Moving from Photoshop into After Effects

[rosannaw7860180]

Hi,

Apologies in advance if this is quite a basic thing I'm not quite working out atm! I've gone through lots of the AE tutorials step by step and am now trying to figure out how I can cater AE to the work I do. ATM I'm looking for it to to speed up my workflow and push animation possibilities, and once I've cracked this I hope to keep learning

I'm moving from creating short animations in photoshop (an example below) but this can be slower than I'd like and so I am now trying to learn and move over to  AE to animate my PS compositions. Getting my head around the different workspaces and failing a little atm.

Currently for longer animations (multiple 'scenes') I'd create a number of mov exports from different photoshop compositions and piece these together in premiere.

Does this work in a similar way for AE, so to create a multi 'scene' animation (creating original artwork in photoshop) would it be best to create these scene by scene and bring these together in Premiere?

If not, my thinking is that the AE file would have a crazy number of layers on the timeline panel as my photoshop compositions often have 50+ layers.

Any advise here would be great.

Thanks in advance

Best

R

[Rick Gerard]

One layer per asset in After Effects. Learning curve for AE about 3 times that of Photoshop but understanding layers will give you a big head start. Consider AE Photoshop on Steroids. It's a lot more powerful but it can get awfully cranky if you don't know what you are doing or your system is not up to the task.

[BartonGarrett256]

I am not sure what your question is, but in my workflow I bring layers from Ps into Ae and animate there.  It's easier and more powerful than Ps in terms of animation.  50 layers is, in my workflow not an unusually large composition.

Then use Dynamic Link to take compositions into Pr, Ae is not an a place to edit. 

At the core core of what you do focus on storytelling. What's the story and how do I advance it with each frame of  my piece?   Animation just for the sake of movement is unsophisticated.

[rosannaw7860180]

So would you can bring you AE file in to Pr to edit via Dynamic Link, and your AE file can still be edited if necessary rather than being an compressed export?

[BartonGarrett256]

It's not perfect- keep the comps as small as practical, save often.  Rendering and exporting makes huge files, if you need to tweak your comps  and hate big files and lots of rendering down time it can be a huge timesaver.  No worries about file bloat, exactly which version was the last or file names longer than Welsh villages.  Ae is not the best place to tweak audio either, so being able to easily go back and forth from Pr is a big help to me.

[rosannaw7860180]

Thank you for getting back to me in detail.

Trying to figure out how to transition over, really appreciate the advice!

[BartonGarrett256]

No worries, it takes years and a village.  Just pass it on when you get there.