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Even though you won't really need any exterior devices to work with After Effects effectively it's always a good idea to bring in different elements so that your compositions are more unique. For example, did you sketch anything that you might want to bring into a composition to use as a background or a character or as a prop? Well, in that case you'll want to get it into your computer by scanning it in. Scanners really don't cost very much these days, and they all come with a software available so that your computer should be able to recognize it. I typically scan through Adobe Photoshop, but the scanners do have their own software and their own interfaces so you can scan through the software that comes with them. Likewise, a lot of printers these days, which I'm going to talk about in just a minute, also have scanning functionality. By the way, a technique that a lot of people are using these days, including myself, is e-mailing photos that you take yourself through your digital camera or your phone. For example, I use my iPhone to take pictures of sketches I do, I e-mail those sketches to myself, and I start working with them in Photoshop. So, that's one way you can use scanning and photographs to get your own images to After Effects. Speaking of digital cameras, I don't go anywhere without my digital camera. I have a Sony Cyber-shot. It's really a great camera, but I highly recommend that you go to your favorite electronics store and shop around. The prices are pretty reasonable these days. You can get a camera for about 100 bucks, 200 bucks, and of course, much higher. The advantage to using a digital camera is that you can take pictures of textures that you can use for backgrounds, you could take pictures of people that you want to animate by moving the picture around, or taking a picture of something that's against a pretty plain backdrop. Say you want to animate your friend and you have him stand against a white wall. Well, it's pretty easy to get rid of that white background and then you could bring your friend into After Effects and use the Puppet Tool to animate him, whether he likes it or not. Getting back to printers, printers are, once again like anything else, are really coming down in price, and a lot of them have multiple functionality. They can print, they can scan, they can fax, they can make coffee Ð well, the last one just a little hope on my end Ð but anyway, you can print things out such as, let's say you take a paint brush and you put some splatter effects on it, you crumple a piece of paper up and then you scan that in your computer, you print it back out, you do some more stuff to it, scan it back in, and you can really come up with some really intricate patterns that way. And, last but not least, something that just makes your life a little bit more comfortable when it comes to working with After Effects or the computer period, is a digital tablet, and I use a Wacom Tablet, and you can go to wacom.com and check out the different tablets available. They range in price from 100 dollars on up to about a couple of hundred dollars in different sizes and, as you can see here, they have a brand new one, so. That is just a few of the suggestions I'm going to make as far as increasing your functionality with peripheral devices for use in After Effects and in general with your computer work.