Build your animation abilities through hands-on courses that explore composition, pacing, and visual storytelling. You’ll experiment with techniques that bring imagination to life.
Learn to create compelling video content with Adobe After Effects. This course covers the basics of animation, text effects, and file integration needed to start creating impressive visual content from scratch. Get hands-on experience with real-world projects taught by an experienced instructor.
Learn motion graphics and visual effects with Adobe After Effects and Premiere Pro. Develop your skills in animation, video editing, and special effects, and create a motion graphics demo reel to showcase your work to potential clients or employers.
Learn how to use Adobe Premiere Pro to create professionally edited videos in this comprehensive class. From importing and organizing footage to advanced editing techniques like multi-cam editing and green screen removal, this course will equip you with the skills to create compelling video content.
Dive into the dynamic world of Adobe After Effects with this advanced course, designed to elevate your animation and motion graphics skills. From mastering 3D layers and custom shapes to optimizing animations with expressions, you'll create captivating visuals that stand out in any project.
This course unlocks the power of Adobe After Effects, teaching you to create stunning visual effects and professional-grade motion graphics. Master techniques like motion tracking, compositing, and time remapping to take your video projects to new heights of creativity and impact.
Become a skilled Video Editor and Motion Graphics Designer by learning Adobe Premiere Pro, and After Effects. Develop creative techniques and concepts for editing videos, and showcase your skills by creating a professional demo reel.
Animation is the creation and presentation of sequential images that give viewers the impression of motion. When images that differ slightly are presented in rapid succession, our visual systems fill in the transitions and perceive the changes as movement. This technique may be nearly as old as visual art itself! Various kinds of visual illusions—including sequential murals, flipbooks, and ‘magic lantern’ devices—established the principles of animation well before celluloid film made recorded animations possible. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, filmmakers developed techniques like stop-motion, cutout, and hand-drawn animations, with the first true ‘cartoons’ appearing in the 1910s. Cartoons continued to evolve as new film technologies emerged. In theaters, in addition to short features, animation was soon used in advertising. Animators also created special effects for traditional recordings by drawing over film or superimposing drawn cels. Animation steadily expanded into full-length movies and kept pace with the appearance and popularity of television. More widespread knowledge and new technologies then opened animation to more creators, subjects, and styles beyond the traditional studios.
Early experiments with computer-generated imagery (CGI) in the 1940s benefited from advancing computing technology in the 1970s, and computer-generated animation exploded in the 1980s and 1990s. Computer-generated animations were largely used as special effects in television and film until the debut of the first full-length, entirely CGI animated film, Toy Story (1995). Since then, faster computing, greater storage space, and technologies like motion capture and 3D modeling have made computer-generated and computer-assisted animation faster and cheaper to produce, more realistic, and more widely available. Now, desktop applications allow creators to produce animations quickly from either their own drawings or pre-built image libraries. Digitally created animations now frequently remain in digital form, often viewed online as content on social media applications and websites. In addition to their use in entertainment and advertising, animations are also employed as educational and technical illustrations, scientific and technical simulations, attention-grabbing images on websites and other digital documents (particularly as motion graphics, simple moving images often paired with text), and components for video productions and software applications. Most modern video games are essentially user-controlled, continuously generated animations, while also containing pre-generated ‘cinematic’ animations. Animation continues to take new forms with the appearance of virtual reality environments and generative systems that can produce animated environments and characters upon request.
The creations most people associate with animation are cartoons. Studying animation will certainly enable you to create simple cartoons, especially when assisted by animation software. Creators with more artistic skill will be able to produce more original, visually appealing, and realistic features, and those with more time to invest will be able to create longer and more complex projects, but mastering the basic techniques and tools of animation is within anyone’s reach. Further study will help you to create smoother animation, add new styles and techniques, and manage challenging aspects like coordinating sound with action. Eventually, you could go from creating short animated clips to full cartoon episodes and even to animated movies. In addition to their use for entertainment, cartoons have an equally long history as advertisements. Some advertising agencies specialize in animated formats, and most agencies need animators for television and web advertising, not only to make ads but to generate animated components to use in other forms of marketing. You could also use animation for yourself to create more engaging advertising and webpages for your business.
