Mathias Möhl published the first of his “guru” lessons, a free After Effects training series dedicated to beginners. Mathias aims to teach the basics starting from the very beginning and make it entertaining. In the first lesson (embedded below) you learn importing footage, creating a composition, and moving and scaling layers to create a fire effect. During the next month, Mathias plans on more lessons that will cover the basics from applying effects to basic color keying to basic tracking techniques. All required footage and the project file are available for free so that users can develop their muscle memory.

This series joins numerous other beginner series, like the new one by Kevin McAuliffe on Creative Cow. These are among the more recent…

1) “Getting started and tutorials” aka “Learn After Effects CS5 and CS 5.5” (hypertext guide to resources)

2) A video series on Adobe TV also called Learn After Effects CS5.

3) In September 2010, Adobe added an in-depth introductory course by Adam Shaening-Pokrasso, Classroom: Basic Compositing and Animation in After Effects CS5. Todd Kopriva outlines these classes and adds links to pages in AE Help that give more detail about each subject.

4) A growing number (over 21) of free videos from AE CS5: Learn By Video, notes free samples from After Effects CS5: Learn By Video, a DVD and book training set by Angie Taylor and Todd Kopriva.

5) After Effects CS5.5 New Creative Techniques by Chris Meyer, on PVC and AdobeTV.

6) After Effects CS5.5 New Features by Mark Christiansen provides exercise files with the course at Lynda.com, which has various free trials offers.

After Effects Beginner Tutorial: Guru Lesson 1 from Mathias Möhl on Vimeo.