Bag o' Tricks

[Ashyukun]

Sometimes, effects just aren't necessary...

I learned a lot effects wise by watching other videos and trying to figure out, at least in general, how the effects in them were done, and they pulling up the respective program and fiddling with things. Almost no description of how something works is going to compare to actually going out there and trying it... I've on several occasions just sat down, dropped a piece of video onto the timeline in AfterEffects and started applying different effects to it to see what they did.

But beyond a basic knowledge of the programs you'll use to create them... what you really need is a good imagination. Especially with AfterEffects, you can do just about anything you imagine with enough work at it. The same goes for a number of other tools. Some of the cooler effects I've seen in videos have been very simple in how they were done, but I would never have thought of having used the programs in that way.