Creating the composition and preloader in After Effects

Though after effects is more commonly associated with Hollywood and high end video production, this rather versatile tool can be used for simple things as well. How simple? Fireworks explosions are a good start. Though they look rather complicated, as you are about to discover, they're not at all complicated to produce. So let's get started. To get yourself started, launch After Effects. I'm using the Creative Cloud version of After Effects, but if you have anything say, from CS 4 up to the Creative Cloud, feel free to use that. And when the application opens, the first thing we need to do is to set the stage size and frame rate for the project. The stage size and frame rate will determine how fast the pre-loader works and how big the pre-loader will be. To do this, select composition, New Composition. The composition setting style log box will open, and in the composition kaboom. In the presets, change the width and height to 100 pixels, and this is the dimensions of the preloader…