of the scene. Then I want the camera to
pull back and we'll see a man's silhouette with the key in the
center of his chest. From the key lines start to fill the man's silhouette
from the inside. I want to show that
discipline is like a key that activates the inner workings
of a person's activities. Next we move on to
showing the goals. We can do this by zooming into the head to see
the goals inside it. This demonstrates that
discipline, which is the key, activates a person's goal
oriented activities within their mind to transition
to the next scene, the person fades away, leaving only the goals, which then split into
three spheres to represent the order in a person's mind when they decide
to be disciplined. Now we need to illustrate that this discipline makes
the person strong. We can use the uplifting
motion idea from our reference making
the three spheres rise one after the other. Now to visually represent that the person becomes strong
when faced with challenges, we can draw a large heavy
rock falling on the person, symbolizing the toughness
mentioned in the script. To show the person
becoming stronger, we can use the
uplifting motion and scaling animation
from our reference. This symbolizes the person's
improvement when they decide to be disciplined
during this motion. The large rock shrinks and
eventually disappears. Now to depict our main
character, the small sphere, achieving its goals, we can use the flying idea
from our reference. Let's create a scene
where the spheres fly through space to reach
the goals illustration. Finally, to wrap things up, we shrink our main character, which triggers the
smile illustration. Let's make it more interesting by only drawing the smile line. Awesome, it looks great. I could only come up
with all these ideas after watching tons of
similar animations online. That's why I emphasized in the previous part how
crucial this stage is. Always fill your mind
with animations in the style you're aiming for
before starting a project. This way, you train your imagination to think in the right way
for your project. Great, now that we
have the storyboard, we can present it to the client and walk them through
the entire story. It's essential to do this
before the animation stage. You avoid dealing with conceptual revisions after
you've started animating. That's why I recommend
not moving on to the animation part until your client approves
the storyboard. All right, let's say
the client approves the animation and we're ready to move on
to the next stage, which is the design
phase for this. We'll use Adobe Illustrator and we'll cover this
in the next part. See you there. It's
going to be super fun.
6. Design in Illustrator: Welcome back. In
the design phase, we're going to create the
elements for our animation in a vector based software
like Adobe Illustrator. Using vector software
means the elements we create will be sharp
and high quality. We can scale them
up without losing any quality during
the animation phase. Before opening Illustrator, I'd like to review
the storyboard again to see if there's
an element I can download from the Internet
to save some time. And which elements
I can create inside after effects during
the animation phase. For instance, in our case, it might be the
man's silhouette. Because the rest of the elements
are simple shape layers. That means that in our case, we'll focus on designing only the first scene
of this storyboard. Because the rest of
the scenes we can create directly and after
effects from scratch. All right, let's head back
to free pick and search for a man's body to see
if there's anything that fits our project To start, we can search for man body. I'll deselect the icons
option and choose vectors. Also selecting free in case you don't have a paid
account on free, pick. Now let's search for some
minimalist silhouettes. Don't rush to download something you see
on the first page, even if you think it
can fit the project. Go over a few pages to ensure there is nothing
better in there. I find this one nice, but there is a lot of
unnecessary objects around. Let's keep searching. Look
at this illustration, guys. It's not minimalistic and I won't use it for
the silhouette. But this illustration
gave me an idea for doing something interesting
in the animation phase. Later on, I'll
explain what I mean. In our storyboard, we drew some lines inside the
man's silhouette. Now after seeing
this illustration, I got an idea to
design these lines as blood veins inside
a man's organism. We can create an animation that references flowing blood
inside a man's body, which fits perfectly with
our script conceptually. Let me take a snip of that pick to use as a reminder
for this idea later on. Sometimes ideas can come
from other designs. Always pay attention to interesting visuals you see while searching on
these websites. Awesome. Now let's go back to free pick and continue searching for the
perfect silhouette. This one looks nice, but there's too much
going on around it. All right, let's
try to search for a man's silhouette and see
if there are better results. There it is. This one
looks pretty simple and realistic at the same
time. Let's use this one. Click on the arrow
here and choose to download it as an EPS file. Now head over to the Assets folder and create
a new folder called freepic. That way, our project folder
stays organized and we can always know
from which website we downloaded this
graphic asset. All right, let's save it and navigate to
the Assets folder. We can close the snipping
tool, there it is. Let's enter the
freepic folder we just created and right click
on this file to open it. In Illustrator, if you get
this pop up, just click yes. Now let's make sure we all see the same panel
arrangement for this. Head over to Window, go to Workspace and choose Automation. Great, now let's create
a new document so we can copy this asset and
start designing our scene. When working on
animation projects, I highly recommend using a
film and video type document. So I'll explain why. For now, let's choose the full HD format and
change it to be vertical. It will transform
this document to the resolution of
the Reals format, which is 1080 in width
and 1920 in height. Now let's name this
document, main scene. Make sure we are using one. Our board, the color mode
is set to RGB and not CMYK. Because we're creating
a document for a digital screen
and not for print. You can leave the PPI
at 72 and hit Create. Now I want to explain why
it's better to work on a film and video type of document while working
on an animation project. If we go to our boards, we will see that there are two
R boards in this document. With the help of this
automatically created art board, we can design our scene in the main art board without being afraid of going out
of its borders. If you save an illustrator file where you designed your scene on a regular document and you got some elements getting
out of the borders, and then you bring this
file into after effects. You will see that
everything placed outside the borders
will be cropped. Unlike working on a film
and video document, which will not crop the elements placed beyond the border
of the main art board. All this, because
this type of document has an unseen buffer
art board inside it. All right. This was
something important to know. I'm sure you got my point. Now let's start designing
our main scene First let's go back to the
Freepic asset and copy this layer into
our new document. Now let's scale this layer by dragging it from
one of the corners. And holding the shift and
the Alt keys on the keyboard for Mac users hold down the
Shift and the option keys. This will scale the layer symmetrically from
all its sides. Finally, we can change the
name of the layer to man body. Great. Now since we need all our elements in the project
to be designed as lines, let's click here so we
can see only the stroke. Next, change the color to white and set the
stroke width to two. After that, let's click here and create a new layer
for the background. To create the background, we can select the
rectangle tool. Click here once and set the dimensions of the rectangle
to fit the document size. Great. Now let's
click here to fill it with a color and change
the color to black. Finally, use the aligned
tool to align it to the center of the canvas
and change the name to BG. Now we can lock this layer and create a new one for
the design of the key. We can go back to
our mood board and see the reference we
found for inspiration. All right, I want to create a very minimalistic key design. First, let's zoom in a bit
to the center of the body. Now, create the first
shape of the key. For this, let's
click and hold on the Rectangle tool and
choose the ellipse tool. Now let's set it to be
only with a stroke. Change the color to white
and the stroke width to two. Now create an ellipse while
holding down the shift key. Awesome. Now I want to teach you something very important when creating projects
based on line design. The important thing in these
kinds of projects is to maintain the same line width for all the elements
in the scene. This will look much
more professional because the general visual
look will remain the same. But now let's say we want
to scale this layer a bit. As you can see, it's stroke
width gets scaled with it. Now it looks very weird compared to the
man's body stroke. We can change the stroke
here back to two. But what if you decided to scale this layer down later on? As you can see, you will need to adjust the
stroke back to 21 more time to prevent the stroke from
changing its width. During the scaling process, we can go to window, scroll down a bit, and
open the transform panel. Now while the
object is selected, make sure to uncheck
these two boxes. Now the stroke width
will remain the same no matter what I'm
doing with this layer. Awesome, Now we can
close this panel. Next, let's make sure to check the constrained function and set the size of this shape to 100, or maybe to 150. Click here to align it
vertically to the scene. Select the selection
tool and lift this layer somewhere around here. Great. Now let's continue
to create the rest of the parts of
the key for this, select the regular pen tool. Now click here. Once, hold down the shift key and
click here once. This will create
a straight line. Now let's go back to
the selection tool. Zoom in a bit, and start to create the final
parts of the key. Select the pen tool
once again and create a small rectangular shape while holding shift the whole time
to make straight lines. Now let's go back to
the selection tool and move this shape to the left using the arrows
on the keyboard. Now let's make this
shape corners rounded. For this, we can select
the direct selection tool, which will open up the corners
function for this shape. And set a tight.
Awesome. Now let's go back to the selection tool and create a copy of this shape. For this hover over the shape, hold down the Alt or the option key and move this
shape up a bit. Let's scale this one down and adjust the position for
both of the shapes. Now select all of them, right click, and
group them together. Now we can move this
shape closer to the ellipse and group all
of these shapes together. Now we can change the name of this layer to key and lock it. Let's set the screen
to fit and move on to creating the lines that should
be inside the character. Let's make it look like
a combination between the line icons and the
inside organism of the man. First, let's create a new layer and lock the man body layer. Now select the pen tool and
turn on your imagination. Let's zoom in a bit and try to create the first line
somewhere around here. Create the first point
here and continue creating the rest of the points while
holding down the shift key. I don't really know
what I'm doing. I'm just trying to draw a line according to
the shape of the hand. All right, now let's go back to the selection tool and
see how that looks. I think we can move
all the points on this side a bit to the left. For this, we need to select the direct selection tool
And select all these points. Now use the arrow keys
to adjust the position. Awesome, that looks great. Now we can select the
pen tool again and create a new line,
something like this. I think that looks super cool. Now let's create another
one between those two. Now let's make a small one here to connect
between the key and the first line. Awesome. I think it's enough lines for
the upper part of the body. Now let's move on to the
stomach part and the legs to move the preview down. Hold down the Spacebar
key and drag the preview. And then continue
to create the line. I don't want the line
to touch the body. I'll select the direct selection tool and move some points. Actually I need to move the
points from the upper area. I'll zoom out a bit and now select all the points
from the left side. Hold shift and select
the rest of the points. Now let's use the left arrow
key to move it to the left. Awesome. Now let's move on and create another line
somewhere around here. That's starting to
look very nice. Now let's create
the goal spheres that should be inside
the character's head. But first let's change
the name of this layer, two lines, and lock it. Now let's create another layer. Zoom in a bit and adjust the preview screen so we can see the head in the center
of our document. Now let's select the ellipse
tool and make sure that the ellipse has a white stroke and the stroke weight
is set to two. Now, create an ellipse while
holding down the shift key. Next, align it to the center. Then let's make sure that the constraint proportions
are checked and set the size of this ellipse
to 150, or maybe 130. That's better. Now let's move this layer down a bit
on second thought. Let's set the size
to 140 awesome. But now as you can see, it looks like the
sphere is not centered. But the truth is that
the sphere is centered. It just looks like this. Because the head of the
silhouette of the man is actually not proportional
from both sides. Let's fix this real quick. First, let's select
the selection tool, lock the sphere layer, and unlock the man body layer. Now to see only this layer, hold down the Alt key
and click on at once, we can turn on the
background layer to see what we are doing better. Now let's select the line. And using the direct
selection tool, select all the points
here and delete them using the delete or
the backspace keys. Great. And now to delete the points in the area
of the head properly, let's select the pen tool and create a new point in
the center of the head. Now using the direct
selection tool, we can delete the last
unnecessary point. Awesome. Now to duplicate
and flip this shape, all we have to do is select the silhouette using
the selection tool, right click on the layer, Go to Transform,
click on Reflect, and choose to flip Vertical. Then instead of
clicking on Okay, we need to click on Copy to get a new duplicate of the line. Finally, let's adjust the
position of this line and make sure it fits
proportionally with the left side. To make it precisely, we can turn on the
sphere layer and move the right side of the man's
body according to the sphere. Looks nice. Now let's head over to the bottom part to see if
everything is okay there. We can use the direct selection tool and adjust the points. Now let's select both
points and join them together so we can fill up this shape later
on if we need to. Just don't forget to connect the points in the area
of the head as well. Great. Finally, let's adjust
the curves of the head by selecting the points and moving down the curve handles
for the two points. Great job. Now let's go back to the selection tool and continue working on the
goals illustration. First, let's select
this shape and copy it using control C.
