Collage Animation: Creative Motion Graphics with Photoshop & After Effects

1. Course Trailer: Collage animation is a new way to tell stories differently, loosing your creativity by creating incredible worlds. My name is Carminys. I am the co-founder of operary.com. We are an animation studio with more than eight years experience. We have created beautiful animated explainer videos for hundreds of companies worldwide. Since I was very young, I always loved reading, writing, and drawing stories. Even though I ended up studying business administration, I decided to pursue my dream. I created Operary together with my partner Guillermo Ortega. He is the creative manager, and together we have created the contents for this course. In this course, you will learn how to make an amazing collage animation in a very simple way. Using cropped images, and video files, we will create incredible worlds without having to be great illustrators. We will also see an alternative method to give your animations a collage look in an easy way. We will start developing the idea. I will show you the best web pages to download the material for your project for free and we will design a quick sketch of what our project will be. Next, you will learn two different methods to crop images quickly and very effectively with Adobe Photoshop. Finally, we will pass all our material to Adobe After Effects. Once here, we will animate the images and integrate the videos in the same way that we do in our studio. We will retouch the colors, add filters, textures, and I will give you some special tips to give your project a unique and professional touch. This course is ideal for creative artists, animators, graphic designers, illustrators, and anyone who wants to experiment with a different, attractive, and original style. This is an easy-to-follow course, however, I recommend having a basic knowledge of After Effects in Photoshop. If you have not used After Effects before you can take my previous course, animate your illustrations in record time using Adobe After Effects, first. Are you ready to make amazing collage animations? Let's begin. 2. Before to Start: During the course, we will work with Adobe Photoshop to crop our images and Adobe After Effects to animate the project. I would love to see your projects at the end of the course. Please upload them to the course photo gallery or tag me in your Instagram post. I hope you enjoyed the course. 3. Idea: Hello everybody. Welcome to this class. Before developing the project's idea, I want to show you an artist's work that I really like. His name is Julien Pacaud. On his website, you can find a lot of examples that can inspire you. In this case, Julien designs static collages, still he has a good taste and I think it's an excellent reference to start with. Here's the web so you can take a look at this work. Okay, class. Now we are going to focus on our project. Before we start looking for images, it is good that we have a clear idea of what our final design will be like. For my project, I was clear about three things. I wanted to create a surreal world, a giraffe driving a vintage car, and a door that connects with another world. The project has no meaning or hazing message It just seems like a fun idea to me. Sometimes the best way to improve your skills is practicing for fun. From this ideas, I would start with one of the fundamental parts in creating a collage. Finding the right material. 4. Looking for Images and Videos: Hi there. In this class we will see some free websites from where you can download material to create your own animated collages. It is about finding the images and videos that most inspire you. Let us start with unsplash.com. From its search engine, we can find thousands of photos with excellent image quality. We can even choose a resolution at which we want to download our images. If we go to the images Licensed page, we can see that they are free for commercial and non-commercial use. Another interesting website is pixabay.com. This website has a lot of material to download for free. On Pixabay, you can also choose the download resolution. Pixabay also has stock videos that would help us to give our animation more dynamism. Another website with a lot quality and free material is Pexels. It works similarly to Pixabay, and it has both photos and videos, so it's perfect. As in the previous examples at Pexels, we can use downloaded material for our projects, both for commercial use and personal use. In case you have a paid subscription with other websites such as Adobe Stock or Shutterstock, you will have more options available. On Freepik, you can download dozens of free images. However, you will have to attribute the author. It is a good option since it has hundreds of thousands of images available. With these examples, we have plenty of material to make our projects. I have left you a PDF file with the websites that I just mentioned before, and some other good options. So enjoy. 5. Sketch: Hello there. Welcome to this lesson. Once we have downloaded the images and videos that we liked, we will proceed to put all the material in the same folder so that everything is well organized. In this case, I have called the folder footage. As you can see, they are all photographs except the sky, space, and the moon, which are video files. To follow the course simply, I have left you a PDF file with links to photos and videos to download. But I have added some variations to make it more fun. In the PDF, you can find different options for animals, mountains, cars. By following the same indications of the course, you can make your own project, achieving a different result. This way, it will be more fun and more satisfying. Next, we will make a first approximation of how our work will be in Adobe Photoshop. We create a new document in Photoshop, and we put a size of 1,920 by 1,080 pixels, what we commonly know as full HD, and a resolution of 72 pixels inch. We name the file. Finally, we create a new document. Next, we open the