Understandability
It's highly recommended that you first purchase and use
Steve Holmes' Total Training for Adobe After Effects
7 Pro: Essentials before jumping into this series.
If you do so, you'll be able to understand most of the
concepts more easily. This does not mean that you have
to do so if you're already familiar with After Effects,
as this training does work as a standalone training.
While
it was pretty easy to follow Steve's thoughts and ideas
much of the time, there were a few times where his simple
familiarity with the program would cause him to blur through
steps a little too quickly. With a bit of patience, you'll
catch up to him, but there's a bit of an extra learning
curve due to this.
Depth
of Information
There is a huge amount of information that is covered
in this series on 3D, compositing, color correction, rotoscoping,
and Motion tracking, which will definitely help your future
productions improve dramatically.
After
you complete this training, you will have an all new respect
for some of the plug-ins that Adobe has included with
After Effects, like KeyLight, which allows
you to very powerfully key out colored backgrounds--even
if the lighting isn't very even--while still preserving
any shadows you may want. As much as I've used After
Effects, I was really impressed with some of the new
effects that it's now capable of and some of the clever
ways Steve combined features to come up with something
completely new and innovative.
