Designing a Channel Ident

1h 30mIntermediate2019-11-04

Authors

Eran Stern

Teacher and Motion Designer, 20+ years of post-production experience

Course details

Idents are short promo videos that identify a station or network. Once a mainstay of radio and television, idents are now a critical branding element for all digital channels, especially platforms like YouTube. Join Eran Stern in this short, fun, and easy course, where he shows how to create your own ident in After Effects. Learn how to import and animate a multi-layered Illustrator file using the Graph Editor, extrude a logo into 3D, add 3D particles and animated text, and apply sophisticated lighting and shadows. Eran also shows how to render your result to a master file for delivery.

Learning objectives
Animating Illustrator artwork
Animating a camera
Extruding a 3D logo
Adding 3D particles and shadows
Rendering the result

Skills covered

IllustratorSocial Media MarketingAfter EffectsMarketingAdobeOne-Off

Concepts

0. Introduction

01 - Bringing a logo to life
02 - Using the exercise files
03 - Case study - The Zoom channel
04 - The brief

1. Import

05 - Preparing the artwork
06 - Importing assets

2. Animation

07 - Creating a basic transition
08 - Bouncing the logo
09 - Animating a camera
10 - Extruding the logo
11 - Lighting the scene
12 - Adding secondary animation

3. Particles

13 - Introduction to particles
14 - Setting up a 3D particle system

4. Titles

15 - Converting artwork to live text
16 - Per-character text animation

5. Shadows

17 - Adding 3D shadows
18 - Casting shadow from the particles

6. Finalize

19 - Adding motion blur
20 - Rendering

Conclusion

21 - Next steps