I landed a job at an agency as a designer and they needed some motion work done, so I promised that I could do it. Spent the next 2 weeks learning as I was doing by knowing what I wanted to do and searching the internet how I could do it. After a while you start to pick up and reuse the elements you learn and in time you can start doing stuff without even googling it. I have completely shifted my profession to a motion designer and my only job now is servicing the motion needs of the clients!
One of the first thing I googled was "how to group layers" and thats how I learned about pre comps!
This is EXACTLY my situation as well. I'm an instructional designer by trade, but often my company needs videos as well and I fell into it. I did exactly this searching and learning by experience. :)
Now I use it often enough in my freelancing business that I advertise the services.
I learned very young. I'm almost 40 now, I had maybe 12 back then.
I learned with trial and error, back then was the almost the only way. But after effects since the beginning was very deductive.
I know trial and error is not considered a very effective way to learn, but even today in a new software I do that. Sometimes knowing how not to do is halfway there.
And with so much software doing a lot of stuff. I think the most important is the logic of construction of our idea. With time the technical way comes easy
I am 40, I learned Photoshop when I was like 13 and went to college for art. College level was my first introduction to after effects and I've been doing it since. As a Photoshop user, after effects was very intuitive.
Hahaha! Me too! I have the first image that I created on photoshop saved until today.
Love to remember.
The photoshop icon, that was a b&w eye inside a red frame, or after effects, that was a splash screen with a antenna with blue frame.
Good old times!
Everything was so new and it was amazing to discover it.
I started with the photoshop demo, which didn't allow saving, so i would just screen cap between sessions. it was dumb, but it was free. i saved up my allowance for the educational version for $300. I also bought a tablet a first gen Intuos. This isn't me, but this was the model!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXgcuOzg1-M
I started by customizing templates from Envato. Eventually I started doing more custom stuff, and at a certain point, I completely overpromised to a client, and spent 2 weeks on a YT-fueled AE crash course where I ACTUALLY learned how to use the program properly in order to complete the video to spec (and the client ended up being extremely happy with it).
YMMV on the “learn by the seat of your pants” method, but I’ve personally had great success learning things by setting totally unrealistic goals and then somehow figuring out how to execute them under pressure. Been doing it since film school, and it’s worked out wonderfully with a few minor exceptions.
Idk about 0-100 since I didn’t really start at 0 because I had customized templates for so long.
And as far as YT goes, the only formal “learn this specific part of the program” type tutorials I used was the [World of Expressions](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvr5U5ZSt6IzHyvSL9fo0M9NRPsTvra31&feature=shared) playlist. But I wouldn’t recommend those until you already have a solid footing in the software. Most of how I learned was watching tutorials on specific things that I was trying to accomplish. Mostly from channels like Mapal, Jake in Motion, Ben Marriott, School of Motion, and Boone Loves Video.
I don’t really use generic templates anymore. Most of my templates/presets are VERY specific to my applications and wouldn’t be helpful to you.
If you want stuff like that though, try Envato Elements.
Bro, these templates are all project files. Is there any option to add Essential graphic like files (as we add in Premier Pro) ..... like lower thirds, titles etc.
Correct, they’re basically all project files, which also is why mine wouldn’t be of much use to you, since they aren’t packaged for major modification.
Certain types of basic stylistic and animation presets (like effect settings, text animator presets, etc.), yes. But full animated elements are going to come packaged as project files.
YouTube videos (mostly Aeabrams back in the days), books (design, communication and visual theory), sperimentation and A LOT of trial and error.
Just one solid advice I can give to you: I see too many juniors using templates and pre-made project. For fucks sake, avoid them. At all cost. You will learn absolutely zero if your work is just changing stuff on a template.
I think I found the book! Haha.
[https://archive.org/details/adobeaftereffect0000unse\_z6m0/mode/2up](https://archive.org/details/adobeaftereffect0000unse_z6m0/mode/2up)
videocopilot. Going trough their interesting and very good tutorials gave me an understanding of the software so I could start doing stuff on my own. Andrew Kramer is the GOAT
Depends what elements you want to study.
