Build A Motion Graphics Template: Advanced Adobe After Effects

A narrow class that knows exactly what it wants to teach

Jake Bartlett's course does not try to be a comprehensive expressions tutorial. It picks one goal, building a customizable lower third that survives the trip from After Effects into Premiere Pro, and stays locked onto it for all 90 minutes. That focus is the course's biggest strength. Rather than cataloguing dozens of expression methods, it teaches four or five and drills them repeatedly until they stick: the property pick whip, the expression pick whip, variables, and sourceRectAtTime.

The opening lesson on expressions basics is unusually patient for something aimed at an "advanced" audience. It starts by parenting one layer's rotation to another's opacity just to demonstrate that expressions are, structurally, just a value being generated and piped somewhere else. Only after that foundation does it introduce random() and wiggle(), and it explicitly points viewers to the expression language menu as a built-in cheat sheet instead of asking them to memorize argument order. This is a good instinct: it lowers the intimidation factor of code without pretending the code isn't there.

The variables lesson is short but earns its place, framing a variable as a way to name a chunk of reused code, the same efficiency logic as a precomp, and that analogy will land well with anyone who already thinks in After Effects terms.

Where the real teaching happens

The sourceRectAtTime section is where the course justifies its "advanced" label. It walks through using the text layer's bounding box to drive a background shape's size and position, then spends real time on the fiddly parts most tutorials skip: why a left-justified text layer's box does not follow the anchor point by default, why dividing width and height by two matters for centering, and how the left and top values from sourceRectAtTime let the anchor point snap to the true baseline origin of the text. It is dense, but each fix is shown as a direct response to a visible problem on screen, which makes the logic easier to retain than if the code were presented all at once.

The lower third build then folds in offset sliders, expression controls on a null object, and multi-line text handling, showing how to keep two animated lines aligned to a shared left edge even when their bounding boxes differ. By the time the Essential Graphics panel lesson arrives, the template is functionally complete, so that lesson can focus purely on packaging: choosing which properties to expose, renaming them for an editor's benefit, setting a poster frame, and exporting a .mogrt for a real test in Premiere.

The honest limitations

The course is upfront about its own ceiling. Bartlett says outright that his own commercial templates have far more controls than the one built here, and that this class is a first stepping stone rather than a complete system. That honesty is appreciated, but it also means viewers expecting a marketplace-ready template will end with something more like a proof of concept: two text fields and one offset slider. Anyone hoping to learn a wider vocabulary of expressions, loops, conditionals, or layer arrays will not find them here. The pacing also assumes a viewer can pause and rewind, since several expression edits happen quickly with little repetition once the pattern has been shown once.

For an editor who already knows After Effects and wants a working, well-explained reason to start writing expressions instead of only using keyframes, this delivers exactly what it promises.

What you will learn

• ·Writing and reading basic JavaScript-based expressions in After Effects, including the property and expression pick whips
• ·Using variables to store and reuse values like opacity, width, and height inside an expression
• ·Applying sourceRectAtTime to dynamically size a background box or lower third to fit changing text
• ·Building expression controls (sliders, offsets) on a null object to centralize adjustments
• ·Setting up the Essential Graphics panel with master properties, renaming controls, and setting a poster frame
• ·Exporting a .mogrt file and testing it inside Premiere Pro's Essential Graphics panel