Learning After Effects Expressions

Learning After Effects Expressions

Learning After Effects Expressions

In this course you can learn the fundamentals of using Expressions in After Effects. This is a premium course on LinkedIn Learning but there are some free tutorials that you can watch listed below.

Course Introduction

Even if you’re not comfortable with scripting or coding, you may still want to take a look at expressions. They are like little scripts that trigger changes to layer properties, and they can save you time, make your work more flexible, and open up new creative possibilities. 

Free Tutorials

Here are a few free tutorials from this course for you to enjoy.

If you’d like to see more you can sign up for a free trial here.

Course Details

In this course, motion graphic designer Angie Taylor shows you how to make Adobe After Effects expressions work for you, starting with building expressions with the pick whip.

She introduces JavaScript-based math expressions, which allow you to adjust timing and movement. 

Angie's Favorites

Angie shares her favorite “no brainer” expressions, such as property linking and connecting camera focus to layers.

Plus, discover how to react to sound, play with color, format text, and link 2D and 3D properties. 

All Angie’s premium courses are available here on the Linkedin Learning website.

After Effects training

After Effects training

After Effects Training

Our remote, online After Effects training courses are taught by motion graphics expert, Angie Taylor – a motion graphic designer, author and illustrator with 25 years industry experience. Choose from our standard two-day After Effects training courses – all taught on a 1-2-1 basis. Or pick and mix modules from below to make up your own bespoke course.

You can choose from Beginners, Intermediate or Advanced courses in Photoshop. Or, pick and mix modules  to make up your own bespoke course. We offer remote, online training for individuals and groups.

Contact us to book

Customer Reviews

Want to hear what our customers think of our courses? You can read reviews about our training courses here.

What we cover in our After Effects training

There are four levels of After Effects training available as well as custom courses. You can find example outlines of these courses by clicking on these links. Each of these is a 2 day course

How does the training work?

Angie will send you an evaluation form that takes a few minutes to complete. This will give Angie an indication of the level of After Effects training you require. She will customise the course to fit your own personal needs. Evaluation form example

Your Instructor - Angie Taylor

All courses are taught by artist, Angie Taylor. Angie worked as a motion graphic designer for over 25 years.

She was a demo artist for Adobe and is an Adobe Community Professional. You can see examples of Angie's work here on her portfolio.

Angie is a lecturer at the Univeristy of Brighton. She has taught children and adults at several colleges, schools and universities.

Angie has several books & courses  published on design & animation.

fundamental-after-effects

Getting comfortable in After Effects
  • An overview of the After Effects interface
  • Making use of task focussed workspaces
  • Customising the application preferences
  • Project settings you need to know about
  • Creating composition settings presets
  • Useful, advanced composition settings
Importing Images into After Effects
  • Supported image types in After Effects
  • Working with Photoshop files in After Effects
  • Working with Illustrator files in After Effects
  • Importing or creating image sequences
Working with video footage in After Effects
  • Supported video formats in After Effects
  • How After Effects works with aspect ratios
  • Adjusting video frame rates and looping footage
  • Understanding video compression and codecs
  • Working with interlaced footage and field order
Timing and motion graphics
  • Importing Premiere Pro animatic via Dynamic Link
  • Adding comp or layer markers in After Effects
  • Making motion graphics dynamic with sound effects
  • Animating elements in time with music
Mastering the five transform properties
  • Rotation
  • Scale
  • Position
  • Anchor Point
  • Opacity
  • Working with 3D in a 2D environment
Applying Effects
  • Adding video effects layers (Blurs, Color correction etc)
  • Applying effects to solids (Generator effects)
  • Creating backgrounds (Fractal noise, patterns, textures)
  • Using Adjustment Layers to apply effects to multiple layers
  • Applying shadows and bevels with Layer Styles
  • Masking effects to isolated areas
Panels
  • Essential Graphics
  • Motion Sketch
  • Smoother
  • Wiggler
  • Mask interpolation
Previewing your work
  • Customising the Time control options
  • Setting up a disk cache (purging)
  • Composition panel options (fast previews, region of interest, resolution, draft options, masks, channels, view options)
  • Timeline controls (shortcuts, view area, zooming, navigating, panels)
Keyframe Assistants
  • When to use Easy Ease and when to use Continuous Bezier
  • Time-reversing keyframes and animations
  • Fixing acceleration issues with Exponential Scale.
  • Understanding keyframe interpolation
  • Auto orient rotation options.
2 day course