photos that we are going to use for our project. In this process, we will make a quick selection of the parts that we want to use in our collages. We don't need it to be perfect since we only want to get an idea of what the final result will be like so we can see if it works or we need to make more adjustments. Let's go to the image. In this case, it is a landscape. We zoom in on the area we want to cut. We select the polygonal lasso tool. If you can't see directly, right-click and the rest of the option will appear. In this case, we are going to cut the mountain on the right. Once we have our selection made, we double click with the mouse to close the selection path, that easy. Now, we will only have to select the move tool and drag the selection that we have created to the sketch document. Once here, if we press a key combination, control T, or command T on Mac, we can transform our photo. We take a corner and make our image smaller to adapt it to the desired size. Now, we are going to duplicate the mountain. To do this, we hold down the alt key and then drag the mountain. Let's go to edit, transform, flip horizontal. We make it bigger again using the control T key combination on Windows, and command T key combination on Mac, and drag in from the corner. Now, we name both layers to have everything well organized. To name them, we just have to double-click on the layers name and rename them. Following the same method, we are cutting all the images. For example, let's cut this car from here. We get a little closer using the zoom tool. Again, we select the polygonal lasso tool and cut the car from the image. Let's remember that now we don't need to be precise, we just want to make a quick sketch. Select the move tool and drag the selection that we have created to the sketch document. We adjust the size using the combination of keys, control T on Windows, and command T on Mac. Don't forget dragging from one of its corners. Finally, we name the layer from the layers panel. We do exactly the same process with all the images until we complete our process. As it is a repetitive process, and I don't want you to get bored, I won't do it with all the parts. Okay guys, we already have all the cropped images in the sketch document. Now, we just need to include the sky, the moon, and the doors background that we will introduce directly into after effects as video files. As we are making a quick sketch with not too much detail, we could save time by replacing the video files that we will add in after effects with basic shapes. For example, I'm going to create a blue rectangle for the sky. We name the layer, place it below the rest of the layers, and lock it to avoid mistakes creating more drawings on the same layer. We can do the same for the moon, but this time we will create a cycle with the ellipse tool. If we hold down the alt and shift keys while dragging, we can create a perfect cycle with the center located where we had started creating the cycle. We color it white. We name the layer, and lock it. Next, we will deactivate the layer that don't let us see the door well. We can do the same to replace what will be the space clip. Place it below the door layer, name it, and lock it. Would you prefer to add a screenshot of the medias to the sketch? That's very easy. For these, we erase the sky to add a screenshot of the video. To erase it, we need to first unlock the layer. Now, we delete it. We go out, we go to our photos folder, open the clip of the sky in full screen, and click on the print screen key to take an image of the video in full screen. Next, we go back to Photoshop and paste the print screen into the document with control plus B, and we name the layer. Depending on whether you want a more or less detailed sketch, you can use either of the two methods. For the floor, I'm going to create a rectangle. With this color, it can look good. We checked that the floor layer is below the mountains and name the layer. By mixing flat colors with real images, we can give a fresh thought to our composition. Our animation will have two different points; the moment when the giraffe is driving in the center of the screen, and when the door to another world and the astronaut become protagonist. We have to check that both moments work well. First, we will hide the door, the astronaut, the tree, and check the first scene. Great, I like it. We deactivate the giraffe and the car in the layer panel and activate the astronaut, the door, and the tree. Let's see how it looks. I'm going to place some elements to get an idea of how our animation will be. Perfect, I personally like the final sketch. Of course, when everything is well cropped, placed, and with the color adjustments applied, everything will be much better. But we can tell we are on the right way for now. Once we have our finished sketch, and feel happy with it, we can crop the images on Photoshop. This time, we'll do it with more precision. 6. How to Crop Images 1: Hello everyone. In this class, I will show you how to crop complex images simply. First, we will create a new document with 1,920 by 1080 pixel size, as in the previous lesson, which we will call collage design. This will be the main file to place all our cutouts to later animate everything in after-effects. There are many ways to crop images in Photoshop, but I will show you the methods that I use because they are very simple and effective. To apply this first method, you need to have the 2020 version, or the 2021 version of the software installed. If you don't have it yet, just go to your Creative Cloud account and update it. It won't take more than five minutes. To show you how this method works, we are going to open the photograph of the giraffe. The complication of cropping the giraffe image is the detail of the hair. I'm going to zoom in so you can see better. But don't worry because it is very easy to do. We need precise, but not perfect cropped image. Keep in mind that the elements are going to be moving and it will not be seen at large