Transcripts
1. Course Trailer: Hi there. I'm Carminys Guzman. I am the co-founder of operary.com. We are an animations studio with more than eight years experience. We have created beautiful animated explainer videos for hundreds of companies worldwide. In this course, I will teach you how to make zoom loops fast and easy. We will start developing the idea. I would show you how my work process is, and then we will design our project in Adobe Illustrator. On the way, you will learn how to add crazy textures and effects to your animations. Finally, we will bring our design to live. If you haven't used After Effects before or have neither experience, I recommend that you take my previous course, Animate your illustrations in record time with Adobe After Effects first. Are you ready to make crazy zoom loops in After Effects? Let's begin.
2. Before to start: I invite you to download the project file that we will make during the course. This way, you can follow the instructions in real time, and it will be much easier for you to apply what you're learning. This is an intermediate level course. To follow it smoothly, you need a basic knowledge of After Effects. I'm looking forward to seeing your animations at the end of the course. Please share your work in the course project gallery so that we can all enjoy your art.
3. Ideas & references: Before we start designing, we have to decide what we want to do. We need to have a clear idea of what our design and animation will be like. In my case, I knew I wanted three things: To use an eye as the main element. To use geometric shapes for the main design, and to have an endlessly zoom with a real touch. From these ideas, I compiled a series of references to get inspired. I usually look for inspiration on sites like Pinterest, Instagram, or Google images. I'm not the type of person who does a lot of sketching, but I'd rather have the idea clear in my head before I start. In my case, I always like to draw my designs on paper first. I will act smart and achieve my goals much faster. Once I have my sketch done, I scan it with my smartphone and import it into Adobe Illustrator, and that's it.
4. Shortcuts in AI: The most used chart that's in Adobe Illustrator are the ones referring to the tools that we use most commonly. Some of them are the same in After Effects. Let's see how to access the main tool at touch of the key. Press "V" for the selection tool, "A" for the direct selection tool, "P" for the pen tool, "B" for the paint brush tool, "T" for the text tool, "R" for the rotation tool, "I" for the eyedropper tool, and "Z" for the zoom tool. As you see with shortcuts, we can change tools quickly without the need to waste time going to the tool panel. I have left you a PDF file with the most useful shortcuts so that you can download it.
5. Design: Welcome to this class. Let's see how to design in Adobe Illustrator for a handmade drawing. We open a new 1080 by 1080 pixels documents. In another documents, I have prepared the color palettes that I will use for this design. I recommend you to prepare in advance the colors that you are going to use. If you find it difficult to mix colors in one to save time, you can use the colors that see all websites. It is very intuitive and gives very good results. Let's go back to our color pallet. We select our colors and drag them to the document that we are going to work on. We put it on top so that it doesn't bother us. Now, we go to "File," select "Place," and look for the sketch that we have previously scanned and we put it in our documents. We go to "Layers, " and create a new layer. We drag the sketch to the new layer. We do double-click and name the layers. Next, we lock both layers so they don't bother us while designing. Now, we can start designing. We create a new layer to start creating our design. Hold down the "Rectangle Tool" for a second to see the rest of the options. We can choose the "Star Tool" or the "Polygon Tool". We drag by holding the "Shift" key to keep the proportions intact. While still holding the mouse, we repeatedly press the "Arrow Down" key until we get the triangle. We place a triangle and adjust it. At the moment, we are going to work only with strokes to see our sketch without problems. We want to create a triangle within the main triangle. To achieve this with a triangle selected, go to "Object" select "Path" "Offset Path," and apply an offsets path of minis ten pixels. Now, we are going to create a circle. We hold down the "Alt" key to take the center as a reference and the "Shift" key to make a perfect circle. We place it. We name the layer and lock it. Now, we create a new layer and draw a hexagon. Like this. We select the "Pen Tool" and by clicking on three points, we create a triangle. Let's create the lines that will go inside the triangle. We use the "Pen Tool" again. We create just one, selected and keeping the earth key pressed, we duplicate it. Then we press "Ctrl" plus C or common D and Mac several times to duplicate them. With the "Shift" key, we select everything and then we deselect the hexagon. I have to select the triangle and the last line escape me. Then we go to "Pathfinder" and select "Divide." Let's create a new circle. Remember to press "Alt" and "Shift" to make it perfect. We name the layer and lock it. Again, using the "Pen Tool," we will draw the eye. We click here, moves to the other point and click again. Now, drag to make a curve. We click again to continue the outline and finally, be close it and drag to adjust the curve. We name the layer and lock again. Now, we are going to create the eyes of the eye. Name it and lock it. Now, let's create the circle of the pupil. We select it and while holding down the "Alt" key, we drag to create the brightness of the eye and we make it smaller. We name the layer and lock it. We create another layer. Now, we only need to create the three meter circles that are around the eye. We create the first, duplicate it and place it. We name the layer and we already have our complete design. We unlock all layers and removes the sketch layer by dragging it to the trash symbol. We select all the elements of the design and make it bigger. Remember to hold the "Shift" key down to keep the proportions intact. Now, we only need to color the design. For these, we're going to select the different parts and with the "Eyedropper Tool" take the colors that we had prepared before. Sorry, I'm going to leave to stroke for now to see the rest of the elements. We continue coloring. We select and color like this all of the time. Now, we just need to create the background. We create a new layer. Create a square with the size of the composition. Color it and move it below all the layers. To finish, we select the color palette layer and delete it. It's ready. We have our design done.