Animation helps with other kinds of entertainment. Special effects in video, when not created by models or practical effects, are usually some kind of animation edited into recordings. Even effects that look realistic and natural may be accomplished by sophisticated animation. Computer-generated animations sometimes create whole scenes in ‘live-action’ films, like vast battles that would otherwise require hundreds or thousands of background actors. Animations are also used in both pre-recorded and live television programs, as transitions between scenes, as titles and credits, and as on-screen informational graphics, especially in news shows. Whether you work for a media company or create your own content, animation adds a valuable feature to your video creations.
Animated informational graphics are becoming more widespread in other kinds of applications. Animated technical diagrams are valuable for education, especially in engineering, science, and medicine. Professionals use similar technical animations in their work, to design products, demonstrate designs to clients, visualize research subjects, illustrate medical scans and procedures, or model projects like construction or interior design. Being able to create and modify these animations enables you to use such tools more capably, which is especially helpful for communicating complex information. Short animated images, called motion graphics, are often added to webpages and other digital documents, engaging viewers better than static images. Again, studying animation and animation tools enables you to create motion graphics for an employer’s use or your own. Finally, all these forms of animation—cartooning, special effects, and short animated elements—come together in software applications. Almost every visible part of a modern program, from tutorials to user interfaces to video game elements, uses animation. Designing user-friendly software usually requires some animation skill, and creating video games or virtual reality environments is essentially working with large-scale animations.
Before images can be animated, they must be created. Not every Animator needs to be a talented visual artist, but any animation student should understand the principles and techniques of visual art, especially drawing. 3D animators also need to know the same visual principles as 3D artists like sculptors. Visual design principles like color, contrast, and composition further inform the decisions and processes of animation. Further, animation is a form of filmmaking, and animation classes reproduce many of the lessons of cinematography and photography such as focus, framing, composition, and visual storytelling. Animators also use many of the same digital tools as visual artists, particularly when preparing sample frames, backgrounds, models, and storyboards.
The core of any animation course is the underlying concepts and techniques of animation itself. Students first learn the features of visual perception that create the illusion of motion. Then, they learn how to manipulate images to create not only animation itself but smooth, appealing, and convincing animations. They then apply these principles to different formats, learning how to make drawn, stop-motion, and computer-generated animations. Next, they learn more about natural motion: how to correctly mimic physics for objects and physiology for characters. Students must become familiar with the methods used to generate different movement styles, coordinate layered, complex scenes with multiple moving elements, and synchronize motion with sound. In particular, voice synchronization, matching a character’s speech to their movements, should be understood first in its manual form, even if it is later assisted by automated tools. Finally, animation students learn the history and principles of animation as an art form, so that they will know what choices and techniques produce more interesting and communicative results.
While hand-drawn and manually assembled animation remains a valuable art form, specialized software has opened animation to more creators and allows even traditional animators to create longer and more elaborate projects. Some animation programs enable techniques that would be extremely difficult or impossible with film alone, especially when creating 3D scenes and lifelike visual effects. Nearly all animation courses teach one or more of these creative programs to give students access to modern tools and ensure that their talents stay marketable. Some of the most popular programs come from the Adobe Creative Cloud, particularly Adobe Animate for general animation and Adobe After Effects for motion graphics. Other classes focus on free animation packages like Cinema 4D, Blender, or Animaker. Other commonly used and taught animation programs include Autodesk Maya, Houdini, and Procreate. Studying an animation program not only prepares students to master that specific software but also to use digital animation tools in general.
Being able to create a technically competent, visually appealing animation is only part of an Animator’s job. Even short animations of a few frames should communicate meaning, and longer animations and cartoons should tell more complete, satisfying stories. Rather than confusing viewers or making them guess, animators should learn how to tell clear, comprehensible stories with images and motion, in much the same way as a Video Editor or Graphic Designer communicates with images. Complete animation courses discuss how to plan out an animation’s story and how to make its visuals connect to viewers. As in film or stage writing, students practice creating narratives, learning how to introduce characters and settings, pace story events, and weave a convincing ending. Even if an Animator works from someone else’s story, they should be aware of that storyteller’s intentions and be able to convey key elements through their contributions.