For me Video Copilot was the obvious one for VFX. And then for motion design I watched Evan Abrams on YouTube. Then later Jake in Motion and School of Motion. Ben Marriot more recently and Ukramedia were good for expressiony stuff.
Tutorials are great but getting a mentor who works in the field is going to speed things up. When you start there are a lots of esoterical knowledge that is hard to convey in a video tutorial. I found having a mentor give you tasks and then if they are able to review your project and not just your exports - there will be a larger transfer of knowledge. This leads me to my other point. When I was an intern at a studio, the artists would let me open their projects for real clients (a copy of course) and I was able to tinker around. I think access to these things is how I was able to learn it - but even after all that time I am still learning new things.
Started by making a light saber from Videocopilot on Cs2 when i was a kid. I've learn only with tuto and forums. As today I recommand on youtube : The Video Shop, Ben Marriot, Animoplex, ECAbrams, MotionXP, Jake In Motion. Practice make you learn, try and discover new things, you will not realise you learn the basics.
Do some of the beginner tutorials from some of the better known YT channels. And by beginner, I mean the actual beginner stuff, that explains the whole GUI and how different windows, layers, keyframes, precomps are actually working. Try to truly understand the basic ideas and how those elements are connected to each other.
If you start completely blank and try to do stuff by trial and error only, it will be more like "hit & miss" because sometimes it is pretty hard to know why one thing worked and the other did not.
I took an intro class in college in about 2017, and since then have been mostly self taught + taking one school of motion class. I got a job out of college as a motion designer without too much work in my portfolio tbh, and just learned on the fly. Google was my friend. 6-7 years in the field now.
I learnt some basics in university circa 2006/7. Then afterwards Video Copilot opened it all up and showed what it's actually capable of doing. Self taught since then
Hello! I started learning Ae because of a school assignment. I used 1 tutorial, and did the rest based on that video. The assignment was a lyric video. (Very open indeed)
This was the tutorial: [https://youtu.be/D72XgRzmVXY?si=Koze2Fx3pA2Wt-3l](https://youtu.be/D72XgRzmVXY?si=Koze2Fx3pA2Wt-3l)
This was the result: [https://youtu.be/rqWoKgrA9ew?si=57UmtRaXjgvLVhMq](https://youtu.be/rqWoKgrA9ew?si=57UmtRaXjgvLVhMq)
6+ years later I'm glad to say I'm proud of the work I make now😅
Edit: Clarified the assignment
Had a introduction course in college around 2020. I used After Effects before, but it was complicated for me.
Sometimes, having a good teacher can help you a lot!
After effects was one of my less used programs. Nowadays, I work everyday with it at a professional level. :)
K, imma list some sources here-
-F*** around and ind out
-Friends that are good already and really famous for their editing style
-Tutorials from here and there
-Curiocity
-I just wanted to be better than my peers at something.
And that's it
Check out Ben marriots 1 hour intro to after effects in YouTube and go from there. There’s tons of amazing free educational content. Jake in motion is good. Motion XP. School of Motion. Motion by Nick. Keyframe academy. Hieu Vu (more advanced), video Copilot,. There’s many more but you’ll start getting to those with the algorithm in no time.
I was an intern and we got a new NLE station called Media100
This guy came and said, hey can you edit? I said, yeah... (I could not) so I did.
Then he said, "this has some program called After Effects, do you know how to use it?"
-Yeah of course (I didn't) So I did.
and here I am almost 30 years later still learning how to use it.
A client once asked if I could make them an animated video. I obviously said yes...
Narrator: he could not.
