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After Effects Kickstart will introduce you to the fundamentals of Adobe After Effects in the easiest and most fun way possible. You'll dive head first into Adobe After Effects and begin creating animations from day one. By the end of this course, you'll be able to animate a full :30 spot.
Apr 4, 2022
•
1:00 pm
UTC
"I loved every minute of this course! When I show my friends the animations that I have created they don't believe that I made them. In two months you can become an animator." - Parker T Simmons, Winter 2021
Nol Honig is a director, designer and animator in New York City. Since founding The Drawing Room in 2013, Nol has directed work for Coca Cola, The History Channel, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, Frame.io, and others, and served as a design/animation lead for various clients including MTV and YouTube. As a freelancer, he has worked at some of the best studios in NYC including Golden Wolf, Pentagram, and Block&Tackle. In 2017 he received a Distinguished Teaching Award for his work as an associate professor of motion graphics at Parsons School of Design, where he has been teaching since 2001.
This might be your first time using After Effects, but that doesn’t mean we’re going slow. Meet your classmates, get comfy with the course format, and then we’re getting to work. Nol will guide you step-by-step through your first After Effects animation, helping you learn and master the basics.
Apr 4
*
1 Project
Your first two big lessons are designed to get you into After Effects as fast as possible. You'll learn the basics of layers, keyframes, timing, and editing. You'll work with sound, and create your first kinetic type piece.
Apr 11
*
2 Projects
Meet your classmates, get comfy with the course format, and dive right in with your first project which will get those creative juices flowing right off the bat.
Apr 18
*
2 Projects
Our courses are intense, so we built in these focus weeks to give you a chance to finish any work you haven't gotten to. We also throw in a ton of cool bonus content to make sure you never stop learning.
Apr 25
*
0 Projects
Meet your classmates, get comfy with the course format, and dive right in with your first project which will get those creative juices flowing right off the bat.
May 2
*
2 Projects
It's time to put all of your new knowledge to good use! It's up to you to animate a full :30 spot over the next few weeks to show off your MoGraph skills.
May 9
*
1 Project
The final 2 weeks of class are Extended Critique. You can use this time to catch up, complete your final project, then turn it in for critique.
May 16
*
0 Projects
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Be engaged from anywhere in the world on your own schedule. Lessons open at a specific time but you can watch them and do your work whenever it is convenient for you.
Built in catch up weeks, extended critiques, and very flexible deadline policies make completing this course possible for even the busiest professional.
All of our courses are taught completely online through prerecorded lesson videos, podcasts, and handouts.
Students typically receive homework assignments twice per week, which have soft deadlines.
All student work is critiqued by our highly trained Teaching Assistants. School of Motion TA's are professional motion designers with real life experience in the industry.
During the course you will be invited to a private classroom that contains all of the Teaching Assistants and students in your session. This is a great tool for connecting, asking or answering questions, sharing thoughts or insights, and winning cool contests!
Who should take After Effects Kickstart?
As the world's most intense After Effects intro course, After Effects Kickstart is the best way to spark your motion design career. So, if you've ever asked yourself, "Should I take After Effects Kickstart?" here's a handy breakdown:
The Absolute Beginner
You're our favorite student, someone who is a blank canvas for learning! After Effects Kickstart is the best place to start learning After Effects. This course was built to help you start from the very beginning. Honestly, we wish AEK was around when we started. Let us help you save time and frustration as you kick-start your motion design career.
AE Users That are Still Confused
There are so many bad tutorials out there that it can be frustrating to figure out which one you need to watch. After watching numerous videos you might find yourself even more confused than before. This is truly a heart breaking place to be. After Effects Kickstart is for the confused After Effects user that can't seem to get a solid grip on what's going on.
Video Editors Who Want to Learn After Effects
After Effects can be a very frustrating application if you are a video editor by trade. Even a "simple" task can be difficult, leading you to give up, buy a template, or worse, animate in Premiere (gasp). Eventually, you just end up building your animations in Premiere Pro. We'll help you grow your basic animation skills so you can take the frustration out of your workflow!
Designers that Want to Learn After Effects
Design may come naturally to you. Perhaps you live and breathe it. But, have you been interested in taking your career up a notch. Learn how to breathe life into your designs by adding motion.
Maybe you're on a design team and you work with motion designers. What are their deliverables? What is this strange language they're speaking?