And now let's paste it in place using
control shift V. Now let's scale down this layer while holding shift and control. Or we can just set
the size here to 100. Great, let's do
it one more time, but this time set
the scale to 60. Finally, let's change the
name of this layer to goals, set the preview to fit, and turn back on the
rest of the layers. Now let's create some lines
in the area of the head. But first, make sure to lock the goal layer and unlock
only the lines layer. Now using the pen tool, create the first line here. Let's align it to the center. Using the align tool. Now create another line in this area. Once we're done
creating all the lines, we need to zoom in and make sure all the lines are not getting crossed with the
rest of the design. To fix this, select the
direct selection tool. Then select the
point you want to adjust and move it
to the right place. Go across all the lines and check their
connection points. Once we're done
adjusting the points, we can select the
selection tool and select all the lines to
round their corners to get a much more
interesting look. Actually, I can see that I
didn't adjust all the points. For example, I see that
in the area of the leg, there are some points
that need to be adjusted. I'll go back to the
direct selection tool and adjust this
point right here. Let me check the hand as well. I see that I got a few
points I can adjust. Let's double check
the upper part, two. All right, everything
looks fine. Now let's go back to the
selection tool and select all the lines elements
now to round the corners. Let's go back to the
direct selection tool and adjust the roundness value. Let's zoom in a bit to see
what we're doing better. Let's set it to 16. Awesome. Once we're
done with that, we can unlock all the layers
and save the project. Note that we don't
need to duplicate the lines elements
to the right side, because we will do
it in after effects after creating the animation
for the left side. All right, now go to
File and click on Save, as you can choose to save
it on your computer, and then navigate to our
main folder of the project. Then enter the design folder
and save this file here. Check the name before
clicking Save Awesome. And with that, we have finished designing the main
scene of this project. At this point, you can
also save this design as a Jpeg file and send it to
the client as a style frame. That is to show the client how the overall look of the
project is going to look like. In our case, we are not
dealing with a client. We will skip this part and move on to create the rest
of the scene and after effects from scratch
since the rest of the scenes don't have complex
elements that are made of. But before that, we need to prepare our project
for animation. We will do that in the next
part, so see you there. It's going to be amazing
and super interesting.
7. Voice over and markers: Welcome back. After designing everything we need
for the project, it's time to dive
into after effects. First thing first, we can
close this window now, so we all can see the
same panel arrangement. Let's click on Default here. Now we're ready to create
our first composition. Let's name this
comp, Master Comp. Since we're creating
a reels format video, we need to change
the resolution to 1080 in width and
1920 in height. Next, set the frame rate to 30 and the duration of
this comp to 30 seconds. Then choose black color for
the preview background and make sure the resolution
is set to full. Awesome. Now let's make sure we
all see the same thing. First, set the preview
screen to fit. Now if you don't see
the black color, click here to turn off the
transparency background. Next, if you see the
numbers in the time line here differently than what
is shown in my timeline, then hover over
the time display. And while holding control, click on the numbers once. This will change the
time line numbers, whether to frames or seconds. In our case, let's set
it to show the seconds. Also, to see the
preview properly, make sure the Cap Slock
key is turned off so you can get rid of this red message
in case you see it now. Finally, make sure your keyboard language
is set to English. The shortcuts we will use during the workflow
will work properly. All right, now it's a great time to save
this project and give it a name to make sure
after effects will start to save it automatically
every few minutes. As you can see right now, the project we are working
on doesn't have a name. The name we gave earlier was
for the first composition. Let's go to File
and click on Save. Now, find the main folder
we created for the project. Enter the AE folder and
save the project Here, make sure to name this
file and hit Save. Great. And now our
project has a name. And we activated the
autosave function. Speaking of the
autosave function, let's use this opportunity
to go to Preferences and check that all your program
settings are set like mine. You can have the best
workflow experience while working in after
effects Mac users. You can enter the
preferences in this way. All right, let's enter General and start to
adjust the settings. Pause the video if you need
more time to check it. In the meantime, I will move on to the rest
of the settings in the disc cache. You can change a different
number than mine. Try to set it to
the highest number your computer will give you. We will talk about what that
is in the next lessons. All right, moving on. Here
is the autosave function. Ensure you set it to save
your project every 5 minutes. As I did this way, even if the program crashes
and you forget to save it, you will be able to
find the latest version of your project to
continue work on. Under the memory settings, you may see a different
number than mine. It's because you may have
less or even more Ram installed on your computer. The most important
thing for you to understand here is
that you need to give more Ram to after effects rather than for
other applications. That way, after effects
will work faster. All you have to do is just
lower this number right here, which will give less Ram to other applications and
more Ram to after effects. Under the audio settings, you may see different names. It's because you have a
different audio device connected to your computer. All
right, moving on. Awesome. So we're done
with the technical stuff. By the way, you don't need to adjust the preferences
every project. This is something
that you do once and the program will remember
your last adjustments. All right, now let's start
working on our project. The first thing we
want to do is to import our design
to after effects. Therefore, let's find
the illustrator file we created earlier and
drag it into our project. Now let's choose to import
it as a composition, since we need all
the layers separated and not flattened into
one footage layer. Next, we will choose layer size, since we want the layer controls to fit the size of the layer and not the size of the
illustrator document. Great. And now we see a new folder with all the layers
separated and a new composition with
the entire scene exactly the way we designed
it in Illustrator. Awesome. That is a
great time to hit control less to save the
project before moving on. Get used to this short cut. Even if we got the autosave
feature activated, it's better to save the
project every while. Because After Effects is a program that can
crash suddenly, no matter if you have an expensive computer
or a cheap one, to avoid unnecessary problems, save the project after
finishing an important step. Now when everything's
ready for animation, the first thing we need
to do before starting to animate the project is to import the voiceover
for the script. It's very important to bring the voice over now because that way we can approximately know how long every
scene should last. That way we'll know when to
transition to the next scene. And it will be much
easier to adjust the timing of the
animation rather than adjust the
timing after creating the entire animation without
listening to the voiceover. If you're providing a
voiceover service or you're working with a good
voiceover actor, that's great. If you don't have one of these, I want to show you
how you can generate a really high quality AI voiceover like you
here right now. This voiceover is generated by the same software I'm about
to show you right now. Get ready, it's going to
be super interesting. The first thing we need is
to find a good AI platform. From my experience, Vdo and Descript are
the best out there. But if you're seeing this course later from the
date I created it, there may be much more advanced platforms than
what I showed you. Anyway, in our case, we will use V O and you will be surprised by
the results at the end. First thing first, you
need to sign in for the free trial and then go
and create a new project. Since we don't have
any file to upload, we can close this window. Now, give this project a name and head over to the
text to speech option. Next, copy the script and
paste it in the text area. Right here, we can delete the unnecessary
lines and spaces. Now make sure the language
is set to English. And now choose a voice over actor that fits the
best for your project. You can test the voice by
clicking on the play icon. Being disciplined is the
key to your personal. There are a lot of
different actors and you can check
them all later on. In our case, I already picked a voice that can fit
our project vibes. Scroll down until you find Eric. Now all we need to do is
click on Generate and let the AI magic do
its work. Awesome. Let's see what we got.
Being disciplined is the key to your
personal growth. It means sticking to your goals, keeping things organized, and being strong when
things get tough. Discipline will help you
become a better person. Reach your goals and
make your life happier. I love it. Now let's click on Done and hit
that Export button. After the file
finishes rendering, click on the download icon and choose to download it
as an MP three file. Now locate our assets folder and create a new folder
name, voice over. Enter this folder and save
the MP three file inside. Now let's go back to our project and go
to the master comp. Finally, bring the
MP three file to the project and drag it
into the master comp. Now let's hear it one more time to see if we need
to adjust something. Being disciplined is the key
to your personal growth. It means sticking to your goals, keeping things organized, and being strong when
things get tough. Discipline will help you
become a better person, Reach your goals and
make your life happier. As you notice, there
is some part where there are large pauses
during the speech. I think we should
get rid of them. For this, we need to find where those pauses are to
see where they are. We can select this
layer and hit the L key twice to see the audio wave
of this MP three file. There it is almost an entire
second without speaking. To fix this, we
can zoom in a bit. And now we need to split
this layer from this point. For this, let's use the
shortcut control shift. Now let's select this layer
and hit the L key twice, once again to see
the audio wave. Now we can crop this
layer from the left side by dragging the edge of it to the point where
the sounds begin. Awesome. Let's do
the same thing here. Great. Now we can close the layers and
adjust their position. Select this layer and
drag it to the left, while holding down
the shift key. That way this layer will be snapped to the end
of the first one. Let's do the same with
this one as well. Great, now it's a good time to save the project.
Let's hit Control. All right, After
adjusting the voice over, we can mark the
points in time where one scene ends and
the other one begins. Soon. Now explain why
it is so important to do this before jumping
into the animation phase. Let's see how we can mark
the times for the scenes. For this, we can create a new adjustment layer
which is a blank layer. Now we can change the
name to markers and use this layer to mark
the points in time where there is a transition
between the scenes. For this, let's hear it once again to see where
the first scene ends. Disciplined is the key
to your personal growth, it means, all right, so the first sentence ends here. Therefore, we will
right click on the adjustment layer and
create a new marker. You can use the
short cut as well. Now let's double
click on the marker. And right here the number two. So we can know that from this point the
second scene starts. If you want, you can create another marker at the beginning of the timeline to mention that the first scene
should start here. All right, let's continue with this process and hear the voice over once again to
find the point in time where the rest of
the scenes start and end. It means sticking to your goals. Let's hear that one more time. To your goals. Great. According
to our storyboard, we know that after
sticking to the goals, we need to start the next scene. Which means we can
mark this point in time as the beginning
of the third scene. Moving on, keeping
things organized and all right, keeping
this organized. This is the end of
the third scene. We should mark this point as the beginning of
the fourth scene. By the way, you can also note to yourself the main
topic of the scene, in addition to writing its
number inside the marker. Anyway, I prefer to stick
only with the numbers. All right, let's move on. And being strong when
things get tough, let's mark the point
in time when he finishes to say
things get tough. Since after this we need
to start the next scene. Discipline will help you
become a better person. Let's mark this point as the beginning of
the sixth scene. And continue hearing
the voice over, reach your goals and make
your life happier. Goals. All right, so when
he says goals, this is our sign to
mark this point. Because the next thing he will say is to make
your life happier. And this is the scene that makes your life after
reaching the goals, person reach your goals
and make your life happen. All right, I think
we are good to go. Now let's cut this layer
from this comp using control X and paste it in the main scene comp we
got from Illustrator. That way we can know now what the duration of the
scenes should last, which makes it much
easier to work and know where to transition
between the scenes. Finally, we can tag this
layer with a neutral color and lock it so it won't interfere with us
during animation. Now I want to teach you
something very important. As you may understand,
this video needs to be posted on
social media platforms. Since every social media has
its own unique UI design, we need to make sure
that we're creating an animation that
fits this UI design. So we can be sure that we're not putting any of the
important stuff into fields where
it will be hidden behind the UI design
of the platform. In our case, let's imagine that this animation needs to be
posted on Instagram reels. Therefore, you need
to make sure you know the safe zone of the UI
design of this platform. That means you need to use safe zone guides every time you work on these
kinds of projects. Luckily for you, I created the ultimate safe zone guide that you can use
in your projects. Let's navigate to our
Assets folder and drag the IG Real Safe zone PNG
file into our project. Now let's drag it
into our composition. Great, now let's
hit the key to open up the opacity of this
layer and set it to 30. Finally, we can
tag this layer in a neutral color and lock it
as well as the markers layer. Once we're done with
that, let's hit control as to save the
project before moving on. Now we're ready to start
animating this project. Since we're working on
the portrait format, that is a vertical type screen, let's adjust the panels
according to that. It will be much easier for us to work and
see what we're doing. First, hover over the gray
area of the composition panel. When you see the mouse cursor changes to the icons of
the two white panels, This is how you can
know that you can drag this panel and
place it somewhere else. Let's select this panel and drag it to the blue
area right here. Now we can shrink
the project panel since we won't use it
in the near future. Then we can enlarge the
layers panel like that. We can shrink this area to see more of the time line area. Finally, let's zoom in on the timeline and start to
animate the first scene. I hope you're ready, because now we're moving to the
most exciting phase, which is to animate
the whole thing. And we will do it in the
next part. See you there. It's going to be awesome. But before moving on
to the next part, I highly recommend taking a ten minute break to
refresh your brain. You can also do some
light stretches or make yourself a
good cup of water. These all are going to help you concentrate more
for the next part.
