If you are familiar with any of the packages within Adobe Creative Cloud then you likely will have come across the option to ‘Stylize’ or add ‘Effects’, granting easy access to glows, bevels and drop shadows to give your creative extra depth and impact. Whereas in Photoshop and Illustrator this is easily found in the top menu or at the click of a button, in After Effects it is a little more hidden away.
Having worked on a video project at work now for the past few months, the final step was to add subtitles across the four-minute duration. Having never done this before, the task seemed daunting, imagining the crazy number of layers that would need to be created to realise such a feat. Thankfully, doing a little research beforehand paid off and I found that all my subtitles could be assigned to a single layer by utilising hold interpolation – far less complex than it sounds!
Those of you that have been following me for a while now may recall this post I did about the Motion Design School a few years ago. As part of their Fundamentals of After Effects course they gave away a fantastic plugin to speed up and improve your workflow. One included function was to instantly centre an object’s anchor point. Unfortunately with my new company’s security, plugins aren’t easily installed, and thus I had to find an alternate method. Thankfully there is one, if slightly more time-consuming.
A number of times now in After Effects I have come across a frustrating anomaly I have never known how to fix… until now. Testament to how great it is to work alongside other creatives, my colleague was able to assist with a keyframe issue that had plagued many a past project. Happy days!
Until following a recent tutorial, I hadn’t really touched the Roto Brush Tool in After Effects. As such I didn’t realise quite how powerful it was, and also by how much it has improved since I last experimented with it about eight years ago! In preparation for my new job I decided it important to revisit some of these lost skills, and I’m so glad that I did.
Having started work on this project back in May 2021, I am pleased to say that over the Christmas break I finally completed my self-initiated title sequence for Netflix’s The Queen’s Gambit.
After receiving some feedback for the first Block of my course, requesting I add some texture to my animation, I wasn’t sure where to start. Fairly new to After Effects, my first point of call was the Internet and I came across a series of fantastic tutorials by Ben Marriott. Simple and clear, even for a beginner like me, they really helped me add a little extra oomph to my idea.
Besides gorging on food and binging TV, films and video games over the Christmas break, I also took some time out to develop my Motion Design skills. It is an area I have been looking into for a while now, and am considering doing a part-time course in, and thus these 12 days off granted the perfect opportunity to gain further insight towards this decision. Not wanting to invest at this early stage, the free ‘Fundamentals of After Effects’ course by the Motion Design School gifted the ideal starting point from which to begin. Action!
Brandon King Design 