Social Media Ad: Assembling the Assets

Topics Covered in This After Effects Tutorial:

Creating a Composition, Importing Media, Organizing the Project Panel, Working with Layers in a Composition (Timeline), Transform Properties: Position, Scale, & Rotation

Exercise Preview

Exercise Overview

Let’s create an animation with photos, video, and audio, adding visual effects (borders, shadows, and smoke) to make it more interesting. Before we can animate, we must import and layout some content, which is what you’ll do in this exercise.

Previewing the Final Video

1. Let’s see a preview of what you’ll be making. If you’re in After Effects, keep it open but switch to your Desktop.
2. On the Desktop, navigate to Class Files > After Effects Class > Guitar Picks > Preview Movie and double–click Guitar Picks Square.mp4.
3. Play the video to see what we’ll be creating in this series of exercises.
4. Replay the video if you need to, and close it when done.

Setting up the Workspace

1. Launch After Effects.

2. Choose Window > Workspace > Standard.

3. Choose Window > Workspace > Reset “Standard” to Saved Layout to ensure all your panels are returned to their default locations and sizes.

4. If the After Effects window does not fill the screen, maximize it:

   Mac:	At the top left of the window, click the green button (the third button).
   Windows:	At to the top right of the window, click the Maximize button (the middle button).

Getting Started—Creating a New Composition

1. Choose Composition > New Composition (or click the New Composition button in the middle of the window).

2. Do NOT click OK until we say so! Set the following:

   • Next to Composition Name type in Guitar Picks Square
   • From the Preset menu choose HD • 1920x1080 • 29.97 fps
   • Uncheck Lock Aspect Ratio
   • Change Width to 1080
   • Make sure the menu to the far right of Frame Rate is set to Drop Frame.
   • Make sure Resolution is set to Full.
   • For Duration type in 1500 and hit Tab to set it 0;00;15;00 (15 seconds).

   

3. We’ll want to create square compositions like this in future, so let’s save this custom size as a preset. To the right of the Preset menu, click the New Preset button .

4. Name it 1080 Square and click OK.

   Notice the Preset menu now displays the new preset’s name.

5. Now click OK to create the Composition.

6. Choose File > Save As > Save As.

   • Navigate to Desktop > Class Files > After Effects Class > Guitar Picks.
   • Name it Your Name—Guitar Picks.aep.
   • Click Save.

Importing Files

In Adobe After Effects, you first need to import files to use them in your project. This is because After Effects needs to be able to access and work with the various elements (such as videos, images, and audio files) that make up your project to create the final output. By importing files into After Effects, you are creating links to the files on your computer, this allow AE to then use them in your compositions.

1. In the Project panel at the top left of the window, make sure you can read the entire comp name (Guitar Picks Square). If you can’t see the whole name, find the divider between the Name and column headers and drag it to the right until the you see the whole name.

2. Choose File > Import > File (or press Cmd–I (Mac) or CTRL–I).

3. Navigate to Desktop > Class Files > After Effects Class > Guitar Picks.

4. Click on the Media folder to select it.

5. Click Open (Mac) or Import Folder (Win) to import the folder, and all of its sub–folders into your project.

6. In the Project panel, click the reveal arrow next to the Media folder to reveal its contents.

7. Click on the Images folder to select it and press Return (Mac) or Enter (Windows) on your keyboard to make the name editable

   NOTE: Double–clicking on a folder or footage item name does not make the name editable (it previews it) but CTRL–click (Mac) or Right–click (Windows) on a folder name and you can choose Rename from the menu.

8. Rename the Images folder 01—Images and press Return (Mac) or Enter (Windows) again to finalize the name change.

9. CTRL–click (Mac) or Right–click on the audio folder and choose Rename.

   • Type in 02—Audio
   • Click on any empty area of the panel or press Return (Mac) or Enter (Windows) to finalize the change.

10. Click on the video folder to highlight it and press Return (Mac) or Enter (Windows) to make the name field editable.

    • Type in 03—Video
    • Hit Return (Mac) or Enter (Windows) to finalize the change.

11. Click on the 01—Images folder to select it:

    • Hold Cmd (Mac) or CTRL (Windows) on your keyboard and click on 02—Audio and 03—Video to select them as well.
    • Release the Cmd (Mac) or CTRL (Windows) key before continuing.

