Adobe After Effects Day 1

I bought Adobe After Effects CS4 a month ago, knowing that I would be able to use it for a learning tutorial. I followed Joanna as she walked us through the first tutorial. I was glad to have her point out the functions in the workspace. Students of mine had demonstrated a project to my class last year, but it was assumed we all knew the basic functions. I didn't want to hold any of my students back by asking too many questions as many of them had already played with the program at home. Instead, I booked a former student of mine to come back and take me through step by step. Fortunately for him, he got a job at CTV and I decided to buy a book and try to learn AE on my own. Well, the school year got rolling and I found I had no extra time to play with the program on my own free time. Joanna's tutorials will be a great help as I will surely forget how to work the program and can now go back and refer to them.

We learned how to bring in various forms of media including different layers from Photoshop and how to use the transform tools of anchor point, position, scale, rotation, and opacity. I learned the importance of locking off a background layer so that I don't accidentally transform it in any way. I also learned how to rag on effects such as sepia, contrast and brightness. There are several of these tools to play with. I also learned how to blend layers by activating Mode.

We briefly touched on cameras and lighting. I'm going to need more time with this part. I got confused when the axes crossed over each other. I'll have to see if I have a chapter in my book to help me along with this.

Lastly, Jim and I got a chance to try out a tutorial on our own. We made a robot fly on a path and put some moving clouds in sideways to look like smoke. We played with the Linear Light mode to make the clouds look like they were blended more into the background. Afterwards, I asked Joanna about render and export and she showed me how to select advanced settings for this.