Q&A Facebook Edition – Question 1 (make more professional colours in After Effects?)

This question comes from Seán Mc Ternan. And he asks “What are the little thing’s you consider important to give an overall ‘Professional’ look and feel to your graphics. Meaning what do you add in terms of blending options to make your colors look more alive rather than a flat?”

Well that’s a lot of things and the answer will likely disappoint you. It’s a lot about choosing good colours. Knowing about colours. And applying colour theory. As well you get an earful about what I REALLY think about your colour choices.

If you want to suggest a tutorial topic please do so here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/13A2eHcNQADsjyPWrrlbFTeOMqPAbqAxq07p7Alroh_w/viewform

If you have any questions just let me know in the comments.

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Q&A Facebook Edition – A very facebook Introduction

A long time ago I tried to answer 100 questions about after effects. I failed. But the dream lives on. Here I’ll answer the first five questions that came up after the post went out on Facebook for questions. These 5 brave people put their uncertainty on the line and now I’ll try to answer their quandaries best I can. Enjoy.

Like the facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/pages/ECAbrams/193708234045591 it’s rad.

If you want to suggest a tutorial topic please do so here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/13A2eHcNQADsjyPWrrlbFTeOMqPAbqAxq07p7Alroh_w/viewform

If you have any questions just let me know in the comments.

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How to use 5 Colour Animated font from ECAbrams – Adobe After Effects tutorial

Click to tweet? — http://clicktotweet.com/1KZ62

This is how to use the animated font that you can see in action here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Uy_shNyo-k

Get the animated font files here: http://ecabrams.fetchapp.com/sell/ceerelie for paypal payments. Or here: http://gum.co/lYJvw

This will show you how to: Import the files, lay out the letters, sequence layers in time, edit the colours, edit the time offset between the layers, and choose how many layers there are.

If you have any questions just let me know in the comments.

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Easy as Pie Charts – Adobe After Effects tutorial

Click to tweet? — http://clicktotweet.com/fbb1_

This tutorial is as easy as pie… pie charts that is! It’s all about making a simple and easilly editable pie chart. The trick is to get one wedge to start where the other wedge ends. It’s very clever and quite tasty. Also if you look closely you’ll learn things about pies, and me, and yourself.

This is the perfect solution for when you need a pie chart but someone isn’t giving you the data you need right away. Or if a producer comes in and changes it. Or needs to change the order, or whatever. This is brilliant, trust me. I think so and I’m the guy who made it.

If you want to suggest a tutorial topic please do so here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/13A2eHcNQADsjyPWrrlbFTeOMqPAbqAxq07p7Alroh_w/viewform

If you have any questions just let me know in the comments.

If you want to download this project file go here: http://gum.co/cXbV

Evanabrams.com
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Spinning Globe – Adobe After Effects tutorial

Click to tweet? — http://clicktotweet.com/L7b5K

We’ll be using the cc sphere, a little masking, and some clever layer stacking and duplicating to move some arrows around a globe and look good doing it. I personally hate to travel because I fear being groped by the TSA so this is good for me. But this has arrows, lines, dotted lines, masks, all sorts of good things. So I’ve got two tickets to tutorial town, pack your bags we’ll leave… whenever. Cause… It’s the internet.

If you want to use the texture that I used you can get it here: http://gum.co/fzMEs

If you want to submit a tutorial idea use this form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/13A2eHcNQADsjyPWrrlbFTeOMqPAbqAxq07p7Alroh_w/viewform

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Animate Text On A Path – Adobe After Effects tutorial

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How do you animate text along a path? Well you do it by animating text along a path. It’s like riding a bike, you just ride it. But everyone has to have their first go at it so if this is your first go at it I’ll try to make it simple for you. Also just a warning the second half of this has nothing to do with animating text along a path, it’s all flashy embelishing and blah blah blah.

If you want to suggest a tutorial use this link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/13A2eHcNQADsjyPWrrlbFTeOMqPAbqAxq07p7Alroh_w/viewform

If you want to get the project file for this intro go to this link:

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Flip Clock Countdown and Up – Adobe After Effects tutorial

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Here is a flipping good countdown clock. It’s a little tricky to make it go but I’m sure you can do it. It’s based on the retro flip clocks you might have on your desk right now. Oh what’s that? You can’t tell time using a circle clock but think it’s lame to go digital because lo-fi is so hip right now. I thought so.

If you can’t be bothered to do the tutorial or just want to save time or see how an expert *cough* does it use this link and get the file: http://gum.co/CQAc It’s practically free in that you can pay whatever you want… if you want to.

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Isolate One Colour (Color) – Adobe After Effects tutorial

Click to tweet? — http://clicktotweet.com/2m6jM

Make your footage black and white and one other colour. It’s like Sin City, Shindler’s List, Yellow Pages ads, and what I see when I’m on the left handed cigarettes. It’s quite simple to do and you’ll enjoy doing it! Unless you don’t enjoy it, then… I’m so sorry.

This tutorial is a request from Jim. Just Jim. If you want to request a topic use the request form! https://docs.google.com/forms/d/13A2eHcNQADsjyPWrrlbFTeOMqPAbqAxq07p7Alroh_w/viewform

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Moving Frames Montage – Adobe After Effects tutorial

Click to tweet? — http://clicktotweet.com/2fGj9

This is how to make a cool montage that slides and moves around. It’s basically a ripoff of the opening to parks and recreation. I’ll show you the basics and I’m sure you can do the rest. It’s pretty simple once you picture the whole thing as one big board of videos and you move a camera around it. Not that I know exactly what parks and rec did but I’m very sure that’s how it was done.

If you have any problems just let me know in the comments or tweet at me @ECAbrams 🙂

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