What is up creatives this is Tom welcome back to another video today I want to
take a slightly different angle on the channel I've had quite a lot of comments
recently talking about the business side of videography the business side of
freelancing being a photographer or a videographer
or creative in general and I want to talk about personally what I think is
one of the most profitable things you can do or learn as a videographer and
that for me is After Effects I'm gonna veer too much away from calling it
animation in this video just because animation as a whole is just an enormous
topic things like character design character rigging and animation as a
skill can take absolutely years to master and there's a real art form in
itself what I'm sort of talking about is using After Effects to your advantage as
a creator or videographer to basically level up the amount of opportunities you
can accept and also improve the level of content that you are able to produce I
think before we go any further just a little bit of background about me and my
kind of video career so I've been working in-house so for businesses and
for maybe sort of five six years in video production and in the last sort of
a couple of months I've gone freelance full-time so I'm now a freelance full
time videographer and photographer I produce videos for a number of clients
obviously I've literally just took the jump to go and work for myself in the
whole world sort of imploded in the situation that we've got right now try
not to complain too much just because I am in a better situation than a whole
host of people so you know trying to remain positive and something that has
really kept me afloat but has kept my business going in this sort of
ridiculous time at the moment is animation for want of a better word
it is After Effects content I've been able to take videos that previously
would have we need to have shot content on a production shoots for and
still produce a piece of content using Adobe After Effects and animating that
into a final piece of creative that is obviously just one side of it and I want
to talk about a few different pieces of After Effects a few different ways you
can use After Effects to really improve your videos even your YouTube videos I'm
also going to link a bunch of resources down below in the description if you are
interested in learning after effects or leveling up your After Effects a little
bit more these just some of the resouces I've used in the past to learn this
skill there are some paid resources I've never personally done any paid resources
but things like Motion Design School like amazing resources if you happen to
be in a position that you want to pay for it but again there's a whole bunch
of free materials down there in description display most of them in
YouTube videos but hey you're on YouTube you don't probably don't have a problem
of that they're all linked down below the first one I want to talk about is
text animation it's like text animation you just saw that little slide there
that is just one example of text animation that is actually done with in
After Effects using something called an animated typeface there's a really cool
website called aescripts.com and you can buy animated
typefaces that ones are one called Voyager whether you'll have seen me use
on my channel and you just plug it into after-effects load up one of the plugins
that you have available to you and then you can basically create those animated
typefaces really really easily obviously if you've got better you'd be able to
animate those typefaces by hand personally that's just something which
just takes a lot of time and these are already built so I just license that
font and just use that as an example where ever animated typefaces and
animating text is something which can immediately level up your videos a whole
world of possibilities is now open to you you can basically tell stories just
with written text on screen and personally I think this is just a
significant level on top of things like just standard titles so you can actually
start animating these text and these font into your videos itself again
that's just one example of you using a text on these animated almost like title
screens however you could also do videos literally from scratch in this current
situation I've been doing text animated videos from scratch because they're
really popular in social media they are really popular with brands brands like
them and they're a really good way to help your brand's content stand out from
other people online
that's all I want to talk about logo animation this is just such a staple
pretty much every project that I do I animate the logo on it is a really nice
way to basically help yourself stand out as a videographer believe me clients
will be impressed if you have a video and instead of just sort of fading in
their logo at the end if you just take the time animate it a little bit and
again these animations don't have to be crazy complex take the time and learn to
slide one side of an element with a mask and then another side of an element in
together and animate in and out those types of things just make a big big
difference again it's just something which clients often won't expect will be
a really sort of value added on top again the complexity of these animations
can vary some people are incredible at different logo animations some
animations are just really absolutely astounding and use very complex
animation techniques you can really get quite creative this logo animation I did
for a brand that I've worked with recently for a restaurant and basically
what I did is I just used a sort of 3d zoom within After Effects
so I created a camera on my canvas and I sort of scaled the text portion of the
logo and then the sort of i dint of the logo zoom them in independently and
they're just key framed between those segments again we're not going to sort
of go through these in crazy detail if you want to ask any questions on the
animation process down below in the description or I can make a sort of more
extended video if that's of interest to you but again that just with a bit of
motion blur and a bit of depth of field on that camera within After Effects you
get something looking really nice really professional and that's something you've
been able to do as a freelancer and they didn't need to go to some sort of
animation studio to do that separately
third and finally we have this sort of motion graphics and in video animation
now you'll basically see every creator Under the Sun using some element of
these types of things in their videos videos recently from Daniel Schiffer
I've seen stuff with Peter McKinnon using these sort of animated techniques
within video Jesse Driftwood uses this style on his local animation which
is really really great basically it's the idea of creating animated segments
or inserting dynamic animations within your content that sort of interacts with
your content again that sort of the example of Jesse driftwood really does
that well because you sort of tracked his logo again once you've sort of
started learning the basics of After Effects and how you can sort of animate
things between one keyframe and the next lots of things are open to it it's a
really fantastic tool and a very powerful tool so you basically get as
creative as you want with your videos again I wanted to reiterate about the
resources that I've linked down below these are things which you can basically
just sort of pick up at any time download After Effects if you don't have
it or just sort of open it if you haven't if you do have it but you're
maybe scared of it it is just an amazing tool is a little bit complicated but
once you start picking it up and really that complication goes away and you
really start understanding these sort of nuances of the program and how it works
we've pretty much never been in a position like this right now lots of us
have a lot of time on our hands download After Effects get practicing I
promise you you will not regret adding this string to your videography bow
there we go guys a bit of a different one this week let me know what you think
about this video down below in the comments if you have any questions about
After Effects animation in general just drop a comment down below as always I'll
be down there chatting away to you guys and I'll catch you in the next