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

By Chris Meyer and Trish Meyer

Book Overview

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 12 core lessons including a trio of projects combining After Effects with CINEMA 4D Lite, 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 added in After Effects CC, 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; color key, track or rotoscope existing footage to add new elements; 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.

USER LEVEL: Novice-Intermediate

Topics include how to:

- Animate, edit, layer, and composite a variety of media.

- 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, animate, and extrude text and shape layers.

- Explore 3D space, including using CINEMA 4D Lite.

- Use tracking and keying to create special effects, such as replacing screen displays.

A companion website at www.routledge.com/cw/meyer makes available for download all exercise source material and After Effects CC project files required to get the most out of this book.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1138643084
• ISBN13: 9781138643086
• Release Date: February 2016
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 432 Pages
• Weight: 2.28 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 8.4" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Great Book

I just finished this book. I recommend it highly. I first used the "Adobe After Effects Classroom in a book" and thought I had learned a lot until I began working the "Apprentice" book. "Apprentice" is detailed, highly organized, and the lessons were very easy to follow. For someone who wants to learn After Effects I recommend starting with After Effects Apprentice and don't bother with the Adobe Classroom book, which I found to contain numerous errors that made the lessons difficult to follow. Apprentice contained very few errors and that ones I did find did not inhibit the lesson.

A GREAT BOOK!

I have bought over 32 books in the last year on various subjects related to After Effects and other video software tools. Out of these only 2-3 really stand out, and this book is one of them. It covers quite a bit and it layed out quite well and easy to read. I was so impressed with it, I came back and bought the PDF version for the road. If you are looking for a good book on After Effects, do not pass this one up.

Great Book if you want good information mixed w/ solid tutorials

I am enrolled at a local community college and the teacher is using this book. I would highly recommend if you are (like me) new to after effects. It does a great job of providing you with side notes about the application and how to use it effectively. If you do the additional items at the end of each chapter you will really have a good grip on this program. A+

Not just for apprentices

As advertised, this book is a great introduction to motion graphics design and After Effects. The Meyers are both great artists and great teachers. They really understand how to present both the theory and the practice of building compelling motion graphics. I'll be using this book for my intro video post production class in the fall, but the name is a little misleading. After Effects users who consider themselves proficient, but aren't familiar with all the ins and outs of the application can benefit from the book as well. I've been using After Effects professionally since version 3, and I've learned a lot from this book.