Alongside animation-specific software, animation courses often discuss broader digital editing techniques and programs. First, some animated projects are published and presented as digital products, requiring similar techniques as for other digital audiovisual creations. To complete their work, animators might need to integrate separate scenes, add transitions, overlay additional filters and effects, add and integrate audio, and export their finished files in appropriate formats. Second, some animators create components to be integrated as part of a larger, multimedia project, and might be asked to shape their output accordingly or even add their animations directly to a video project. Animation classes might feature popular video editing programs like Adobe Premiere Pro or take advantage of the video editing features integrated into some animation software, like Animaker.
Any animated project of significant length requires planning and organization, starting with its initial storyboarding and sketches; continuing through the creation of models, keyframes, backgrounds, and other components; and finishing with the compiling, recording, and editing that generate the finished product. Animation courses discuss how to conceive a project, identify and create its parts, and then bring those parts together in an orderly manner. Such organization also helps when animators collaborate on larger projects like movies, animated series, advertising campaigns, or video games, dividing work for efficiency and then combining individual outputs. Animators sometimes work in multidisciplinary teams, especially within companies like film studios, marketing agencies, or web developers. Being able to fully participate in the organizational aspects of collaborative teams makes any worker more valuable. Not only can they potentially take management roles themselves, but they take direction better and produce components that more easily fit the emerging project.
Simple animation is surprisingly easy to learn, especially when assisted by software that handles the fine detail and repetitive work of manually created animations. You can learn to use one of these programs in a short course and begin producing basic animated videos and motion graphics right away, even using 3D characters and environments. However, being able to animate is not the same as being an Animator. Limited study will result in limited options, restricted by your artistic skill (or available image libraries), your technical knowledge, and the capabilities of each program. To get a desired visual appearance, one which fits a particular artistic style, appeals to viewers, and conveys your intentions, you will need to study and practice a variety of related skills. Inexpert animations will also look crude, with unnatural, rough motion and missing elements. Just as important, programs cannot judge visual and audio design, write coherent stories, implement stories in images and motion, or improve these features through editing. At a minimum, you will need several courses of study to acquire all of the skills of a professional Animator. You also need time to practice different techniques and learn how to reliably create desired effects, which time includes trial and error and discussion with accomplished experts. Finally, short animations will be of limited use unless you understand how they fit into larger projects. Animators need to study the fields their work will support: entertainment, education, design, technology, or others.
When professional animators consider their greatest challenges, two categories emerge most frequently: technique and visual storytelling. Creating animation begins with artistic skill, especially if you want an original, well-defined visual style. If you have not studied visual art, your animations will be greatly limited until you improve your basic creative abilities. Creating motion with consistent, intentional direction, speed, and style also poses numerous technical problems. Programs can assist the animation process, but you cannot supply the correct components and inputs to these programs without knowing how they work and what they are doing. Similarly, good visual storytelling can be difficult, requiring careful thought. Translating a story to action through effective planning and storyboarding is a practiced skill, similar to the challenges faced by cinematographers, video editors, and advertisers. Even experienced animators with years of study and experience can struggle when choosing appropriate images and animations to convey plot events, background information, and moods. Some animators even need to write their own storylines, which is a challenge in itself.
