Pre-composing layers is an essential everyday part of working within Adobe After Effects and the resulting compositions can be re-used multiple times in a project. Andy Needham, motion graphics artist and animation director explains the workflow and how to pre-compose layers to create re-useable components.
- [Voiceover] Let's create some reusable components…from our artwork layers.…The only thing that's changed since we were last in…After Effects on this file is I've just renamed…dashboard2 to be in line with dashboard1.…So I just removed the underscore start.…And let's focus on our composition dashboard01…and we are going to create these reusable components…by pre-composing the layers.…When you pre-compose a layer it puts it in a new composition…and that will replace the layer in the original composition.…
So this new nested composition becomes the source…for a single layer in the original comp.…And as the composition appears in the project panel also,…then that's available for rendering…or use in any other composition.…So this allows us to group layers which…we can instance later in other comps.…So I'm going to select,…to begin with, the Title Today.…And I'm going to use the shortcut command + shift + c…and that will bring up the pre-composed dialogue.…We can rename our new composition.…
I'm just going to highlight that Comp 1 text…
Author
Andy Needham
Released
6/6/2016In this course, Andy Needham shows how to create an app interface from scratch using Adobe Illustrator, and then take the finished design into After Effects for animation. This is a start-to-finish project, going from concept sketches to the final product (an animated GIF). The prototype will showcase the navigation and interactive aspects of the app interface and can be used for marketing or gathering client and user feedback.
- Sketching ideas
- Planning ahead: knowing your target output
- Designing screens in Illustrator
- Preparing artwork for After Effects
- Creating reusable components
- Building and animating screens
- Adding transitions and gesture animations
- Exporting the final sequence as an animated GIF
Skill Level Intermediate
Duration
Views
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Introduction
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Welcome34s
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1. App Plan and Pre-Production
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The app creation33s
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Sketch out ideas3m 8s
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Choose the user journey1m 45s
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2. Explore the App Screens
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3. Prepare Assets for Animation in After Effects
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Set up and import artwork5m 14s
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Create reusable components4m 31s
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Build the Dashboard tiles6m 26s
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Build the Dashboard screens7m 25s
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4. Animate in After Effects
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Animate the Steps screen8m 29s
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Animate the Friends screen7m 50s
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5. Build and Export the Sequence
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Export the final sequence4m 45s
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Conclusion
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Next steps1m 9s
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Video: Create reusable components