This is going to be a longer post than what I normally do, but don't worry, there's a movie.  Finally, after a while, I've learned much more on After Effects.  And now, I've finally decided to get started putting it on the blog... just as soon as my new college semester is starting.  Excuse me for a moment... *Whack!* Ahem.  After Effects, kind of like Photoshop for videos, is really pretty amazing.  Used on a huge amount of big-budget movies, I've done a lot with it, and I've recently learned that I've barely scratched the surface! Here's a screenshot of the basic area (while working on a yet uncompleted/test project):  There's a whole lot of stuff in this program, but in order to do anything with it, it's good to know about three really important things: 1. The Preview panel.  It's usually on the right side of the interface, but if it doesn't appear at all, you can bring it up by pressing Window-->Preview (if it's ch...