profile

Hi! I'm Megan Friesth.

I’m an explanimator–I write, illustrate, and animate educational animations. I’m a self-taught motion designer, striving to help you learn motion design–mostly After Effects–more efficiently than I did. Sign up for my monthly newsletter which includes tutorials, classes, and quick tips.

Featured Post

20 Tips to Work Faster in the After Effects Timeline | October Update

👋 Welcome to the latest edition of my monthly motion design newsletter, where I bring you fresh tutorials, a sneak peak of what’s coming soon, a handy tip, and a random recommendation! 🥳 New Learn 20 things you may not have known you could do in the After Effects timeline. A new feature in After Effects (released in August) is Quick Offset, which is handy for creating sequential animations. This feature allows you to select layers then hold command + option on a Mac or Ctrl + Alt on Windows...

New Explanimation about food waste!

👋 Welcome to the latest edition of my monthly motion design newsletter, where I bring you fresh tutorials, a sneak peak of what’s coming soon, a handy tip, and a random recommendation! 🥳 New Phew! I finally finished the first video for my new YouTube channel, Explanimated, where I’m making solutions-focused explainer videos on environmental issues. I initially was planning a long-form video about food waste, so I got deep into research-mode. 😅 Turns out that the causes and solutions to food...

20 Adobe Illustrator Tips

👋 Welcome to the latest edition of my monthly motion design newsletter, where I bring you fresh tutorials, a sneak peak of what’s coming soon, a handy tip, and a random recommendation! 🥳 New I recently published a video of must-know Adobe Illustrator tips: I also published a tutorial breaking down how I animated one of the logo animation examples for my class, Principles of Animation: Bring a Logo to Life. You don't need to watch the class for the tutorial to make sense! 🤫 Sneak Peak I’ve...

👋 Welcome to the latest edition of my monthly motion design newsletter, where I bring you fresh tutorials, a sneak peak of what’s coming soon, a handy tip, and a random recommendation! 🥳 New 15 Must-Know After Effects Tips These 15 pro-level After Effects tips and tricks will help you create motion graphics more efficiently! Watch now How to Illustrate with Shapes in Adobe Illustrator I also released a lesson from my class, Illustrate with Shapes: Design Vector Graphics in Adobe Illustrator,...

👋 Welcome to the latest edition of my monthly motion design newsletter, where I bring you fresh tutorials, a sneak peak of what’s coming soon, a handy tip, and a random recommendation! 🥳 New Learn how I created a peach animation that looks like it’s rotating in 3D space, but is actually made of 2D shape layers. In this Adobe After Effects tutorial, you’ll learn how to animate the Path Property of shape layers to simulate 3D rotation, and how to cut and rearrange the layer order to pull off...

👋 Welcome to the latest edition of my monthly motion design newsletter, where I bring you fresh tutorials, a sneak peak of what’s coming soon, a handy tip, and a random recommendation! 🥳 New Last month, I published videos #5 and 6 of the Adobe Illustrator Essentials series. I'm releasing these every other week, but all 8 videos are available now as a class on Skillshare. I also published the completely rerecorded version of my class, Easy Animated Icons in Adobe After Effects. That completes...

👋 Welcome to the latest edition of my monthly motion design newsletter, where I bring you fresh tutorials, a sneak peak of what’s coming soon, a handy tip, and a random recommendation! 🥳 New Last month, I published videos #3 and 4 on YouTube as part of the Adobe Illustrator Essentials series. I'm releasing these every other week but all 8 videos are available now as a class on Skillshare. I also published Illustrate with Shapes: Design Vector Graphics in Adobe Illustrator. In this...

👋 Welcome to the latest edition of my monthly motion design newsletter, where I bring you fresh tutorials, a sneak peak of what’s coming soon, a handy tip, and a random recommendation! 🥳 New Learn how to combine basic shapes to create more complex illustrations in Adobe Illustrator (no drawing skills required), in my new class: Illustrate with Shapes: Design Vector Graphics in Adobe Illustrator. Watch the trailer: In this beginner-friendly class, I’ll demonstrate how I illustrated 6 icons by...

👋 Welcome to the latest edition of my monthly motion design newsletter, where I bring you fresh tutorials, a sneak peak of what’s coming soon, a handy tip, and a random recommendation! 🥳 New Adobe Illustrator Essentials If you’re familiar with my YouTube playlist, Adobe After Effects Fundamentals, this is that for Illustrator! There are 8 videos that I’ll be releasing on YouTube every other week, but the entire series is available now on Skillshare. Watch on Skillshare The Illustrator...

auto-fade layers in After Effects

👋 Welcome to the latest edition of my monthly motion design newsletter, where I bring you fresh tutorials, a sneak peak of what’s coming soon, a handy tip, and a random recommendation! 🥳 New Automatically Fade a Layer In & Out in After Effects Instead of having to adjust keyframes, write an expression so that all you have to do is adjust the duration of the layer and it will automatically fade in and out based on the start and end of the layer. Watch the tutorial 😎 Also new... hope you like...