Adobe After Effects: Flat Animation Buildup

Jump right into animating motion graphics in Adobe After Effects with this quick-start guide to creating 2D animations.

4.55 (274 reviews)

Udemy

platform

English

language

3D & Animation

What you will learn

design an object in Adobe Illustrator

prepare designs in Adobe Illustrator for animating in After Effects

animate with the flat buildup style

export from After Effects

Why take this course?

You want to learn how to make fun, hip, and stylish motion graphics in After Effects, right?

This is the third part in my 3-part Dive Into After Effects series. Check out parts 1 & 2 if you haven't already done so. I created this series to make learning how to use After Effects as easy as possible.

You learn by doing.

In the Dive Into After Effects series, you'll follow along and work on your own project while learning. In this course, we'll create our own flat animation buildup - a popular style of animations you see in commercials, television shows, and movies today.

What makes me qualified to teach you?

My name is Phil. I am a professional motion graphics artist and video creator. Plus, I'm the creator of some of the world's most popular After Effects courses - with over 150,000 students and thousands of 5-star reviews like these ones from this course:

I really enjoyed this course! I'm fairly new to After Effects (minus some light video editing), but I felt like I learned a lot. - Katherine Vargas

Very easy to follow, at this time I did the course with the material given from author, and was simple and got a great animation with AE! - Renato Nakazima

Phill made what is simple... look simple. Great course, great support, easy to follow, I'm really happy with it. - Bartolomeu Jacq

My Promise to You

I'll be here for you every step of the way. If you have any questions about the course content or anything related to this topic, you can always post a question in the course or send me a direct message.

I want to make this the best course on learning After Effects for beginners. So if there is any way I can improve this course, just tell me and I'll make it happen.

What's this course all about?

In this 45-minute course, you'll learn how to beautifully introduce objects in your After Effects projects. Knowing how to animate the small details of your objects will dramatically improve your After Effects skills. Follow me as I animate the build-up of a polaroid camera graphic.

This class is perfect for video creators, designers, and everyone who wants to learn After Effects in an non-intimidating way. If you're just starting out, we recommend taking the Dive into After Effects: Understanding the Basics & Working with Keyframes courses first. By the end of this class, you'll know how to seamlessly animate object buildups for your own video projects.

With our 30-day 100% money back guarantee, there is nothing holding you back from jumping in right now and trying the course out.

Go ahead and click the enroll button, and I'll see you in lesson 1!

Cheers,

Phil

Screenshots

Adobe After Effects: Flat Animation Buildup - Screenshot_01

Adobe After Effects: Flat Animation Buildup - Screenshot_02

Adobe After Effects: Flat Animation Buildup - Screenshot_03

Adobe After Effects: Flat Animation Buildup - Screenshot_04

Reviews

Olia

November 5, 2023

Nice course, I am a beginner so I would recommend not just to show the shortcut keys on the screen, but also state what keys we are supposed to press. I had to go back several times any watch where the lecturer was clicking to achieve the desired effect.

Gabriela

March 27, 2023

Loved this quick course! It gets directly to the point, very mindful of the time while still giving enough explanations so you can really understand what's going on.

Matthew

September 14, 2022

The course was well paced and clearly explained. Also, I learned a few valuable time-saving tips/tricks. Thanks.

Sonja

June 28, 2022

Thank you very much, the course was very stimulating and explained in an understandable way. The only thing that really bothered me were the subtitles above the timeline, i.e. the actual workspace, which unfortunately did not allow you to see well where which work steps were set. I assume, however, that this was not the intention of the lecturer.

Pierre

May 12, 2021

I got this course as a freebie in 2017. Although it says the course was updated in February 2021, it's just one new video in which Phil talks about Udemy's video player (speeding up video, choosing better quality) and about leaving reviews. This course was made using After Effects CS6 but the vector graphic was made in Illustrator so if you don't have the full Adobe CC subscription and you've used up your free trial period, you'll have to either make it in After Effects or use another vector graphics program. Phil also mentions Skillshare and how the student can share their work which tells us that the course wasn't made exclusively for Udemy. The course is outdated because it uses an old version of After Effects and should be closed for new students.

Brent

September 30, 2016

Loved the pace of the class, and the techniques I learned. A great follow-up class to both of Phil's first two classes in the series. The overall duration of the class was great too. I would highly recommend this course to anyone just starting out with After Effects. This course also really provides a nice solid foundation for advancing with After Effects. Thank you!

Bartolomeu

May 16, 2016

Phill made what is simple... look simple. Great course, great support, easy to follow, I'm really happy with it.

Steven

March 3, 2016

After watching this course, I knew how to animate a flat polaroid camera, but I didn't know why I was making the choices I was asked to make. Why did the teacher sometimes move just the keyframes and other times move the entire layer? Why did the teacher "freehand" the spacing of the keyframes, especially the sequences of keyframes involving multiple layers? Is that rough sequencing (as opposed to precise sequencing) part of the 'flat' style or just a time saving measure? Why did the teacher use a drop shadow in a flat art style piece? Are drop shadows ok to use in flat art, or should they be avoided? There are many more 'why' questions that I would have liked to know the answer to. Overall though, this was a good course. It did what it set out to do. However, without knowing why most of the choices were being made, the skills shown here are difficult to apply with confidence to other projects.

Markus

February 27, 2016

Very nice quick course containing and explaining all the essentials for flat animation, from building your elements in Illustrator, bringing them into After Effects and quick and hassle-free animation. Also very well presented and narrated! :-) Very helpful and enjoyable course!

Oscar

December 3, 2015

I really like it even though it's only one graphic that was animated. Would be nice to have 2 different kinds of graphics or 2 exercises using different methods. Anyways, I enjoyed the class. I Iike how Phil's voice and tone is easy to follow, it's very clear.

Sonia

November 16, 2015

Although the course is a little fast-paced, it is very easy to follow. I was able to make the animation very well. I learned a lot of information that I plan to use in the future.

Renato

November 15, 2015

Very easy to follow, at this time I did the course with the material given from author, and was simple and got a great animation with AE! I will try making another object later to try this out! Thanks!

Katherine

August 28, 2015

I really enjoyed this course! I'm fairly new to After Effects (minus some light video editing), but I felt like I learned a lot. I didn't really know how to approach a 2D object in AE, but after taking this course, I feel like I can now look at a 2D object and see each part as it's own separate piece to be animated. Thumbs up!

Mary

June 22, 2015

This is a great straightforward course, with a really fun video project to do. Very satisfying results, Great for people who are beginning to get the hang of After Effects.