Animation, like most technical artistic skills, requires many hours of practice to master. While you could learn the fundamental concepts and techniques of animation in a short course, understanding and using these ideas requires seeing many examples and trying them for yourself. Still, after a single course, you can usually produce simple, rough animations, especially with software to handle the time-consuming intermediate steps. Some animation classes do require students to produce several manual animations without automated assistance to gain a better understanding of their craft and an appreciation of the work involved. With consistent practice to refine each skill and technical tool, plus time to explore different animation styles, you could consistently produce short animated features after a few months. Employers will generally require a portfolio of these high-quality, consistent animation samples before hiring an Animator. Making even more complex, detailed animation such as realistic visual effects or full 3D scenes requires that you study more techniques and tools, which will require additional coursework and practice. Similarly, producing animation for specific uses like film, web graphics, or software development can require additional study to gain the required technical knowledge. Finally, while animation courses can guide you toward better visual storytelling, mastering this skill requires further study of other animators’ work and practice with your own projects. Many animators find it useful to work in an entry-level position, learning from experienced animators while producing routine animation components, to understand how each element contributes to a complete project and a well-planned story.
Traditional in-person learning requires that instructors and students meet at a shared physical location. This physical requirement limits the classes students can choose, based on the financial and time costs of travel between their homes and available schools. Students may also be limited by their availability versus class dates and times. However, some students prefer to be in the same classroom as an instructor, as this format provides the fastest and most direct feedback. Such regular oversight and advice can be especially helpful for animation, to explain concepts more clearly, address questions promptly, and catch errors early. Students may even require this method due to learning difficulties. A shared class location also allows students to access printed materials, art supplies, and computer hardware and software provided by the school.
Self-paced or asynchronous learning eliminates the limitations of both location and time. Students can study from texts, prerecorded videos, and/or interactive programs, wherever and whenever they choose. Where self-paced course materials were once sent by mail, they are now primarily delivered online. School websites also provide students with message boards and chatrooms for discussions with instructors and other students, to supplement their individual study. In some courses, students can also request limited live chats or video calls with instructors. However, the freedom of self-paced learning comes at the cost of regular contact with an instructor, losing the easier feedback and advice provided by a live course. Self-paced courses are also limited by the materials that have already been written and recorded, making them slower to update than live classes. Further, most self-paced courses require that students use their own computers and software, though some courses offer free or discounted software subscriptions.
Live online courses offer a balance between the immediacy of live instruction and the convenience of online learning. Students and instructors attend live class sessions via streaming video platforms like Zoom. These meetings allow them to interact in real-time, though sometimes limited by technical problems. The lack of physical presence can also pose a difficulty for some learning styles. To help overcome these limits, many live online courses are supplemented with written materials (usually available for download), message boards, chat rooms, and/or private chat or video sessions with instructors. Also like self-paced courses, live online classes may not supply necessary computer hardware and software, but some courses do provide free or discounted software subscriptions. Most importantly, live online courses provide students with the greatest possible range of course contents, instructors, and schedules, by eliminating the restrictions of location and pre-recorded content.
Most animators are happy to talk about their craft, and students can find free resources across the internet in the form of text and video lessons, recorded and live-streamed animation tutorials, and video and interactive demonstrations. For example, you can find several video lessons on animation and animation software on Noble Desktop’s website and their YouTube channel. Few of these free lessons, however, match the quality of professional instruction, and even free lessons presented by an expert instructor are necessarily limited by their available time. Some free lessons are intentionally limited, intended as demonstrations for longer courses. Further, free lessons rarely provide an organizational structure or learning exercises, and none can offer students feedback to address their questions or correct their errors. Self-taught students trying to learn animation from free resources alone will require additional time and effort and will likely repeat avoidable mistakes. A well-designed course with an experienced instructor and supporting materials will provide you with a more complete, accurate, and efficient education. Purchasing such courses from an accredited school will also ensure that your study meets the professional requirements for your desired industry, giving you both confidence in your abilities and verification for potential employers.
Few students become interested in animation without some interest in primary visual arts like drawing, painting, photography, videography, or digital modeling. Broadening and deepening their artistic skill is always useful for an Animator, helping them to create designs and components for their animations and to understand shared principles like composition, color, and visual communication. Related study in applied artistic fields like multimedia art, digital content creation, graphic design, motion capture, and 3D modeling will add more tools to an Animator’s repertoire. Learning more about the programs that support these creative endeavors is also wise. Creations made in digital drawing, modeling, and editing programs often can be imported directly into integrated animation software. Animators who want even more control over their computer-generated and -aided creations might learn one or more programming languages to modify existing programs, automate routine tasks, or even write animation code directly. Popular choices for animation coders are Java, JavaScript, Python, and C++. Finally, students primarily interested in animation for video games should study game development environments like Unity, Unreal Engine, or Godot Engine, to see how animated components are combined with game features.
