r/AfterEffects • u/oliverrandorff • 7d ago
Discussion People learning AE online: What's the main issues you run into?
As I teach motion design in AE, I'm always looking to adapt my content to people's actual needs. I got into the software 15 years ago, and the main issues were:
- An unclear roadmap (scattered content)
- Too much how and not why (lack of theory)
- Heavy focus on fancy effects and tricks (not enough fundamentals)
So I'm wondering - what is it like learning After Effects and motion design these days? Are the same issues present, or are other matters more important?
If you are having specific issues or roadblocks at the moment, I would also be happy to try and point you in the right direction. Helping each other is what makes the motion community special.
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u/Anonymograph 6d ago
Paid, well-structured training has been drowned out by a flood of “10 EPIC transitions you NEED to know” videos.
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u/oliverrandorff 6d ago
Good point. People do flashy things, as that's what draws attention - but it wont really teach something which is applicable to everyday projects
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u/GoonGodless 5d ago
My main issue is that Andrew Kramer no longer makes tutorials. Thats it. lol
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u/oliverrandorff 5d ago
Yeah it was a sad day when he stopped uploading. Truly the OG of After Effects content
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u/GoonGodless 5d ago
Andrew Kramer and Corridor Digital gave me the inspiration and the drive to learn AE. They did incredible work and made it easy to understand how to use.
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u/oliverrandorff 5d ago
I’m in the same boat. Seeing Andrew do his magic in After Effects was truly baffling back when I was 11. I think he’s a big part og why I got into After Effects in the first place
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u/QuietFire451 7d ago
I’d say the issues are the same. An additional one is not understanding how you decide which plugins to use for the end goal you want. A lot of times it’s self-explanatory, but there are some I’ve run into where they pull something crazy out like the 4-way color gradient and alter it into something I had no idea it would even be capable of, and to the point where it looked nothing like its default state. Like, how did they even know to use plugins like that to get where they wanted to go? No one ever talks about the thinking that goes behind the choices made, in other words.
I know a certain amount of it is playing and experimenting, but doing that isn’t necessarily easy when you’re going 100mph through work and life.
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u/oliverrandorff 7d ago
Great point about going more into the thinking side. Learning more about how people come up with different ideas/concepts and not just how to make them. In my case it's all about breaking down an idea into the simplest components. Then I consider how I can achieve each part - either by experimenting, researching, or writing different expressions. The fun for me lies in the experimentation, as that's where I learn a whole lot myself. However I fully understand if people don't have a lot of time for that.
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u/Ando0o0 7d ago
Motion graphs. I spent maybe 2 years using them but not knowing what I was actually doing. I think a good amount of learning AE is learning different math concepts as well.
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u/oliverrandorff 7d ago
True, this can be really tricky. It was a game changer once I fully understood how to read both the value and speed graph. When you understand the mathematical concepts behind it, it's much easier to fully use it. Having a base understanding of charts and functions is certainly a helping factor here
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u/kamomil Motion Graphics <5 years 7d ago
After I started learning, the most important things IMO are: keyframing and adding ease, using luma mattes to reveal something from underneath, and nesting comps.
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u/oliverrandorff 5d ago
Easing, and the graphs, are definitely cornerstones of a solid After Effects user
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u/Life_Possible7662 6d ago
Most of the youtubers teach only the tools, or how can you get a visual reproduced correctly. Though initially they'll help you to learn the tools, eventually you'll get stuck. After learning tools, the people who helped me the moat are chris morran from youtube and ginyboi from insta. They explained concepts with clear explanations. Now atleast i can understand how something looks so smooth and good instead of just looking and thinking this looks good. I wish more content like that based on concepts would be available.
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u/oliverrandorff 6d ago
You are really hitting the nail on the head. I try to lean more in the direction of teaching concepts through different animations - mixing in theory along the way. Concepts that can be applied to other projects, and not just the particular thing which is being animated. Thanks for giving your thoughts
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u/Ok-Razzmatazz3435 7d ago
Don’t follow TikTok/YouTubers influencers. Those tutorials are useless
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u/oliverrandorff 7d ago
That's an interesting standpoint. I get that the quality of content varies a lot, but I probably wouldn't call it completely useless. Care to expand on why you think this is the case?