size. You don't have to waste time trying to make the perfect cutout. First, we're going to select the "Object Selection" tool. With the selected tool, we will create a rectangle that includes the object we want to cut out. Photoshop will automatically create a precise selection of our giraffe. But as you can see, we'll still have some details to improve though. To do this, we click on the "Select and Mask" option. We can also find this option in "Selection", "Selects and Mask", by clicking on this option, our selection will appear above the rest. We can choose the view mode from here. For example, we can select the all-white option at 50 percent more or less. Next, we will zoom in with the zoom tool to better see the details. With the" Edge Refine Brush" tool, we will improve the details of the hair. We adjust the size of the brush and carefully pass it over to hair. Try not to abuse this tool. One pass is enough. This option only works with small detail, such as hair or a small flaws. If we zoom out, we see that it looks very well. There is a small defect in the ear. I'm going to pass over the ear and the contour of the face. Okay, perfect. I have been a little less precise with the bottom part. This is not a big problem because you will only see the giraffe from the trunk up in the video. However, I will show you how we could quickly improve this selection. For this, we're going to use the "Polygonal Lasso" tool that we have already seen. If you can not see it, just right-click on this option, selecting it and choosing the option, subtract from selection by clicking on this little symbol over here, we will remove the parts that we don't need easily. Just select the parts that you want to delete from the selection. Remember that to close the relation path, we have to double-click. We keep applying these methods until we get the expected result. In the same way, you can always add parts to your selection by selecting the add to selection option by clicking on this symbol here. We are going to increase the opacity to 100 percent to better see our selection. Very good. Now, we just need to improve the selection a bit by applying some simple adjustments. For these, we can add a little forever to our selection so that later it is better integrated with the rest of the elements. We can also give a negative value to shift edge to remove some pixels from the selection, and make sure that we do not take anything outside of it. Perfect. Our selection will be finished. Click on "Okay". With the "Move" tool selected, drag the selection to the collage design. Now we only have to name the layer and that's it. As you can see, it is very easy. Following the same process, I have cropped the astronaut, the tree, and the earth field. In the next lesson, we will see a different method to select objects. 7. How to Crop Images 2: Hello there. In this class, I will show you a different method to crop images simply. We have already seen this method in lesson 5 using the Polygonal Lasso Tool. But now, we are trying to be more precise with more care. We will crop the red car in the image so that you can see how it works. If we apply the previous lesson methods with this photo, we see that it's not very accurate. In this case, it will take more time to tweak this selection than to do it manually. Press Control D or Command D in Mac to remove the selection. Let's zoom in a bit to be more precise, we select the Polygonal Lasso Tool. As I have told you in previous lessons, we are trying to be precise, but we are not looking for perfection. We move through the design by holding down the space key to select the Hand Tool. We could get closer and make a more precise selection, but we will waste too much time, and the course will become eternal. However, this is how I usually work. As this is a video, it will be unnecessary to apply more detail. We will add in the wheels independently, so we would not select them. When working with sharp curves, we can apply more details to our cutout out to make it more precise. Once we have finished the selection, we double-click to close it. We will click on this little symbol here. Subtract from selection to remove the gaps in the selection windows since we went to see the giraffe body and the background through the windows. I think this result is too hard, and it won't be well integrated with the background. To improve this aspect, we're going to blur the edge. We select any of the Selection Tools, and then we enter Select and Mask. As we did in the previous lesson, we will increase the feather a bit. In Shift Edge, we can give it a negative value to remove some pixels from the selection. We checked that everything is as we want, and click on Okay. Next, we the Move Tool selected, we drag the cutout to our collage design document. As you can see, we have cropped the car but not the wheels. This is because we want to animate them independently. We will open the image of this car from where we will crop the front wheel. Let's get a little closer to the wheel to be able to crop it more comfortably. We can use the Elliptical Marquee Tool by right-clicking on this symbol and selecting it to crop the wheel. Next, we simply create a selection with the size of the wheel. If we hold down the Alt and Shift keys while dragging, we can create a perfect circle with the center location where we started the selection. As with the rest of the cuts, we drag it directly to our main design. With Control plus T, or Command T on Mac, we adjust the size of the wheel. Then we duplicate it by pressing the Alt key and dragging. Finally, we name the layers and place them just below the car. As you can see, it is a very simple process using the same method with the help of the Polygonal Lasso Tool, we have cut out the door in the mountain. In the next lesson, we will prepare all the material to later import it into After Effects. 