Imported Illustrator artwork outside composition bounds becomes transparent in After Effects

I would say, the ultimate “public” goal of Adobe should be to make the job easier for the artist. The current work flow isn’t obvious and it’s an additional step. Often a designer will make something for print and later down the line someone says lets make a video. So the prep was not done before hand since the designer didn’t know it was going to be made into a video. So now someone has to do the extra prep work. Sometimes you also get files from clients and you have no say in how it was created or prepared. While in Illustrator if started with a video template it works, Photoshop does not behave the same way. The mask can be moved and adjusted without clipping, but the layer itself is clipped if any of the artwork is out of bounds. Which makes animating difficult and you have to do extra steps in order for this to work.

I agree with doing the research and reading to fully understand the tools you are working with. I am one of the few who like to read the instruction booklet/documentation, but most companies assume no one reads the instructions. For the most part that is true. If it doesn’t work right out of the box, most people will return it. At least that was my experience at Radio Shack when I worked there. Often times I’d save the sale by opening the box and reading the instructions with the customer. Since that is the case most companies rely on being idiot-proof since that is something they can control. Asking the consumer to learn more is a harder ask than trying to make it easier.

From the 17 years of being an animator (freelance and as a full time employee) I don’t think I have ever seen a Illustrator document done with a video template. Whether from Hollywood or big post-production houses. Maybe Adobe doesn’t stress the importance of using a video template or when using the video template it looks different than the default and are confused at what they are looking at and why the extra larger artboard. Also a lot of tutorials out there don’t use the video template either, which further hides the benefits of using a video template.

So, a simple check box that I suggested would be nice. It is intuitive and would solve a lot of confusion and prep work even if the designer didn’t use a video template (only in Illustrator not Photoshop) to begin with.

It’s not a workaround. It’s the way the feature is designed to work. 

Maybe someone on the development team can explain why the feature works the say it does, but I would assume it is because of the fact they are completely different programs with very different roles and rules for how their features work.