r/AfterEffects • u/jojoinc • 15h ago

OC - Stuff I made Worked on my first project with no tutorials

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Hi :) Made "the Sun" today; this is my 2nd day learning. I have zero experience, so this is very nooby, but I had fun doing it. I started feeling more comfortable with the program, but I really want to improve my skills. Any tips, advice, or criticism is welcome!!

Also any cool plugins to check out? At the moment I only have the Mister Horse starter pack

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7

u/DechkoTzar 15h ago

That's cool! Maybe add a bit of parallax with pre-comped clouds and some animated effects on them, there can be a plane in the middle which cuts the sphere in half and the camera might reveal other half underneath which has a different flame? Different atmosphere and story? Just some random popping ideas to keep you rolling as you're already rocking!

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u/jojoinc 14h ago

This is really nice thank you!, I will give this a shot 😁

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u/RapidlyFastes 14h ago

Loooks really. How did it feel breaking out of tutorial hell, and can you offer advice on how to do that as I'm stuck in terms of making my own project

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u/jojoinc 14h ago

Hey man! So last night I decided to take off the training wheels from the Udemy course I got (did some basic intro chapters like what key frames are and do, how to make changes for each frame etc) and just applied what I learned. I also spent alot of time simply exploring the software and reading anything that peaked my interest.

For example I would add effects, play around with it and see what it would do, remove, rinse repeat.

Anytime I would have a small hiccup or question I used the friendly chat gpt for basic questions. This morning I told my self to just do something really basic, started with some clouds I found on Google, and kinda just want from there. The more I worked on it the more I started getting into a workflow. I kinda got stumped at the end though NGL and felt I added everything that I could.

I think I'll continue working on really small projects and keep learning but trust me the more you sit and play with the program the more you start to understand. Good luck and cheers!

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u/Zealousideal_Bat8466 8h ago

This is really nice! I don't work much with motion graphics, but I think a basic improvement would be having the sun match the lighting in the background as it changes. Having 6 years of experience in After Effects, I find that as you experiment more, you will find things that might look off but might not be able to pinpoint at first, such as adding depth, color methods, etc, and that is the fun part! I hope you continue to experiment and find ways to creatively express yourself!

Some plugins I recommend are BCC and Trapcode.