Hello class,

Please disregard completely the rasterization instructions in Illustrator of your vector images! You will notice that you cannot import them successfully into After Effects as you will get solid gray boxes instead. That is because there are no shapes there, but rather, rasterized images which AE cannot convert into shapes.

HOWEVER, you can restore your old rasterized files from the files you created in Illustrator back to VECTOR IMAGES in Photoshop. The tutorial below show exactly how to do to this! But there are step-by-step instructions here as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZX890lABFQ

STEP 1:

OPEN PHOTOSHOP

>>Create a new document from the New Document Panel exactly as it looks above.

1920 x 1080 px
Resolution: 300
White Background
Hit Create

Your new panel will look like this below very similar to Illustrator, but it's Photoshop.

Screen Shot 2021-12-07 at 6.50.56 PM.png

Step 2:

OPEN YOUR OLD ILLUSTRATOR DOCUMENT with the altered rasterized images one frame at a time. You will have to create one Photoshop document for each panel in your storyboard to size 1980 x 1020 px just as you did before to restore your images back to vector shapes.
The example below is an Illustrator file from a student at another school. The images below are no longer vector images due the error (my bad) of rasterizing them. And although you cannot see the pixelated edges on the screen, trust me, they're there. It can be restored in Photoshop.

Click on all the images by holding down the SHIFT key. If you feel more comfortable doing one layer at a time for each element you want to repair in Photoshop, do so. For demo purposes, I will select the whole thing, blood drops and the larger blood drip on top.

Hit COMMAND/CONTROL "C" on your keyboard to copy them.
Go to the newly created Photoshop document. Do not confuse the Illustrator Document with the Photoshop document.
Hit COMMAND/CONTROL "V" to paste them in. Both images will be imported into Photoshop and will look like below:

Screen Shot 2021-12-07 at 8.02.26 PM.png

Right or Control Click directly on the image as the video instructs (really, look at the video on how exactly how to do this) until you get the marching ants surrounding all the elements in the image as seen below:

Screen Shot 2021-12-07 at 8.02.45 PM.png

Go to the Rectangular Marquee Tool and click on it.

Screen Shot 2021-12-07 at 8.58.00 PM.png

Then Right or Control Click on the image again (marching ants and all) and select "Make Work Path". Leave the tolerance at 1.0 as
shown below.

Screen Shot 2021-12-07 at 7.42.27 PM.png

As in the video, all the anchor points will be reappear!
While the Photoshop document is still open with your newly restored vector image, There is another step...

Screen Shot 2021-12-07 at 7.35.13 PM.png

Go to the Direct Selection Tool (the white arrow on the tool panel) and right or control click and select "Create Vector Mask".

Screen Shot 2021-12-07 at 7.35.27 PM.png

Once again, it is a vector image (phew!) that you can cut and paste directly from here into a new Illustrator document made to size as instructed before: 1980 x 1020 px. (The anchor point stage is not shown here on the blood, but they were all there.)

Step 3: Cut and Paste the image by selecting it, COMMAND/CONTROL "C" and paste it into a new Illustrator document. It might paste in much smaller than it was, just resize it accordingly and fill with the appropriate colors you had before. I would strongly suggest you create one Photoshop page per layer. (yes, I know, it's a lot of work...) but be on the safe side, then recreate your layers and import them into After Effects. It really does work; there will be no menacing pixelated shapes with white outlines showing, but rather, solid, clean vectors.

With the White Selection Arrow in Photoshop selected, select one element in the document you want to paste in first. In the case here, it's the larger blood drip. Hit COMMAND/CONTROL C to copy.

Go to the new Illustrator page and hit COMMAND/CONTROL "V" to paste it. A dialog box will pop up.

Just press OK. Remember, it may be exceedingly small on the page, but the anchor points are there! Resize it safely by holding the SHIFT key while pulling from the corner anchor points and pull it up to size. It will not have a FILL.

The image above is showing the resized vector image, again, with no FILL.
Now, either double click on it to bring up the color swatches or just color and fill it!

The vectors are now restored. You can now rebuild your layers.
Save the document as Frame 1 (or something you"ll remember) and close.
Now you can safely import them back into the Project Panel in After Effects and begin the process of breaking down the layers.

BUT WAIT, YOU'RE NOT FINISHED WITH THE PHOTOSHOP DOCUMENT YET!

Since the video is an older version of Photoshop, the "Save As" feature will not have the Photoshop EPS file available in the list of formats you must save it in. You must now Export it to have backup copy of your vectors should something go wrong.
GO TO FILE>>Export>>Paths to Illustrator to save it.

Screen Shot 2021-12-07 at 5.59.19 PM.png

This will create an entirely new Ai document which you can reuse, but when you open it, you will not be able to see at first.

Screen Shot 2021-12-07 at 10.32.10 PM.png

To see it, hit COMMAND/CONTROL "Y' to see the wire frame.
Select it and fill it with color from the swatch panel.
Hit COMMAND/CONTROL "Y" again to see the fill.
Again, the image will be quite small and not to size
Cut and paste into a larger new frame: 1920 x 1020 pixels and resize it.
Since you have already cut and pasted the image from Photoshop into a new Illustrator document, you don't need to use this new Illustrator document. But it's there as a backup should you need it again!
Best bet, better to cut and paste directly from the Photoshop file into a new and correctly sized Illustrator doc. This new .ai document will only confuse you. Think of it as only a backup, but don't open it.

Step 4: You can safely import those new files into After Effects. They will be true vector images with clean edges with no pixelation. They will be fully editable as well; you can even change the fill color!

Screen Shot 2021-12-07 at 10.35.57 PM.png