Transcripts

1. Introduction: Hello and welcome to this class where I would like to take you by hand and teach you how to make a very simple explainer. Videos will use after effects as our tool but basically you could use any animation software or video editing program. L teach you three essential things here. Apart from of course, researching and gathering resources LTTE How to make a voiceover scene lt's you how to make a transition transition between your scenes in your explainer videos and altitude How to make a scene using text We'll go very simple here. This will be a normal pretty scene and we will use after effects to do this I'll show you older tips and tricks in order to get this done so you can be ready with your first video during this class it will be a super simple workflow so anyone can jump on board and be ready with explain a video within an hour. See you later and let us start 2. Your Class Project: Okay. Hey, what will be your class product? Your class product will be to select information which you would like to create an explainer video on, then to select 23 icons which you would like to use for this animation and then to create a scene and transition to be your explainer video. You can either use voice overs if you have a good microphones and off Hokkaido was or if you don't, we did a quick animation here. If you don't, you can make the transition and just use text. It is just as effective, and I will show you both techniques. I'll create to example scenes. So, as you can see, I have a fully functioning ready explainer video here which has about 25 seconds. This will be the final render, and I cannot wait to see what you come up with, and please don't overdo it. You can use very simple tools like I did here. I just use Aiken's. I made a simple animation that I made a does simples tradition and I show you everything step by step. So you can do this with me during this class. I can't wait to see her projects and see you and upcoming tutorials where we will simply go ahead and finalize this product 3. Selecting a topic: Hey there. It is such a pleasure to start working with you on this product. If you have absolutely no idea what to record about, just goto any news website or a website, which is kind of in the scope of your interest. It can be in your language and you can make the explainer video in your language to make it easier. But I have just selected. I just typed in news in Google. The first site which came up was BBC news and for example, here on the bottom. I see deadly quake and landslides hit Japan and this would be perfect for Murray Explainer Video seen So I will use the title. Of course, all credit goes to the creator of this article. I'll use some some information which I gather here and what icons will I need. I own it and I can connect it to Japan to an earthquake. Too much slides and I will be able to craft a scene which would explain this news. So my topic selection is done. I've selected an article I will create Explain a video about and we will now continue the work off course. Your quest is to find a topic for yourself. It could be to really two sentences. We will just use a few icons, a few simple animations, so you will get rolling. If it's something off your interest, the better. If you're into movies, just select a new premier, which you would record about. If you're into sports, select the sport you like. Let's see ourselves in the next lesson where I'll proceed to select Aiken's. 4. Choosing appropriate graphics: okay now on to selecting the appropriate Aiken's most of the time I'm using flat. I come because this website is really so perfect on the boat. Folio off the icons is so huge and you have total control over them. But also a very good website is I can find her dot com. I really like it as well and it's just as good of quality. Off course you can select other Aiken websites. So what do I personally need? I won't and I can relate it to Japan. I want an I can relate it to earthquake. You have to imagine, or you have to write down how the story would look like. But I have this kind of in my head because this will be a very simple one. Well, mudslides. It will be difficult to create mudslides, Aikens. But if you have a word which is hard to put into an image you could select from synonyms, for example, you go to the Zara's. You put this word here and you try toe avalanche. Okay, rockslide. Hurtful snowslide. Landfall! Those are the words that come in my mind. And I'm no native English speakers. So that's that much harder for me. So selecting something like that is wonderful. Okay, I'm going to the website. I'm writing off Japan this first and the s likens the selection. Items are free if we credit them. Those with the crown, our premium icons, which we would need a subscription for. Okay, I select the nicest Japan I can I can find. I also like this one. Then we have earthquake, earthquake Japan. And just look at that. Those icons are so wonderful. For example, taste looks splendid. It even has a little Asian, at least for my taste. Well, the design more like to buy puts. I maybe take one second more to search for another. Okay, I'll use this icon. And if you want to download off icons just hit on PNG and download the quality of least off 256 or or 512 pixels if you want to go high quality. I also like the free download because I would like to credit the altars and allergist safe the Aikens I need. Okay, Earthquake. And what's the last thing I wanted? I wanted mudslide, but, um, mudslides might be difficult. Maybe not landslide and look at that again. Even such a niche like keyword, gives me such beautiful icons. Off course. Select this one. I'll just click PNG and I'll download them. All right. I have my three I can selected. This is it for now. I will not need any more. Now your turn. Police review the news or the information you would like to put into an explainer video or your future YouTube video and try to select connected appropriate wagons. This claimer here, if you want you can only use two icons and you'll still be able to learn how to craft a scene like that. It can be even example Icons. If you have no idea about the topic right now, just go into flat icon, select a consistent set like here and select. I contest this and this and you're