After Effects can feel overwhelming at first. This orientation changes that. You'll get comfortable with the interface, learn how to set keyframes, and discover the 5-step framework that every animation follows. By the end, you'll have a clear mental model for how motion design works. Watch the orientation for free here.

Your first project eases you in with simple, but useful animation. You'll learn how to create and edit shape layers, parent layers together so they move as one, and use mattes to control exactly where a layer appears. You'll also get an introduction to text animators.

Learn how to bring Adobe Illustrator artwork into After Effects and animate it. You'll work with track mattes to simulate fluid rising and falling in a thermometer and rain gauge, while getting practice setting keyframes and using text animators.

Animate the fly that pollinates cacao trees flapping its wings and flying across the screen. You'll work in 3D space for the first time, learn how pre-compositions help you organize complex animations, and create a custom motion path so your midge moves naturally through the air.  Plus, you’ll learn how to make a seamlessly looping animation.

Level up your animations–from stiff to smooth. Learn the concepts of timing and spacing, understand how After Effects interpolates between keyframes, and get hands-on practice with the graph editor. These lessons aren’t just theory, they include exercises designed to help the concepts stick.

Data visualization is one of the most common things motion designers are asked to create. You'll learn how to set up a bar chart in Illustrator (no math required), animate lines drawing in using Trim Paths, and add texture and depth with blending modes and effects. These techniques that will show up again and again in your work.

Practice and build confidence with techniques you've learned, while adding a few handy automations to work more efficiently. You’ll use simple expressions to do math for you and animate numbers counting up.

Learn how to use an After Effects camera to animate a map panning and zooming through 3D space. You'll also practice working in the graph editor to refine your camera moves and add the kind of polished motion that makes this scene feel professional.

The most complex project in the course, and the most satisfying. You'll animate a microscopic scene inside a magnification pop-out effect, working with nested compositions, Photoshop files, and stylized layer effects. By the end, you'll feel confident navigating multi-composition projects.

The hard part is already done. Now you'll learn how to assemble 6 of the 7 projects into a complete 45-second explainer video. Since you’ll have already timed the animations to the voiceover, putting this together is a breeze. You’ll also learn how to reuse compositions efficiently and render your final piece.