12. With all three folders selected drag them down and out of the Media folder.

13. Click on the Media folder to select it and press Delete (Mac) or Backspace (Windows) to delete it.

14. Choose File > Save or hit Cmd–S (Mac) or CTRL–S (Windows) to save your After Effects project.

Adding Files to a Composition & Positioning Them

Files that you import are usually referred to as either footage or media. But once you add the footage to a composition, they exist as layers inside that composition.

If you’ve used other layer-based apps like Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator, layers works similarly. Each layer has its own independent properties that you can control, and you can stack layers above each other to control their visibility.

1. In the Project panel, click on the arrow to the left of the 01—images folder to reveal its contents.

   NOTE: You can also double–click on a folder name to reveal its contents.

2. Drag background four picks.jpg into the left side of the Timeline, as shown below:

   

3. In the Timeline, CTRL–click (Mac) or Right–click (Windows) on the background four picks.jpg layer and choose Rename.

   NOTE: You can also press Return (Mac) or Enter (Windows) to make the name field editable.

4. Type in background and hit Return (Mac) or Enter (windows) to finalize the change.

5. When you add a layer to the Timeline it’s automatically centered in the composition. This is a wide image, so let’s reposition it to see the area we want to start on. Click the arrow on the left of the background layer to reveal Transform.

6. Click the arrow next to Transform to reveal the individual transform properties.

7. Hover your cursor over the first Position value (horizontal position).

8. Drag to the right to scrub (change) the value. Continue dragging until the value reads 1240 so the guitar picks are visible.

   You can also click on the first Position value, type 1240 and hit Return (Mac) or Enter (windows) to apply it.

9. Click the arrow next to Transform to hide the properties.

10. Click the arrow next to the background layer to hide Transform.

    In After Effects we use these Transform properties a lot. Using the arrows to open and close them gets tedious and time-consuming. So from now on, we’ll mostly use keyboard shortcuts to speed up this process.

Scaling & Rotating

1. From the Project panel, drag pink-pick.jpg into the left side of the Timeline above background.

2. With the [pink-pick.jpg] layer highlighted in the Timeline:

   • Hit Return (Mac) or Enter (Windows) to make the name editable.
   • Rename it photo1
   • Hit Return (Mac) or Enter (Windows) again to finalize the change.

3. This image is much larger than the composition size of 1080 X 1080, so we have to scale it down.

   With the photo1 layer highlighted, press the S key to reveal the Scale property.

4. Hover over the first Scale value and drag to the left until it reads 42 (or click on the value and type in 42).

   NOTE: Horizontal and vertical scale are linked together thanks to the link button on the left of the first scale value.

5. With the photo1 layer still highlighted, press the R key to reveal Rotation property

6. Set Rotation to 0x-16° and don’t miss that it’s negative 16!

   NOTE: Rotation is written as 2 values. The first value is only used when you’re animating, and is the number of full rotations to make. The second value is the degree of rotation of the layer. So every time the degree value goes above 360°, the first value increases by 1.

7. Choose File > Save or hit Cmd–S (Mac) or CTRL–S (Windows) to save your file.

Understanding Drop Frame Vs. Non–Drop Frame Timecode

Timecode is separated by either semi–colons or colons. Semi–colons indicate drop frame, while colons indicate non-drop frame.

Drop frame timecode is the standard for broadcast video and uses a counting trick to ensure that the time displayed by the timecode corresponds as accurately as possible with real time.

If you’re producing video for television broadcast you must use drop frame timecode. If you’re producing video for other purposes (like social media) it doesn’t matter which you use.

Linking Vs. Embedding Files

Linking and embedding are two different ways of including files in another document.

When you link a file, you are creating a connection between the original file and the document where you want to use it. This means that the file remains in its original location and any changes made to it will also be reflected in the document where it’s linked. If the file is moved or deleted from its original location, the link will be broken, and the file will not be accessible in the document where it’s linked.

Embedding, on the other hand, means that a copy of the file is placed directly into the document where it is used. The original file remains untouched, but any changes made to the copy in the document will not be reflected in the original file. This means that even if the original file is moved or deleted, the copy embedded in the document will still be accessible.

When working with After Effects, all imported files are linked. Items you create in AE like Composition, Text and Shape layers are the only types of items that are embedded in this application.