8. Before to Animate: Now that we have all our images cropped, we just need to leave everything well organized to import into After Effects. First, we will make sure that all layers are named to make it easier for us to identify them in After Effects. Let's review some details so that there is no doubt. We deactivate the astronaut for a moment to get a better view of the car. As you already know, the wheels are on separate layers to animate them independently. Okay, now we deactivate the layers that don't let us see the mountains. We will duplicate the quintiles of the mountain by holding the "Alt key" and dragging it to the desired location. Next, we're going to flip the image. For this, we go to edit, transform, flip Horizontal. We make it bigger again with "Ctrl + T" or "Cmd + T" on Mac and drag it from the corner. Then we name the new mountain. We activate the layers of the car for the next step. We're going to create a black rectangle that will be the background of the car's wheels. We name the new layer and place it just below the wheels. We haven't included the sky jet because we will put it directly into After Effects as a video file. Just like the moon and the space that we will add later. As in lesson 5, for the floor, we have created a rectangle. Let's activate all the layers again to take one last look. I forgot. The background layer that is created automatically can be deleted. Click on the padlock symbol to unlock it and delete it. This will be all guys. The most important thing is to understand that everything must be well organized by layers to make our life easier in After Effects. We "Save" the document and we will already have our file ready to import into After Effects. In the next lesson, we will look at the short cuts that we will use the most in After Effects during this course. See you there. 9. Shortcuts in AE: Hello everyone, welcome to this class. Before I start animating, I will like to reveal the after-effects shortcuts that we will use during the course so that everyone can follow the instructions without problems. The most used shortcuts refer to the properties of the layers and the tools that we use commonly. Let's see how to open the layer properties with a single click. Press A for the anchor point, P the position, S for the scale, R for the rotation, and T for the opacity. Also, if we hold down the Shift key, we can open several properties at the same time. Now we're going to see how to access the main tools with the touch of a key. Press V for the Selection Tool. Hold the space bar for the Hand Tool, Z for the Zoom Tool, W for the Rotation Tool, Y for the Pan Behind Tool, and G for the Pen Tool. It's about practice. At Projects and Resources, you have a PDF file available for download with the most used shortcuts. In the next lesson, we will begin to bring our project to life. Don't miss it. 10. Let´s Animate 1: Okay guys, we're ready to start with the fun part of the course bringing our project to life. We're going to start by importing our Photoshop design into After Effects. In the Import As menu, we choose the option Composition-Retain Layer Sizes. A pop-up message appears, we choose the Merge Layer Styles option. As we have not applied layer styles in Photoshop, the option Editable Layer Styles would not bring us any benefits and can make the renderings go slower. Click on "Okay". In addition to creating a composition with entire scene, a folder is also created. Inside this folder, we can find all the layers we will work on the composition. With a double click, we enter the Collage Design composition. Next, we go to Composition, Composition Settings, and set their duration to six seconds. If you notice, we can work with the frame rate of 25 frames per second. Press "Okay" in case the layers are cut when changing their duration as it happen to be. You only have to select the first layer, and while holding down the Shift key click on the last layer. Next, we drag from the end of the layers to the end of the timeline, so the layers are active all the time. Now we will recompose the layers that make up the car, including the giraffe to animate him more comfortably. To do this, we select the layers. Right-click "Pre-compose". We give it a name, and click on "Okay". With a double-click, we enter the new composition that we have created. Before continuing, let's save the project. We go to File select ''Save''. We name the project and save. Perfect. Now, we're going to activate the Toggle Transparency Grid option to see our car better. We link the layers of the black shape and the giraffe with the car's layer so that when the car moves, they will follow its movement. If we move the car, the linked layers will move too. Before starting to animate the car, we're going to place the anchor point. To do this, select the car layer and with the Pumpy Hand Tool set the anchor points at the base of the car in center. The car will rotate around this point. We create a key frame in the position and rotation properties at the beginning of the timeline by clicking on the stopwatch symbol, and rotate the car very slightly. Next, are Benton frames and slightly animated rotation. We're going to lower the position of the car in the second key frame. Select all the frames, and press the F9 key to smooth the movement. We're going to apply the expression loopOut("pingpong") to create an infinite loop. To create an expression, click on the Position stopwatch while holding down the Alt key, and write the expression loopOut("pingpong"). This loop type goes back and forth between the first and last key frame. We want to copy this expression and paste it into the rotation property. Right-click on the Position property and choose the option Copy Expression Only. Next, select the Rotation property, and with Control V, Command V on Mac, paste the expression. Preview by pressing "0" on the numpad. We see that with only two key frames in a very simple expression, we already have or looped animation done. Great. Now we are going to animate the giraffe. But first, we're going to apply a mask to hide the legs. Select the Giraffe layer, and then with the Rectangle Tool we create a