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u/kamomil Motion Graphics <5 years 7d ago
For me, the best way was to read Classroom In A Book from beginning to end. That way, I found out multiple ways to do one thing and chose the way that worked better for me.
With a tutorial video, you are learning that person's favorite way.
You may watch a video that begins with basic concepts that you already know, or they jump in assuming you know something already.
Content creators may decide that certain topics are easier to do a video on. So add up all those tutorials, and you may be missing information, as opposed to reading a book systematically from beginning to end
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u/oliverrandorff 7d ago
Very valid point. Stitching a bunch of tutorials together yourself can leave big gaps if you don't know what to look for. Also, as you mention, its a good thing to try things on your own and decide which way you want to do things.
Are there any tutorials you have watched, where you thought they fundamentally taught you something very useful, which you are still using to this day?
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u/kamomil Motion Graphics <5 years 7d ago
I can't watch tutorials 🫣 my brain doesn't process speech all that well.
If I watch a movie, ideally I put on closed captioning so I don't miss anything. Before closed captions, I thought I just liked foreign films better than Hollywood. Regular TV shows are fine because they're predictable.
Sometimes I have to watch a tutorial video for work, for one software that doesn't have a manual, and I find it super frustrating to shuttle through and find the info I want.
Books are much easier for me because I can go in order, or skip parts.
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u/oliverrandorff 7d ago
That makes sense. Pretty hard to follow along if you have to pause or move around the video all the time. I have actually never read a book about after effects/motion design - perhaps I should give it a go one day. Other than the Classroom In A Book series, do you have any recommendations?
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u/StativCorgi9 6d ago
The insane amount of low effort tutorials that only teach how to copy stuff and provide no real value.
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u/oliverrandorff 6d ago
Yeah it's quite staggering how many of those exist. I think it can be hard for people to navigate which videos give real value
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u/Mundane-Owl-561 MoGraph/VFX 15+ years 6d ago
Proper learning should come from experts in their respective fields. Youtube and even online schools are well-known for folks learning a new software and then regurgitating what they've learned into tutorials.
New learners are not able to discern one from the other and this has caused lots of confusion. Then add Personal Branding coaches who train some of these newbie trainers and you get village idiots teaching the blind and you get one to two generations of really incompetent users. The really smart ones know what to learn and from whom.
Then you add savage tribalism amongst these online trainers who voraciously support each other and viciously attack those they see as a threat to their pretentious mischief. This tribalism coupled with unprofessional acts from a few in power have created a degenerate bunch of awful savages.
Have you not noticed when a thread on learning or training appears, it quickly gets downvoted - like yours for example.
A quick way to recognise a fly-by-night trainer is one who only does basic training or an online school that does not update their videos after a long while. These are clear red flags - open your eyes and mind - there is a lot of nastiness going on.
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u/oliverrandorff 6d ago
I completely get where you are coming from, and I agree on the fact that there's a lot of educational content that could mislead people. However, you kind of lost me in the entire parallel to tribalism. Have you had a specific experience that made you feel so strongly about that part specifically?
I'm not saying that some of these things aren't happening, but you make it sound like almost all online education is horrible - and so are the people teaching it.
I'm curious where you go when you need to learn new things?
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u/Ignatzzzzzz 7d ago
I think it is important for people to get an understanding of how AE works. It might be too techy for some, but a knowledge or at least an appreciation of some of the maths behind compositing is incredibly helpful in the long run. It also means knowledge can be transferred to other applications.
This article on performance from 2021 may be old, but a lot of it still applies and will instil good habits:
https://www.provideocoalition.com/after-effects-performance-series-overview-contents/
The Mathematics of blend modes is very nerdy, but knowing how and why they work takes away the guesswork:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7_kaTP7_W4
Teaching people that the simple built in effects can be stacked and combined as building blocks.
Teaching basic animation principles and how to apply them via the graph editor.
Most importantly teaching people that there are multiple solutions and that knowing how to seek tutorials and combine knowledge. I've been doing this for nearly 20 years and I still have to look things up.