8. Animating the first two scenes: Welcome back. First up, we're going to animate
the key in the lines, since according to the script, they're the main elements we need to showcase
right off the bat. According to my markers, this animation scene should
last just over 3 seconds. But before we dive
into animating, I highly recommend checking
the script again to make sure the key and animated lines are indeed what we need to show. In this opening scene, we might decide to include
the man silhouette two. But we'll see how things
shape up as we animate. For now, let's start
with the key first, let's focus solely
on the key layer. I want to create a cool
reveal animation for it. Here's how we do that. First,
let's zoom in on the key using your mouse wheel or the
zoom keys move the screen, so the key is front
and center by holding the spacebar and dragging
the screen towards the key. Great, Now to animate strokes
and lines in after effects, we need to turn this
layer into a shape layer. For this, right
click on the layer, go to Create and select Convert Shapes
from Vector layers. We've now got an exact copy of our illustrator shape
as a new shape layer. Let's rename it by pressing Enter and deleting
the word outlines. Then press Enter again, we can delete the original
illustrator layer. Now opening up this layer, you'll see it has four groups inside representing the
shapes we drew separately in Illustrator to reveal
all these shapes at once rather than one by
one select contents. And then add the
trim paths effect. Using this effect, we can create a cool reveal animation for
the strokes of the key layer. Now let's adjust this panel
to see more of the timeline. Make sure we're at the
start of the timeline, set the end property to zero, and create the first key frame. If you're new to after effects, I suggest checking out the keyframe lesson in my
free beginner's guide. All right, moving on now, zoom into the timeline, go to the 1 second mark and
set the end property to 100. Great, we've got ourselves a reveal animation
to spice it up. Let's also animate
the offset property. This will make the
line move during the reveal start at the
beginning of the animation. Create a key frame
for the offset at zero and then at
the 1 second mark, adjust the offset to
make a full rotation. Let's watch what
we've got by hitting the spacebar. It looks great. The stroke moves beautifully
during its reveal. Now let's animate the line's
layer using the same method. First, to isolate the key layer and focus on the line's layer. Next, let's adjust the preview so we can see the lines better. Now to animate it, just
like with the key, we'll convert this layer
into a shaped layer, Delete the original and
rename the new one. Then open the layer, select contents,
and add trim paths. But before we get
into animating, pay attention to
the lines layer. When I adjust the properties, we barley can see
what we are doing. And it's because of the
blue layer controls that getting in our way
and hiding the lines. Let's turn off the layer
controls for clarity by hitting controls
shift H. Awesome. Now we can see the lines. Now I notice one of the lines is moving in the opposite
direction from the others. I'm talking about
this one up here. This is because of how we
drew it in Illustrator. The direction you
draw an illustrator affects the animation
in after effects. Since we draw it
from the up, down, the trim paths effect
moves it from up to down. No worries. It's an
easy fix to fix this. All we need to do is first find the problematic shape
and to find it, bring back the
layer controls with controls shift and keep selecting groups until
you find the one to fix. There it is. Now to reverse it, open the group and click on the reverse path direction icon. Now let's hide the layers
controls once again. As you can see, this line
is revealed correctly. All right, let's
close this group and create an animation
for the end property. Let's go to the beginning
of the timeline and create the first key frame
with the value of zero. For now, let's decide that is animation will
be 1 second long. Let's see how that looks nice. Now I want to create
something very interesting. Let's go back to our mood board and try to create
an animation that looks like it's a blood streaming inside veins
within an organism. Let me show you how
we can do that. Obviously we need to
duplicate our lines layer. But first let's press
and set the opacity of this one to 30% Let's
hit control D to duplicate it and
change the opacity for this one to 100% Now let's reopen this layer to find the trim paths effect. First, we want the end property not to reach 100% at the end. That means we need to change the value for the
second key frame. For this we must place the time indicator on the
key frame we want to adjust. And only then change the value. Let's set it to 50% Now this layer won't
reveal the entire stroke. Now when we change the offset, we will get a cool
moving lines effect. To make this value
move constantly, we can use a very
simple expression. What is expression?
Expression is a piece of code that you can use to automate and control various properties
of your animation. It is a powerful tool that
enables you to create complex animations
without having to keyframe every single
element manually. Let's hold down the Alt or the option key and click
on the offset stopwatch. Now, wright time asterisk 100. This will make the offset rotate 100 degrees every second. Let's see how that looks. If you want to speed this up, you can write a higher number. Let's say 300. That looks great. With this, we have finished animating
the lines animation. All that's left is to do the same for the other
side of the body. For this, we can group
these two layers, but in after effects we don't
call it grouping layers, we call it precomposing
the layers. For this we need to select the layers we want
to precompose, then right click and
choose Precompose, or use the shortcut
control shift C. Great. Now let's name
this pre comp line. Make sure that both
are selected and hit. Okay, now let's select
this pre comp and hit control D. Then right
click on the new Duplicate, go to Transform, and
flip it horizontally. Now for more
organized time line, let's precompose
these two pre comps. We get one layer for the
lines in this time line. We can call this comp,
lines main comp. Great. Everything looks awesome. Now let's time between the key animation
and the lines comp. I want the lines to start only after the key finishes
its animation. Therefore, I'll
drag the lines comp to start from the second one. We are ready to move
on, but before that, let's slow down the animation of the lines a bit because
it's happening too quickly. Let's enter the
lines composition, make sure no layer is selected, and press you to
see the key frames. We can also zoom in on the timeline to see the
key frames up close, all we need to do is move the last key frames to
the two second mark. Awesome. Now let's go back to the main scene comp and
continue animating the project. Now we are ready to move
on to the next scene. In this scene, we need to create the goal animation inside
the head of the silhouette. To start, we can turn off
the safe zone guide for now. Then adjust the preview screen. Now I have a question
for you guys. What do we need to do to
the goal layer in order to be able to animate the
lines of this illustration? Let's right click on the layer. Go to Create and convert this vector layer
to a shaped layer. Now we can delete
the original layer and adjust the name
of the new one. Now let's open up the layer
and select the contents to add the trim paths effect to
all the shapes inside it. But before that, let's isolate this layer and zoom in a bit to see better
what we are doing. All right, now we can add
the trim paths effect. We can go to the beginning of the layer to start
the animation. From here, we will time this layer with the rest
of the animation later. For now, I want to teach
you something cool. Let's say I want the
lines animation to start from the bottom part
and not from the right side. I want the lines to go
from the bottom and reveal from both the left
and the right sides. To create this animation, first we need to set
the end property to 90% so we can see
the lines separated. Now we need to adjust the
position of the line, and we can do it
using the offset. In our case, we need to set
the offset to 90 degrees. Finally, we need
to set the end to 50% and the start
to 50% as well. Now we can create the first
key frames with these values. Then let's go to
the second one and set the start to
0% and the end to 100% Now we've got a cool animation
that starts from the bottom part and
finishes from both sides. Awesome. Now I want to start each shape one
after the other. For this, we can duplicate
this layer two times. Let's change the
name here to go one. Now all we have to do is just leave one
shape in each layer. In this one, we can delete the second and the third group, which are the medium
and the large spheres. In the second one, we will
leave only the second group. In the third one, we will
delete the first two groups. This way we can easily
control the layers and create a small delay between them
before starting to animate. Let's zoom in a bit on the timeline to see the
key frames we will create. Soon, we want the first shape to enter the scene
to be the big one. We will leave this
layer as it is now. Let's say we want to start the second shape
after five frames. Let's move it here. Then move five more frames and bring
the last sphere here. Great. Now you might
think it's necessary to precompose these three layers since they are part of
the same animation. However, we don't
need to do that. Our storyboard shows that one of the spheres here needs to
continue into later scenes. We will leave all these layers
without precomposing them. All right, now let's find a nice point in time to
start the goal animation. Since the voice over for the second scene mentioned
striking towards your goals, it's easy for us to determine where to place these
layers on our timeline. Awesome, Now let's just
change the order of these three layers to fit our sequence in the timeline
with the rest of the layers. This is how your
layers should be arranged when working
in after effects. All right, now let's
move back and forth with the time indicator to check
the timing of the animation. My goal is to focus
on watching the goals inside the head while
moving the time indicator. And while doing
that, checking how it looks together with
the lines animation. Pay attention to the
upper part of the scene. In my opinion, the
goal animation is too quick and is
starting too late. I think we need to
adjust this part a bit. Let's start this animation
from second number one. Select these layers and
drag them like that. Noting that we are not moving the layers, we are
extending them. Now we can hit the Ukey
to see their key frames. Now let's drag the
first key frames to the beginning of each layer. This way we will still
see the goals entering the scene at the right time according to the script
and the markers. Also, this animation
will be a bit slower. Now we can play around
with the delay of the layers to create a more
interesting animation. But pay attention that
the last layer should finish its animation up
until the third marker. And not beyond that, because we know that from
this point in time, the third scene should start. All right, I think
it looks nice. Now we are ready to move on and start animating
the next scene. And we will do it
in the next part, which is going to be
super interesting. See you in the next one. But before moving on
to the next part, I highly recommend taking a ten minute break to
refresh your brain. You can also do some
light stretches or make yourself a
good cup of water. These all are going to help you concentrate more
for the next part.