Animators should also study verbal and visual storytelling. This is especially true for those who want to create full cartoon features or story-driven games, but storytelling also benefits animators creating content for advertising, social media, websites, or education. Courses on narrative forms like writing, scriptwriting, cinematography, and comics provide tools and insights that will benefit an Animator, particularly with storyboarding. Animators interested in fields like marketing and advertising, social media management, movie production, technical illustration, software design, or video game production will benefit from studying those industries in more depth. Finally, animators who plan to work on large-scale collaborative projects will need study and practice with subjects like project design, time management, and creative collaboration tools like Asana, SyncSketch, or GitHub.
Philadelphia has a thriving animation industry, with many local dedicated animation studios, including unPOP, Remade Studios, Toolbox Studio, Studio YGKrow, CGiMATE, and Motifmotion, plus many freelance animators. There are also several local media production companies with animation departments such as Leveler Media, Splat Productions, Siloam Graphics, JTWO, and What’s This?! Media. In addition to making animated entertainment, these companies contract to create animated content for a variety of client industries. Entertainment is the most common public experience of animation, including not only cartoon movies and TV shows but also social media videos, virtual reality environments, and video games. Animation also creates many elements within ‘live-action’ entertainment, like titles and visual effects. Alongside media, animation is used in advertisements, websites, and digital applications. Educational uses of animation have paralleled other industries, with animations used as illustrations on teaching websites and in digital texts, as ‘edutainment’ teaching tools, and in training software and simulations. Multiple industries—especially engineering, manufacturing, construction, and medicine—also use animations for internal training and illustration, plus demonstrating designs and procedures to their customers, creating designs (especially for moving parts), and guiding work in process.
The entertainment industry is the largest employer of animators, whether in dedicated animation studios or hired by media producers of many kinds. Animated entertainment could be traditional cartoons, stop-motion such as Claymation, obvious computer-generated animation in 2D or 3D formats, or realistic CG work that can substitute for live recordings. Animators may work with film studios to create animated movies or to create visual effects or animated elements for live-action movies. Other studios produce television, streaming, and/or web-based episodic series, whether fully animated or including animated elements and effects. The news media also needs animations, from weather maps and informational graphics to on-screen titles and icons. Social media of various types uses animation for all of these same purposes, plus a few unique innovations. Animated avatars, mapped by facial recognition and motion tracking, allow users to wear virtual costumes or puppet entirely virtual characters. These characters are often used on streaming video sites, often in live streams, and can be simple or complex, 2D or 3D, with the most elaborate ‘rigs’ producing the equivalent of real-time motion-capture animations. Animators also create moving backgrounds for live and pre-recorded videos and interactive virtual reality characters and environments.
These social and virtual media creations are largely extensions of animators’ decades of work on video games. Where animators once breathed life into games by scripting alternations between simple pixel graphic sprites, sophisticated game engines now function as interactive animation generators, using precompiled components like character models, movement animations, object animations, and particle effects to render whole scenes based on player inputs and game scripts. Video games can also contain pre-written ‘cinematic’ scenes which are digitally rendered animated movies in their own right. Other forms of digital entertainment, like visual novels, augmented reality, and virtual reality, make use of both interactive and scripted animations.
Some of the earliest filmed animations were advertisements shown before movies, and the uses of animation for advertising have followed entertainment and media in every direction. Cartoon advertisements and ads containing animated elements once accompanied television programs and now occupy the same space around streaming videos. Animated ads also appear on websites and in some free software. Video billboards and shared virtual worlds have created new spaces for animated advertising in public view. Most advertising agencies either directly hire animators or visual artists with animation training or else contract animation studios to create animated ads or animated elements for ads.
