Time Art 4- Adobe After Effect's sessions

So far during this term we have had 2 After Effect's tutorial lessons. I was excited to start this unit because I am fascinated at how visual effects are made in films, and hope to improve my knowledge of After Effects. Sadly, After Effect's is a program I've never used before, so I know that it will take some time to learn all the different features After Effect's has to offer. 

Lesson 1 

During our first lesson, we looked at the basic's of After Effect, in particular, 'Masking'. During the lesson we made a composite of video footage. We were firstly shown the basics of After Effects. For example how to change project settings to fit the footage you're working with, how to create solid shapes and how to create composites. The footage we we're given was not completely still, so we also were taught how to reduce the amount of shaky movement during a video. We then masked around the footage, to manipulate the water and the sky to whatever colour we wanted. I found this helpful as when you know how to accurately mask around an object, then you can do various things such as Green Screen masking. I found this task quite challenging to start, however as the lesson went along, I got familiar to the features. 

Lesson 2

During our second lesson, we looked solely on how to make a still image look as if it is moving. The image we were given was of a mountain. We were then shown many of the basics, such as how to add smoke filters onto the mountain, again using masking to select certain parts of the mountain that need to me moved and also how to remove certain parts of an image, and overlay them by using the blend tool. I found this challenging as I wanted the image to look as professional and natural as I could, however the actual outcome made the image look heavily edited. We also added other effects such as particle effects that gave the piece more of a realistic look.