9. Smooth transitions: Welcome back. Before we dive into animating
the third scene, let's give the man
silhouette a bit of action. Since it's just been hanging out during the first two scenes. We're going to have it
show up right when the key finishes its animation
around the 1 second mark. I'm thinking a cool
dissolve animation with a little flicker
effect should do the trick. To get started, select the man body layer and press
key to bring up the opacity. Drop the opacity down to zero. Now let's position this layer here and create the
first key frame. Now zoom in a bit
on the timeline, move two frames forward, and bump the opacity up to 100. Keep doing this a few times, after a bit, we can copy all these key frames and paste them two frames
after the last one. Let's repeat this once more now. We've got a neat
flickering effect for the entrance of
the man's silhouette. To keep our timeline tidy, let's place this layer
underneath the lines comp. All right, before we get
into the third scene, we should wrap up the
previous scenes with an ultra animation
starting with the lines. This needs to happen just before the third
scene kicks off. Let's head into the pre
comp where the lines are. We can zoom in on a time line. Now let's reopen
the layers to see the trim paths effect and create an outro animation from
the point in time where we place the time indicator
for the outro. We're going to play around
with the start property. Up to now, the start
position has been fine. Let's mark it with a key frame. Move 1 second forward
in the time line, and for the first line's layer, adjust the start property to 50 since the end value
is already at 50. For the second layer, set start to 100 because
its value is at 100. Let's check out the result to
make it a bit more dynamic. Let's move 1 second forward
again and adjust so the second layer finishes its animation after
the first one. Let's see how that looks. It's looking good,
we can move on. Let's go back to the
main scene and create an outro animation for the key starting from
the same point in time. Select the key, press you
to reveal its key frames. And just reverse the
animation by copying the key frames and pasting them at the indicators position. Right click to reverse them using the keyframe
assistant menu. Let's see how that looks. While moving the time indicator and watching out what's
happening in the scene, I think we can delay
this animation a bit. It disappears right before the
lines to check the timing. Move the time indicator while watching the key animation
on the preview screen. Perfect timing. Next up, let's reverse the man
body layers animation to serve as its outro. Let's copy the opacity
animation we have here and paste it just
before the third scene should start and reverse
it Looks awesome. A good moment to save our project and lock
in all the hard work. All right, now let's start
animating the third scene, where we need to
create an animation to visualize the organized
behavior that you will achieve. When you're disciplined
according to our storyboard, we want the three goals, Shapes, to scale down and
change their positions. Before creating this animation, I want to teach
you something very important when working
with shaped layers. You already know we need to change the scale of
these layers soon. But pay attention to what
happens to the stroke. When I change the scale
using the scale property, it affects the stroke width. And that's not something we want because we aim to maintain the same line thickness
throughout the project as much as we can in shape, layers, and after effects. There is another scale
property that we can adjust and you can find it under the transform properties
of the group, but here as well, it
will affect the stroke. Remember not to use the scale from the transform
property of the layer, and not to use the
scale property from the transform
properties of the group. Instead, in these situations, we need to animate the path
that creates this shape. To select the path, we need to double click on it
and then scale it, just like we are scaling
a regular layer. As you can see, the stroke
width remains the same. Awesome. I'll press control
Z to undo my action. And now let's do it together. First to find all the paths
of these three layers. We can select them all and use the layers panel
search bar for paths. This will bring up this property
for the selected layers. Now since we want the path to be as it is up until
this point in time, we will create the
first key frame for it for all the layers. Now let's move to the point in time where the next
needs to start. We can move the time indicator
while holding shift. This way it will snap
to the nearest marker. All right, now let's select the first
path, zoom in a bit. Double click on it
in the preview panel and scale it down while holding shift and control to scale it proportionally
from all sides, press Enter to
finish the action. Great, now let's do the same
for the rest of the layers. Awesome, now let's add
a position animation. In addition to the path
animation we just created. Place the time indicator here, select the three layers and hit the P key to bring up
the position property. Let's create the first key frame with the current value
for all of them. Now let's move to the
fourth marker and adjust their position
for the first layer. Click here to create a key
frame with the same value, ensuring it stays
where it is now. Then let's move the second layer to the left and the
last one to the right. To work more precisely, we can enlarge this
panel and turn on the proportional grid found
in the preview functions. Now we can adjust the
positions of the layers. Awesome, Everything looks good, and we are ready to move
on to the next scene. I want the middle sphere to be our main character for the
rest of the animation. Therefore, I want
to color it white. To make it more
notable for this, let's go to the beginning
of this scene and create an animation for
the fill of this layer. But as you can see, even when I turn on the fill from
here and color it white, I don't see the
color on the shape. Let's reopen the
layer and try to understand why that
is it's happening. Because we didn't
have a fill for this layer in the original file. Which means this
layer didn't have a fill color when we
created it in Illustrator. Therefore, after we converted the original Illustrator
layer to a shaped layer, we don't see a fill
property for it right now. But that's not a problem at all. To add a fill to a shape layer, all we have to do is select the contents and
add a fill effect. Now we've got a fill property that we can change to white. Now let's animate it, make sure you're at the
beginning of the third scene. Now create a key
frame for the opacity of the filled property
with the value of zero. Move to the end of this scene
and set the opacity to 100. Awesome. We're done
with this part. Let's move on to the next one. At this point, we need to create an uplifting
motion for the spheres. First, let's turn off the guide and enlarge this
panel a bit more. Now let's select all
the spheres and hit the key to see only
the position property. After the spheres are organized, we need to create an animation for them to represent
them being strong. While things get tough, let's begin to create
the uplifting motion first before the big rock
falls onto the middle sphere. Up until this point in time, we are good with the
position of the spheres. Now we can move 1 second forward in time to create the
uplifting motion. For this, we can click on the numbers here and
change the second 6-7 This will move the time indicator exactly
1 second forward in time. Now while all the
spheres are selected, we can move them up
using the y axis. Now let's move to the
end of this scene and create the following down animation for the middle sphere. Let's select only it,
adjust the preview screen. We can also turn back on the safe one guide to ensure we're not moving
it down too much. Now while watching the sphere, let's move it down
using the y axis. Once again, place it somewhere here
since we know that here the big rock is
going to be right now. Now to create the rock, ensure no layer is selected, then long press
the rectangle tool to choose the ellipse tool. Now color a dark gray with a white stroke
with a weight of two. Now let's start to
create a big sphere. Holding down the shift key, we can make this
sphere big since we want to represent that times
can be very tough sometimes. This big sphere
represents the amount of problems our main character
needs to deal with. Now I have a question
for you guys. From which property do we need to scale this
sphere so that the stroke remains the same and is not affected by
the scaling process. For this, we need to scale this shape layer using
the size options path. Let's set it to 1,600
Now select the layer, Choose the selection tool,
and move it up here. Now let's align it
to the center using the horizontal alignment
in the aligned tool. Great. Now let's zoom in
and bring this layer down. Using the down arrow key, it stays right above
the small sphere. Awesome, we can zoom out. Now check the size of the big sphere and move
on to the next scene. But before that, let's
bring this layer above the small spheres and change
its name to big sphere. Now we need to create
an intro animation for the big sphere and time it with the rest of the
animation we have here. Let's find a point in time where we want this sphere
to enter the scene. I think we can time it
from this point in time where the three spheres make
an uplifting animation. Let's select the big sphere, press P and move it up until we don't
see it in the frame. Set the preview screen to fit to make sure it's
out of the frame. Now, create the first key
frame for the position, since we want this
sphere to be where it is now at this point in time. Now to time it, together with the down animation of
the main character, we can move to the
point in time where all the small spheres finish
the uplifting animation. And make the big sphere
enter the scene. Place it right above
our main character. Now go to the exact point in
time where the small sphere reaches its down position and bring the big sphere
to be right above it. You can adjust the value using the up and down arrow keys. Let's see how that looks great. It looks awesome. Now, since the big sphere enters the scene only from
the fourth scene, we can crop this layer
from its beginning. To save the organized timeline to crop this layer
from its beginning, press out and the left bracket. Nice, Now we are ready to move on to the next scene
where we need to create an uplifting motion for
our main character to create a visual representation of becoming a better person. First, let's split the small sphere layer
from this point in time using control shift and place it above
the big sphere, because we want to create an entirely new
animation for it. And it will be much
easier to deal with timing adjustments
later on in case we need to adjust the
timing of the scenes. All right, according
to our storyboard, the small sphere needs to go up while the big
sphere scales down, representing the situations
when a person is getting better and dealing with all its struggles until they disappear. First, let's change the name of the new duplicate to goal one, as it was Now, press the Ukey to show
all its key frames. Let's delete them all
from the beginning, while leaving the last
keyframe for the position, since we want this layer to be placed here at this
point in time. All right, now to create a scale animation
for this layer, we will use its path
to maintain the stroke width at this point in time, create the first
keyframes for the path. For convenience,
select this layer, press the Ukey once, and then once again to see only the key
frames we got on it. Now let's move to the end of this scene and bring
this layer up. Now select the path. Then double click on
it in the preview. And scale it up while
holding shift and control. Then press Enter to
finish the action. Let's see what we've got.
All right, that looks okay. Now let's create a scale down animation for
the big sphere. Let's start at the
beginning of the scene, then use the search bar
to find the path of it. Let's open the path and create the first key frame
for its size. Now move to the end of this scene and scale
it down to zero. Now, during the uplifting
motion of our main character, the big sphere disappears. But as you can see, it does not align perfectly
with the white sphere, which is totally fine. But if you want it
to align with it, you can use guides to create
much more precise animation. Let me show you what I mean. First, let's open the
rulers and create a new guide line from above to mark the position
of the big sphere. Now we can change
the last position of the white sphere to move to the position of the big
sphere we just marked. Now this will create a much
more interesting motion. All right, so we're
done with this part. Before moving on, let's check the storyboard once again to
see if we miss something. As you can see according
to the storyboard, in order to represent
the situation where the person has
become better than he was. That is, he left
his older version behind and grew up to his
new version of himself. We need to show a
disappearing animation for the small sphere
we had earlier. For this, we can expand
this layer up until the end of this scene and create
some disappearing animation. To save some time, we can actually copy the
outro animation we created for the
man's silhouette and paste it onto
the small sphere. I'll copy these key frames
from the man's body layer. Then I'll select
the small sphere and press to see its opacity. Now I'll select the property, make sure that I'm at
the right point in time and hit control V to
paste the key frames. Now we've got an
outro animation for the small sphere,
but in my opinion, it's happening very fast to slow this animation down in the most efficient
way we can, select these key frames, hold down the alt key, and drag the last key frames
to the end of the scene. This will move all
the key frames while preserving the same
spacing between them. Great, so we are done with this part and are ready to
move on to the next one. But before that, let's organize our project for
more convenient work. First, at this point, we can return the panels to
their original arrangement. We can close the rulers, set the previous screen to fit, and hide the guide
we created using a shortcut control and
the semicolon key. Awesome. Now let's
organize our timeline. First, I'll change the
name of this layer again. For some reason it returned
to its original name. All right, now let's make
sure no layer is selected. And press the U key to see all the keyframes
on all the layers. Now we can crop the layers where the animation
on them is over, like the key layer,
its animation ends at this point in time. Meaning we can crop this
layer from its ends. For this, press Alt
and the right bracket. The same goes for
the man body layer. We can zoom in a bit on
the timeline and crop this layer from the end
as well as the key layer. Now let's see where the
lines finish the animation. Let's enter the precomps until
we see the lines layers. The animation ends here. Place here the time indicator. Now go back to the
main scene and crop this precomp from the
end using the shortcut. Let's crop these
two layers as well. The animation ends here. Let's bring here the time
indicator and crop the layers. This one is already
cropped, okay? It's a good time to see all the animation before we move on to check how it looks. Everything looks totally fine. But at this point in time where the three
spheres are going up, I want to create a small
delay in the animation. I want the white sphere
to start going up first, and then the other
two will follow it. For this, let's select
the three spheres and press to see their
position animation. Now let's zoom in a bit in the preview to see
what we are doing. Now all we need to do is just
to start the animation of the two spheres on the sides a few frames after
the white sphere. Let's zoom in on this timeline and move these key
frames forward in time. To create a good
delay animation, we actually need to copy the position of these
spheres and paste it here. All the spheres at this point in time will be placed
at the same position. Now we can easily select the uplifting animation of the two spheres and move
it wherever we need. Just don't forget to extend these layers to the
end of the animation. Great, now the
uplifting animation of these spheres will start a few frames after
the white sphere. Now we can click here to
unselect the layers and press the Ukey twice to
close them all at once. Finally, before moving
to the next part, let's crop the big
sphere layer as well as the rest of the
layers that already finished their animation. Awesome, now we are
ready to move on to the next part when we will create the rest
of the animation. See you in the next one. It's going to be awesome.
