With all the tutorials on advanced techniques you can learn everything from rotoscoping to rig removal overnight, but if you don’t start by learning the basics the time it takes you to complete projects is longer and your timelines are a jumble of footage and effects. Even those who are well versed in After Effects often overlook, forget, or never even knew some ways to improve their workflow or do certain things within AE. That’s why it is so good to get a refresher course on the basics and to always keep learning. Here are a small selection of beginners tutorials I found on the web from various tutorial websites on many aspects of After Effects for beginners.
The first stop on this crazy train of knowledge is Creative Cow where you’ll find two great tutorials by Gyorfi Szilard titled AE: Quick Tips for Better Workflow: Part 1 and Part 2. In these you’ll find great tips on editing, working with keyframes, and navigation.
Also on Creative Cow you’ll find eight great tutorials by Aharon Rabinowitz titled AE Workflow Tips #1: Duplication, #2: Rendering, #3: Open in Editor, #4: Renaming and More, #5: How to Find Things, #6: Drag and Drop, #7: Importing Projects and #8: Working With Audio. All of these walk you through many of the very basics that will save you a ton of time in future projects.
AeTuts.com throws us more basic tutorials, these created by Kajik, titled After Effects For Beginners Part one, two and three.
Also on AeTuts.com you’ll find a great tutorial by Topher Welsh called A Concise Guide to After Effects Keyboard Shortcuts. As we all know, shortcut keys are literally the key to improve the time it takes you to finish your projects.
Adobe.com has some great tutorials on expressions called, no surprise, Intro to Expressions which are great to learn to broaden your knowledge on what you can do within after effects.
Motionworks has an interesting video created by John Dickinson called Simplify Your Workflow which shows you how improving your workflow saves you a ton of time and effort.
Last but not least, GrayMachine has four great tutorials by Harry J Frank called Basic Looping Effects, Basic Audio Edits, Introduction to Expressions and Expressions 101.
These great tutorials are just the beginning steps to streamlining your workflow to speed up and clean up your projects. Keep scouring the web and you are sure to find many more that will help you gain a ton more knowledge on the subject matter.
Written by John Kostrzewski - Contact - About
John Kostrzewski is a freelance motion graphics designer, visual effects artist, video editor and writer living in Minnesota. When he's not working on a client's or his own projects or writing for various websites and publications, he can be seen watching movies, blogging, playing Xbox 360 and on Twitter.
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