Animation has been around for over a hundred years and it has had a significant influence on the way we experience media. Since the early days of cinema, typography has been an object for animation in titles, subtitles, TV commercials, but it wasn’t until social media became a crucial part of our lives, that animation was seen as a natural behavior of type. Since then designers have been urged to crack the, rather intimating, animation softwares to integrate movement into their practice.

This workshop was designed to serve as a travel kit that will equip you to navigate Adobe After Effects in a very practical way: We’ll cover workspace housekeeping, what are keyframes, and how they work, and we will cover the 5 most commonly used techniques to animate type. It will be packed with tips, shortcuts, and demos that will help you demystify kinetic type. We’ll have a final animation project in the third portion of the class, and students will have the opportunity to go over any questions that may arise during the process with our TA.

Audience and Format

Some familiarity with After Effects is most welcome but optional. Beginners will definitely be the most to benefit from this class, although intermediaries will also be able to extract valuable gems from it.

Goals

• Develop awareness of the animations tools available in After Effects
• Create a typographic animation

Learning Outcomes

• Learn how to organize their workspace in After Effects
• Learn how to set up their Adobe Illustrator file for animation
• Learn 5 different animation methods

Material Requirements

• A computer with reliable Internet connection
• A free Zoom Account
• A free Slack account (an invitation to a class group will be sent to each participant)
• Adobe After Effects
• Adobe Illustrator

Scholarship Information

A scholarship seat is available for this course. Please check out more details on the scholarship page. This scholarship is open to all Black, Indigenous, and other people of color, with priority given to those who have limited resources or access to educational opportunities.