As a designer you have a leg up on most motion designers! Those at the top of the animation pyramid have typically been designers first. They made pretty images and then learned how to bring them to life. Maybe you could be the next big motion designer!
After Effects Kickstart: Common Pain Points
If you replied yes to any of the questions above, After Effects Kickstart might be for you.
What to Expect in After Effects Kickstart
Your experience will vary depending on your skill level, but here is a general look at the level of difficulty you can expect in After Effects Kickstart.
Intense After Effects Education
We're not going to put it lightly, our courses can be tough. After Effects Kickstart is a jam-packed learning experience. We dive deep into the 'why' behind what you're doing, and we don't just show you what button to push. Expect our courses to be more challenging than other online learning websites.
A Unique Course Format
We've built a learning platform from the ground up, uniquely tailored to the visual arts. In addition, your teaching assistant and fellow students give you a one-of-a-kind experience meant to help sharpen your skill
An Encouraging MoGraph Community
Even though there is a lot to learn that doesn't mean it has to be "hard". We want to make sure you make it through. That's why we don't just throw lessons at you like robots. We're humans, and we understand that it's important to lean on your TAs and community for encouragement! We're all here to help each other and learn.
Animate Professional Storyboards
All of the storyboards created for AEK have been designed by professional designers. These illustrations have been tailored to provide clear direction for your assignments. This workflow will simulate real-world artist collaborations.
You won't believe how good you'll get.
We hit the ground running! By the end of After Effects Kickstart you'll look back and think you've time traveled. Your animations are going to be at a totally new level and your knowledge of working in After Effects will be clearer than ever.
Time Commitment: After Effects Kickstart
We don't just want to throw random numbers and lofty expectations at you. According to our student surveys, you can expect to spend an average of 15-20 hours a week working on After Effects Kickstart. This can vary from person to person, as well as how many revisions you'd like to make. You will have 8 total weeks to take the course, this includes orientation, catch up weeks, and extended critique. Altogether you will likely spend 120 - 160 hours working on After Effects Kickstart.
What Are You 'Qualified' to Do Upon Completing After Effects Kickstart?
You now 'know' After Effects.
We've gone over the interface thoroughly and you can now navigate After Effects confidently! We've taught you how to lay out images and animate them to tell a basic story. You can start adding animations to video projects and those cool corporate event videos!
Become an Intern or Junior Motion Designer at an Agency
You're now ready to jump into working in After Effects at an entry level position! This could be full-time at an agency, or an internship at a studio. Don't wait to get into a full-time position to continue working on your motion design skills. Create personal projects, work on your social media presence, and write out case-studies that show you working at your craft. These are great ways to start to get noticed, and make it easier for studios to see you and know what you're doing.
After Effects Kickstart: Next Steps
You know the tool, now lets get into animation principles!
Knowing After Effects is just step one on this journey. Now you can make shapes move, but can you make it move exactly the way you want? Check out Animation Bootcamp to dig deeper into animation principles. You'll learn how to transfer ideas in your head and make them come to life. You'll go beyond the software and into motion design theory.
You can move things, but is the design captivating?
Now that you can make illustrations move, do they look good? Design Bootcamp could be the next step as you grow your career. This course is designed to be PRACTICAL. Each lesson covers basic design principles in the context of real-world motion design jobs. You’ll learn the fundamentals of design and you’ll also see how those fundamentals get used in real projects.
After Effects Kickstart: Summary
After Effects Kickstart is for the true After Effects beginner. You could be brand new to Motion Design, a video editor looking to add some AE skills to your tool box, or you are someone who is self taught but don't feel confident in the software. After Effects Kickstart will take you from the first keyframe to having all of the foundational knowledge that you will need to advance to the next level.
You'll learn about animating type, working with both Photoshop and Illustrator artwork in After Effects, basic parenting, shape layers in After Effects, using different effects, basic animation principles, and different keyframe types. By the end you will be able to animate a short advertisement-style explainer video with artwork that we've provided. If you're ready to jump in, head on over to the After Effects Kickstart page and see when you can get started!
If you replied yes to any of the questions above, After Effects Kickstart might be for you.
What to Expect in After Effects Kickstart
Your experience will vary depending on your skill level, but here is a general look at the level of difficulty you can expect in After Effects Kickstart.