10. Mistakes you can take during the workflow: Welcome back. At this point, we need to create
the next scene where the main character is flying towards their goals
and achieving them. Therefore, let's continue
animating the white sphere. First let's press the U key
to view its key frames. Now let's create the illusion of this sphere flying in space. For this, we need to move 1 second forward
on the timeline. Now we can move it down here. Then we can select the path, double click on it, and
scale it down a bit. Now let's move to
the end of the scene and bring this layer to the
center of the composition. I'll zoom in a bit to see where is the
center of the frame. Now let's scale it down
even more at this point. From this point in time, we can create an outro
animation for this sphere. For this, let's move
1 second forward. We can use the numbers here
which represent the timeline, and simply change the
seconds here to 13. This way we will move the time indicator
exactly 1 second forward. Great. Now let's select the path and scale it
down as much as we can. Finally, we can cut this layer using out
and the right bracket. Awesome. And that's how we created the flying
and space illusion. Now let's stand at the
beginning of this scene and enter the goals that our sphere needs to reach by the
end of this scene. For this, we can drag the
goals layer into our timeline. Since I want to animate the intro of these
spheres one by one, I will convert this layer
into a shaped layer. Let's delete the
original layer and adjust the name of
the new shape layer. We have now to animate this layer without
affecting the stroke width, we need to animate
it from its path. Let's select this layer and use the search
bar to find it. Great. Now at this
point in time, let's create the
first key frames for all the shapes
in this layer. Now let's move to the
end of the scene, select the path, and double
click on it to scale it up. Let's turn on the safe guides to ensure that we didn't
scale it too much. I think it looks awesome. Now let's create an intro
animation for this layer. We don't need to do
something fancy, we can just create a
nice opacity animation. Let's stand at the beginning of this scene and press the key
to bring up the opacity. Create the first key frames
with a value of zero. Now let's use the numbers
here to move 15 frames forward in time and change
the opacity to 100. Looks awesome. We can crop
this layer from its beginning, since it enters the frame
only from scene six. All right, now
from this point in time where the white sphere is making a scale
down animation, let's create an outro
animation for the goals. First, press you to see
all the key frames. Now let's scale each
shape separately. Let's move 1 second
further in time. Now select the first path, double click on it, and scale it up until we don't
see it in the frame. Let's do the same for the rest of the shapes in this layer. All right, now let's
make these shapes exit the scene one by one and
not all at once for this. First, let's zoom
in on the timeline. Now let's move a few
frames backward from the middle key frames and
copy and paste them here. That way we got a few
frames in this animation, which will be handy
in a few seconds. But for now, let's move
these key frames here to maintain the same duration of the intro animation
of the goals. Now let's create a small delay between the shapes
in this layer. We want the biggest
shape to exit first, Therefore we won't touch
its outro key frames. Now we can select the
first two paths and move their outro animation five
frames forward in time. Next, select the
first shape and move its animation five frames
forward in time as well. Awesome, I think it looks nice. And now we can crop
this layer, close it, and move on to create the starburst animation that
needs to be in this scene. A quick tip for you guys. Every time you
finish an animation, always go back to the storyboard to see if you miss something. And to check what you need
to do in the next scene. All right, now I
will show you how to create a Starboarst
animation in a few minutes. First, we need to create
a new solid layer. We can call it speed lines, Make sure it's in a comp size
and set the color to black. Let's isolate this layer to
see what we are doing better. Now we need to add a CC
particle world effect to it. Let's search for it in
the effects and presets panel and drag it
into the solid layer. Let's zoom in and
adjust some parameters. First things first, let's get rid of the grids
of the effect. Now let's change the
birth rate to 0.1 so we get much fewer particles
for the longevity. We set it to 5 seconds. Next, let's open the
producer properties and expand the particle
across the x axis to one, the same for the y axis, and 20 for the zaxis to get more depth for
the particle space. Moving on to physics, start by changing the
animation to direction axis, set the velocity to 20, the gravity to zero. And finally, reset
the extra angle and set it to 90 degrees. Now open the
particle properties, set the opacity to 100 and
change the color to white. And both birth and
death color properties. Now let's an isolate
this layer to see the rest of the layers and bring the speed lines to start. At the beginning of
the sixth scene, we can place this layer above the goals layer and drag it to start from this
point in time. Great. Now let's make the speed lines disappear
at the end of the scene. We can do that by animating
the birth rate property. Let's create the
first key frame at this point in time with
the current value. Now press you to
see the key frames. Now we can move one frame forward and set the
birth rate to zero. Now the particles will start to disappear and it will take
them 5 seconds to do that. Since we set the
longevity to 5 seconds, in our case, we need them
to disappear much earlier. Since the flying
movement illusion we created stops at scene seven, let's drag these key
frames backward in time to start the outro animation of
the particles much earlier. At this point in time, we should not see any
particle in the scene. Let's drag it even more back in time. Let's see what we got. Great. Now let's crop
this layer to the end of this scene and move on to create the final scene which
is the smile animation. First, we need to create
the smile in the scene. For this, ensure no
layer is selected. And choose the ellipse tool, turn off the fill color, and select a white stroke
with a width of two. Now let's create a
proportional sphere while holding the shift key. We can isolate this layer, change the name to smile, and place it above the
speed line's layer. Let's crop this layer from its beginning to start
from scene number seven. Then let's align it horizontally and press P
to adjust its position. Place it so the bottom part is placed exactly in the
center of the frame. Now let's reopen
the layer to find its path size and set it to 450, so we all be on the same page. Now let's select
the selection tool and ensure the bottom
part is in the center. All right, and now
let's animate this. And we will do it using
the trim paths effects. First, let's open the layer
to select the contents and then add the trim paths
effect before animating it. Let's press Control shift H
to hide the layers controls. So we can see the line. Now in order to animate this
line from the bottom center, we need to set the end and
the start properties to 50% and create key
frames for both. We can press you now to see only the key frames
on this layer. Now let's move 1 second forward in time and set the end to 75% and the start to 25% Great. And now let's move 1 second
forward one more time. Either by changing the numbers here or from here. This
is the same thing. Now just copy the initial
key frames and paste them at the time indicator position to create
an outro animation. We can now crop this
layer from the end. Awesome. And now we have an outro animation
for the smile. Now an isolated and
move on to time. Everything we created
in this scene, first thing first, I see that the white sphere needs to
disappear a bit earlier. Therefore, let's
select this layer and press you to
see its key frames. Now let's move the last keyframe
for the path responsible for the scaling down animation of the layer a bit
earlier in time. Let's see how that looks. Looks nice. Before moving on, let's set the preview back to
fit and see the final scene again to check how
that looks with the rest of the
objects in this scene. All right, I think we
can scale down the smile a bit because it's too big
right now, in my opinion. For this, let's find the size of the path
and set it to 300. Once done, don't forget
to bring this layer down. All right, so we have
finished animating the entire script and
everything looks fine. It's a great time
to press control as to save the project
before moving on. All right, now I want to teach you something
important in case you want to create a unique
background and not just a black
solid in the scene. Let's turn on the
transparency background and turn off our background
layer in the scene. As you can see, the
main body layer doesn't have a fill color, which can be a bit problematic. If we want to add
some elements behind it or just create
a grid background, that means we need to add a
fill color to our character. For this first, we need to convert this layer
into a shaped layer. We can delete the original layer and adjust the name
of the new one. Now as you can see, even if I'll turn on the fill for this layer and
color it in black, we won't see anything. It's because we didn't
create this layer. An illustrator with
a fill to fix this, all we have to do is
to select the contents of this layer and add a
new fill effect to it, and finally color it in black. Awesome, now we have a pill for the character and we are ready to create a
cool background. But now since this
layer has a fill, we can't see the key layer. Since it's placed under
the character layer, this is not a problem. All we need to do is place the character layer
under the key layer. Great. Now let's press control
to create a new solid, which will be our new grid background layer
for this animation. Call it background, make it the size of the comp and
color it in black. Let's place it below
the character. Now, search for the
grid effect and add it onto the new solid layer. Let's adjust some parameters
to get a nice grid. To get a nice grid
background set to control its size
using a slider first. Now adjust the slider to get
something that you like. Finally, adjust the border
to set degree width. As you can see, since our
character has a fill color, the scene looks much better. All right. I actually
prefer not to use a grid this time. I
just turn it off. We can delete the
original background layer we got from Illustrator. Awesome. And now
we can move on to the next part to time our
animation with the voice over and create additional
camera movements for the animation to make it
look much more interesting. It's going to be super
fun. So see you there.
11. What is Keyframe velocity?: Welcome back. After creating the rough animation with
the correct timing, let's add some rough camera
movements to the animation to help the viewer concentrate on what we want
them to focus on. For this, we can copy our
guide layers from here. Turn them on in this comp and paste them into
the master comp. Now let's bring
the main scene to this comp and create an
illusion of camera movements. And we will do it using
the scale property. Our goal is to create an illusion of a camera
zooming in and out. In these kinds of projects, it's a better choice
rather than using a O camera because we don't have three D
layers in the scene. We have one pre comp that
we can scale up and down. By the way, if
you're asking why we copied the guide layers from the main comp and
turned them off, it's because if they were
turned on in the main comp, they would scale up and
down with the comp. And that's not what we need. We need the guide
to stay in place so we can make sure we're
in the safe zone. All right, so I'll bring
everything back to normal and let's
get started first, according to our markers layer, we know that at
this point in time we need to see the
entire silhouette, because according to the script, we need to show the
personal growth scene. We will use the end to
beginning method of animation. This means we're
setting key frames from the end of the
scene to the beginning. This is because we know
how the scene should end. Therefore, we will place
the time indicator at the end of the first
scene and create the first key frame
for the scale property with the current value. Since we want the scene to
look exactly as it is now, since we know that there will
be a point in time where we will need to move our
layer as well as scale it. We need to create an animation for the position
property as well. To see the position
of this layer, we can hold shift and press P. This will show this property
together with the scale. Now let's create the first key frame with
the current value, since we want the
scene to look as it is now at this point in time. Now we see that
we need to create a zoom out animation to
make it interesting. We can go back 1 second, set the comp size to 150, and place it here in the center. Now let's place
the time indicator somewhere where we can
still see the key. We can see where we
are moving the comp. Now let's scale this comp to 300 and move it so the key
will be placed in the center. Once done, we can move these key frames to the
beginning of the animation. With this, we have finished animating the camera movements
for the first scene. Now let's move on
to the next one. According to the
script and storyboard, we know that at
this point in time, we need to show the goal scene. Therefore, let's
adjust the scale and the position of
the composition. At this point, we
can set the scale back to 300 and place
the composition so we can see the goals
inside the head of the silhouette,
somewhere around here. Now I want to teach you something important
about scaling up precompositions
with shape layers or illustrator
layers inside them. As you can see, after
scaling this composition, the shapes inside
appear a bit pixelated. To fix this, we need to activate the collapse
function found here. If you don't see it,
you can click here. What this function
essentially does is it maintains the properties
of the original layer. In cases where we use
an Illustrator file and then activate the collapse
function in after effects, this will make the layer very crisp since the original
layer was created. In vector based software
like Illustrator, a vector means that no matter
the size of the layer, the object will remain
in high quality. By activating the collapse, after effects will
preserve this information. In our case, we have a layer
that is a composition. This layer has a lot of
shape layers inside it and shape layers in after effects are vector layers as
our illustrator layers. This means no matter the scale, the shape will
remain very sharp. By activating the collapse
on this composition after effects will preserve the information
inside this layer. That is, it will preserve the information of the
shape layers inside it. Since the shape layers can stay in high quality no
matter the size, we will see the
shape layers inside this composition in
high quality as well. Since the lines here
are illustrator layers, we need to enter
this composition. Then we need to activate the collapse on the lines
precomposition here, as well as for the two
precompositions inside it. By doing this, we preserve the information inside
this precomposition. We preserve the information
of these shaped layers that can be in high quality
no matter the scaling. This information is
preserved here, here, and here by activating the
collapse along the way. Awesome. That looks good, and we are ready to move on. All right, so let's move on to the end of the third
scene and adjust the composition to see all three spheres in the
center of the frame. First we can set the
scale to back to 100, and then adjust the y axis
for the position property. That looks nice,
but as you can see, we can see the big
sphere in the scene. And that's not what we want. We need the big sphere to enter the scene only
in the next scene. Let's fix that first. Let's understand why we
are seeing the sphere. We see it because we activated the collapse for
this composition, which makes all the layers inside this composition visible. If I turn off the collapse, you will see the original
bounds of this composition. When we activate the collapse, we see all the information
inside this composition. In our case, we see the big sphere that's placed in the upper part
of the composition. To fix this, all we
need to do is adjust the intro animation of the big sphere inside
the main composition. In our case, we need to
adjust the position property. That is, we need to change the initial position
of this layer first. Let's stand here on
the first key frame with the time indicator
To change it, to see where to relocate it, we need to see how it looks
in the master composition. Therefore, I want to teach
you a little trick to witness the changes
we implement within the main scene in the
master composition. We can click here to lock this composition and then
enter the main scene. Now we can drag the panel of the main scene here to view
both of the precompositions. Since the master
composition is locked, all the layers we
see in the layer and the timeline panel are the layers of the main
scene composition. All right, now we are ready
to adjust this keyframe. Let's move the big
sphere up until it is no longer
visible in the scam. While we are checking
the master composition, keep moving up the sphere while watching how that looks
in the master comp. Great, Now we can unlock
this panel and close it. Let's return to the master
composition and see what we've got. Looks great. All right, now let's
adjust the position of this composition according to what's happening
in the main scene. In the main scene, there is a moment when the big
sphere enters the scene. Let's position ourselves here
with the time indicator. Go back to the
master composition and adjust the position
of this composition. I want the scene
to look like that. I do not want to change the
scale of it at this point. Let's click here to create a new key frame with
the same scale value. Let's see how it looks. Keeping things
organized and being, being strong when
things get tough. Discipline will help you
become better person. Reach your goals and
make your life happy. Let's view it one more time. Keeping things organized and being strong when
things get tough. Discipline will help you
become a better person. Reach your goals and
make your life happier. All right? I think
that looks awesome. And now let's continue adjusting the position and the
scale of the composition. For the next scene.