Separate from explicit advertising, animations are used in other aspects of marketing and promotion. Marketing agencies and web developers employ animators to create animated elements for business websites, largely in the form of motion graphics. Animated shorts and interactive animations can catch attention, demonstrate a product or service, assist customers in choosing products or designing custom products (especially for manufacturers), and guide customers when assembling, using, or troubleshooting a purchased product.
The uses of animation in digital entertainment and marketing map onto its uses in software development and design. Animations can be part of a program’s user interface and user experience design, in the form of animated controls, transitions, tutorials, and information screens. Some programs generate animations as their primary interactive method such as for computer-assisted design of 3D and moving components. Certain programs, of course, are designed to aid the creation of animated components or full animated features. All of these uses of animation require either that programmers and designers understand animation themselves or that a software development team employs a skilled Animator.
If pictures are worth a thousand words, animations can be worth millions. Animated informational graphics can explain many complex concepts and subjects far better than verbal descriptions or sequences of static images. This is especially true for three-dimensional diagrams that can zoom, rotate, or cut away layers for a more immersive, detailed experience; or when illustrating processes that unfold over time, like natural phenomena, movements, and interactions. For example, a video or a digital application might display a three-dimensional map of a city that students can adjust to watch the city’s construction over time, its changing political divisions, or its traffic patterns over a day or week. Various employers, including schools, textbook publishers, and educational software developers, hire animators to create informational graphics. For younger students, animations may take the form of ‘edutainment’ like cartoons and games. In university courses, technical training, and medical schools, animations appear as technical diagrams, illustrations in video texts, and training simulations. The more accurate and realistic these instructional animations are, the better prepared students are before encountering real problems, tasks, or patience.
Just as animated illustrations demonstrate technical concepts to students, the same tools are valuable to working engineers to communicate concepts and designs, create products and systems, and guide manufacturing. Animations particularly help to visualize moving parts and systems in operation and can depict unfolding processes like construction and assembly. For example, engineers designing vehicles, robots, and other mobile products can simulate their movement, and civil engineers can map the growth of infrastructure and see time-lapse simulations of utilities, traffic, or land use. Some animation and video production companies specialize in these kinds of technical illustrations, and software developers create programs for technical visualization. Engineering animations can also be integrated to guide manufacturing and construction, with engineers’ designs becoming four-dimensional plans.
Animated illustrations are valuable in many parts of the construction industry. Most such animations are generated by design software, but some builders will contract animators directly to create demonstrations for internal reference or to show to clients. For example, time-lapse simulations can map the stages of a construction plan. Other simulations can demonstrate movement through a building or moving parts such as machinery in a factory. Rendered 3D environments are helpful in architecture, interior design, and landscaping, showing how a designed space will appear from different angles.
Medicine is another field that makes good use of animated imagery for training, planning, communication, and procedures. Anatomical and microscopic visualizations and simulations can be used for medical training in all the same ways as for other education. Animations are also useful for working physicians: to visualize procedures for their own reference, to advise patience, or to view complex medical imagery like functional MRI data. Animated illustrations can show how body systems function over time such as blood circulation or nerve impulses. Such illustrations can also depict disordered functioning and its effects, as well as the effects of interventions like drugs or surgery. 3D illustrations can allow for the exploration of internal anatomy without requiring surgical observation or dissection. Animation also helps to visualize body movement, creating valuable imagery for sports medicine, bioengineering, and limb surgery.
Many employers hire professional animators under the simple title of Animator. These positions include creators making fully animated entertainment and advertisements for animation studios and media producers, animated components for multimedia products, and video games and software. Self-employed Animators might contract for any of these projects, or they might create unique content to pitch to studios or present on social media. Generally, Animators spend the majority of their work hours planning, creating, and editing animated content, focusing on the techniques of their art. However, they may need to use other tools or understand particular fields depending on their employer’s business type. Across the United States, Animators earn an average of $44,000 annually, including all types of employers and degrees of expertise.