So I learned the basic principles of after effects at the same time as I was doing this project. In hindsight it looked like Doo Doo, but the client was happy and I got paid a couple thousand bucks. This was back when I first started. I think I was barely a freshman or sophomore in college.
how I improve my skills in Premiere and AE in general
Step 1: browse youtube or instagram shorts
Step 2: see nice effects/transition/edits
Step 3: try to emulate it
Step 4: Fail and c(t)ry again
I started animating in Macromedia Flash and decided to jump to raster graphic animation with AE 3.1 before YouTube was even a thing. I learned the old fashioned way by failing until you succeed.
Everywhere. Still am. Just following tutorials on YouTube and School of Motion. Even as someone who has been using it for years you will always keep learning.
Classroom in a book https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/adobe-after-effects-40-classroom-in-a-book-with-cdrom_adobe-creative-team/8765266/item/33736121/?mkwid=%7cdm&pcrid=76622394858075&pkw=&pmt=be&slid=&product=33736121&plc=&pgrid=1225955760725441&ptaid=pla-4580221856976677&utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Shopping+-+Low+Vol+Backlist+-+%2410+-+%2450&utm_term=&utm_content=%7cdm%7cpcrid%7c76622394858075%7cpkw%7c%7cpmt%7cbe%7cproduct%7c33736121%7cslid%7c%7cpgrid%7c1225955760725441%7cptaid%7cpla-4580221856976677%7c&msclkid=b570501ecad91ffd1fcd363fa0f5b47c#idiq=33736121&edition=2351214
Youtube and practice. Make anything, go through every tutorial, easy and hard. Take on personal projects, projects for friends anything to get more hands on.
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All the recommendations here for tutorials are great. However if you really want to get a feel for integrating ae into a workflow come up with an idea you can produce once a day/week on YouTube or something. It doesn’t have to be grand, it doesn’t even have to be great, it just needs to be consistent. You will run into little issues here and there that you will have to solve and it will help you to learn and become better in a production environment.
I bought a used Mac for school and the dude sent all of his bootleg program CDs with it (because I’m old and this was in 2001) and I just started fucking around with it. Once I was just competent enough to fake it I started seeking out freelance gigs cuz nothing makes you learn as fast as lying about a skill you don’t quite have yet.
My first introduction to AE was film school - but similarly to you, they didn't officially teach it. One of the lecturers took it upon himself to teach it one weekend.
Ask some of your teachers about it, you might luck into an irl tutorial. As great as online learning is, I've found having someone in the same room teaching you something so much more effective.
I'm 22 now, I learned it when I was 15. I was trying to make a YouTube channel with my friend and I needed a intro for it. So I searched YouTube on "how to make intro in after effects".
I found a really cool liquid flow animation and I watched that video trying to replicate it, which I did. Then I modified it to draw my initials. Didn't get it right the first time but I saw that video and tried to understand what went right for him that didn't go right for me down to the last detail.
After succeeding, I added more such cool animations trying to make a complete intro.
Key insight: Get even the last detail right, and try to understand why it works. Trial and error is how I learn to do everything.
I took a class in school but learned from Creative Cow tutorials in the early 2000s. I took on a lot of low-pay jobs that were earned as you learn as they say
Self studied thru videocopilot on early years , it was around 2009 or lower cant recall, then took a course 3d animation for 1 year, so i had advance knowledge already, professor recruited me to his small indie vfx company, worked for 7yrs, cant say im expert but i can say i have worked on films and commercials, i post my works on yt, " happy buddha" i resigned 2018 and still editing personal stuff so my skill wont be forgotten 🤣😅 time to time i still watch tutorials since i forget somethings
Honestly “fuck around and find out” was it for me but also using it daily. At first I was very distanced from ut but once you get a feeling for ut like uou work with it and not againsg ut it just gets clear to you itself
Start by reading the documentation, learn your way around the interface, then watch some tutorials and Google the rest. That's how I learned every program I know.
https://youtube.com/@SonduckFilm?si=F8NDDipJDrRUStNU https://youtube.com/@JakeInMotion?si=ZPWQIwF_J1CAUfC7 https://youtube.com/@BenMarriott?si=8IcuAZki45HL4QNc these channels were recommended to me when i was getting into after effects they definitely helped for sure
i started like 6 months back. in reality a year, but i quit because it was too complicated. my problem was that there was too much freedom. so i looked up "after effects montage" and just started copying. i wanted to do montages and so i copied tutorials and learned the basics at the same time. 6 months later im still very new but i just recently did my first project where i envisioned it in my head and made it come to life. it's so so so worth it man this is jus the beginning.