ready to work. You don't need to craft a story like now. I would like you to get the technical skills behind it to make everything possible and done All right, This is it for this lesson. Let's end it and let's each other in the next lecture 5. Animating the icons: all right. We can finally hope into after effects and think about our story. So I have those three icons I just drag and drop them into a new after effects composition . And I have to think I just created a background with control. Why a simple gray background and I'll drop in all tree icons where I can think about the story. So the story. So in my case, the story would be s BBC news reports Japan or rather, the island of Hokkaido has been hit with a power for earthquake. As a result, landslides tore apart some of the houses, so this would be the news. I would like to incorporate into this innovation into this explainer video. So my first information is Japan. So comes first. My second information is the house, and the mudslides is kind of a separate information. So I will use this icon separately. Let's think of it, it's a second scene or something like that. So first information would be the houses and Japan, and I told you, we just need to icons and how to go about the simplest animation in the world. Depending on if you will use text here, or if you will record a voiceover for your information. If you are recording a voice over, we don't need to space here at all. If you need your space for text, then I would eventually put the exhibit higher. Since not all of you have proper microphones, probably. So I'll start like that. Japan. Be like position because we have to think about an animation click on the key frame. Moved to keep from 21 2nd and select the second value and put this icon down. As you can see, this was great simplest animation in the world. And if this is enough for you, you can proceed to the next month. But if you would like to spice it, just a tiny little bit of you. Just right Click Key from Assistant Eazy E's or Your Press F nine and the animation Cats and more fluent. You can even go into the graph editor and headed the speed and velocity of the animations, for example. I'll make it slower at the end. Okay, I can imagine the animation could take a bit longer, beautiful, even slower at the end. Perfect. So we have to first key frames, so the information is flowing. And now I'm selecting the houses, The houses, I think our position properly and also p key from here. Put the key frame forward in time and put the houses down. Okay. As the information arises, the houses will come into play either the same easy East key frame assistant. And now the information will take some time to play. If you need to extend this time, just go to composition, composition settings and for deliberation. I will give it 20 seconds. I think this is completely enough for this scene. So depending I also control a extent everything. What? The background was closed. I'll extend the background, close it back again. Not solid closed. And my initial Imation. Now I don't do the voice over and this is the oldest comes to slow and this one I can can come later. That's no problem. I can even trim it down here and boom houses arise doesn't give you the information. Judging by the story, my third part of the story is not only an earthquake hit Japan over the island of Hokkaido , but also mudslides and landslides did tore down some houses. Okay, in the next lesson. I want to show you a great trick to use regarding the landslides. So this is also very useful to know about, and we'll see each other in the next lecture. And I can't wait to do this because this will be a really cool animation. 6. Rove across time and Null Objects: hater. One thing I haven't touched here is how you could potentially speed up and maximize the efficiency off your workflow. So let's say you have this very simple. I can animation when I click on the icon. It comes up here other than flights of it down. So we have an animation like this and like this. Okay, normally, you'd ese those key frames to make the animation a little bit more East. And you see the bounds here right now is absurd. Why is that? Go into the graph editor, Click on the position and look what happens. It's a bounce and then the second bounds. So this is the problem here. If you want to correct that in any off your animation work to select the middle key frame and click on Rove across time, you could do the same by right clicking here, going into the key frame interpellation and in the roving options Select Rove across time. Okay, so now you have a beautiful intimation like that. Okay, now it's pretty fluid, but on the next scene you have three icons. And if I take three Aiken's, I place one I can hear. When I can hear what I'm going when I come here. And I would simply take those position key frames and paste those cook position key frames . They would inherit the position and all of them would be in the middle. So this is not what I want. This would be not optimal. I could make all three icons appear at once. But with the same information from the same position is to use a new object. So you right, click Select New Select a new object which is an empty layer just for controlling older layers. And this is the new object. I'll take all three icons besides the learning one and I parent, it's together with Daniel object. So now wherever the parent option the parent layer moves, those will move with them. No, you can take the original key frames. I praise you. You can take the origin and few friends right about here. You can place them on the new object and you will have the first animation. Maybe this last Aiken should disappear. But that's not important right now. Take you in and then with help of the new object, you have the same information which you already did. You saved your work by using any object the negative side two years here that you would need to have three nil objects if you would like to come if you would like them to come separately in. But the reason I use until object is because I don't have to worry about the position of the key from I can, For example, place this here, places here and place this one here and they will still have the same animation on them. Versus this is a position key frame on it. When you mess around with the position off this one, look what happens. Additional key frames are being created. I cannot move this icon. And let's just say that I want to move the icon and a little bit to the left. I would have to move. He's keeping to the left. You would need to be perfect with the second key frame that I would need to be perfect with the third Aiken, with the third key fame using the nil object will help me with that because I can link multiple icons and they would inherit the same nice animation. Okay, this is it. for the first bonus two pounder to give you in this in this class because this would speed up. Where are your workflow when creating those explainer videos? 