is there a beginners lesson area or learning tutorial anywhere ?
There's tutorials all over the place, on top of this forum, at creativecow.net, do a Google search and you'll find tons.
I think the best book for beginners is Adobe's Classroom in a Book. The Meyer's first book is also good, Creating Motion Graphics.
I'd say a little from column A, a little from column B...
If you want to learn alot in a short time, try video tutorials. Very inexpensive ones can be found at at www.VTC.com.
John
Stabbing in the dark promotes bad habits and sloppy style. Just my .02. The meyers books is the best teacher for the money. If you can afford it the total training DVDs are great.
- Mythical
I think the best book for beginners is Adobe's Classroom in a Book. The
Meyer's first book is also good, Creating Motion Graphics. <
I'm just starting out in video and have got After effects 6 in the Digital Video Collection. It could be a while before these two books are updated to AE 6. Does anyone have a feel for how long that could be or whether it would be worth getting the current books which are based on AE 5 or 5.5? How relevant would they be to version 6? I'm starting from the very beginning in After Effects. Thanks for any advice.
The way the Meyers teach AE is timeless, as I have discovered. Their insights into how the program works, what techniques work and what to avoid in your work go far beyond the interface and feature updates for AE6.
The only thing missing from the books as currently published is a treatise on the new text tools. But you will be so busy learning how to work in the rest of the program that you won't mind at all.
Well, OK, maybe a little bit. :-)
Jeff
Thanks for the reply, Jeff --- it was the Meyers' one I was definitely leaning towards for my first purchase, so I'll go ahead and get it.
Thanks,
Dick
Try Creative Cow...
Here's a link to the AE tutorials. Most are excellent and you've got about 130 hours of free instruction.
<http://www.creativecow.net/articles/aftereffects.html>
Thanks, Rick. I've bookmarked that site. At this point I need something to take me from square one, so I ordered the Meyers' book today. It has now been dispatched so I should have it in a couple of days.
Thanks,
Dick