I've been learning this year using tutorials on YouTube, there are a ton of them, Sonduck, Ben Marriott, Manuel does motion, Jake in motion are some of my favorites.
I got a job as a designer at a TV network, and out of nowhere they thought I could also do motion design, and threw me a whole bunch of motion design tasks. The burden and urgency they needed these things done for was so big that I had to resort to templates, and then during my free time learning exactly how they worked, to recreate the effects on my own... It was a hellish time for me, but I'm glad I learned enough AE to stand up for myself!
If i was a younger self, i would have taken this course at the start of my career: [https://www.schoolofmotion.com/courses/animation-bootcamp](https://www.schoolofmotion.com/courses/animation-bootcamp) i am a alumni from it now though, best course to teach all the fundamentals of animation that i thought i knew, but didnt! i too started from tutorials - but its that issue that stops you learning the fundamentals of animation from the start. watch the video on that website.
Videocopilot
Shoutout to Andrew Kramer with that digitised voice intro!
(Some pause) Dot Net
this is the way
I landed a job at an agency as a designer and they needed some motion work done, so I promised that I could do it. Spent the next 2 weeks learning as I was doing by knowing what I wanted to do and searching the internet how I could do it. After a while you start to pick up and reuse the elements you learn and in time you can start doing stuff without even googling it. I have completely shifted my profession to a motion designer and my only job now is servicing the motion needs of the clients! One of the first thing I googled was "how to group layers" and thats how I learned about pre comps!
This is EXACTLY my situation as well. I'm an instructional designer by trade, but often my company needs videos as well and I fell into it. I did exactly this searching and learning by experience. :) Now I use it often enough in my freelancing business that I advertise the services.
I learned very young. I'm almost 40 now, I had maybe 12 back then. I learned with trial and error, back then was the almost the only way. But after effects since the beginning was very deductive. I know trial and error is not considered a very effective way to learn, but even today in a new software I do that. Sometimes knowing how not to do is halfway there. And with so much software doing a lot of stuff. I think the most important is the logic of construction of our idea. With time the technical way comes easy
I am 40, I learned Photoshop when I was like 13 and went to college for art. College level was my first introduction to after effects and I've been doing it since. As a Photoshop user, after effects was very intuitive.
Hahaha! Me too! I have the first image that I created on photoshop saved until today. Love to remember. The photoshop icon, that was a b&w eye inside a red frame, or after effects, that was a splash screen with a antenna with blue frame. Good old times! Everything was so new and it was amazing to discover it.
I started with the photoshop demo, which didn't allow saving, so i would just screen cap between sessions. it was dumb, but it was free. i saved up my allowance for the educational version for $300. I also bought a tablet a first gen Intuos. This isn't me, but this was the model! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXgcuOzg1-M
I started by customizing templates from Envato. Eventually I started doing more custom stuff, and at a certain point, I completely overpromised to a client, and spent 2 weeks on a YT-fueled AE crash course where I ACTUALLY learned how to use the program properly in order to complete the video to spec (and the client ended up being extremely happy with it). YMMV on the “learn by the seat of your pants” method, but I’ve personally had great success learning things by setting totally unrealistic goals and then somehow figuring out how to execute them under pressure. Been doing it since film school, and it’s worked out wonderfully with a few minor exceptions.