7. 6. Bonus - Creating a Voice Over: one thing I haven't touched before is getting the voiceover, so getting the voiceover off course requires a microphone from from you and requires some recording software. I am personally using contagion for my recordings that you have a voice free voice recorder , for example, audacity, which also handles sound editing so you could get some tutorials on that and learn how to edit your sound to sound really great. Apart from that, you can also record sound in Premiere Pro. So no matter which tell you take you record your voice over. In my case, I would hit. Stop, can't Asia would open. Then I simply would go to share, and I would select export audio Onley. I'll get away file or MP tree, and then I would seem simply drag and drop this into after effects what I will be doing and then having the voice over here. I'll just press zero to preview the scene, which I'm currently doing. I will hear what I'm talking about, and then I'll take those those icons, this animation and I'll shift him around, and I'll animate them according to what I say. Okay, this is just a quick tip recording that actual voice ovary 8. Craft your story - Advanced trick!: Okay. Welcome back. I will treat the landslide as a new scene. So we can either use a transition and use the landslide or use it here. Okay. What? This? I can This Aiken itself presents so great that it's gonna be an animation in itself. And if you select really nice icons, you can do very simple animations on them. What I'll do, I'll just turn this around. I didn't make this pretty big, didn't I? So I'll put this in the corner here. Or maybe so. It's brown. So we don't see the black outline. And look at that. What I need to do is to divide this part and this part. How to do this. Very simple. Select a landslide press control D, Or even though you don't have to press control, we select the land flight, select your pen tool and just pen out the place. You would like to be separated. In my case, I want toe. Have the rocks separated, so I need to think about how to craft this story. Now we will select this landside control de or commented he if you're in the Mac, double press em to open the mask or just one time m and on the 2nd 1 just make it inverted . What we have now is Lance Light number one and rocks number two, maybe to make the work a bit easier for you and for it to be better visible. I'll select orange for those, and I put them later because this was the first part off the information and this is the second part. So the second part, the rocks, were full. The landslide. I'll just press T high capacity a key. Frame it at zero in a few seconds forward, it will appear at 100%. And when it comes to the rocks, if you want to be more precise, is press enter and called them rocks. As I reached the information, MM Japan Japan, earthquake, earthquake, landslides were happening. So I have the rocks, and I will make the simplest animation in the world just start in the beginning because we can move this press B, put the rocks above the screen, making position key frame, go forward and put the rocks here or even outside the screen, boom, This simplest animation in the world, you do not have to make more advanced items at this point. So what? This animation with houses appear and winner start talking about the landslide? Also, this was happening. I have a very simple animation and it's happening too quick. Just put the key frames there and I need no transitions. I have basically my explainer video ready. Now I need to use the text or the voiceover in order to finalize this animation. This was my example because I had a perfect I confirmed that in the perfect news, which fits what's happening. But if not, I could just simply fight in the entire icon and it would be just as good. At this point, I think we already and we have our story crafted. 9. Creating a Transition: all right. I did a very, very simple voice recording. Now I will show you how to make a transition to another scene and how to take another scene and use text for it. So this is the example. I'm not sure that you can hear it, but hear this. As BBC News reported today, sadly, Japan's northern island off Hokkaido was struck by a quite powerful earthquake. The earthquake triggered landslides with destroyed plenty of houses. Okay. And this scene what? And here I'll just close the scene down and we're done. We can move on to a new scene. So in order to do that, we need a transition. I'll just press control and to create a new comp and I'll call transition. This is your quest for this lesson or again? Composition composition, settings. This will have, like, two seconds. Or make it four seconds. This is completely enough for your transition. And the simplest transition in the world would be creating a rectangle, a big rectangle pressing our rotating at 45 degrees like this, putting it here, pressing P for the position going two seconds forward. It is clicking on it and dragging it across the scene. This only needs to stay at least for a few frames to cover the entire screen. Okay, It covers it and the transition goes away, so I can see two seconds would be enough. After all my personal control. Ok, To change the composition settings, I could take the key frames. Right. Click key frame assistant. Easy, Eastham. To make the animation flow a little nicer. This is it. And for the color I want a dark is great. Okay? And this is it when it comes to creating the transition. Look at that. No, camp one, diapers control K and I select. See? Seen one diapers control. And and I called end video seen