Creating Animated Stories with After Effects

Keep content simple: this is the key to animating engaging stories and the underlying philosophy at Novenero, a motion design studio that has worked with clients like Facebook, HP, and Tommy Hilfiger. Bring your ideas to life by transforming simple sketches into illustrations in motion and create vibrant visual metaphors that capture your audience’s attention.

In this course, learn how to direct and design an animated story in After Effects alongside Andrea and Giulio, founders of studio Novenero. They teach you the step-by-step process for compelling motion design projects, from the initial sketches to animating the final artboards and art direction for audio.

Andrea and Giulio get the ball rolling by telling you about their individual careers, how their paths crossed, and what led them to open Novenero, along with the artists that have influenced their work.

Start with a brainstorming session to generate ideas based on a specific concept that you can develop into a story. Translate your initial ideas into rough sketches with notes and search for reference images to help you decide on the style and mood of your project.

Pick out the best ideas and continue to refine them until you’ve got a set of detailed compositions and designs arranged in a storyboard. Then make a key visual to lay out the theme for the rest of your material. Recreate your artboards in Illustrator and vectorize your designs before working on the finer details and trying out different color palettes.

Learn the basics principles of animation, import your illustrations into the After Effects timeline, and start animating your first scenes and transitions. Once you’ve finished the primary animation, move on to the secondary animation and smooth over any rough parts.