Tutorial 6: Storm Force Heroes Transitions Sequence!

This class we will learn how to animate with Masks, Pre-Compositions, and transformation animations. By combining these skills we will be able to create a motion graphic introducing The Storm Force Heroes. Masks in After Effects carry the same concept as they do in Photoshop. They are an important skill to learn because they allow you to temporarily hide or reveal visual information at your whim!

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Part A. Project Setup

Part B. Animating The Logo

Part C. Plasma Man & Monarch Surfer Transition

Part D. Creating a Mask Reveal Transition To Laser Eye

Part E. The Last Transition - Green Terror

Part F. Pre-composition and Fade out

Part G. Adding Music and Fading it

Part H. Render

Final Product Preview (See Fig 1):

Fig 1 - Storm Force Heroes Full Animation

Part A. Project Setup

Before we start please install After Effects to your machine.

Download this lab class' assets

• Download this lab class' assets from D2L under, RTA 103 → Content → Course Documents → Lab tutorials → Tutorial 6
• Find the RTA103_Tutorial_6_AE.zip file and choose download. Save this to a folder on your personal drive, and unzip the folder (Downloaded Zip Contents: 1 x Storm Force Heroes Frames.ai, 1 x Heroic Struggles.mp3)
• 📂 Opening zipped folders properly (click triangle to open) ****
• 💾 Working with external drives? (click triangle to open)

<aside> ⚠️ ADOBE FILE MANAGEMENT: Keep ALL assets (media files) in the same folder/location. Adobe does not know where your media is if it is scattered and will cause errors. Do NOT work off Cloud Storage (iCloud, Google Drive, Adobe Cloud): This can cause you to lose project progress and assets. Use cloud storage as storage backup only!

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<aside> 📕 Assets in the tutorials provided for you are copyrighted materials. These are just for learning purposes only. When you do your assignments, your assets/materials are expected to be your own original work. You are permitted to use any fonts you find as well as audio from The Creative School audio library. (Great fonts can be found here)

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• Refresh yourself with an After Effect interface overview here (Click Triangle to open)

Importing an illustrator file into After Effects

• Open up After Effects application

• Select New Project (See Fig 2)

Fig 2 - New Project Button

• At the top go to File → Import → File...

• Look for the Heroic Struggles.mp3, and Storm Force Heroes Frames.ai from the file that you have downloaded and unzipped from D2L

• Before we import it, we must change how we import it by going to the dropdown option: Import As → Composition - Retain Layer Sizes → Leave Create Composition unchecked (See Fig 3) ****

• Now click Open

Fig 3 - How to import the assets properly

<aside> ⚠️ ⚠️WARNING⚠️: If you do not import the illustrator file as Composition - Retain Layer Sizes the rest of this tutorial will become a very confusing mess. Please make sure you have imported this asset correctly. To verify this, your Project Panel will have the following items: Heroic Struggles.mp3, Storm Force Heroes Frames Composition, and a 'Storm Force Heroes Frames layers' folder (See Fig 4) ****

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