As we mentioned earlier, we're creating a video training series based on our popular beginner's book After Effects Apprentice, which progresses from “I haven't used it before” through core skills including keyframing, masking, text animation, and 3D space to advanced techniques such as motion tracking, green screen, and expressions. The second course is based on the Basic Animation section of the book, where we guide you through creating a simple project from importing sources to arranging and animating layers through rendering.

The movie above demonstrates how to edit Transform properties such as Position, Scale, and Rotation interactively in the Composition panel – this will be helpful to new users who are more comfortable with dragging objects around a stage than just entering numbers. The complete course also includes “going deeper” movies on creating variations, better understanding keyframes, alpha channels, layered Photoshop files, and common mistakes beginners often make – but which you can now avoid.

The content contained in After Effects Apprentice – as well as the CMG Blogs and CMG Keyframes posts on ProVideoCoalition – are copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.