Create a lower 3rd animated graphic over video

Find Your Way Around

Learn The Interface
Become familiar with the parts of the interface: windows, tools, work spaces. Where they can be found, how to move them, and what their basic functions are.

At the end of this step you'll know how to interact with the program and have the basic lanugage needed to understand the rest of the steps.
Import & Create Your Assets
Now that you know what is where in the user interface we should bring in some things to work with. Finding files and importing footage is essential to manipulating and editing it later. This includes but is not limited too video, pictures, illustration, and sound.

Also we will talk about creating assets inside the application out of nothing. These are things like solids, text, and shape layers.

During this step we will be interacting with the interface elements as outlined in part 1 so if you get lost in what you're talking about always refrence back to that first step.
Manipulate Those Assets
Now that things have been made and imported we have to change them to suit our needs. This means using the tools pallette and drilling down into the properties of layers.

In this step we will learn what a layer is, how it interacts with other layers, and what the properties of that layer are and do to that layer.

At the end of this step you will have laid out graphics without animating and will be ready to make things move.

Animate Primary Motion

Understand The Keyframes
Before we make motion we need to know what motion IS. At the core of this unit is the keyframe. It sets the start, end, and method from getting from that start to that end for properties. Esentially it's all math, but it's math we can see, and we need to know what we're seeing.
Translate (move) Solids
Most of the animation is done by moving things, so we'll edit the position and scale of objects over time duplicating and arranging them over time and space as needed.
Smooth The Motion
Anyone can make things move, few can make them move well. This last step will ensure you're the latter and not the former.

This will cover easing keyframes, and getting into the graph editor to fine tune motion over time.

Edit and Animate Text

Understand the Character and Paragraph Palettes
Text is edited using these two palettes. Or through the text tool. Familiarity with the text tool functions will save you time and annoyance later on.
Add Animation using built in Properties
Now that you know what properties are you can animate them in special ways using range selectors. Unlike other layers text laters can not only be animated globally but specifically within the layer. This is the single best thing about text layers and the most important to master.
Set Up Text To Change Later On
Since we're making lower 3rds, and it's unlikely you would ever make them knowing everyone who would ever be interviewed, or every location you would ever watch in a program, it's important that other people can edit your text later on, and that the animation be timed and correct no matter who tries to ruin it.

Add Embellishments and Effects

Use Adjustment Layers
These special layers apply effects to other layers. we will be using them to embelish and blend our work with move movement and interest than can be had from flat solids.
Make Small and Repeatable Embelishments
The devil is in the details. We'll make a few little bits to add some visual interest to the aniamtion that will bring out more of the qualities of the piece we're after. Like moving from a large brush to a smaller one these little embelishments add personality and life to the piece.
Blend Your Elements Together
Graphics shouldn't be "flat" unless they're flat graphics. But usually you need to have some interplay and separation from footage and graphics. This last step makes the harmony/contrast more apparent to viewers and sells the graphics more to the audience.

Export Your Footage

Set What Will Be Exported
You need to tell the program what you want to export. This mean which composition, and what section of that composition. When working these areas can be set, reset, and confused. This step is essential to prevent later dissapointment after export.
Understand the Render Queue
As soon as you go to export you'll be confronted with the Render Queue. There isn't much there to go off and its options are less than intuitive to the uninitiated, but we'll go through what you're looking at and what you want to get from it.
Pick the Right Options
We will talk about codec, compression, and the purpose of the options in the Output Module and Render Settings.
Export Without the Render Queue
There is more than one way to get footage from After Effects. We'll look at exporting through the Media Encoder (an external program used for ONLY encoding media) and what can be done with the .aep without any rendering.

Additional Resources

If you havn't completed part one, or didn't save your file. Have mine and you'll be up to date.

This file works in Adobe After Effects CC only.
If you havn't completed part two, or didn't save your file. Have mine and you'll be up to date.

This file works in Adobe After Effects CC only.
If you havn't completed part three, or didn't save your file. Have mine and you'll be up to date.

This file works in Adobe After Effects CC only.
If you havn't completed part four, or didn't save your file. Have mine and you'll be up to date.

This file works in Adobe After Effects CC only.

Alexandra Winsor

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