6. Shortcuts in AE: In this class, we are going to take a look at the shortcuts that we are going to use in After Effects. The most used shortcuts are the ones referring to the properties of the layers and the tools that we use most commonly. Let's see how to open the layer properties with a single click. Press A for the anchor point, P for the position, S for the scale, R for the rotation, and T for the opacity. 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 just a click of the key. Press V for the selection tool. Hold space-bar for the hand tool, Z for the zoom tool, W for the rotation tool, and Y for the pan behind tool. It is all about practice. I have left you a PDF file with the most useful shortcuts so that you can download it.
7. Zoom loop: Hi there, welcome to this lesson. Now that we have our design done, we can animate it. In the previous lesson, we designed this scene in a 1080 by 1080 pixel squared formats. But I changed my mind and we're going to make the animation look wider. I think it will look better. I'll buy a new composition of 1,920 by 1,080 at 24 frames. Name it, give it three seconds and asset it. Next, we import or decide from Adobe Illustrator and drag the imported composition into the main composition. Enter the composition. We go to composition, select "Composition Settings" and in width, we change the value at 1,920 pixels. Next we go to the Background layer, select it and adjust it to the compositions mu size by pulling on the sides. That easy. First, we want to animate the recession of the cycles. We press the anchor point E, the sensor. We create a key-frame in devastation goal to the end of the timeline and answer fourth, Charges interpretation. Let's see how it works. Okay, so now we do the same with a lines design layer. We animate the rotation. But in this case, instead of doing two turns, we only do one. Let's have a look. Now we want to put the background layer and paste it into the main composition and drug it below the composition. Next, we create a mask over the composition of the eye. We just have to select a layer and create a shape. In this case, a circle with adjusted well to the size of the eye so it can be worth it. We invert the mask by clicking on the inverted box and who-la, we have created a hole with side of the pupil side. You can see what is behind it. We will place the anchor points. In this case, we want to put it in the center of the eye and we animate the scale. Create a key-frame, go to the N and increase the scale onto DD sign is not seen on the screen. As you can see that the sign is pix-elated. To solve this, we go into the composition and activate the continuously pasteurized in all the layers. We go back to the main composition and enable it. Okay, now everything looks great, but there's still a problem. If we preview, we see that assume doesn't seem to be a continuous movements, but instead softens at the end. To solve it, we select the scale. Right-click, select key frame assistant, explanation scale. If we preview again, cool, now we have what we wanted. Okay, so now duplicate the composition and delete all the key frames of the copy by clicking on the stopwatch. Move to the end of the timeline and link the copy with the original composition. Preview. All good. Now we duplicate the copy, remove the lean from the new copy, move to the end of the timeline and link it to the previous copy. That's it. We already have assumed that never ends. Are you enjoying the course? Please follow me on sculpture so you won't miss any of my upcoming classes.
