You can do anything in after effects... Almost
anything. But if you're looking to improve your work don't do these. Stop putting motion blur on
everything when i first started i did this because i thought i should it took longer
to render so i thought it must be worth it now motion blur absolutely has its place especially
in vfx if you're compositing elements into live action footage you should match the motion blur
of your footage so it looks like everything was captured with a camera but animation is
traditionally captured one frame at a time with no motion blur and that's typically a look that a lot
of 2d motion graphics are trying to replicate so generally leave it off unless you're using
it for a specific reason stop adding too much stuff i know you're excited because you've just
learnt a new technique you found some expensive plugins that fell off the back of a truck and
a stock library with loads of cool cell animated assets but your job is to communicate and message
clearly with your scene not jam as much as you can into it to show off and make it look expensive
and premium because you'll do the opposite and your work will end up looking like this
stop creating unorganized projects at first you won't even realize it's happening you can see
all of your elements in the project panel it's fine you've only got two comps to keep track of
one more can't hurt but lay your guard down for one second and you've got
of the this if you're working with others on a project trust me no one wants to deal with your
mess and if we're being honest neither do you you'll save so much time in the long term by
keeping it organized and if you don't know where to start download my free project file template
it will help you out stop putting everything in one comp it can be tempting to create multiple
scenes in just one composition especially if you've got transitions or an element that we
follow through multiple scenes but you can easily end up with hundreds of layers and it will make
working at that comp unnecessarily slow and more importantly a nightmare to navigate
sometimes it is necessary but most of the time you should find or make moments where
you can make a seamless transition to a new comp like in movies where they make it look
like one continuous shot but there are hidden cuts cleverly placed where we didn't even notice
stop using plugins as a crutch plugins can be a great way to augment your toolkit to let you
do what you want faster and give you some more options but don't let them take control i have
a problem with a lot of easing plugins for this reason they just make it a bit too easy to avoid
the graph editor and not make any bespoke motion but if we're letting a tool choose the speed for
our motion what are we needed for that's that's the whole show you're letting someone else take
the wheel at that point you should be pushing your abilities to make creative decisions and
execute them well not just your ability to operate a plug-in i love the plugin flow for this reason
even if we use their preset easing there's a mini graph editor that we can see and edit
at all times so we're not losing that sacred connection between animator and graph editor
stop eyeballing there will be many times where you need to animate something in the center of
your composition so make sure it's actually in the center don't eyeball it even if it's off by just a
smidge that triggers something instinctual coated deep inside our dna that something
is off luckily for us though after effects has an alignment panel now the first thing you should do
when you open after effects is make that window visible then never let it out of your site and if
you require further assistance you can pull out guides and the always lovely proportional grid
stop puppet pinning everything now i'm not denying the puppet pin is a fun tool to use
some would argue that the original puppet pin was actually the best level in super mario 64
but 91 of the time it just looks janky really janky stick to using it for subtle motion and
you'll be fine for character animation building a rig out of individual components will serve you
much better i've got two weeks of lessons dedicated to just that in my master motion design
course the student work coming out of the course has been just incredible so if you're looking
to take your motion skills to the next level it's a great place to do that if i don't say so
myself anyway stop animating the fun stuff first this is the eat your vegetables first approach
take time at the beginning to block out all of the important larger motions like a more detailed
animatic then animate it in passes with more and more refined motion otherwise you can easily end
up with a project that looks like this where the first few seconds have all the attention
that the rest deserve you'll be able to manage your time and the project better by taking a
larger view then at the end treat yourself and if you want to know what the best plugins are that
won't take over your brain like a parasite you'll want to watch this next video i'll see you there