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14 Day After Effects Course for high schoolers – looking for project suggestions
Hello,
I’m going to be teaching an After Effects course that only runs 14 days to high schoolers at a summer camp (class lasts only an hour a day). I’m sure it’s safe to say none of them have ever used AE let alone heard of it.
I’m looking for suggestions on what topics I should cover and potential fun projects I could have them do in the allotted time.
I appreciate any suggestions
Nathan
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4 Replies
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Nathan,
Two of the most important topics, in my opinion, would be roto and tracking. Keying is also great, as well as expression basics and an intro to particle systems.
Sean Mullen
Rampant Design Tools -
Thank you for the suggestion. I was maybe thinking more along the lines of animation based. Animating logos or text? It would be awesome to show them particles/expressions/etc but after teaching a graphic design course at the same program last summer and going over the most basic features of Illustrator, some of those things went right over their heads.
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I think your observation is correct- high school kids with no experience or any major interest in AE previously need basic stuff that is fun for them to learn. I would suggest a basic animation project. Make them take pictures of their class mates, cut the people out using masking tools in AE, put them over a background made of a picture collage (can be anything from a room, city to an alien space ship), and animate them using the puppet tool. It would be great if they can pair up and do short animated stories. You can include in that basic text/logo animation as well.
Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist -
On occasion, I teach VFX classes from high school up through college and I can tell you many schools are neglecting core tools, techniques & skill sets in their programs. You can easily make tracking and roto fun. For example, the last high school class I taught tracked fellow classmate’s t-shirts and animated type & characters that jumped from one person’s shirt to the other. We shot everything on the T2i and they had a blast.
Sean Mullen
Rampant Design Tools
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