rectangle that covers only the parts of the giraffe that we want to see. As we did with the car, we will place the giraffes on core points with the Pan Behind Tool at the height of its knees where the steering wheel is. We will make an animation similar to the car, but we will move the animation a few frames to give it a more natural appearance. Advance to the frames according to the start of the car's animation. To save time, we can copy the rotation animation of the car. Select the car's rotation key frames and copy them with Control C or Command C on Mac. Select the Giraffe layer and with the Control V or Command V in Mac, paste the same animation in the giraffe. If we preview, we see that seasons animation has been copied with loopOut("pingpong") expression included. We create a key frame at the position in the same frame where we created it in the rotation. Advance stem frames again, and lower the position of the giraffe a bit. Again, we select the frames and press the F9 key to smooth the movement. We copy the expression loopOut("pingpong") and paste it into the position's property of the giraffe. Let's see our animation again. As you can see we can save a lot of time with a task, as simple as copy and paste. Perfect. Now we are going to work on the wheels. Please select one of the wheels and open its rotation. Next, while holding down the Alt key click on the stopwatch to create an expression again, and write the following expression that you seeing on the screen. Applying this expression, the wheel will turn three times per second. A complete turn is 360 degrees, and if we multiply it by 3 we obtain 1,080. We pull the expression with a negative value so that it rotates counterclockwise. Copy the expression and with Control V/Command V on Mac paste it on wheel too. Press "0" on the numpad to preview the animation. Perfect. We already have our car fully animated in a very simple way. 11. Let´s Animate 2: Hello, everybody. In this lesson, we will continue working on our animation. But now, we will deactivate the astronaut, door, and the tree layers so they don't bother us. During the first seconds of our animation, the car will remain still in the screen center. To get a sense of speed, we need the rest of the elements to move. To apply this displacement, we will use the parallax principle by which we will create an illusion of spatial depth. The principle is very simple. The closer an element is to the camera, the faster it moves, and the farther it is, the slower it will move. Let's see how it works. Create a key frame in the air field layer precision, and move it to the left. Next, advance to second tree and move the object to the right. At the end of the movement, we don't want it to stop abruptly. To do this, select the last key frame, and smooth its movements with F9. We're going to do the same with the mountains in the background. We want to give the feeling that the mountain of the left is closer to the camera than the one on the right, so that it will move a little faster than this one. Select the mountains of the left and create a keyframe in the position at the beginning of the timeline. Then advance to the second tree and animate the position just a little. Then we smooth the movements of the last frame with F9. We do the same with the mountain on the right, we'll reduce the range of motion according to the mountain on the left. This way, we can appreciate the parallax effect. Again, we apply F9 to the last frame. Let's take a look to our animation by pressing "0" on the Numpad. Great. This is what we were looking for. Now, for the animation to be credible, we must make some adjustments. When the movements of the landscape slows down, the car should begin to move across the stage. We will create a keyframe around here, as you can notice that the movement of the landscape becomes slower, and we make it disappear from the screen in a range of about two seconds. Important tip: we will smooth the car's acceleration so that the movement is well integrated with the rest of the animation. As we have done before, we smooth with F9 key on the first key frame and we preview again. It doesn't convince me. Let's try moving the keyframe a bit. No. Too soon. Let's delay them a bit. Great. Now I like it. But now, we need to give our animation more depth. We're going to make some changes. We will activate the tree layer for a moment and duplicate it with Control D or Command D on Mac. We drag it above all the others. Next, we increase its scale. If you notice, when increasing its size, the tree becomes pixelated. This is normal because Photoshop works with pixel-based graphics. But in this case, for us, it's not a problem because later, we're going to apply a blur effect to it. We're going to animate the position of the tree. We create a keyframe when the animation is already advanced. I think here is okay. Move the tree out of the scene on the left side, then advance a little over a second, and move it to the opposite side. In this case, the tree is closer to the camera than any other object, so it will move faster than everything else. Perfect. We already have it. Now, we will apply an effect to the foreground elements to give more depth to our design. Select the tree layer number 2 and go to Effect, Blur & Sharpen, Gaussian Blur, and increase the blurriness value until it is totally out of focus. Next, copy the effect with Control C or command C on Mac. Select the airfields layer and with Control V, Command V on Mac, paste the effect. Let's increase the blurred it. If we look at it, thanks to this blur, we have achieved a more greater sense of depth, and also, we can no longer appreciate that the tree is pixelated. Okay. I'm going to tweak these values a bit. Keep in mind that there is no correct value. Everything will depend on your perception. As you can see, these details greatly enrich our animation and are very easy to apply. Perfect. Now, we will animate the door's entrance and the tree in the same. First, we are going to activate the