We can slightly elevate this layer and
leave the scale as it is. Let's check how that looks and being strong when
things get tough, discipline will help you
become a better person. Reach your goals and
make your life happier. All right, that looks great. And I don't think we need to add another scale or
position animation until the rest of the animation. This means we have finished creating the camera
movements animation. Now I have a question for you. What should we do
after finishing an important part
of the project? It's a great time to hit control as to save everything
we've done so far. All right, so at this
point in our project, after setting the key frames and creating a rough animation, and after ensuring that all the animation we
created fits to voice over, we can move on to
adjusting the key frames. And improving the motion by
converting the key frames to easy ease and adjusting the
velocity of the animation. Let's see how to do
that. First, let's enter our main scene and
arrange the panels for a better workflow with working and viewing all the key frames. For this, we can drag the layers panel here and
shrink the project panel. Now let's get rid of the guide. For that, we can use the shortcut control
and the semicolon. Awesome, now let's set
the preview to fit. And enlarge the layers panel
to see more of the timeline. Great, now let's click here to ensure no
layer is selected, and press the U key to view all the keyframes
on all the layers. All right, now I want to teach you something
cool about how you can quickly improve
your animation if you are not a beginner. I still want you
to listen closely because very soon I will show you something
that you didn't know. Of course, there are
a lot of scripts and plug ins out there
that you can use, but in this course I want
to teach you how to achieve it inside after effects without
using any external help. All right, so first let's talk about a basic
key frame. Quickly. As you know, when we want to create an animation
for an object, we need to create keyframes
across the timeline. These key frames indicate to after effects
that a change in a certain value needs to occur at the points
in time we chose. In this case, there is
a changing value in the position property across
the duration of 2 seconds. While creating basic key frames, the object will
perform the animation at the same speed
during the 2 seconds, meaning the object moves
at a linear speed. To make it more interesting, we can adjust the
speed of the object throughout its animation
by using the graph editor. And adjusting the animation
with the speed graph. Currently, the speed of our object's animation remains constant during these 2 seconds. To modify this, we can transform
these key frames into as key frames which will
alter the speed of the object at the start
and end of the animation. I know that the speed
of the animation has changed because I see that at the beginning
of the animation, the speed is zero
pixels per second. However, in the middle
of this animation, the speed has increased to more than 700 pixels per second. This indicates that the
curve is displaying the speed of the object during its 2 seconds of animation. For instance, at
frame number 20, the speed is slightly more
than 600 pixels per second. At frame ten, it is slightly more than 400
pixels per second. And at frame number zero, the speed is zero
pixels per second. This means that the speed of
this object accelerates from the beginning of
the animation and starts to decelerate
after the first second. Now after understanding
what we see in the graph, I can make the
animation remain at a slow speed for
a longer period. The animation will
maintain a very slow speed during all this time and will start to accelerate.
From this point. It will be at a high speed for a short period before
slowing down very quickly. Since the animation we
created lasts for 2 seconds, the last key frame is placed
at the two second mark. This all means that we aren't changing the duration
of the animation. When we play around with
the speed of the animation, we are just deciding
at which point during the 2 seconds the object
will move slowly or fast. This means we can decide
that we want the object to start slowing down earlier
during these 2 seconds. But this also means it will be very fast at another
point in time. Right now, the animation will be very slow at the
beginning and end, but around the first second
it will be super fast. For a very short period, it will be very fast
for one frame only. That's how you can
control your animation and create interesting
movements for your layers. Now I want you to pay attention to the
percentage numbers that change when I decide
whether to make the animation fast or slow. I don't want you
to be a programmer and try to understand
what it means in depth, but try to remember that
there is a way to control this velocity influence
percentage more easily in case you want to create the same movement
for many layers. Let's say that I love the
movement of the object when its velocity
percentage is set to 85% for both key frames, both the first and the last. But setting this exact
velocity for all layers by going to the graph editor every time can be
very challenging. Therefore, I want to teach
you a quick way to do it. All we need to do is select
the key frames we have either right click on one
of them and go to the key frame velocity panel. Or we can enter this panel
using a shortcut for this. Hold down the alt key while all the key frames are selected and double
click on one of them. Here we can see
that we are dealing with the position
property key frames. And we can see how many key
frames we have selected. Now if we set the influence
percentage here to 85, it's like we're
dragging the handle of the first key frame to the right to make this animation slow. When we change the
outgoing influence, it's like we're
dragging the handle of the second key
frame to the left. By doing so, we are making this object slow at the
end of its animation. That means this object will be at a slightly faster speed, exactly in the middle
of its animation. A very important
thing to remember when using this
method is that we can change the velocity for only
one property type at a time. For example, if we have key frames for
scale and position. Even if we select all
the key frames and try to change the velocity
for both properties, the velocity will change only for the key frames we
have double clicked on. In this case, I double click
on the position property. Therefore, I can see
that now I will only change the velocity for
the position key frames. All right, enough
with the talking. Let's practice it
on our animation. As you can see, we have a lot of different types of properties for which we created key frames. Let's start by
changing the velocity for the end property of
the trim paths effect. Select the property from here, This will select
all the key frames for this property on the layer. Now hold down shift and select the same property
on the other layers. Now hold down the Alt key and double click on
one of the key frames. Here we can see that we
are now dealing with the end property
and we are going to adjust 13 key frames at once. Let's set both incoming and
outgoing velocities for all the animations we have
on these layers. Great. Now let's do the same for the offset property of
the trim paths effect. I see that we have an animation for the offset only
for this layer. Let's change it only here. We don't have to
change the velocity on the opacity property
since we are good with the flickering
animation that we created. All right, let's move on
to the next property. Select all the
start key frames on all the layers and
change the velocity to 85% for both incoming
and outgoing velocity for all these key frames. Great, let's move
on to the next one. We don't have to do it on the birth property of the
particle world effects, since we are good
with this animation. All right, now let's select
all the path key frames on this layer and change their
velocity to 85% as well. We can do the same here. We can select all the
path key frames on all these layers and change
their velocity at once. Now let's do the same for
the position key frames for the disappearing
animation of the man's body. We can just convert
the key frames to *** using the F nine shortcut. Now I notice that
I forgot to change the velocity for the size
animation of the big sphere. So let's do it real quick. We can convert the
opacity animation on this layer to
easy key frames. Now let's not forget the lines animation
we got in the scene. Since the key frames of this animation are
inside this pre comp, let's enter them and
adjust them as well. Now make sure no
layer is selected. And press the Ukey to see all the key frames
on these two layers. First, let's change the velocity
for the start animation. And now do the same for the end. Awesome, now let's go back
to the master comp and do the same for the position and scale animation we created here. Let's start with the
scale key frames now move on to the position. Great, now let's see how everything looks
together and try to find some issues
or adjustments we need to make before
rendering the animation. In this part, all we
got to do is watch the animation a few times
and see what we can improve. Being disciplined is the key
to your personal growth. It means sticking to your goals, keeping things organized, and being strong When
things get tough, discipline will help you
become a better person. Reach your goals and
make your life happier. All right? I notice
that the flying in space animation is
happening very fast. Let's see it one more time. Reach your goals and yeah, that's happening too fast. Let's enter this comp and
try to fix this First, let's zoom in a bit on the timeline to see the
key frames up close. And we can also enlarge this
panel for a better workflow. Now let's find the
problematic part. This is happening in the scene where we see the goals flying toward us and the white sphere
flying toward the goals. Therefore, let's isolate
these two layers and see what we can
do to fix this. I see that at this part, the sphere is making
a small pause, which I don't really
like it's happening because we played around with the velocity of
these key frames, But that's not a problem. To fix this, we can select
the problematic key frames, hold down the control key, and click on them once, and then once again to convert them to
continuous key frames. That will fix the pause. Let's see it one more time. I think it looks much better. Now, we can de, isolate these
layers and move on. This part looks good now, but I notice that the
smile enters too early. Let's move this
layer a bit forward in time and see how that looks. I think it looks
much better now. All right, let's go back to the master comp and see the entire animation
one more time. Being disciplined is the key
to your personal growth. It means sticking to your goals, keeping things organized, and being strong When
things get tough. Discipline will help you
become a better person. Reach your goals and
make your life happier. All right. After watching it once again and hearing
it with the voice over, I notice that the silhouette of the man enters the
scene too early. I think it should
enter approximately At this point in time. Let's enter the pre comp and adjust the intro
animation of this layer. I think it should enter the
scene a few frames after the lines start their animation,
somewhere around here. Let's select these key
frames and move them here. Let's go back to the master comp and check how that looks. Being disciplined is the key
to your personal growth. It means sticking to your goals, keeping things organized and being strong when
things get tough. Discipline, Great. Now I want the silhouette
to disappear a bit earlier. I want it to disappear during
the zoom in animation. Let's enter the scene and move the outro animation
to start somewhere between the second and the third scenes, somewhere around here. Let's see how that looks. Being disciplined is the key
to your personal growth. It means sticking to your goals, keeping things organized, and being strong when
things get tough. Discipline will help you
become a better person. Reach your goals and
make your life happier. All right? I think
it looks great. We can press control
S now to save everything we've
done so far before. Moving on to the next part, let's bring the panels
back to normal. We can also enter the scene
and shorten the timeline. Since our animation ends
at second number 15, we don't need the rest of
the timeline. For this. We can drag the workflow area manually to the end
of the animation or press in to bring it automatically to the position
of the time indicator. Now right click on the
workflow area and choose Trim Comp to work area. Awesome. Now let's click here to make
sure no layer is selected. And press the Ukey to close
all the layers at once. Great. We can now close all the open precomps and
save the project one more time before moving to
the next part where we will learn a few ways to add
captions and so much more. It's going to be
awesome, see you there. But before moving on
to the next part, I highly recommend taking a ten minute break to
refresh your brain. You can also do some
light stretches or make yourself a
good cup of water. These all are going to help you concentrate more
for the next part.
