Digital-Tutors - Animating a Geometric Design in After Effects

English | 3h 53m | AVC 1280x720 15 fps | AAC 128 Kbps 32.0 KHz | 1.47 GB
Software used: After Effects CS6, Illustrator CS6, Photoshop CS6
Genre: eLearning | Level: Advanced

In this series of After Effects tutorials, we will be creating a short animation composed of geometric shapes and patterns using After Effects.


We'll be starting from an Adobe Illustrator file and we'll see the project right through to the final render. Along the way we will cover a range of techniques including: Offsetting layers to create interesting animations, using blend modes to build up interesting textures, animating text onto the screen effectively rather than using the unscalable Write-on tool, creating basic 3D made entirely in After Effects, and using the curves in the graph editor effectively to get silky smooth movement.

By the end of this tutorial, you will have learned how to use all these techniques and more to create an After Effects project without the use of any expensive, 3rd party plugins.


1. Introduction and project overview 01:09

2. Installing scripts and codecs 10:46

3. Looking at design in our base files 08:29

4. Importing files and animating 15:34

5. Animating the base layer grid and using curves 07:33

6. Creating the grayscale square portal 14:43

7. Adding 3D to the animation and texturing the cube 13:58

8. Adding a new layer to the grid 09:29

9. Creating and animating the triangular portal 07:15

10. Adding a 3D pyramid 14:45

11. Animating the triangular portal out of our scene 16:05

12. Adding a final layer to the grid 10:42

13. Creating and animating diamond shaped portal 11:31

14. Creating the second layer of the portal 09:35

15. Adding and texturing a 3D sphere into the scene 06:01

16. Introducing lines to the scene by animating paths 08:44

17. Introducing animated shapes to the scene 20:06

18. Animating logo holder 12:03

19. Animating strokes on the logo holder 05:01

20. Animating the logo and rendering the video file 21:07

21. Summary of the project and final words 02:00