Animators may be further specified as 2D or 3D Animators. A 2D Animator specializes in two-dimensional animation forms like drawn animation, animated text, and 2D game sprites. Positions described as 2D Animator pay an average of $57,000 per year in Philadelphia. In comparison, a 3D Animator produces three-dimensional animations, which may include stop-motion films, computer-generated animated features and visual effects, simulations, and 3D character models and environments for games. A 3D Animator in Philadelphia typically earns $139,000 annually, reflecting the greater technical knowledge required for this work.
A Digital Designer, sometimes known as a Multimedia Artist, Multimedia Illustrator, or Digital Content Creator, creates digital art in various formats, including animation but also static graphics, 3D models, and video, sometimes also integrated with audio. Some Digital Designers primarily work in video and specialize in video editing, with animation a useful component in their creative process. Other Digital Designers create content for websites, advertising, video games, or software. Digital Designers may be freelance contractors, making products according to clients’ requests, or may work for companies like studios, media producers, or software developers. Like Animators, Digital Designers usually learn additional tools and subject knowledge particular to their employers’ needs. In the United States, Digital Designers earn $95,000 per year, on average.
Motion graphics are short digital animations used in many projects, including television and film, websites, digital documents, software applications, and video games. A Motion Graphics Designer, also called a Motion Designer or MoGraph Professional, creates these animations for an employer or client in any style or format they might require. The ability to create custom visual art is valuable for this career, as clients may need custom imagery. Motion Graphics Designers especially need strong fluency in the programs used to create motion graphics, like Adobe After Effects, and familiarity with multiple other platforms their clients might use, like video editing, web design, or software design systems. In the United States, the average salary for a Motion Graphics Designer is $77,000 per year.
A Software Engineer, or Software Designer, creates computer programs for a variety of uses, including business, education, and entertainment. Being able to create animated content for programs can save their developers time and expense. Animation ability is especially valuable for Software Engineers who create video games (also called Game Developers) but is also a significant asset when working with technical simulations in educational and industrial applications. Animation is used in many interface designs, including moving controls and displays, as well as tutorials and transitions between screens. Some Software Engineers with animation backgrounds invent and upgrade software tools to assist other animators. Naturally, Software Engineers must learn additional technical skills to design and implement programs such as coding languages, development environments, and collaborative tools for software design teams, which education is reflected in their salaries. Salaries for Software Engineers in Philadelphia average $98,000 per year and increase greatly with greater experience and ability, reaching an average of $160,000 per year across the United States for a Senior Software Engineer. Specializing further in a particular kind of software can also improve potential income. For example, a Mobile Developer can earn an average of $124,000 annually across the United States.
The Knowledge Academy offers live online courses on a variety of subjects and also has a Philadelphia location for in-person classes. For a comprehensive course in animation suitable even for new students, they present their Animation and Design Training | 2D Animation Course in both formats. This course begins by explaining the fundamental principles of animation and an overview of the 2D animation process. Students then explore each step in greater depth, including character design, storyboarding, techniques that create different animation effects, and sound design for animations. Finally, instructors explain post-production: the processes of editing, cleaning up, and exporting an animation project for use in specific formats. Students who complete the course receive a 2D Animation Certificate.
Certstaffix Training provides professional technical training, primarily through live online classes, but their students in Philadelphia can access their computer lab in Malvern, PA. Two of their courses teach software packages useful for animation. Both classes award a digital badge and certificate upon completion, can be retaken once for free for up to six months, and prepare students for the Adobe certification exams for their respective programs. The first course, Adobe Animate (2024), is a short course teaching Animate, a program that can generate animated content in many styles and for many uses. The course first addresses the core functions of Animate, explaining many of the concepts of animation by showing how they are implemented in the program. The course then elaborates upon each technique and discusses many of Animate’s tools, showing how each adjustment changes the appearance and motion of animations. Students also learn how to publish their animations in different formats for various professional uses and how to create interactive animations using ActionScript and JavaScript.
Certstaffix Training’s second animation software course, Adobe After Effects (2024), is a short course that teaches how to create motion graphics in After Effects, including 3D graphics. Students will learn to use all major features of After Effects and generate motion graphics for use in video projects, mobile apps, and websites.