12. Captions creation: Welcome back. We will begin
this part by learning how to use AI platforms to create automatic
captions for our video. I know there are
many scripts for after effects that
you can purchase, or you can use Adobe Premiere to generate automatic captions. Since there are plenty
of tutorials out there on how to do this
using these options, I decided not to show
you these methods. Instead, I will show you how you can use a free AI platform. To achieve this, the first
thing we need to do is to render an MP three file of the final voice
over for the video. Let's do it now. First, let's place the time indicator at
the end of the animation. You can drag the time
indicator while holding shift. This way it will snap to the
end of the voiceover layer. Now let's press the key to bring the end of the
time line to this point. We do this because
we don't need to render the scene after the
end of the voice over. All right, now let's press control M to
render this time line. Now let's click on
the output module. And in format, we will choose to render it as
an MP three file. After this, let's click on output two and choose
where to save this file. Let's save it in the
voiceover folder. Now we can click on this
file to sample the name. Let's just adjust it to edit it. Finally, click Save and Render. Now let's go back to Vo and click on the logo
to go to the dashboard. Now let's create a new project and import our new
MP three file. Awesome. Now leave
the background in black and here you can choose
another format to work on. In our case, we will not
change the format because I want to export the highest quality of
the text possible. Soon you will understand
what I mean. All right. Now let's change the name of this project to
Discipline Subtitles. Great. Now let's
go to subtitles. Click on auto subtitles, make sure the language
is set to English, and click on Create Subtitles. It can take a few minutes
to finish, so be patient. All right, and now we have subtitles for all
the voice over. Don't worry if your subtitles
look different than mine. Soon we will learn
how to change them. For now, let's at play and
see that everything is okay, strong when things get tough, discipline will help you become a better person,
reach your goals. And now let's learn how
to adjust the subtitles. First, we can make
every subtitle be short and not a
very long sentence. For example, I want being disciplined to be separated from the rest of
the first sentence. For this, I can click here and press Enter
to drop the line. Let's do the same in
the third sentence. We can drop the line after the. Now we need to bring the word organized to be together
with keeping things. Let's click here and press de
Let to bring this text up. Now we can drop the
line after the comma. All right, it looks good. Let's move on to the
next sentence here. We can drop the line
after the word here. After the word goals. All right, now
let's hear it with the voice over to
see how that looks. Being disciplined is the key
to your personal growth. It means sticking to your goals, keeping things organized, and being strong when
things get tough. Discipline will help you
become a better person. Reach your goals and
make your life happier. I think it's awesome. Now we are ready to design these
captions for this. Let's click on Style now. Just choose the style
you want and move with the time indicator to
see how that looks. There are a lot of super
cool options here, so make sure to check them out. You can also choose
to show each word separately if you
want, before deciding. You should ask your client if he has something that he
preferred the most. In our case, let's
pick this one. This is the simple one, and in my opinion,
it fits our project. Now let's adjust it even more. First, you should know that
there are a lot of cool, different font styles
to choose from here. In our case, let's
pick the anybody font. You should see it at the
bottom part of this list. I see it up here because I already worked with
this font earlier. Anyway, choose this font and now click on the italic font
option to cancel it. We want the text to be straight. You can also click here
to make the text bolder. You can also click here to make all the text and caps letters. Or to make every
first word to be caps or no caps at
all. In our case. Let's click here and
set it to default. There are a lot of
other cool functions here that you can
play with later on, but in our case, we are
good with the design. Now let's move the text to the center of the
scene and scale it up. Once done, bring
it to the center. Awesome. Now move across the timeline to see that
everything is fine. Once you are good,
let's click on Done. Now we can adjust the quality. First, set the resolution to ten ADP and the quality to high. Make sure burn titles is
checked and go back to Export. And click on Export Video. Now wait a few seconds and
then click on Download. And choose to download
it as an MP four file. Let's choose to save it
in the Assets folder, make sure the name is
good, and click on Save. Great, now let's go
back to our project. We can close the render panel and bring this file
into our master comp. Great, now I want to show you a few ways on how you can get rid of the black background. The easiest method to get rid of a black color in
after effects is to click here and change the blending mode of
this layer to add. The problem with this
method is when you want to add a drop
shadow effect, you won't see it on the text. We can't see it on
the text because this layer is in a
full HD size format. That means that you will see the drop shadow effect on
the edges of this layer. Fix this, make sure the
blending mode is set to normal, and now search for the
effect called lumache. Now drag the effect
on the layer and make sure it's on top
of the drop shadow. Now set the key type to key out darker and
adjust the threshold. Let's isolate this
layer and turn on the transparency background to see what we are doing better. Make sure you crank up
the threshold until you don't see any of the
black color on the text. In our case, we
can set it to 220. Awesome. Now let's
turn off the sound on this layer since we already got a voice over in the project. Now to make the drop
shadow stronger, we can duplicate the effect
and adjust some parameters. Great, now all we need
to do is just scale down this layer and place it in a good place in our scene. I can place it somewhere around here and maybe
scale it up a bit. Let's see that the text stays in the safe zone during the
rest of the animation. Now I see that we got a little problem with the
background in the scene. This is happening because
we moved the scene. To fix this, all we
need to do is enter the scene and cut
the background layer from here using control X. Now go back to the master comp and paste it here
under all the layers. Awesome. Now let's go back to
dealing with the captions. As you can see, they are
interfering with the safe zone. In that case, we can just scale this layer down a bit until
we get the right size. 50. Looks great. All right, now let's turn off this layer, and I want to show you
how you can manually generate the caption in
after effects from scratch. Maybe it's a bit
more time consuming, but in small
projects like these, I actually prefer to do it manually and after
effects because I can gain full control over the text and create much more
interesting scenes. With that, let me
show you what I mean. First, let's open up the script and copy the
text of the first scene. Now let's go back
to our project, Select the text tool and
paste the copy text. Now let's adjust it a
bit to fit our scene. First, I'll change it to any
font with a thin weight. You can find this free
font on Google Fonts. Find the link in
the links PDF file. Let's set the size to 50. And I'll uncheck the
all caps function. Now let's go to paragraph and make sure the text is
aligned to the center. Now go to character and
color the text white. And finally, go to a line and align it to the
center of the comp. Now I see that this
font is too thin. I'll go to character and try
to find something better. All right, so I'll stick with the default version of the
font with a bold weight. Now let's drop down the text. From this point, I see that
my leading is messed up, so I select all the text
and set it to auto. Awesome. Now we need
to hear the voice over and bring the relevant text according to what we hear. It's going to be very easy
since we split the text. That is, each text line we are using is actually a
scene in our timeline. Being disciplined is the key to your personal growth.
It means stick. All right, from this point in time we can split
this layer using control shift and then go to the script and copy the
text for the second scene. Now let's double click on this
layer and paste the text. Great, let's move on
to the next scene. Sticking to your goals, keeping things organized,
everything looks fine. We can split the
layer at this point in time to bring the
text of the third scene. Awesome, let's move on and continue to hear
the voice over. Things organized and
being stoke let's split this layer at this
point in time and bring the relevant text
for the fourth scene. Since this is a long text, we can drop the line
from this point. All right, moving on, let's keep doing this process until
the end of the animation. Being strong when
things get tough, discipline will help you become great. Now let's crop this layer from the end using alt and
the right bracket. The best benefit of using this method is that
now we can select the selection tool and
adjust the position of the captions we created according to the
design of the scene. For example, in the first scene we can bring the
caption down here so we can see the key according to what we see
in the second scene, we can bring the text up here. Moving on, At this
point in time, we can bring the text
here. Looks great. Let's keep adjusting the text according to the scene to
the end of the animation. Basically, all you have to do is to move the time
indicator slowly to see the scenes and
try to think of a good position to place
the text at each scene. Now let's improve the look
of our new captions by selecting important words for each scene and coloring
them in a different color. Let's choose the yellow
color before clicking Okay. Let's copy the info of this color to use it
in the next captions. In this part, let's
color this text. Press control V to
paste the info of the yellow color we copied
from the previous caption. Awesome, let's continue doing that until the rest
of the animation. To know which words to mark, you can ask the client or
choose one for yourself. The goal is to make the
important words pop. You can also know which words to marker according to the
marked words from the script. Great, now let's see what
we've got a few times. Being disciplined is the key
to your personal growth. It means sticking to your goals, keeping things organized,
and being strong. When things get tough, discipline will help you
become a better person, Reach your goals and
make your life happier. Being disciplined is the key
to your personal growth. It means sticking to your goals, keeping things organized, and being strong When
things get tough, discipline will help you
become a better person. Reach your goals and
make your life happier. Being disciplined, alright? Everything looks very nice and we can save the project
before moving on. Now I've got a question for you guys in a case
like ours right now, where we've got a
bunch of layers that belong to the same type
of role in the scene, like the text layers
we've got here. What should we do in order
to keep our timeline organized and make
all the text layers function as only one layer? In this case, we can precompose all the text layers.
Let's do it. Let's select them all in press control shift,
let's name it, subtitles or captions,
and hit, okay, great. Now let's collapse this pre
comp and add a glow effect. To improve the look for this, go to the effects panel
and search for glow. Then drag the effects
onto our new precomp. We can set the glow radius
to 50 to get nice glow. But actually in this case, I don't really want to use it, but you can leave it in case
you love how that looks. Instead of the glow effect, I'll go back to the first
subtitles layer and copy the two drop shadow
effects on it and paste them on
our new subtitles. Precomp. Great to see
the shadow a bit more. We can play around with
the softness property. I'll leave it at 50. Awesome, so we are done
with the captions. Let's just bring this
pre comp above the voice over layers and we
are ready to move on to the next part where we add
some cool sound effects and improve the overall look of the animation and so much more. It's going to be a fun
one, so see you there.
13. Final touches: Welcome back. After finishing the animation and
adding the captions, we are now ready for
the final touches. We will begin with
improving the overall look. For this, we can enter
the main scene and add glow effects to some of the main objects in the
scene, like the key layer. Now I want to teach you something important
about how you can further enhance
the appearance of your project while working
with the glow effect. As you can see, even if I adjust the parameters of the glow
and increase its intensity, the effect doesn't look so good. To improve it, we can go to the project panel and click here to enter the
project settings. Once there, we can open up the bit depth menu and
choose the 32 bits per channel without going into too much unnecessary
programming detail. All you need to know is that the more bits per
channel you have, the richer your project will
look in terms of colors, gradients, and glowing effects. Now, as you can see, we immediately see a drastic improvement
in the glow effect. Now we actually need to lower the intensity and
adjust the radius. Try to find the perfect
balance between those two that looks awesome to
achieve a much stronger glow. You can also adjust the
threshold if needed. I'll leave it as it
was. Just so you know, there are many different
paved versions of the glow effect that
you can find online. But I'm trying to teach you
ways where you will spend as little as possible on
this project anyway, let's move on now. Let's copy the glow from
this layer to the lines comp and paste it into the moving lines
layer we have here. When pasting the effect
onto the new layer, make sure to check how it looks and adjust the
parameters if needed. Great, now let's go back to the main scene and find another layer to add
the glow effect to. I think we should
paste the effect onto the small
sphere we have here. Since this layer will become the main character of the
project in the next scenes, let's not forget to adjust the effect and see
how that looks. It looks nice. And now
let's copy the effect from this layer and paste it onto the main character layer
we have in this scene. Because it is the continuous
layer from the previous one. All right, it looks great. And now we can paste
the glow effects onto the speed lines
we have in this scene. Let's close the particles effect to see the glow and adjust the parameters a bit to get better results for the
glow in the speed lines. Looks awesome.