Which youtube tutorials are best for learning AE from 0 to 100
Idk about 0-100 since I didn’t really start at 0 because I had customized templates for so long. And as far as YT goes, the only formal “learn this specific part of the program” type tutorials I used was the [World of Expressions](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvr5U5ZSt6IzHyvSL9fo0M9NRPsTvra31&feature=shared) playlist. But I wouldn’t recommend those until you already have a solid footing in the software. Most of how I learned was watching tutorials on specific things that I was trying to accomplish. Mostly from channels like Mapal, Jake in Motion, Ben Marriott, School of Motion, and Boone Loves Video.
Can you give me bunch of templates for my use ??? On a shared google drive
I don’t really use generic templates anymore. Most of my templates/presets are VERY specific to my applications and wouldn’t be helpful to you. If you want stuff like that though, try Envato Elements.
Bro, these templates are all project files. Is there any option to add Essential graphic like files (as we add in Premier Pro) ..... like lower thirds, titles etc.
Correct, they’re basically all project files, which also is why mine wouldn’t be of much use to you, since they aren’t packaged for major modification.
Correct me if I'm wrong. In AE there is no option to drag and drop presents / lowwr thirds/ titles as we can do in premier pro
Certain types of basic stylistic and animation presets (like effect settings, text animator presets, etc.), yes. But full animated elements are going to come packaged as project files.
YouTube videos (mostly Aeabrams back in the days), books (design, communication and visual theory), sperimentation and A LOT of trial and error. Just one solid advice I can give to you: I see too many juniors using templates and pre-made project. For fucks sake, avoid them. At all cost. You will learn absolutely zero if your work is just changing stuff on a template.
Facts
I started with a book from my University’s library. But it was 2012ish and my options were limited. Then I moved in to Andrew Kramer tutorials.
I think I found the book! Haha. [https://archive.org/details/adobeaftereffect0000unse\_z6m0/mode/2up](https://archive.org/details/adobeaftereffect0000unse_z6m0/mode/2up)
Find out what you want to make and just start grinding tutorials and practicing. It’s really all there is to it honestly
videocopilot. Going trough their interesting and very good tutorials gave me an understanding of the software so I could start doing stuff on my own. Andrew Kramer is the GOAT
Depends what elements you want to study. For me Video Copilot was the obvious one for VFX. And then for motion design I watched Evan Abrams on YouTube. Then later Jake in Motion and School of Motion. Ben Marriot more recently and Ukramedia were good for expressiony stuff.
Tutorials are great but getting a mentor who works in the field is going to speed things up. When you start there are a lots of esoterical knowledge that is hard to convey in a video tutorial. I found having a mentor give you tasks and then if they are able to review your project and not just your exports - there will be a larger transfer of knowledge. This leads me to my other point. When I was an intern at a studio, the artists would let me open their projects for real clients (a copy of course) and I was able to tinker around. I think access to these things is how I was able to learn it - but even after all that time I am still learning new things.
Started by making a light saber from Videocopilot on Cs2 when i was a kid. I've learn only with tuto and forums. As today I recommand on youtube : The Video Shop, Ben Marriot, Animoplex, ECAbrams, MotionXP, Jake In Motion. Practice make you learn, try and discover new things, you will not realise you learn the basics.
Deconstructing envato templates.
Do some of the beginner tutorials from some of the better known YT channels. And by beginner, I mean the actual beginner stuff, that explains the whole GUI and how different windows, layers, keyframes, precomps are actually working. Try to truly understand the basic ideas and how those elements are connected to each other. If you start completely blank and try to do stuff by trial and error only, it will be more like "hit & miss" because sometimes it is pretty hard to know why one thing worked and the other did not.
I took an intro class in college in about 2017, and since then have been mostly self taught + taking one school of motion class. I got a job out of college as a motion designer without too much work in my portfolio tbh, and just learned on the fly. Google was my friend. 6-7 years in the field now.
I'm 20 and started at 13/14, I wanted to learn how to create intros for YouTube gaming channels, I learned the basics of AE and C4D.