layers by clicking on the eye symbol. Let's start with the door. We create a frame in the position property in the second tree. We go back to the second one and take the door out of the scene. Following the parallax principle, the door must move faster than the mountains, but slower than the foreground's elements. In the last frame, we apply a slow down with F9 and we do the same with the tree. We animate the position, just like we did with the door, but its movement should be slightly slower than in the door. To do this, create a first keyframe In the second tree of animation, and then go back a frame before the door's animation starts, and move the tree out of the scene. Remember to smooth the movement of the final keyframe with F9. Preview. Great. It's looking very good. We're going to end the unit by animating the entrance of our astronaut. First, we will reduce it to scale by up to 10 percent, for example. Place the astronaut inside the door. We link the astronaut's layer with the door's layer. Next, go back in the timeline until the moment when the astronaut appears on the screen, and create a keyframe on the position, a scale, and rotation, by clicking on the stopwatch. Apply a rotation to turn it slightly to the left. Then move to the end of the timeline and increase its scale. We set the rotation to zero and move our frame to the right. Let's see. Let's place the astronaut's layer below the red car layer. Now it's okay. If we look at it, although we haven't applied any smoothing into the acceleration and deceleration, it seems that he doesn't have a constant speed. To solve it, we select the astronaut's scale, right click, Keyframe Assistant, Exponential Scale. Now, if we preview, we can see the movement is more natural. Okay, guys, in the next lesson, we will see how we can integrate the video files within our animation. 12. Let´s Animate 3: Now that we have our animated layers, we are going to add the video files that we have previously downloaded. We are going to organize the material we have. I'm going to create a folder called Videos. Then with the folder selected we go to File, Import, and select the video files and import them into the folder. Next, we select the sky's video and drag it to the composition collage design below all the layers. If we preview, we see that we already have our incredible sky integrated with our animations. Next, we're going to drag the space video to our composition. We are going to place it just below the door layer, reduce it's scale, and place it. This is okay. We deactivate the astronaut layer so it doesn't bother us and we get a little closer to get a better look at what we are doing, then we choose the rectangle tool with the layer selected and apply a mask to the door size. As simple as that. Link the video with the door layer, so it follows it's movements. Finally, we're going to drag the moon's video to our composition. In this case, we are going to place it just above the sky layer, adjust it's scale to the desired size, and place it in the scene. In this case, we could eliminate the black color in different ways. First, we could apply a mask again, in this case with the ellipse tool. Let's delete the mask. Another option would be to apply a key effect like linear color key. In the key color option with the eyedropper tool, we could choose the background color and we could quickly eliminate it. I'm going to delete the effect. Finally, we are going to apply another method that will be the one we use. We apply a layer mode to it. If you can't see this option, click "Toggle Switches, Mode" until you can see it. In this case, we are going to apply screen mode. I like it because it integrates very well with the sky. This option only works in some circumstances, like our case right now, where the background is completely black in contrast to the moon and the background layer. Activate the astronaut layer again and let's see what happens. Nice, everything works perfectly. Finally, we're going to add some more details to improve the appearance of our animation. I have downloaded a free fire stock footage from my YouTube channel with great free material quality, it's called free fire and you can download the material from the video description. I already have it downloaded, so let's import it. Very well. Drag it to the composition and place it below the tree layer. We're going to zoom in to see better while we do. Reduce its size and place it on one of the tree branches. With the layer selected press "Control D" or "Command D" on Mac, to duplicate the video, we're going to place it on another tree branch. If we look at them, they are not well integrated. We need to apply a mask. To apply the mask select fire's video. Then select the pen tool and trace the mask, so that we will hide everything that is outside the mask and we do the same with the other layer. To finish, we will only need to link the first layers with the tree layer. Let's take a look. In the next lesson, I will teach you some tricks to retouch the colors and add [inaudible] effect in very simple ways. See you there. 13. Colors & Glitches: Welcome to this class. In this lesson, we will apply color corrections to improve the look of our projects and give it a more professional look. We will also learn how to use a glitch effects in a very simple way. Let us start by applying the color corrections. Select the sky layer and from the effects and presets panel, look for the hue saturation effects and apply it with a double-click. Perfect. Now from the effect controls panel, we're going to adjust the parameters to our liking. I'm going to lower the value of master saturation a bit and modify the value of master hue. It is about playing with the options until you get the desired result. Now, let's work on the mountains. We will give them a more attractive look according to the scene. Select the mountain layer and with a double-click apply the same effect again, and adjust the same parameters again. Great. In the other mountain, we want to apply