I’ve been learning After Effects for almost a year now and feel like I’ve come pretty far. I’ve got most of the basics down such as keyframing and 3D camera moves. I’ve scoured the internet for tutorials to help me in my quest of becoming an AE master and spent many hours poring over books on motion graphics.
The other day a friend asked me how to do something in AE and all I could say was, “I’ve seen a tutorial on that, let me try and find it.” I realized that even though I had gone through all those tutorials, I hadn’t really internalized the information.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m very thankful for all the free tutorials out there (like this one) and the people gracious enough to create them. If it weren’t for them I wouldn’t know half the things I do. But if I can’t recreate the effect on my own, then I’ve merely copied someone else and haven’t internalized the information.
There is a big difference between someone showing you how to create an effect and actually do it on your own. Here are a few ideas for moving beyond just copying someone else and making the skills your own.
1. Experiment
Take some time to just sit down at the program and play. Don’t worry about trying to follow the same pattern that you’ve always used to create something. Go through each item in the menus and see what they do. It doesn’t matter if it messes something up because you’re just experimenting. Go through each of the presets and effects and see what all the settings do. It’s easy when watching tutorials to copy their settings and not know why.
Learn what each parameter actually does to your project. Right click (or control click) on everything and see what kind of menus pop up. You might find an easier way of doing something. Try to recreate one of your favorite effects in a completely different way. Oftentimes in AE there is more than one way to arrive at the same destination.
You might find out all this time you’ve been it doing it the long way.
2. Copy to Learn
Whenever I watch television commercials or a demo reel I always see something I want to learn. Instead of looking online for a tutorial, why not try to recreate it yourself?
Open up a new project and see what you can come up with. You might not end up with the exact result you were looking for, but I bet you’ll learn a ton along the way. Fixing your own mistakes is one of the best ways to learn. If you get stuck along the way, the process of figuring out how to get around it will be more valuable than the finished product.
Don’t assume that by copying someone else’s work that you’re not being “creative.” Every artist learns by copying the masters. Guitars spend hours figuring out solos from their favorite artists. Aspiring painters recreate masterpieces in hopes of learning the techniques of famous artists. And don’t worry about making it look polished. Just learn the techniques and save the polishing for your real projects.
3. Start a Club
My friend Seth and I both geek out on AE, and it seems like every time we get together we spend our time on laptops showing each other tricks we’ve learned since our last visit. So we decided to form a club of sorts. We met at Starbucks over lunch this past week for our first official meeting. We grabbed some coffee, sat down with our laptops, and showed each other the projects we had been working on over the past couple weeks.
Seth pointed out some things I could do to improve my projects and I commented on his. A fresh pair of eyes can help you spot improvements that you wouldn’t notice yourself. He recently purchased CS5, so we spent the rest of our time looking at all the cool new features like Rotobrush. He also showed me some stuff I need to try, like using the 3D abilities of Photoshop and importing them into AE.
Find some other people in your area (or perhaps online via Skype) and spend time learning from one another. Every time you get together you’ll come away with new ideas for your next project.
4. Teach
One of the best ways to learn anything is to teach it. I learn the most in our church small group when I’m the one teaching because of the extra time spent preparing the lesson. Find a kid in your student ministry who seems interested in learning and volunteer some time each week helping him learn the program.
Maybe you could start an intern program in your media department. As you teach not only will your interns learn but you’ll also reinforce your own skills. As a bonus you might even get someone who can help you with future projects.
I hope these four tips help you in your creative journey. What else do you do to improve your skills?
Marcus Williamson says
When we get AE here, I will come back to this…which will be soon hopefully! Good points all around.
Jeremy Green says
Thanks! I know you’ll love the program. It’s a blast.
Stuart says
This is sooooo true.
When I was doing my ‘meeja course’ (because I could) I complained to the senior tutor about one of the other tutors whom had thrown me a sheet of instructions and teld me “do that” was not learning. Most anyone can follow instructions but being able to understand why doing something creates or effects or affects other aspects is what sets the better folks apart.
There are times to follow a tut and then, as you say there are times to experiment.
Creep says
thanks for the guide!
I also had the same exact problem, I will try this steps and see how it goes!