Affect Effects: Killer Intros with a Motion Design Expert

Instructor Credentials

Hi, my name is Ian Boldon, and I‘ll be your instructor for the After Effects course. For almost 10 years, I have been working as a motion designer. I focus mainly on 2D animation in After effects, and have worked with tech companies like Google, Apple, and Youtube.

I went to school for video production, and started playing around with after effects. I started taking a few online courses from anywhere I could find them. Eventually I started getting enough freelance work that I quit my full time job as a Senior Video Producer at Oracle. I’ve been either freelancing, or working full time at a company ever since. Recently, I’ve accepted a position at UC Berkeley teaching motion design.

Teaching Experience

I was a teaching assistant at school of motion for over 3 years, teaching intro courses on design, photoshop & illustrator, After Effects, and animation. Recently I accepted a position at UC Berkeley to teach Motion design.

Having hands-on teaching experience has helped me greatly in designing this course, the combination of simultaneously using and teaching with after effects has helped me build a well-rounded skill set to be an effective teacher.

Focus on how you want a project to look, and how you want it to move, rather than worrying about if it’s possible to do. With this course, you will get comfortable with the software and start looking at illustration boards and ask yourself “How can I animate it?” instead of “Can I animate it?”

Course Description - After Effects

This course will cover all the basics of After Effects such as layers, masks, Alpha channels and Matte, rigging tools, and some shortcuts. Not only the things that I commonly use in After Effects but also some techniques and tips will be introduced along the way. Throughout the process, you’ll have chances to create actual animations and intros. Don’t worry if you are a complete beginner, this course will provide all the basics that you should know from a motion design perspective.

To Students

After completing this course, you’ll be comfortable using after effects to start animating on your own. You’ll know the key basics of motion design, be able to follow along easily, and choose your next path for your career.

One suggestion, while taking this course, feel free to take some time to pause, and take some notes if needed. Make sure to learn the shortcuts. Most importantly, try to adapt this to where your passion lies. Look at other artists' works, take a little bit of a look at what they have, take notes, and try to adapt it how you would like to have it for your work.

Motion Design has so many different categories, and directions you can go, where you can focus on creative parts, or more technical parts, or dabble in a little bit of both. So if you’re brand new, or just starting out, and interested in it, <After Effects: Animation and Motion Graphics> is the course designed to set you up to get the basics down, and allow you to focus on what field you want to go into.