I have spent the past ten years getting to know After Effects like a good friend; using it for my own creative work as animator, visual effects and motion graphic designer for television and film. I have used many software applications in my time but none of them compare, in terms of creative flexibility and sheer depth to Adobe After Effects.

Originally created by CoSA (The Company of Science and Art) in 1992, it was initially named PACo and was designed as a audio/visual compression and playback system. This evolved into After Effects, the software program that we know and love today.

I was introduced to After Effects in 1995. I was already a keen Photoshop user, and I had interests in animation and visual effects, stemming from my days as a prop-maker and cartoonist. After Effects was just like Photoshop with wheels! Anything I could do in Photoshop could now be animated over time in After Effects – the possibilities were endless!

After Effects’ animation tools are second to none and it remains the tool of choice for compositors, animators, and visual effects artists across the creative media industry. It is widely used in television, video production, web broadcast, and new media as well as in the film industry. If you’ve been to see Hollywood movies over the past five years then you’re almost guaranteed to have seen graphics and special effects created using After Effects.

One of After Effects’ greatest assets is its support of third-party plug-ins. While After Effects is quite capable of handling most post-production tasks, there is a wide range of additional plug-in effects available which integrate seamlessly with the main application. This further extends its already bulging toolbox, providing you with enormous creative flexibility.