Intermediate After Effects

Color and channels
  • RGB, HLS and other color systems
  • Using RGB channels for color adjustment
  • Compositing images with alpha channels
  • Color spaces & color management in After Effects
Presets & Templates
  • Building a comprehensive preset library
  • Using Essential Graphics panel to create Templates
  • Working with Master Properties
Spatial Animation
  • Creating motion paths
  • Adding or removing path keyframes (drawing paths)
  • Four basic keyframe types (Linear, Auto Bezier, Continuous Bezier, Bezier)
  • Using Hold keyframes to animate sudden changes
  • Using Auto Orient to automatically rotate objects along paths.
  • Recording mouse movements with Motion Sketch
  • Creating randomness with the Wiggler
  • Physics (Balance, gravity, bounce etc)
  • Applying squash and stretch to animation
Temporal Animation
  • Adjusting timing in the Timeline (Keyframe interpolation, keyframe velocity)
  • Four basic keyframe types (Linear, Auto Bezier, Continuous Bezier, Bezier)
  • Viewing speed and value graphs in the graph editor
  • Roving Keyframes in time to even out speed changes
  • Retiming animations in the keyframe view (Alt-click and drag)
  • Matching keyframes between properties to avoid glitches (scale and position)
  • Creating overlapping actions
  • Going past the pose to create dynamism
  • Smoother
Shape Layers
  • Primitive vector shapes
  • Drawing custom vector shapes
  • Fills and strokes
  • Combining shapes
  • Shape operators
  • When to use multiple layers
  • Converting shapes from other applications
Text Layers
  • Character panel
  • Paragraph panel
  • Source text property
  • Arranging text along a path
  • adding text animator properties
  • The range selector
  • The wiggly selector
Working in the Layer Panel
  • Spotting Interlacing issues and other errors
  • Trimming footage in the Layer panel
  • Best practices for Ken Burns effects (Panning and Zooming)
  • Viewing effect paths and controls in the Layer panel
  • Working with multiple viewers
Grouping
  • Parenting
  • Nesting
  • Precomposing
  • Collapsing Transformations
  • Layer and render order
2 day course

Advanced After Effects - day 1

Expressions
  • Rotation linking
  • Working with 2D properties
  • Wiggle
  • Looping
  • Audio control
  • Expression controls
  • Rigging
Keying and Compositing
  • Using masks to isolate areas
  • Auto-tracing images and movies
  • Rotoscoping footage with the Rotobrush
  • Keying out green screen with the Keylight effect
  • Creating transparent keys with the Color Difference effect
  • Matte Correction technique
  • Auto-tracing movies or images
Working with the Graph Editor
  • Understanding the speed graph
  • Animating dimensions individually with the Value Graph
  • Tips tricks and techniques with the Graph editor
RGB images and channel effects
  • Blending modes
  • Mattes and Matte effects
  • Alpha channels
  • Channel effects
  • 32-bit/ linear workflows
Combining Effects
  • Procedural V’s non-procedural effects
  • Creating Fire/smoke/water with Turbulent Noise
  • Saving effect presets
  • Adding color to effects or layers
  • Distorting surfaces with turbulent displace
  • Effects that refer to other layers (Displacement maps etc)
Character Animation techniques
  • Forward Kinematic animation with layers
  • IK animation
  • Puppet Tool
  • Character Animator

