As we mentioned awhile back, we've been busy the past year and a half creating an extensive, multi-course video training series based on our popular beginner's book After Effects Apprentice. Each course has two or more movies that are free for all to view; we're re-posting those videos here on PVC to make sure you don't miss them. In this movie, Trish discusses the different Eraser tool modes – Layer Source & Paint, Paint Only, and Last Stroke Only – and demonstrates when to use each.

The lucky thirteenth Apprentice course (currently available through lynda.com) introduces a series of creative tools inside After Effects: Paint, Puppet, Brainstorm, and Cartoon. The centerpiece is Paint, where Trish will demonstrate how to use the Brush, Eraser, and Clone Stamp tools to draw on a layer, remove portions of it, or repeat elements around a composition. These can be used for artistic purposes as well as to repair problem areas in footage. Chris then shows off the Puppet tools for distorting layers, Brainstorm to break through creative blocks, and the Cartoon effect to lend an illustrative look to live footage or 3D renders.

In this movie, Trish spends some time with the Eraser tool, explaining its very different modes: The ability to erase both the original image and the paint strokes you may have made on top of it, erasing just an added paint stroke, and the very handy ability to erase just the last paint stroke you created. Combined with keyboard shortcuts, this makes it easy to touch up paint strokes as you create them. In general, the power hidden inside the Paint tools aren't always obvious; this movie is an example of how Trish digs in and helps demystify them in this course.

FTC Disclosure: We make a bit of money whenever you purchase one of our courses from Class on Demand, or have a lynda.com subscription and watch one of our courses. We do not make any money from either when you watch these free videos. We've worked with Adobe over the years, and they give us free access to their software in exchange for testing and consulting, but they did not subsidize the creation of these videos or the book they are derived from. We're just trying to pay the bills by sharing what we've learned from using After Effects in the real world since version 1.0.

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.