Color Tips in After Effects

Joey Korenman : What's up Joey here at school of motion and welcome to day 14 of 30 days of after effects. Today's video is going to be a little bit different than the previous ones. And what I'm hoping I can show you are some hacks and workflow tips when dealing with color inside of after effects. Now I don't come from a graphic design background and I never really learned color theory the way you're supposed to do so when I'm working with colors, a lot of times, I feel like I'm just guessing and I'm hoping it turns out, right? So over the years I figured out some tricks and I've learned from other artists, and I'm going to show you a bunch of ways that non designers or even designers that struggle with color can really make things a lot easier. And hopefully de-stress you a little bit then obviously the end goal is to make your work look better.
Joey Korenman : Now, if you're really interested in getting into the design side of motion graphics, you'll want to check out our design bootcamp course taught by award-winning industry pro Michael Fredrick. You'll learn the art of visual problem solving in this absolute kicker of a course that tackles everything from how to approach a client brief compose, beautiful images that use color properly, create a set of boards that work together as a unit and so much more. Also don't forget to sign up for a free student account. So you can grab the project files from this lesson, as well as assets from any other lesson on the site. Anyway, without further ado, let's hop into after effects, and I will show you some cool stuff. So this is actually the first tutorial where I've used the latest version of after effects CC 2014. Uh, there's a very important reason why, which I'll get into in a minute.
Joey Korenman : Um, but what I want to show you guys is just some tricks that I use in after effects, uh, to, to kind of help me pick good colors and make sure my colors are working together, uh, in a pleasing way. Um, so first, uh, why don't we make a new comp real quick and I'll show you guys something that, you know, I still to this day have a tremendous amount of trouble with. Um, and that is picking colors when you have to sort of start from scratch, right? So let me just call this color pick or something, right. That, and let's say that you, you know, really like you have a simple design, you're going to have a background and maybe on that background, you're going to have some type of bar, you know, and it's just make everything black and white for now. And then you're going to have, you know, someone's name like a, I dunno, stinky fart, right?
Joey Korenman : So, you know, when, when you have to start from scratch and come up with the design all by yourself, uh, it's very helpful if you have some kind of design background and maybe you've learned a thing or two about color theory, um, how to compose things. And I'm sure a lot of you have, but, uh, I actually never went to school for that. Um, and you know, I'm sure like a lot of you, I sort of fell into motion design and I've had to learn along the way and because I don't have such a great background in it. I don't, you know, I was never taught the fundamentals. I'm, I'm very much self-taught, um, I've had to use a lot of hacks and tricks to, to sort of make sure that I can fake it while I'm learning. Right. Um, and so, you know, what I used to do when I had to pick colors for stuff like this was, you know, I, I would make a new solid, and I'd put it back here and I'd say, okay, what's a cool color.
Joey Korenman : Um, let me put the, uh, generate, fill effect on here. And then let me just, let me just think. Hmm. Well, I'm feeling like, like, you know, Green's pretty cool right now, but not like this screen more like in here somewhere, but that's too bright, so I'm gonna make it a little darker. Okay, cool. That's my background color. Um, without really thinking about, you know, and that was literally my thought process. That's my background color and I, and what, that's a terrible way to start, uh, because what you really need to be thinking about before you start is what's my color palette and how are my colors gonna work together? Um, because you know, one of the amazing things about colors is that this green, if I put it next to another color will look totally differently. And if I put a, you know, a yellow color over the screen, it'll feel different than if I put red over it.