After Effects Apprentice: Real World Skills for the Aspiring Motion Graphics Artist Book

Whether you're new to After Effects and want to get up to speed quickly, or already a user who needs to become familiar with the new features, After Effects Apprentice was created for you. With 11 core lessons plus a final project that pulls it all together, you'll learn how to tap this program's vast potential – whether you create motion graphics for network television, corporate communications, or your own projects.

Fully updated to cover the major new features introduced in After Effects CS6, CS5.5, and CS5, this edition of the book presents a professional perspective on the most important features a motion graphics artist needs to master in order to use After Effects effectively. You'll learn to creatively combine layers, animate eye-catching titles, manipulate 3D space, track or rotoscope existing footage to add new elements, color key and stabilize a shot to place it in a new environment, and use effects to generate excitement or enhance the realism of a scene. Easy to follow, step-by-step instructions guide you through the features, with explanations of the "why" instead of just the "how" behind each technique. You'll learn more than just the tools; you'll learn skills that you can immediately put to work expressing your own ideas in your productions.

Topics include how to:

• Animate, edit, layer, and composite video and still images.
• Manipulate keyframes and the way they interpolate to create more refined animations.
• Use masks, mattes, stencils and blending modes to add sophistication to your imagery.
• Create and animate text and shape layers
• Place your layers in 3D space.
• Use tracking and keying to create special effects, such as replacing screen displays.

DVD contains: All exercise source material and project files for After Effects CS6, CS5.5, and CS5, plus 90 minutes of video tutorials.