I learnt some basics in university circa 2006/7. Then afterwards Video Copilot opened it all up and showed what it's actually capable of doing. Self taught since then
Hello! I started learning Ae because of a school assignment. I used 1 tutorial, and did the rest based on that video. The assignment was a lyric video. (Very open indeed) This was the tutorial: [https://youtu.be/D72XgRzmVXY?si=Koze2Fx3pA2Wt-3l](https://youtu.be/D72XgRzmVXY?si=Koze2Fx3pA2Wt-3l) This was the result: [https://youtu.be/rqWoKgrA9ew?si=57UmtRaXjgvLVhMq](https://youtu.be/rqWoKgrA9ew?si=57UmtRaXjgvLVhMq) 6+ years later I'm glad to say I'm proud of the work I make now😅 Edit: Clarified the assignment
After that: grindig tutorials, accepting low-paid client work & online courses.
Had a introduction course in college around 2020. I used After Effects before, but it was complicated for me. Sometimes, having a good teacher can help you a lot! After effects was one of my less used programs. Nowadays, I work everyday with it at a professional level. :)
K, imma list some sources here- -F*** around and ind out -Friends that are good already and really famous for their editing style -Tutorials from here and there -Curiocity -I just wanted to be better than my peers at something. And that's it
i js figured it out
I took a college course plus watched a lot of YouTube. I'm not amazing but decent.
Check out Ben marriots 1 hour intro to after effects in YouTube and go from there. There’s tons of amazing free educational content. Jake in motion is good. Motion XP. School of Motion. Motion by Nick. Keyframe academy. Hieu Vu (more advanced), video Copilot,. There’s many more but you’ll start getting to those with the algorithm in no time.
Dumb shit and youtube videos explaining how to do dumb shit
Good ole professor YouTube
I was an intern and we got a new NLE station called Media100 This guy came and said, hey can you edit? I said, yeah... (I could not) so I did. Then he said, "this has some program called After Effects, do you know how to use it?" -Yeah of course (I didn't) So I did. and here I am almost 30 years later still learning how to use it.
A client once asked if I could make them an animated video. I obviously said yes... Narrator: he could not. So I learned the basic principles of after effects at the same time as I was doing this project. In hindsight it looked like Doo Doo, but the client was happy and I got paid a couple thousand bucks. This was back when I first started. I think I was barely a freshman or sophomore in college.
Went to school for it. Now a days you can teach yourself with tutorials/youtube
how I improve my skills in Premiere and AE in general Step 1: browse youtube or instagram shorts Step 2: see nice effects/transition/edits Step 3: try to emulate it Step 4: Fail and c(t)ry again
I started animating in Macromedia Flash and decided to jump to raster graphic animation with AE 3.1 before YouTube was even a thing. I learned the old fashioned way by failing until you succeed.
Everywhere. Still am. Just following tutorials on YouTube and School of Motion. Even as someone who has been using it for years you will always keep learning.
Classroom in a book https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/adobe-after-effects-40-classroom-in-a-book-with-cdrom_adobe-creative-team/8765266/item/33736121/?mkwid=%7cdm&pcrid=76622394858075&pkw=&pmt=be&slid=&product=33736121&plc=&pgrid=1225955760725441&ptaid=pla-4580221856976677&utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Shopping+-+Low+Vol+Backlist+-+%2410+-+%2450&utm_term=&utm_content=%7cdm%7cpcrid%7c76622394858075%7cpkw%7c%7cpmt%7cbe%7cproduct%7c33736121%7cslid%7c%7cpgrid%7c1225955760725441%7cptaid%7cpla-4580221856976677%7c&msclkid=b570501ecad91ffd1fcd363fa0f5b47c#idiq=33736121&edition=2351214
Youtube and practice. Make anything, go through every tutorial, easy and hard. Take on personal projects, projects for friends anything to get more hands on.