Intense After Effects Education
We're not going to put it lightly, our courses can be tough. After Effects Kickstart is a jam-packed learning experience. We dive deep into the 'why' behind what you're doing, and we don't just show you what button to push. Expect our courses to be more challenging than other online learning websites.
A Unique Course Format
We've built a learning platform from the ground up, uniquely tailored to the visual arts. In addition, your teaching assistant and fellow students give you a one-of-a-kind experience meant to help sharpen your skill
An Encouraging MoGraph Community
Even though there is a lot to learn that doesn't mean it has to be "hard". We want to make sure you make it through. That's why we don't just throw lessons at you like robots. We're humans, and we understand that it's important to lean on your TAs and community for encouragement! We're all here to help each other and learn.
Animate Professional Storyboards
All of the storyboards created for AEK have been designed by professional designers. These illustrations have been tailored to provide clear direction for your assignments. This workflow will simulate real-world artist collaborations.
You won't believe how good you'll get.
We hit the ground running! By the end of After Effects Kickstart you'll look back and think you've time traveled. Your animations are going to be at a totally new level and your knowledge of working in After Effects will be clearer than ever.
Time Commitment: After Effects Kickstart
We don't just want to throw random numbers and lofty expectations at you. According to our student surveys, you can expect to spend an average of 15-20 hours a week working on After Effects Kickstart. This can vary from person to person, as well as how many revisions you'd like to make. You will have 8 total weeks to take the course, this includes orientation, catch up weeks, and extended critique. Altogether you will likely spend 120 - 160 hours working on After Effects Kickstart.
What Are You 'Qualified' to Do Upon Completing After Effects Kickstart?
You now 'know' After Effects.
We've gone over the interface thoroughly and you can now navigate After Effects confidently! We've taught you how to lay out images and animate them to tell a basic story. You can start adding animations to video projects and those cool corporate event videos!
Become an Intern or Junior Motion Designer at an Agency
You're now ready to jump into working in After Effects at an entry level position! This could be full-time at an agency, or an internship at a studio. Don't wait to get into a full-time position to continue working on your motion design skills. Create personal projects, work on your social media presence, and write out case-studies that show you working at your craft. These are great ways to start to get noticed, and make it easier for studios to see you and know what you're doing.
After Effects Kickstart: Next Steps
You know the tool, now lets get into animation principles!
Knowing After Effects is just step one on this journey. Now you can make shapes move, but can you make it move exactly the way you want? Check out Animation Bootcamp to dig deeper into animation principles. You'll learn how to transfer ideas in your head and make them come to life. You'll go beyond the software and into motion design theory.
You can move things, but is the design captivating?
Now that you can make illustrations move, do they look good? Design Bootcamp could be the next step as you grow your career. This course is designed to be PRACTICAL. Each lesson covers basic design principles in the context of real-world motion design jobs. You’ll learn the fundamentals of design and you’ll also see how those fundamentals get used in real projects.
After Effects Kickstart: Summary
After Effects Kickstart is for the true After Effects beginner. You could be brand new to Motion Design, a video editor looking to add some AE skills to your tool box, or you are someone who is self taught but don't feel confident in the software. After Effects Kickstart will take you from the first keyframe to having all of the foundational knowledge that you will need to advance to the next level.
You'll learn about animating type, working with both Photoshop and Illustrator artwork in After Effects, basic parenting, shape layers in After Effects, using different effects, basic animation principles, and different keyframe types. By the end you will be able to animate a short advertisement-style explainer video with artwork that we've provided. If you're ready to jump in, head on over to the After Effects Kickstart page and see when you can get started!
This course will introduce you to the fundamentals of Adobe After Effects in the easiest and most fun way possible. You'll dive head first into Adobe After Effects, and begin creating animations from day one. By the end of this course you'll have a strong foundation in all things After Effects.
The only thing you need to take this class is an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription. We’ll take you from your first keyframes to your first completed :30 MoGraph piece.
You can expect to commit 15-20 hours per week on coursework. The lesson videos are 1-2 hours in length. There are 8 assignments total. Typically assigned on Mondays and Thursdays with soft deadlines the next day. We have designated weeks with no lessons or assignments built into the course so that students can keep up with the pace.
Schedule and Course Length
8 Weeks of After Effects Kickstart
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