UI Animation Essentials

After Effects
Principle
UI Animation

A structured online course on interface animation in After Effects and Principle. You will learn how to animate almost any interface, from desktop to smartwatch.

$299
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This hardcore course will teach you how to animate almost any interface, from desktop to smartwatch. We'll start with the basics of interface animation and proceed to the hardcore techniques in After Effects.

We will also cover animation prototyping in Principle, features for exporting animation to use in web and mobile applications, and features for importing designs from various software for UI designers.

Level
Beginner / Advanced
Format
Online
Lessons
12+
Duration
7h+
Required Software
After Effects ‘18 / Principle.
Language
English
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Who will benefit from this course?

Developers and UI designers

WHO WANT TO CREATE AND EASILY PROTOTYPE ANIMATIONS FOR DIGITAL PRODUCTS

We’ll show you how to bring an interface animation of any level to life, and to do it really quickly. Before the design and animation of interfaces will be translated into a code, concept animation will save developers a lot of time.

Motion designers

Who want to LEARN SPECIFIC TECHNIQUES, OPTIMIZE AND SPEED UP UI ANIMATION WORKFLOW

We’ll help motion design beginners to learn animation fundamentals, as well as lots of useful techniques and methods that can be used in different animation spheres. The course will help experienced motion designers to optimize and speed up their workflow.

Problems are a signal for changes

I can’t keep up with the pace of new technologies

The industry changes every year; plugins are integrated into the new software and the tasks that used to take hours are performed in one click now. The main thing is to know where to click 😅

We will study the pipeline with the mainstream software for the interface design development and relevant plugins. With the help of the best interface designers, we have done our best to put together the most relevant market knowledge and approaches.

My colleagues are dissatisfied with the pace I’m working at

Even with many years of experience behind your back, you can be dissatisfied with the pace you’re working at. You can simply pay little attention to routine actions while they consume a huge amount of your time.

Workflow is just as important as design and animation. In this course, we will show subtle methods and techniques that will accelerate the process, and a set of plugins will raise your pace to the speed of light.

My animation doesn’t look cool compared to what others do

Technologies alone are not enough to create quality animation.

Once you feel comfortable with the software, we’ll move on to the basic principles of creating appealing animation. Such an approach works always and everywhere, regardless of what you animate.

What will I learn in the UI Animation Essentials course?

It's a drip course, and you will get the lectures one by one per week.

Lesson 1 - AE Basics
In the first lesson, you will learn basic animation workflow in After Effects. On the example of a simple interface, you will become familiar with the tools and learn how to correctly export the results of your work to any video format or GIF animation.
Lesson 2 - Import and Export of Illustrations
The most obvious way to save time and effort is to correctly import a design into After Effects. In this tutorial, we’ll take a look at the best ways to interact with Sketch, Figma, illustrator, and Photoshop.
Lesson 3 - Functionality Overview
The lesson consists of a series of video tutorials that cover animation with the use of masks, text animation techniques, and various methods to animate outlines and outline illustrations. These are 20% of the tools that can complete 80% of the tasks.
Lesson 4 - Animating Interactive Prototypes in Principle
You obviously don’t need a machine gun to shoot a sparrow. And some tasks don't require After Effects, since they can be done easier and faster in software like Principle. We will review all its pros and cons, the tasks it suits better, and the tasks that still require After Effects.
Lesson 5 - Scripts for Superlight Workflow
After we figured out how to import and animate layouts, we’ll analyze the set of our scripts. They will significantly accelerate the working process and reveal new opportunities that are extremely difficult or even impossible to implement by conventional means.
Lesson 6 - Animating Shapes and Preloaders
We often get to know a mobile application or website starting with a preloader. In this lesson, you will learn how to make interesting animation of preloaders and better understand how to work with shape layers.
Lesson 7 - Morphings or Microinteractions
This lesson will be dedicated to morphings for microinteraction animation. We’ll figure out how to create complex animation that look natural and neat.
Lesson 8 - Lottie, Bodymovin, and export to JS
Is it possible to export animation so that it remains vector, takes little space, plays at 60 fps, and can be integrated into any website or mobile application as code? Yes, it is!
Lesson 9 - Visual Language
The interfaces segment already has a set of its distinctive visual languages. We will study the most popular guidelines from Google and Apple, understand what is needed for them, and practice in creating animated interfaces for iOS devices.
Lesson 10 - Animating Infographics and Expressions
After Effects animation isn’t only manual work. Some aspects of the process can be automated with the help of expressions. Using infographics, you will learn how to create animation with expressions, to get rid of a huge amount of routine work and make the animation work for you.
Lesson 11 - Footage Integration, Augmented Reality and 3D
This set of lessons will help you figure out how to embed footage in other videos, simulating the augmented reality
Lesson 12 - Advanced Animation: Making a Showreel
You'll design a full-fledged stylish showreel using additional cool techniques.

About the author

Hi everyone! My name is Denis Bondartsov

Together with Motion Design School, I have worked on the Motion Beast course and the Expressions Trip course. I have dozens of projects that have given me great experience in animating interfaces, characters, programming expressions and scripts.

UI Animation Essentials
  • The skills of an interface animator to help you get into the industry as fast as possible.
  • New and fresh approaches to already known programs.
  • Experience of working with stylish designs.
  • Updated and accelerated workflow.
  • Understanding of how to work with our exclusive plugins to speed up your working process and automate interface animation tasks.

UI Animation Essentials

A structured online course on interface animation in After Effects and Principle. You will learn how to animate almost any interface, from desktop to smartwatch.

  • Well packed animator skillset for UI designer
  • Precisely structured workflow to solve any animation task
  • 2 Scripts to focus on problem solving instead of routine
$299
Add to Cart Buy It Now

Frequently asked questions

Where can I find After Effects?
You can find After Effects here: https://www.adobe.com/products/aftereffects.html. It will be enough to work with atrial version for some time, but we highly recommend buying a license.
Do I need to buy any additional scripts or plugins for UI animation?
We provide free Motion Tools script and paid Swiss Knife script for 3 months. Besides, we’ll cover plenty of additional paid and free scripts that are essential for many techniques. Still, we will analyze alternative solutions, without using any plugins, wherever it is possible
Will this course work for me if I know nothing about After Effects?
The course is designed for beginners with no experience in After Effects. However, to make work in AE even more comfortable, we recommend our Fundamentals on After Effects and UI Animation Fundamentals free courses.
Will this course suit me if I have some skills in UI Animation?
Yes, the course will suit both beginners and experienced users. We provide basic documentation on relevant and new software, as well as optimized working processes and techniques.