Power User

Contact us for details

Advanced After Effects - day 2

3D 
  • 3D properties
  • Working with the 3D view menus
  • Navigating custom views with the Camera tools
  • Controlling the Axis modes
  • Cinema 4D Renderer
  • Extruding and bending layers
Cameras
  • Basic camera properties
  • Using the camera tools to adjust or animate the Active camera
  • Manually adjusting using position and point of Interest and orientation
  • Using nulls
  • Zoom
  • Depth of Field
  • Keyframing cameras
  • Auto-orient options
Lights
  • Basic Light properties
  • Light types
  • Material Options
  • Shadows
Cinema 4D Lite and Cineware
  • Importing a 3D object into your comp
  • Adjusting the render settings of cineware
  • Editing the file in Cineware
  • Cineware and After Effects cameras
  • Creating a new 3D object for your comp
  • Multipass compositing
Tracking
  • Masks
  • Layer Tracking
  • Camera Tracking
  • Mocha AE
  • Capturing camera moves from a GoPro
Rendering and Distribution
  • Image sequences versus movies
  • Adobe Media Encoder
  • The Render Queue
  • Render Settings
  • Output Modules
  • Templates
  • Watched folders
2 day course
Back to Course List
After Effects & Character Animator training | Summer 2018

After Effects & Character Animator training | Summer 2018

Mel Jennings | motion graphic designer

I highly recommend the Creative Cabin for Adobe After effects training. Angie is extremely knowledgeable, a great tutor and lovely person.

After completing the two day After Effects training course (fundamentals), I felt confident to jump into creating projects back at work.

The 1:1 nature of the training meant Angie tailored the training to our business needs which was superb and helped build my skills and confidence when I got back to the office.

Angie’s knowledge and flair were super inspiring. She’s super helpful and offers lots of tips and tricks.

Totally recommend training at the Creative Cabin! I hope to plan another trip to extend my skills.

After Effects Training | Spring 2018

After Effects Training | Spring 2018

Suzanne Côté | Graphic designer & Teacher

Atelier du Presse-citron |Dawson College, Graphic Design department

Having little time to develop and enrich my animation skills I needed “made to measure” classes. I searched and found Angie Taylor, offering personal well-structured coaching. I flew from Montreal for five days of one-to-one, bespoke, After Effect and Premiere Pro training in Angie’s Creative Cabin. An ideal cozy summer cottage-like training set up. I has access to a top-of-range iMac, many large screens and accessories. It also has a queen-size bed, kitchen and shower room. All overlooking the English Channel.

Angie is a passionate animator, motion graphic designer and is a skilled trainer. Moreover she has written the book, “Design Essentials for the Motion Media Artist” and she also writes and produces tutorials for Lynda.com. She knows how to communicate and make the content easy to digest. Her vast experience has helped me go to the second level of animation and has enriched my pedagogical skills.

My training and “séjour” in the very unique Creative cabin was worth the trip: amazing intensive coaching with an exotic vacation twist.

Merci Angie
Suzanne

DUIK & After Effects training | Winter 2018

DUIK & After Effects training | Winter 2018

Lee Rushworth | Designer & Photographer

Both times I’ve visited the Creative Cabin have been really great experiences. I went there to learn the fundamentals of After Effects for motion graphics and animation and I came away having learnt an incredible amount and, most importantly, confident I could put it into practice.

Angie is an absolute legend. She was really interested in exactly what I wanted to learn and the kind of things I aspired to create. After Effects is vast but everything I learnt felt relevant and Angie put a lot of effort into tailoring the training to my needs. She’s really lovely, approachable and super knowledgeable.

We had a lot of fun practising character rigging (With DUIK)and Angie demystified things like Track Mattes, 3D cameras, and expressions. After Effects definitely feels much less intimidating.

On both of my visits I stayed overnight in the cabin which has a brilliant setup. For me, it was nice getting out of London and spending the time to really immerse myself in everything I was learning. The cabin is really comfortable and peaceful, views out to sea, and, should you wish, there’s the opportunity of practising the skills you’ve learnt during the day on the iMac.

I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend the Creative Cabin. It’s the best training experience I’ve had and I’m planning another visit this year.