After Effects - What do I need to learn to get to the next level?

Question

Hi all. I'm a designer recently dabbling in after effects and hoping to add it to my contracting arsenal. I've a (long!) background in 3d/video/general design and was wondering what are the "meat and potatoes" work you guys find yourselves doing? I'm not a total newb and I'm comfortable with the interface...But when I use after effects I use it as a glorified flash style animation/powerpoint/video editing tool and I want to move to the next level.
There are loads of resources out there - this forum, video copilot and the rest - but what kind of tasks would I be expected to do if i rock up at an agency as a contractor and tell them I'm an afx guy? Should I be looking at compositing, green screen/keying, colour correcting et al? What would you say are the five things I need to be able to do as a minimum if I want to advertise myself as a middleweight afx designer? I know its a vast program with almost limitless potential but i'm just trying to narrow things down a bit to sensibly ground myself in the software and start to really nail down some fundamentals.
I realise this is probably a frustratingly vague post but some real-world pointers from guys in the biz would be invaluable. If you were interviewing me, what would expect me to be able to do?
Cheers guys

Answer 1

You said it yourself: Too wide and too far a field. If you were to do VFX, obviously rotoscoping and tracking would be more important than other stuff, if you were to get into broadcast design fast turnarounds on stylized graphics matter more. Beyond that my general observation is that most "AE artists" don't really have a handle on their workflows and from sloppy naming conventions to awkward constructs to create simple blending modes I've seen too much. In my view the latter is more important than anything else - you have to know how AE "ticks" and adapt your workflow is rather than trying to bend and mold the program. When you know that, you can do anything reasonably quickly. E.g. in my projects I've always isolated steps by using lots of pre-comps. People will then sometimes accuse me of over-structuring my stuff, but in the crunch, I only have to exchange the logo in a single comp, not delve into the other 20 again. That's the kind of stuff I always go for.
Mylenium