#aetuts

In this tutorial, you’ll have to know the basics of photoshop. I’ll be using these tools really frequently while doing this tutorial.

 and this effect on the elliptical tool

PHOTOSHOP PART

First, open a new document in photoshop. Use the size 500x500 (optional) so that it’ll work on big pictures as well. File>New. Open your new image and use the brush tool to colour your background colour black.

Now, you have to create a lot of new layers. Click on 

 or command+shift+N on mac. Click command+r/control+r and your file should look like this :

From the top and left side, drag down and to the right (you’ll see a blue line) to the center of the picture. Go to your elliptical marquee tool, click shift+alt from where the center is. You’ll get something that looks like this.

Colour the inside of the circle on the lowest empty layer. (any color will do) (x) Now, we play around with this effect

. Make a smaller circle INSIDE the bigger circle using the same method. (( Please make sure you’ve changed to this settings to 

 )) The smaller section should look like this (x). Do the same thing but a smaller section again. You should have two dotted circles. 

Now that you’re done with that, fill it with another colour on the next empty layer. These are how my layers look like (x).

You’re going to have to repeat all of these until you get the shape you want. I’m making a simple one and my final looks like this:

All my empty layers have been deleted. (x)

After this, you’re going to have merge the layers together [ DO NOT INCLUDE THE BACKGROUND ]and then use the polygon lasso tool to delete the parts you don’t want. These are my selected parts that i don’t want. (I’ve merged everything but the center white dot.)

How i selected 2 parts at once: 

  I changed the area i would like to delete because i didn’t like it but after selecting the area, go to the layer of the part you’d like to delete and click dlt/delete. Now delete the black background (x) and then save it as a PNG. (IT MUST HAVE A TRANSPARENT BACKGROUND)

AFTER EFFECTS PART

This part is actually really simple now. Open a new composition and make sure you chose the size of your saved png. If you used the same size as me, open a 500px wide and 500px high composition. [New>composition]

Import your saved PNG in now. (x) File>import>file. At the left side, you’ll see this.

Drag the file into the composition now and arrange it so that it fits perfectly. We’ll only be touching the rotation tool here.

Click on the rotation stopwatch icon at the beginning of the composition. You may change your ° to anything you want. Now drag it to the part where you’d like it to stop and change it to 60° (or anything you want). You’ll get two yellow diamond

The animation probably looks boring now, so drag the yellow thing on top (x) to the part where you want the next animation to stop. For this, i made it rotate -40° and then back to 0° at the part where i’d like my animation to completely stop.

You may move the diamond according to your liking. Now that you’re done save it (AS QUICKTIME) File> export>Add to render queue> render. 

FINISHED

Now all you’ve got to do is import it to photoshop and make your gif with it! The whole design is up to you on how you’d like it to look! You should sharpen/resize the new gif you’ve made in order to use it. Change the speed according to your liking. Make sure you’ve use the correct effect on it too. 

First, open a new composition. (Command+N on Mac and ctrl+N on Windows)

Now, something like this would appear. You can rename your new composition and chose the size of your composition. For this tutorial, I used 500px against 300px. You may chose your duration, but don’t make it last for a very long time otherwise the file will be really big when you import it to photoshop later. As for your background color, I recommend you use black or white if it is an unedited new picture so you could use the darken or lighten effect on photoshop later. This are my settings for this tutorial.

Now, you’d get a black new composition. Go to layer>new>text or command+T on Mac. Type whatever you want after that and change the settings at the side. You can download that font here.

Then, click on the layer at the bottom (x). After that, go to layer > create mask from text and something like this would appear. (x) The bottom layer would automatically change itself and be not visible. if you don’t want to see the yellow lines click on this 

 at the bottom. Your screen should look like the above picture. Now, this is where the fun part begins! 

Go to effect> generate > stroke (x). Something like this should appear at the left side of your screen, (x). change your settings to this. [click on all mask, change end to 0.0% and paint style to on transparent.]

Open your layers (x). Click on the time icon at the “start” frame. You’ll see a yellow diamond now. [Similar to Photoshop’s “create video timeline”]. These should appear on your screen. [The bottom circle(zoom) is optional]

Now, go all the way to where you want your animation to end. I chose 4 seconds. Change your start from 0% to 100% and click on the stopwatch icon again. The animation option frame would look like this.

Andnow you’re done with the animation! Time to save. [Drag this to where your animation ends to avoid getting rid of empty frames later (x)] Go to file>export>add to render queue (x). At the bottom there will be 1: your composition. 2: render queue. Click on Render

(PLEASE BE SURE TO SAVE IT AS QUICKTIME SO THAT YOU’LL BE ABLE TO IMPORT IT IN PHOTOSHOP)

Follow this tutorial on how to import videos and save them. 

Use the lighten effect if you chose a black background! [THESE SETTINGS]