one Boom. Oh, sorry. I made it. 20 seconds. And video will have, like, 30 seconds. At least this scene ends in about with destroyed. Plenty of houses. Yeah, this scene ends here, so I just crop this scene. I take me transition. I put the transition above it. They place the transition here, and I just have to cover up the screen off course. The transition could be more advanced, but here another scene will already emerge. Okay, This is it for this lesson. Let's continue in the next lesson and I'll show you how to make a second scene using just text or text with Aiken's. 10. Creating a Text Scene: okay. My possible less information here would be. The earthquake had a magnitude off 6.7. So I go to after effect and I start crafting my scene to Cyprus control and seen through. And the duration? Maybe 10 seconds. All right. I start by creating a background selecting control. Why? Orders? Right clicking here and selecting a grave background. Maybe a bit darker. Okay. Great. I remember that in the scene One. We had those houses and they perfectly describe the earthquake. So I just control see, control Vida into the second scene. Okay, What I could do, I could select this position. I could place this here. I could select the second position and place it on the left side. Okay. Perfect. So I keep the animation, but here as the text, I use the right side. So it's select text. Great fun. Earthquake had a off 6.7. Control a. Make it smaller, maybe center it. Okay. Right now, I could make this with my shift. Click. A bit bigger. Especially the point about the magnitude eight point about the magnitude could be an intensive color. For example, a rat one. Since this is an information. Then I would off course change the fund to something. Something simply are I would have toe search around. But let's say that my explainer video it's a bit too sporty, But I'll now stick with it and you have this text. And if you are not good at animating text, you don't have to be. You just go to window. You open up effects and presets with control five and in the beginning, off the effects process. You have animation presets. You opened them and you have some pre defined ready text animations for after effects done by adobe and animate in. If you select a simple, for example, a simple fate like slow fade on or fade up. Fate up letters, fatal blinds Fate of worlds maybe fade upwards would be okay here. This is the text I press. I suppose he it flows like that. If you press you, you can reveal the key frames and the key frames. We'll show you how quick this happens. Okay, If I have no voice over, it would play like that. Okay, too slow this low. But you get the idea this one preset or those this set of presets could make you an entire explainer video. Perfect. We have the entire animation, the information. It could be a bit shorter. So this scene a second c has six seconds. I'll go to my end video composition. I take seem to and place it under it. Save. Boom. Seen one. Okay. And what do you see here? This transition is totally ugly. I'm not proud of it, but I just wanted to show you a simple way. Okay, I will make it lighter. April control D at least make the animation a bit different. I'll move it over, I press you, I press you put the key frames a bit forward, and I changed the color of the 2nd 1 Press control D you forward? Different color. And now the transition. Maybe we'll look a tiny, tiny bit better. Just a tiny bit. Not much, but you know, Okay, at this point, you would have a slight lights, lights, slightly different transition. It's still ugly with, you know, it starts to get the job done. It even seen, Could be a bit later, but I really enjoy that. The transition now flows perfectly between the animations. This has no voice over. This has no voice over, but it would be close to our finish line. So I hope you are in the same spot and you are able to create a few scenes. Let's go to the next listen and we'll summarize everything up and maybe render a ready video. 11. Final project: Okay, Right now we know. Where are we at? We have the animation complete. I'll close down the scene toe 24 seconds because this will be the amount which will render . And I should maybe group this up like assets and inter assets. You put the voiceover, you put the Aiken's and it gets maybe the solids as well. The solids are the great background. The transition can. Status is the scenes can stay in the end video, maybe a control cake, and put the and video in brackets. So I know exactly that this is the top guy. Most important guy. Okay, We can preview what we did as BBC News reported today. Sadly, Japan's northern island off Hokkaido was struck by a quite powerful earthquake. The earthquake triggered landslides with destroyed plenty of houses. Of course, since I started by having a voice over in the first scene, the second scene should have a vote over as well. He's seen use tapes, and his entire thing should also have music behind it, because it's a bit quiet. But this is how you can get your first explainer videos done. If you want to render out there ready fi, you go to composition and you either rendered in the adobe media encoder. Would you render it straight here in after effects, which I would like to do, But of course not. Using the output module lossless values have some prepared M o V h 264 You can click on it and you can change the type to look Time the former options toe H 264 And if this is complicated to you, those are render settings. You should have them available as well. I have here the quality said to 70%. Okay, The end video is is the name of the scene. So the and video, it could be renamed. But let's just render it out. And this would be a ready video put on YouTube or put everywhere you want. So this is how you could creeper your first ready explainer video. And this is what's also your quest for this entire story telling explainer video lecture I wanted to give you. I hope this was enjoyable for you because I did really enjoy to teach you that. And I would like that people would produce millions and thousands of those We have such beautiful assets such beautiful icons that we should use them for our videos. And I roots strongly to see the results. I would like to preview what you did, and I can't wait to see your end results.