Adobe After Effects

As an interior design major, I've never really given much thought to some of the amazing motion graphics software out there. For my presentation techniques class, we were required to play around with Adobe's After Effects program for our current project. Today we covered some basic tools and put together a quick, five second video using...wait for it...the almighty pen tool!

After Effects' user interface is surprisingly easy to navigate once you've played around with it for a few minutes. I especially appreciate how similar the layout and commands are to Adobe's other programs. Considering the level of my motion graphics knowledge is limited to iMovie and basic at best skills in Adobe Flash, I'd give the interface an A for usability.

And that's not even getting to the technical aspect of the program. The main techniques we played with today were tracing a path, using the 3D tool to create perspectives, and basic "lighting." To my surprise, the 3D/Perspective tool was much easier to operate than that in Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop. Being able to numerically control the angles of each plane was something the former programs could definitely benefit from. 

That being said, my favorite aspect of After Effects has to be the lighting tool. Imagine your own tiny film set in your lap - pretty cool if I do say so myself. Even in the virtual world, lighting completely changes the way a project looks and feels. And, again, being able to control the color, intensity, and angles of the lighting was definitely a plus.

In the end, we made a basic video of our name being written across our "hand-made" wall. Basic stuff, but still pretty awesome in the eyes of someone who has no idea about animation or video editing. I can see this program doing really interesting things with presenting motion through a space. Can anyone say virtual design walk-through?