8. Textures & crazy effects: Hi there. In this lesson, we are going to show you some tips to give your animations and even more interesting finish. First, we're going to apply a texture to a second project and later we're going to animate it. For this we import a texture. I'm going to use this one here, but you can use any you like. You can download free textures from pages like Pixabay are free pik. We place it on top of the background layer. Now, we are going to put the blending mode. If don't you see these options on the screen, click here. With this texture, the overlay mode looks good. You can try other ways to see which one is best with your texture. Now, we can animate a texture. To do this, we animate the position and rotation every four frames. There is no need to follow any order. We just move and rotate the texture every four frames. We create about five keyframes. The last one must be the same as the first one for it to look colorly. To achieve this, we copy the first keyframe and paste it. Now, select all the keyframes, right-click, select the Toggle Hold keyframe. This will stop the interpretation that after effects automatically performs between two keyframes. Apply the loop out expression. Copy and paste it in the rotation. It's ready. It is an interesting resource that we can apply in just a minute. I suggest you too to apply the same method to your texture in order to practice more. It is very simple. Another very interesting resource is adding creasing and abstract backgrounds to your muscle real animations. First, we are going to layer, new, solid. We're going to make it bigger than the composition. You will know why in a moment. We place the solid on top of the texture. Next, we apply the radio waves effects. These effects creates a constant pools of cycles. We can also create other shapes by reducing their number of sides and even create stars. But let's go back to our cycle. Increase the frequency to two and change the color of the stroke. Let's keep a little opacity to the beginning of the animation. To do this, we set pace in time to 1.5. We go to the timeline and move the layer onto the animation occupies the entire screen. Just wrap until you get it. Now, we're going to make the center of the animation coincide with the center of the eye. We just need to move the position of the solid until we achieve it. You see, this is the reason why we have to make the solid bigger than the compensation. We can move it around the screen without cutting the animation. Finally, we apply the CC Kaleida effects that creates a kaleidoscope effect with different symmetrical geometric figures. We apply a size of 46 or so and we will already have our beautiful animated background. Now, we apply the blending mode add so that the effect is also affected by the animated texture. Perfect. You can play with the options of both effects, change the tapes, and create very crazy effects. To finish, we are going to create an adjustment layer. These must be on top of all the others. We're going to apply the posterize time effects to give it a style more like traditional animation. Applying an effect to an adjustment layer affects all layers below it. We've reduced the number of frames per second to 12 to get a more Carson look. Looks nice. Do you want your animation to last longer? It is very easy. Create a new composition of the same size as the previous one. Multiply the time value by the number you want. For example, by four. Now, just drag the master compensation and duplicate it onto you half four, select the four layers, go to animation. Select Keyframe Assistance, sequence layers and that is it, animation now lasts 12 seconds. Now I invite you to perform an infinite sum. You can use the cross files or even better, create your designs. I'm looking forward to seeing your work. Please upload them to the course project gallery or tag me in your Instagram posts. This is our Instagram account.
9. Rendering: Now that we have all just ready, we can explore them. For this, we go to compensation and select Act to Adobe Media Encoder. Media Encoder helps us explore practice more efficiently. Keep in mind, that a composition that we currently have open will be exported. First, we choose the codec. In this case, we will use H264, it explores the video in MP4. They must use format for web. Regarding the outputs resolution, we can choose the March source, high or medium bit rates option to avoid mistakes and exploit it in the same size in which we have worked on the projects. In this course, we have made short end loops animations more focused on social networks like Instagram. For these type of animation, it is better to choose the medium bit rates options so that the videos don't occupy too many megabytes. Finally, we choose the location where we'll explore the video, and give the file a name. To finish, we click on the play button here. You can also explore your animation as a GIF. To do this, go back to after effects and send the video back to media encoder, we choose the cathodic animated GIFs. The option animation GIF match source. Again, we choose the location where we'll explore the video and give the file a name. We finally click on the play button here. And with this, everything will be ready. Once the process has finished, you can open your video and it's starts moving on social media.
10. Final thoughts: Congratulations on coming so far. Now, I invite you to apply everything you have learned by creating your own animation loop. I will love to see them. Don't be shy, and please upload into the cross - project gallery, or tag me in your Instagram post. Look for references, get inspired, and above all, practice. If you enjoy the course, please leave me a review. I will be very grateful. I hope to see you again in future courses. Thank you.
Carminys Guzmán, Motion grapher
