Recommended After Effects Skills to have

[Luis O maymi]

Thanks for the reply George

About shape layers, isn’t it better to create shapes in Illustrator since they are vector based and there are more options to edit there?

As for Lynda, I been a premium member for years. Right now I’m watching the course titled “Getting Started with After Effects Expressions”.

The meaning of a movie are the characters, the life of the movie is the music, but the magic is in the editing. – lomaymi

[Luis O maymi]

I forgot to mentioned something that I find extremely essential, working with multiple monitors. When I work with After Effects (Premiere, Photoshop and even Blender) I always use two monitors and setup the workspace accordingly. I been editing like this for so many years that when I don’t have a second monitor I feel kind of unproductive :-).

The meaning of a movie are the characters, the life of the movie is the music, but the magic is in the editing. – lomaymi

[George Goodman]

You certainly can use illustrator to create shape layers … but that’s not After Effects 😉

Some of the blend modes etc. don’t work when you move them over though if you convert from .ai to shape layer.

There are actually a lot of reasons to build the shapes right in AE. First of, smaller file sizes and faster render times. Also, the shape modifiers, especially the repeater, are pretty powerful. I find that typically illustrator is just an extra step that is unnecessary for me and often becomes messy if you turn the .ai into a shape layer.

Stick with the Lynda stuff for sure! If you want more info on expressions, check out Dan Ebberts website motionscript.com – I also found this book to be very useful: https://www.amazon.com/After-Effects-Expressions-Marcus-Geduld/dp/024080936X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1413554617&sr=8-1&keywords=after+effects+expressions

“|_ (°_0) _|”

Sincerely,

George

http://www.vimeo.com/georgegoodman
http://www.linkedin.com/in/georgefranklingoodman

[Walter Soyka]

[Luis O Maymi] “About shape layers, isn’t it better to create shapes in Illustrator since they are vector based and there are more options to edit there? “

Ae shape layers are vector-based, too.

In addition to what George said, I’d mention that Ae shape layers are entirely parametric; you can modify and animate the properties at any time.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
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