The Beginner's Guide to Adobe After Effects vs Fantasy Character Design in Procreate

The course spans 34 video lessons across approximately 5 hours, covering After Effects fundamentals including panels and workspaces, keyframe animation, precomposing, masking, text work, looping animations, and video export. Multiple reviewers praised the "why not just the what" approach — Jake explains the reasoning behind every setting rather than dictating values to copy. One reviewer who completed the Taco Tuesday arcade project noted it gave a clear grip on the basics and strong workflow tips. The main limitation is that the course only covers Skillshare-hosted content and does not update as frequently as After Effects itself evolves.

Jake Bartlett is consistently described as one of the best After Effects educators online — a Denver-based motion designer with over 16 years of professional experience since 2010 and 30+ courses reaching 325,000+ students. Reviewers across independent blogs, his own website testimonials, and the School of Motion interview converge on the same qualities: he eliminates filler, explains principles rather than recipes, and makes complex animation concepts digestible for any skill level. Students from complete beginners to working professionals report learning something new in every lesson.

The course is included in a Skillshare subscription at approximately $13.99/month billed annually — one of the most affordable entry points into structured After Effects education. The subscription unlocks Jake's entire catalog of 30+ courses (Animating With Ease, Shape Layers, Kinetic Type, 3D in After Effects, and more), multiplying the value considerably. Independent reviewers note the annual plan makes Skillshare "incredible value for money" for beginner-to-intermediate creative content, though the subscription model means access ends if you cancel, unlike one-time Udemy purchases.

Jake monitors a Community discussion tab where students can post questions and he responds, and he runs live portfolio review workshops on Skillshare for direct feedback. However, multiple platform-level reviews note that peer feedback on student project submissions is inconsistent — many projects receive no critique. The Skillshare model lacks the structured cohort and Discord community offered by Jake's paid standalone "Launch Into After Effects" course, which includes a private Discord and personal feedback loops.

The Taco Tuesday arcade animation project produces a portfolio-worthy animation covering keyframe timing, precomposing, masking, parenting, and video export — all transferable to real motion design work. Reviewers note that the skills taught match industry workflows, and Jake's professional background ensures techniques reflect actual production practices. One reviewer specifically called out precomposing as a major takeaway that they hadn't properly understood from other resources. The course stops short of intermediate topics like expressions, 3D, and motion paths, which require Jake's follow-on Skillshare courses to continue.

The course spans 21 lessons and five hours five minutes across four well-structured units: Introduction, Thinking, Sketching, and Painting. The curriculum architecture is notably different from most Domestika illustration courses in that it dedicates an entire unit — three lessons — to creative ideation before a single line is drawn. Unit 2 (Thinking) walks learners through asking a design question, building a mind map, and constructing a mood board; this conceptual scaffolding is a genuine differentiator from courses that jump straight to technical instruction. Unit 3 (Sketching) covers thumbnailing across two parts, line of action and flow, the barcodes-and-ladders shape-analysis technique, and three parts of sketch refinement — a thorough eight-lesson treatment that moves from loose exploration to a tight, resolved character drawing. Unit 4 (Painting) covers Procreate masking across two parts, colour strategy and harmony across two parts, hard and soft shadows across two parts, ambient occlusion, and finishing touches across two parts. The painting unit is the weakest in production consistency: one verified reviewer noted that Nicholas occasionally begins a section with Procreate state changed off-camera, making it hard for students to follow exactly. This is the only structural weakness in an otherwise well-designed five-hour curriculum. Fifteen downloadable resources and ten practice exercises are included.

Nicholas Kole is among the most credentialled instructors in Domestika's digital illustration catalogue. He holds a degree in illustration and has worked as Principal Concept Artist at Phoenix Labs. His franchise credits include Sonic the Hedgehog, Crash Bandicoot, and Spyro the Dragon; his client list includes Disney, Dreamworks, Nintendo, Activision Blizzard, Netflix, Hasbro, Mattel, Warner Bros., and EA Games — a portfolio that places him among the working elite of commercial character design. Across the 257 Domestika reviews analysed, his teaching style is the single most praised attribute of the course. Students describe him as articulate, authentic, and generous in sharing his professional process. Multiple reviewers specifically note his emphasis on prioritising intuition over perfectionism — a pedagogically important message for beginner character designers who tend to freeze at the refinement stage. He is described as patient with complex concepts, and his explanations are praised for making abstract design ideas (line of action, shape language, colour harmony) feel accessible. The only instructional criticism — off-camera changes in the painting unit — is a production issue rather than a teaching quality issue.

The course is priced at $34.99 regular retail, with Domestika running frequent promotional sales that bring individual courses to between $9.99 and $19. At sale price, five-plus hours of structured character design instruction from a working Disney and Netflix concept artist with 22,000-plus enrolled students represents exceptional value compared to art school workshops or private coaching. One-time purchase with lifetime access is the core value proposition: no recurring subscription is required to retain access. Fifteen downloadable resources (brush sets, reference files, 3 file downloads) are included. Domestika Plus members receive a personalised completion certificate, which adds soft professional value for portfolio sites and LinkedIn. The minor value limitation is the hardware requirement: the course demands an iPad with Procreate installed and an Apple Pencil, which is a significant hardware cost for learners who do not own these. Learners already in the Apple ecosystem will find the course affordably priced; those considering buying hardware specifically for this course should factor total equipment costs into their value assessment.

The final project — designing a complete fantasy character in full colour using Procreate — is genuinely end-to-end: the course curriculum is explicitly structured to arrive at a finished, shareable illustration that demonstrates concept, sketching, and painting skills together. Over 228 student projects have been published in the Domestika community gallery, providing a rich body of evidence for what learners actually produce. The project quality in the gallery skews toward a clear, expressive character illustration with confident colour use and shape language — outcomes that are meaningfully portfolio-usable for beginners. The project scope is calibrated appropriately for a beginner course: one character, from mind map to finished painting, with enough constraints to prevent overwhelm but enough creative freedom to produce something personally meaningful. This is a stronger project outcome than many comparable Domestika illustration courses, which produce technique studies rather than standalone finished character designs. Ten in-course practice exercises across the 21 lessons also reinforce skill-building incrementally before the final capstone.

Character design is one of the most commercially active disciplines within digital illustration — games, animation, publishing, merchandising, and entertainment all require original character work. Nicholas Kole's professional background makes the real-world applicability of this course unusually concrete: the mind-mapping, thumbnailing, line-of-action, and colour-harmony techniques he teaches are not pedagogical abstractions but the actual professional workflow used at studios like Phoenix Labs, Disney, and Dreamworks. Learners who complete the course will have practised a production-grade character design pipeline from concept to finish, which is directly applicable to freelance briefs, game development indie projects, and portfolio building for studio job applications. The Procreate-specific instruction is fully transferable within the Procreate ecosystem and partially transferable to other digital painting apps (the conceptual and sketching units apply universally regardless of software). The one real-world limit is the iPad-only hardware dependency — Procreate does not exist on desktop, so learners working in studios using desktop software stacks cannot apply the Procreate-specific painting lessons directly, though the design thinking and sketching processes remain fully applicable.