Finally, let's paste the glow effects onto the smile layer and adjust
the parameters to fit. This layer looks great. All right, now we can go back to the master comp and continue
with improving the look. But before that we can turn off the safe zone and the
grid in the preview. Now let's learn how to add a cool motion blur effect
for the entire animation. For this first we need to
create an adjustment layer to use it as a filter that will affect all the layers below it. Let's change the
name to Motion Blur and place it below
the subtitles comp. Actually, we can place
it below the voice over because we want it to
affect only the main scene. All right, now let's search for the motion blur effect and add it to the adjustment layer. Note that adding
a motion blur to your project will
significantly slow down your rendering time since the motion blur creates a bunch of duplicates
of the scene. Therefore, it is
very hard for after effects to present all
these duplicates at once. The effect actually does is add some nice motion
blur at points in time where the
movement is very fast. We can control it by
changing the shutter angle. In our case, we
can set it to 120. Just note that the more you add, the slower the
rendering time will be. As you can see, the motion blur can sometimes ruin the look of certain effects like
our speed lines that we created using
a particles effect. To fix this, you
can try to lower the threshold and maybe turn
on the native motion blur. Soon we'll go back to it and find a proper solution
for this problem. In the meantime, turn off the motion blur and continue
working on the project. I see that the glow effect I
created for the key is not looking good because this pre
comp has a scale animation. It causes the object to be large but remain the same
settings for the glow. In that case, let's just enter the main scene and adjust
the glow effect on the key. It will look good when it's
small and when it's big. Let's try setting the threshold to 50 and see how that looks. I love it. All right, now let's use this
opportunity to check the glow effect for
the entire animation. Being disciplined is the key
to your personal growth. It means sticking to your goals, keeping things organized, and being strong when
things get tough. Discipline will help you
become a better person. Reach your goals and
make your life happier. Being disciplined, al right,
everything looks awesome. And now, once we're good
with the animation, the subtitles, and the effects, we are ready to add
some sound effects. To download sound
effects for free, you can go to Pixabay, a cool website for free
stuff for creators. In our case, we'll go to sound
effects before moving on, here's a quick tip for you
guys when you are downloading music or sound effects from the Internet before using
it in your projects, make sure to check the
license stuff on the website. In our case, if we go
to license summary, we can see that we can use the content from this
website for free. And here you can see
what you can't do with the content you are
downloading from this website. Make sure to check for this on every free content
website you are using to avoid unnecessary
problems in the future. All right, let's go
back to the main page. And here you can search for some cool sound effects that
you need for your project. In our case, to not waste time, let's use the sound effects I already found and downloaded. Let's find the main folder for the course that you have
downloaded from me and copy the sound effects
folder from there to the assets folder you
created on your computer. Note that there are
many other ways to add the sound effects you
downloaded to your project. The most efficient one
is to send them over to the sound designer artist
and pay him to do the job. This is what I'm doing when I'm dealing with big projects. But since we have a small one, we can do it ourselves. And we can do it either
using Adobe Audition, which is software from
Adobe for editing sound, or we can do it in Adobe
software from Adobe that focuses more on video editing than visual effects
like after effects. Anyway, to make it simple, we are going to add
the sound effects directly to our project
and after effects. Great, so now let's go back to our project and bring all the sound effects
files into it. To arrange these files and
see them side by side, we can tag these files
with a different color and then click here to arrange the files according
to the tagging color. Awesome, Now, before bringing the
files into the timeline, let's hide the layers. We don't need to see
in the layers panel, so we can have more room here to hide a layer
in after effects, we need to use the
function found here. If you don't see it,
you can click here. All right, now let's select
this layer as a shy layer. And click on the shy icon here
to activate the function. Awesome. We can also hide the markers layer and the subtitles layer
that we are not using. We can also hide the motion
blur effect. Looks great. And if you want to
see the layers again, just uncheck the function by clicking on the shy
icon found here. All right, and now
we can start with adding some nice sound
effects to our scene. First, let's start with
checking this file. For this, we need to
double click on it. And now after effects, we'll open it in a
new preview panel where we can press the
space bar and listen to it. Okay, I think this
sound can fit well with the beginning of
the animation where we see the revealing of the key. Being disciplined is the key
to your personal growth. When working with sound effects, we don't really need to see the animation in
the best quality. Let's lower the preview
quality so we can check the sound effect without waiting for the
preview to render. Being disciplined is the key
to your personal growth. I think that's
awesome. But we can crank up the volume a
bit to hear it better. For this, select the layer
and press the L key. Now we can set the audio levels to five and move on
to the next one. Let's double click on
this file to check it. Okay, let's hear this one. I think we can use this sound at the end of the animation
where we see the smile. Let's place this layer
here and see how it looks and make your life happen. We can start it a
bit earlier poles and make your life happen. Being disciplined, all right. I think it's great, but
the volume is too high. Let's lower it a bit. I
have a question for you. What is the shortcut to reach the audio levels
of the sound file? To reach it, we need to press
the L key. Let's do it. And set the audio levels to
-15 And hear it once again. Reach your goals and
make your life happier. Being disciplined is the key
to your personal growth. It means sticking to your goals, keeping things organized, and being strong when
things get tough. Discipline will help you
become a better person. Reach your goals and
make your life happier. I think it's great. And now let's move on to the next file. Let's hear this one as well. All right. I think this sound can fit the downward motion of the big sphere to enhance
the feeling of tough times. Let's place it here
and see how that looks when things get
tough. This is okay. As you can see, this
is a very long layer, which means we need to
crop it to the end of this scene to know until when to crop the layer
without cutting the sound. We can select the layer
and press the L key twice. This way we will see the audio waves of
this layer and that's how we can know at which point exactly to crop it without
cutting the sound. Let's drag it here and use
this sound from this point, press Alt and the left bracket to cut it from its beginning. Now let's drag it here
and hear it once again. And being strong when
things get tough, discipline will help you
become a better person. I think we should start
this sound earlier. And being strong things, getting tough, it's too early. Discipline will help you
become a better person. Keeping things organized
and being strong, Alright, I think we
can place it here. And finally, let's crop
it from its end using out and the right bracket, okay? And now let's press
the LK once and set the audio level to minus
ten to lower the volume. Let's hear how that sounds. Keeping things organized and being strong when
things get tough. Discipline will help you
become a better person, reach your goals and make your life happier,
being disciplined. And now let's hear the rest of the sound effects and try to
find good points in time. To add them to the scene, we can use this
Woohoo out animation we have in the first scene. Blind is the key to your personal growth, To
your personal growth. Watch the scene a few times and move the time indicator
across the timeline. And use the left
bracket key to start the sound layer to the position
of the time indicator. Personal growth,
it means sticking. And now let's press L and lower the volume in this
layer to minus five. Let's hear it one more time. Personal growth, it means
sticking to your goals, keeping things organized, and being strong when
things get tough. Discipline will help you
become a better person. Reach your goals and
make your life happier. Alright? Now we can duplicate this sound and add it at
this point in time as well. Help you become a better person. Reach your goals,
reach your goals, reach your goals, and
make your life happier. Disciplined is the key
to your personal growth. It means sticking to your goal. Great, and now let's add the last sound effect and use it in the quick motion part, we have in the animation, organized and being strong when things things organized
and being strong, keeping things organized and being strong when
things get tough. Discipline will help you
become a better person. Reach your goals and
make your life happier. Being disciplined is the
key to your personal. We can duplicate this
sound and use it at the beginning of the animation
for the zoom out motion. And is the key to
discipline is the key. Being disciplined is the key
to your personal growth. It means sticking to your
goals, keeping things. It means sticking to your goal. Let's duplicate this. Wooh
Sound and use it for the zoom. And animation in the goals seen means sticking
to your goals, keeping things organized,
key to your personal growth. It means sticking to your goal. Here's a tip for you. You can reverse the layer to get the reverse Wo
Sound if you need. It means sticking to your
goals, keeping things. Or it means sticking
to your goals. Growth, It means
sticking to your goals, keeping things organized
and being strong. Sticking to your goals, keeping things organized and being strong when
things get tough, Discipline will help you
become a better person. Reach your goals and make
your life happier, happier. We can also duplicate
this sound and use the stretch time function
to create a unique sound. If you don't see this function, right click here, go to columns and check the
stretch function. Now we can click here and set
the stretch factor to 50, which will make the
layer end faster. And because of that, we will
hear a whole new sound. Now let's place it in the moment where we see the goals
for the first time. Keeping things organized
and clicking to your goals. Keeping things organized
to your goals, Keeping things organized and
being strong when things. Let's speed this up even more. Goals, keeping things organ to your goals, keeping
things awesome. And now let's press out
to set the audio level to -20 It means sticking
to your goals, keeping things organized,
and being strong when things get tough to your goals, keeping things goals,
keeping things organized, and being strong when
things get tough, discipline will help you
become a better person. Reach your goals and
make your life happy. And now let's duplicate this layer and this
time make it slower. We can use this whoosh
for the uplifting motion. We'll help you become
a better person. Reach your goals and
make your life happy. Discipline will help you
become a better person. Reach your goals and
make your life happier. All right, so once we're
done with the sound effects, we can close the open
panels and organize our project in the project panel to keep our project organized, which is one of the
most important things you should care about when working on creative
projects in after effects, we can organize the project by creating new folders
in the project panel. For this, let's click here to make sure no file is selected. And click here to
create a new folder, which we will call precomps. Now drag all the pre
comps we created during the project beside the master
comp into this folder. We can tag the master comp in a different color to
differentiate it from others. Next, let's create
another folder, which we will call assets. Now bring all the asset
files into this folder. For the sound effects files, let's create another folder, drag them into it, and then put this folder into
the Assets folder. Great. Now, before
rendering the project, let's clear our projects
so we won't have any errors during the
rendering in the animation. We will do it using the purge
function in after effects. Purging is like cleaning up your computer's
memory and storage. It's about getting rid
of temporary files that build up while you're
working on projects. This helps keep things
running smoothly, prevents your computer
from getting bogged down and can even fix some
pesky glitches or crashes. It's basically like
giving your after effects a little refresh to
keep it working its best. Especially when
you're dealing with big complicated stuff like rendering or previewing complex
scenes during the work. To do it, let's
go to Edit Purge, and choose to clear all
memory and disk cache. You might see here a
different number than mine. That's because this is what
you allowed after effects when adjusting the preferences at the beginning of this course. In any case, let's
just hit, okay. And wait a few seconds. Awesome. Now, one last thing, Since the animation
ends at second 15, let's get rid of all the
unnecessary timeline here by adjusting the duration of this comp to get to
the setting of this P, let's press control K. Now let's shorten the
duration to 20 seconds. Great. And now let's hit Control to get to render
this composition. Here in the render panel, we can go to output
mode and choose to render it in 50
megabits per second, which means in a high
quality MP four format. If you don't see
it here, you can click on the formats
here and make sure in formats it's set to her 0.264
which is an MP four file. Then in format options, you can crank up
the target bit rate to get a bit more
high quality video. Once done, let's click here and choose where
to save the file. We will save it in
the finals folder we created for this project. Now let's change the name, Click Save, and hit the Render button and
wait for a few moments. All right, and now
to see the render, we can open up the output mode and click on the link here. It will take us directly to the folder where we
rendered the project. Great, so now let's
see how that looks. Being disciplined is the key
to your personal growth. It means sticking to your goals. Being disciplined is the key
to your personal growth. It means sticking to your goals, keeping things organized,
and being strong. When things get tough. Discipline will help you
become a better person, Reach your goals and
make your life happier. Being disciplined is a key
to your personal growth. It means sticking to your goals, keeping things organized,
and being strong. When things get tough. Discipline will help you
become a better person, Reach your goals and
make your life happier. Being disciplined is a key
to your personal growth. It means sticking
to your awesome. It looks great. Now let's render it with the
motion blur effect and adjust the scene a bit in the necessary part when the motion blur changes
the look of the scene. Let me show you what I mean. First, let's turn on the
motion blur and set it to 120. Now, if you remember when we activated the
motion blur earlier, we couldn't see the speed lines since they are very thick. I'll turn off the glow effects so you can see what I mean. As you can see, we
barely see them in the master comp where the
motion blur affects them. To see them better, we can right click on the
Speed lines layer, go to Layer Styles and add
a stroke to this layer. Now let's change
the stroke color to white and see how that
looks in the master comp. As you can see, we can
now see them much better. All right, let's render this version with
the motion blur, but without the subtitles. Let's turn off this layer and press control M to
render the animation. Once again, I'll
choose to render it as a high quality
MP four file. To keep our project organized, let's click on the
previous render to sample the name and
add a suffix V02, which means version two. Great. And now let's
render the project and be very patient because
since we have activated the
motion blur effect, it will take much
longer to render. I'll speed this process
up and once it's done, let's check the new render. Being disciplined is the key
to your personal growth. It means sticking to your goals, keeping things organized, and being strong when
things get tough. Discipline will help you
become a better person. Reach your goals and
make your life happier. Being disciplined, awesome. And now you will have
two options to send to the client and let him decide
which he likes the most. All right, let's go back to our project and close all the
open panels and pre comps. In my case, I will turn off the motion blur and the
stroke on the speed lines. I'll enter the main scene, pre comp and press
the Ukey twice to see all the activated
properties on this layer. Now I will turn off the
layer style from here. With this, we have finished
animating the entire project. Now we can finally close
the project and save it. While doing that, let's close the folder and exit
Illustrator as well. With this, we have finished
the course and you are ready to move on to the assignment I
prepared for you. Have fun. Thanks a
lot for watching.
14. Home Task: Hey, so you've got a
homework assignment to do, you've got three
scripts to choose from. And you need to create a cool motion graphic animation
for one of them. Your comp size should be 1080 pixels in width and
1920 pixels in height, and your animation should be
no longer than 20 seconds. Just use three colors at most
for the task. Good luck.
15. Outro: Congratulations on
completing the course. You have taken a big step forward in your motion
design journey. And if you have some
questions about the course or want to discuss
the home task with me, feel free to reach out to me on any of my social
media channels. And until then, thank you very
much for being part of it. And I can't wait to see
you in the next one.