Preparing and importing Illustrator files

Before you save an Illustrator file for importing into After Effects, consider doing the following:

Crop the image so that you are only saving the portion that you want to import into After Effects.
To ensure that Illustrator files appear correctly in After Effects, select Create PDF Compatible File in the Illustrator Options dialog box.
To copy paths between Illustrator and After Effects, make sure that the AICB and Preserve Paths options are selected in the Files & Clipboard section of the Illustrator Preferences dialog box. If you don’t select AICB in Illustrator, After Effects prompts you when you attempt to paste the path.
To ensure that files rasterize most faithfully in After Effects, save your file in AI format instead of Illustrator 8.x or 9.x EPS format.

When you import an Illustrator file, After Effects makes all empty areas transparent by converting them into an alpha channel.

Note: When you’ve imported an Illustrator file, you can specify whether anti-aliasing is to be performed at higher quality or at higher speed. Select the footage item in the Project panel and choose File > Interpret Footage > Main, and click the More Options button at the bottom of the dialog box.

After Effects does not read embedded color profiles from Illustrator files. To ensure color fidelity, assign an input color profile to the Illustrator footage item that matches the color profile with which the Illustrator file was created.

Eran Stern provides a video tutorial on the Creative COW website that shows how to create text in Illustrator for use in After Effects: www.adobe.com/go/learn_ae_eranafterista.