Adobe After Effects 6.0 Classroom in a Book [With CDROM]

A good second book to have. I suggest getting the Lynda HOT book first, though, cos this one simply makes too many leaps, leaves too much unsaid. A reason behind doing certain things would certainly be a plus in the next edition. Some of the lessons can be hard to understand at first: Through no fault of mine I had to go back a redo certain portions 2-3 times. I'm usually pretty adept at following books like these, so I can only chalk it up to poor explanation. But it's still a good foundation book, and props also to its unique one-project/modular approach. The key to learning AE, though, is to move through three or four of these book quickly in succession. Good luck.

I thought this book was an excellent introduction to After Effects. You work on a single, meaningful project throughout the book. This book focuses only on After Effects - it mentions other products but only in passing - appropriate, I feel, for a beginner tutorial. It's also meant to be used in tandem with the user guide for further explanation of certain topics. Are you going to want more after this? Absolutely. This is only a start but a very good one.

A tutorial driven book whereas the student completes 11 lessons total with the end goal of creating an 18 second movie playable for either television or web. (Note: This book is compatible with either the "Macintosh" or Windows" version.)These lessons are presented in a procedure-like fashion so ultimately the student learns this program with his or her "hands" rather than by verbal instruction or explanation. Each lesson is thorough and complete in teaching the student how to import various formats, manipulate them, animate, transform and composite them into a coherent animation. Also covered are lens flare effects, text effects, and adjusting live action footage. Ultimately, this book is quite competent in teaching all of the above in a step-by-step manner. Each lesson takes about a half-hour to an hour to do so if you are motivated you can burn through this entire book in a fast weekend.My animation experience is primarily with Macromedia FLASH so I figured that when I opened up the "After Effects" manual it would all come to me in a "whooshing epiphany". This was not the case since "After Effects" is quite rich in content and complexity and it requires lots of practice and detail driven tutorials to really grasp this program. Subsequently, this book provided me with the understanding and tutorials I needed to really learn this program