Ledet Training also offers live online training with Adobe After Effects and Adobe Animate, with their courses separated into two levels of expertise for each program. Adobe After Effects 101—After Effects Essentials is an introductory short course that gives students a foundational overview of After Effects. The course addresses each tool and feature in After Effects, demonstrating how each option affects a given animation. This study continues in a second short course, Adobe After Effects 201—After Effects Advanced, which further refines the techniques learned in 101, teaching students to produce more advanced effects. Both classes are combined at a discount in Ledet Training’s Adobe After Effects 501—After Effects Bootcamp, a slightly longer course that still covers all of the same material. Students seeking further study in After Effects can also take Adobe After Effects 202—Creating Animated Characters in After Effects, a one-day course that expands the use of several features, including the Puppet tool, to create more realistic character animations.
Similarly, Ledet Training’s Adobe Animate 101—Animate Essentials is an introductory live online course teaching the fundamentals of Animate. No previous experience is necessary, and students will learn enough to produce basic motion graphics and animated videos from Animate, exporting sample projects in HTML5. Adobe Animate 201—Animate Advanced is the advanced short course for Animate, covering additional program features that produce more skillful animations. In this course, students also learn to create interactive animations with JavaScript and how to publish projects for mobile and desktop applications. Both courses are again combined at a discount in Adobe Animate 501—Animate Bootcamp.
For high school and early college students, NextGen Bootcamp offers an extensive Video Editing & Motion Graphics Live Online course. This course teaches animation in the form of motion graphics created in Adobe After Effects, particularly for use in video editing, which is taught using Adobe Premiere Pro. The course addresses motion tracking, masking, and 3D layer animation and discusses the use of motion graphics for video production (including visual effects) and video game development. In addition to the live class sessions, students receive supplemental reference materials, and the course awards an official certificate upon completion.
Noble Desktop hosts multiple live online courses of interest to practicing and aspiring animators, including short courses for animation software packages and several longer certificate courses addressing particular uses of animation in more depth. For example, if you are just starting to explore motion graphics, Noble Desktop offers several courses on Adobe After Effects. In addition to a one-day introductory course called After Effects in a Day, a longer After Effects Bootcamp, and its subsequent After Effects Advanced short course, Noble Desktop combines those Bootcamp and Advanced courses into a comprehensive After Effects Certification Program. This certification program will prepare you to pass the Adobe Certified Professional exam for After Effects, and the program fee includes a proctored session for the exam itself, plus a free retake of the exam if needed. In addition to live online instruction, students receive supplemental course materials, additional exam preparation videos, and six hours of private tutoring in two three-hour 1-on-1 sessions. You can also retake the course once for free for up to one year.
If you are interested in motion graphics for their use in professional video editing, you may prefer Noble Desktop’s longer certificate course in Motion Graphics. Their Motion Graphics Certificate program includes multiple types of training and awards a New York State licensed certificate of completion. This program includes Noble Desktop’s Bootcamp courses in Premiere Pro (Adobe’s video editing software), After Effects, and Cinema 4D, plus the After Effects Advanced curriculum and a bonus unit on developing a motion graphics portfolio. In addition to the live online classes for these courses, you receive supplemental materials and five 1-on-1 mentoring sessions to address your questions about difficult topics and career development. If you need to refresh your knowledge, you can retake the class once for free for up to a year and can access recordings of the live classes for up to one month after each class.
If you need to introduce animation to your workplace or want to improve or update employees’ animation skills, Noble Desktop can provide animation instruction for corporate clients. You can select courses from Noble Desktop’s existing catalog, including classes on motion graphics, Adobe After Effects, Cinema 4D, and video editing. Or, you can create a custom course to meet your specific needs. Instructors are available either live online or in-person at your location and can adjust course scheduling to your needs. If you prefer, you can purchase vouchers for existing live online courses, at a discount for bulk purchases, and distribute these vouchers to employees to schedule class sessions at their preferred dates and times.
Contact corporate@nobledesktop.com to ask questions, to purchase class vouchers, or for a live consultation to discuss custom courses to meet your requirements.