the same setup. Select the effect and copy it. Next, select the other mountain's layer and with control V or command V on Mac, paste it. As simple as that. We're going to continue with the trees, select the layer and apply the effects again with a double-click, we want to get a gray color, so we lower the master saturation to the minimum. Copy the effect again, with control C or command C on Mac. Look for the other tree, select it and paste the effect in this layer. We are also going to apply the same settings on the astronaut's layer. Select the layer and paste the effects again. We're mixing colors images with black and white images to give our animation a more surreal look. Maybe the rate of the car is too intense, so we will reduce its saturation a bit to get a better integration with the same. For this, we enter the red car composition and making double-click apply the hue saturation effect, lower the master saturation option a bit to give a more vintage look. We go back to our main composition and review again. Do you want to know how to apply a glitch effect in a very simple way? Okay, let's go to pixabay.com, and in the video search engine, we will write something like TV glitch or TV effect. You can take the video that you like the most. I have taken this one from here. Once downloaded, import it into aftereffects. Drag it to the videos folder to have everything well organized. Okay, now we will drag it to the collage animation composition above the rest of the layers and move it in the timeline until we want the glitch animation to begin. We are going to apply a layer more so that it integrates better with the animation. Linear light can look good, perfect. We're going to apply the hue saturation effect again. Let's increase the saturation, and set the master hue value to get a reddish hue. This is perfect. Now we need to animate the appearance of the glitch. For this, we are going to animate the opacity property to get an interference effect. We animate its appearance from zero to a 100 percent. Advance a few frames, copy the previous fame and paste it. Move forward again and lower the opacity to zero percent. Advance and increase the option to 89 percent. Finally, go to the end of the timeline and increase the opacity to the maximum. Let's preview to see how it looks. We already have our glitch perfectly integrated with our animation. In the next lesson, we will apply the final touches to our projects. Don't miss it. 14. Final Touches: Hi there. In this lesson, we are going to continue adding details to our project. First, we're going to create a new composition. We will call it mastery. It will be the same size as the other compositions but instead of lasting six seconds, it will last 18 seconds. We have multiplied the duration by three to put our animation in loop mode. You can multiply it by the value you want, depending on how long you want your animation to last in loop mode. Drag the colors design composition into the master composition and with control D or Command D on Mac, duplicate the composition two times. Next, holding down the Shift key, select the three layers, and go to Animation, Keyframe Assistant, Sequence Layers. Perfect. To give our design more warmth, we're going to create a filter. We have to go to Layer, New, Solid, name it. As we wanted warmth, which shows a yellow color. Apply the layer mode, overlay and then we apply an opacity of 20 percent. Now, if we activate and deactivate our layer, we can see that we have applied a filter in a very simple way. Now, we are going to add a slight noise texture to our animation. We create a new solid again, name it and apply a 50 percent gray to it. We put the layer in overlay mode. Then, we apply the noise effect. We're going to apply an amount of noise of 10 percent. I'm going to zoom in a bit and let's preview to see if we can perceive the noise we have created. It is most noticeable in the blue of the sky. To finish, we can give more detail to our animation by adding shadows. This part is optional since some people prefer to leave it without shadows. However, for me, they enrich the animation alert. Let's see, how it looks. We will enter the collage design composition and we will create the shadow of the car. First, we duplicate the car layer with Control D or Command D on Mac. We go to Effect, Color Correction, and apply the tint effect. In effect controls in the option Map White To, we choose the top black color to color our shadow black. Next, we open the latest position, and by clicking on the stopwatch, we delete the animation that it has applied. With the pan behind tool, we place the anchor points at the height, where the wheels contact the ground. We select the Layer, right-click, Transform, Flip Vertical. Open the scale in the activated concert proportions option by clicking on this symbol here, and then we reduce the value of the vertical axis until we feel comfortable with the result. We name the layer, selecting, and pressing the Enter key. We drag the layer below the red car layer and link it to it. Finally, we apply an opacity of 20 percent. Preview. It looks great. If you like the results using shadows, I invite you to apply it to the rest of the elements following the same method. You can also simply draw the shadows. For example, we're going to draw the door shadow, make sure that no layer is selected, so that the mass is not created. Using the pen tool, moving the timeline unto the moment where the door is without movements on the stage. Entry is a shadow. I'm going to do it fast. We could do it better in more detail but I just want to show you how to do it. We named a layer and drag it under the door. We color it black and apply an opacity of 20 percent, as we did with the car shadow. Finally, we link the shadow with a layer of the door. But for the most demanding, this may not be enough. Let's see how to improve the appearance of our shadows in a simple way. We select the shadow of the car, and with the rectangle tool, we apply a mask. Next, we go