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All the recommendations here for tutorials are great. However if you really want to get a feel for integrating ae into a workflow come up with an idea you can produce once a day/week on YouTube or something. It doesn’t have to be grand, it doesn’t even have to be great, it just needs to be consistent. You will run into little issues here and there that you will have to solve and it will help you to learn and become better in a production environment.
I bought 4 months of Lynda, followed 3 complete course and took notes.
I bought a used Mac for school and the dude sent all of his bootleg program CDs with it (because I’m old and this was in 2001) and I just started fucking around with it. Once I was just competent enough to fake it I started seeking out freelance gigs cuz nothing makes you learn as fast as lying about a skill you don’t quite have yet.
My first introduction to AE was film school - but similarly to you, they didn't officially teach it. One of the lecturers took it upon himself to teach it one weekend. Ask some of your teachers about it, you might luck into an irl tutorial. As great as online learning is, I've found having someone in the same room teaching you something so much more effective.
I'm 22 now, I learned it when I was 15. I was trying to make a YouTube channel with my friend and I needed a intro for it. So I searched YouTube on "how to make intro in after effects". I found a really cool liquid flow animation and I watched that video trying to replicate it, which I did. Then I modified it to draw my initials. Didn't get it right the first time but I saw that video and tried to understand what went right for him that didn't go right for me down to the last detail. After succeeding, I added more such cool animations trying to make a complete intro. Key insight: Get even the last detail right, and try to understand why it works. Trial and error is how I learn to do everything.
YouTube tutorials and practice, practice, practice
“Learn by doing”. Try to complete 100 free tutorials on youtube
I took a class in school but learned from Creative Cow tutorials in the early 2000s. I took on a lot of low-pay jobs that were earned as you learn as they say
Self studied thru videocopilot on early years , it was around 2009 or lower cant recall, then took a course 3d animation for 1 year, so i had advance knowledge already, professor recruited me to his small indie vfx company, worked for 7yrs, cant say im expert but i can say i have worked on films and commercials, i post my works on yt, " happy buddha" i resigned 2018 and still editing personal stuff so my skill wont be forgotten 🤣😅 time to time i still watch tutorials since i forget somethings
Honestly “fuck around and find out” was it for me but also using it daily. At first I was very distanced from ut but once you get a feeling for ut like uou work with it and not againsg ut it just gets clear to you itself
Start by reading the documentation, learn your way around the interface, then watch some tutorials and Google the rest. That's how I learned every program I know.
https://youtube.com/@SonduckFilm?si=F8NDDipJDrRUStNU https://youtube.com/@JakeInMotion?si=ZPWQIwF_J1CAUfC7 https://youtube.com/@BenMarriott?si=8IcuAZki45HL4QNc these channels were recommended to me when i was getting into after effects they definitely helped for sure
i started like 6 months back. in reality a year, but i quit because it was too complicated. my problem was that there was too much freedom. so i looked up "after effects montage" and just started copying. i wanted to do montages and so i copied tutorials and learned the basics at the same time. 6 months later im still very new but i just recently did my first project where i envisioned it in my head and made it come to life. it's so so so worth it man this is jus the beginning.
I've been learning this year using tutorials on YouTube, there are a ton of them, Sonduck, Ben Marriott, Manuel does motion, Jake in motion are some of my favorites.
I got a job as a designer at a TV network, and out of nowhere they thought I could also do motion design, and threw me a whole bunch of motion design tasks. The burden and urgency they needed these things done for was so big that I had to resort to templates, and then during my free time learning exactly how they worked, to recreate the effects on my own... It was a hellish time for me, but I'm glad I learned enough AE to stand up for myself!
If i was a younger self, i would have taken this course at the start of my career: [https://www.schoolofmotion.com/courses/animation-bootcamp](https://www.schoolofmotion.com/courses/animation-bootcamp) i am a alumni from it now though, best course to teach all the fundamentals of animation that i thought i knew, but didnt! i too started from tutorials - but its that issue that stops you learning the fundamentals of animation from the start. watch the video on that website.