Setting Up Illustrator

You need to have Illustrator and After Effects running simultaneously in this section so you can copy paths in Illustrator and paste them as masks onto the solid layers in After Effects. Each letter in the jason.ai file is made of multiple Illustrator paths except the letter N, which is made of just one path.

Follow these steps:

1.	In After Effects, select the jason.ai layer in the Timeline, and choose Edit > Edit Original. Illustrator should start and display the jason.ai file. (Again, if you don't have Illustrator, you can go to the Adobe Web site to download a trial version.)
2.	In Illustrator, choose Edit > Preferences > File Handling & Clipboard. In the Clipboard on Quit section, make sure the Copy As option is set to AICB, and select Preserve Paths. Click OK.
3.	Choose View > Outline to view only an outline of the jason.ai file.
4.	Expand all the layers to display all the paths that make up each letter. These paths will enable you to easily animate the act of drawing the letters' outlines. Each letter is made of one layer containing one or more objects.