to the mask options and increase the value of the mask further until we see, how the shadow disappears. Finally, with the mask selected and using the selection tool, we can move the mask until we achieve the desired result. That easy. In the case of the door shadow, it is a little different. As it is a shape layer, we select the rectangle tool and activate it to create mask box to apply a mask. As we have explained before, we create a mask and increase the value of the mask further until we see how the shadows disappears. Now, our shadow look much more natural. I invite you to apply shadows to the rest of the elements following the most liked method. With this, we will have our fantastic animation finished and ready to be exported and shared with the rest of the world. In the next lesson, we will see an alternative method to convert your illustrations into animated collages in simple way. See you there. 15. Alternative Method: Hi everyone. In this lesson, we are going to see how to turn this animation into an animated collage. This animation is part of my previous course, Animate Your Illustrations in Record Time With After Effects. If you want to learn how to make this animation from scratch and you're not a beginner, it is not necessary to complete the entire course. You only need to view Lessons Nine, Ten and Eleven. To follow this lesson, you can download the project in the projects and resources section. Let's go for it. First. I'm going to show you the files that I have downloaded to carry out this project. It's about wood texture, a cloth texture, and a video of the ocean. I have left you a PDF file with the links to download the same materials that I'm using. We go to our After Effects file with the animation ready. We created the folder that we will call Footage and import the files. Next, enter the sailor.composition and drag the files into the composition. Let us start with the cloth texture. The idea is to drag it below the elements from which it will take shape, in this case, under the Sail Layers. Drag it, and in the Track Matte menu, choose the option Alpha Matte. When applying this option, the upper layer works as a mass for our texture. If you cannot see this options, you can click on the Toggle Switches/Modes option until you can see them. Now we will only have to link the texture to the Sails Layer to follow its movements. Let's take a look. Perfect. Later we will animate this texture. Now, we're going to do the same with the wood texture. In this case, we're going to drag it under the Boat Layer. As before, we choose the option Alpha Matte. We link the texture to the Boat Layer. I'm going to rotate the texture [inaudible] to make it better. Now we're going to do the same with the ocean video file. In this case, the water is made of two layers, the Sea wave Layer and the Shape Layer located at the top. We drag the video file under both layers, and again, we apply Alpha Matte. We don't have to link the layers because the original layers don't have any movements. Okay, we can take a first look to our animation. Excellent. Now we just need to animate the cloth texture. We animate the position and rotation every four frames. It is unnecessary to follow any order. We simply move or rotate the textures every four frames. We create about five frames. The last keyframes must be the same as the first. We copy the first keyframes and paste them to make the loop correctly. Now, we select all the keyframes, right-click, Toggle Hold Keyframe. This will stop the interpolation that After Effects automatically put for us between two keyframes, and we apply the expression loopOut to create an infinite loop. We copy the expression and paste it in the rotation. Let's see the result. I like it. Now it's your turn. Your task is to apply the final touches of color, textures, as I have taught you in previous lessons. This is the result of the video after applying the final touches. We can appreciate a mistake in the dogs hands. When we planned the animation in the previous course, we did not place the layers thinking about this exercise, but in this lesson, I just wanted to show you a simple method to add textures and animate them by creating a simple but effective animated collage. I'm so looking forward to seeing your projects. See you in the next lesson. 16. Rendering: Hello, welcome to this class. Now, that we have our jobs ready, we can export them. For these, we go to "Composition" and select "Add to Adobe Media Encoder". Media Encoder helps us export projects more efficiently. Keep in mind that the composition that we currently have open would be exported. First, we choose the codec. In this case, we will use H264. It exports the video in MP4, the most used format for web. Regarding the output resolution, we can choose the Match Source High or Medium bitrates option to avoid mistakes, and export it in the same size in which we have worked on the project. Finally, we choose the location where we'll export the video, and give the file a name. To finish, we click on the "Play" button here. Once the process has finished, you can open your video, and start moving it on social media. 17. Homework and Conclusion: Congratulations, you have reached the goal. Now is time to put your knowledge into practice. You'll find an assignment will consist of two exercises. Exercise 1, create an animated collage, applying everything you have learned during the course. Exercise 2, create an animated collage from an illustration. You can download the illustration that we used in Lesson 15. Remember that you have PDF files with links to download photos and videos in the projects and resources section. I will love to see your projects. You can upload them to the course project gallery or tag me in your Instagram post. Use references to get inspiration and don't forget to practice, as this is the only way to improve. If you enjoyed the course, please support my work and leave me a review. I will be very grateful. I hope to see you again in future courses. Thank you.