Animating Our Character
Philip Ebiner
Lessons
Class Updates & My Favorite CC 2020 Updates
06:22 2Understand the After Effects Workspace
05:39 3Starting a New Composition
08:15 4CC 2018 Update - Starting a New Composition from Footage
01:55 5Adding Media to Your Project and the Timeline
05:08 6Using the Basic After Effects Tools
10:20Create a Perfect Circle, Alignment, and Shape Colors
03:04 8Working in the Timeline
10:59 9Layer Properties
08:57 10Quiz: After Effects Basics
11Animating in After Effects
07:35 12Position, Scale, and Rotation Animations
05:17 13Tips to Make Your Animations Look More Nautral
04:21 14Using the Graph Editor
05:32 15Challenge - Bouncing Ball
01:01 16Solution - Bouncing Ball
13:00 17Quiz: Animating with Keyframes
18Working with Solid Layers and the Ken Burns Effects
07:07 19Working with Shape Layers, Strokes, and Paths
06:24 20Adding Layer Styles like Drop Shadow, Bevel, and Gradients
03:44 21Shape Effects - Trim Path Animations, Wiggle, and Zig Zag
05:54 22Quiz: Shapes and Solid Layers
23Track Matte Animations - Make Layers Appear and Disappear
08:37 24Using Pre-Compositions to Group Layers
05:34 25Easily Reverse Complicated Animations
02:14 26Playing with Time
05:54 27Blend Modes
06:05 28Stabilize Shaky Footage
04:04 29CC 2018 Update - Previewing and Favoriting Fonts
00:46 30CC 2019 Update - Responsive Design Time
03:36 31CC 2019 Content Aware Fill
03:55 32CC 2019 Create Motion Graphic Templates
08:37 33Quiz: Important After Effects Skills
34Intro to Motion Graphics Projects
00:53 35Clean Lower Third
09:22 36Logo Reveal Animation Bumper
13:25 37Colorful Transition
16:59 38Text with Mask Path Animation
10:05 39Text Bubble Animation
13:39 40Weather App 1
16:41 41Weather App 2
08:21 42Weather App 3
06:59 43Quiz: Motion Graphics Projects
44Flat Animation Challenge
02:47 45Phil Designs his Flat Animation Scene
01:23 46Animating Fireworks with the Repeater Effect
15:02 47Removing Green Screen Background
06:46 48Adding a Background that Matches the Foreground
07:55 49Adding Motion to a Still Image with the Puppet Tool
06:26 50Adding Movement with the Ripple Effect
06:07 51Quiz: Flat Animation Challenge
52Intro to 3D
10:04 53Swinging 3D Text Animation
12:11 54Build Out Your 3D Composition
05:47 55Animating Our 3D Scene
07:38 56Create Stars in After Effects
05:11 57Quiz: Green Screen (Chromakeying)
58Using the Rotoscope Tool
06:55 59Cleaning Up Your Edges
07:21 60Finishing Our Rotobrush Animation
07:33 61Quiz: 3D Animations and the Camera Tool
62Easy Screen Replacement with Masks
09:56 63Replacing a Screen Version 2
13:49 64Screen Replacement with Mocha
07:13 65CC 2019 Update - Native Mocha AE Plugin
05:08 66Quiz: Rotoscoping
67Using the Puppet Pin Tool
04:33 68Animating Your Puppet Pins
03:04 69Animated Blinking Eyes
08:21 70Adding Perspective with Animated Clouds
07:10 71CC 2018 Update - Advanced Puppet Pin Tool
02:08 72Quiz: Screen Replacements
73Applying Text Animation Presets
05:59 74Create a Page Turn Effect with CC Page Turn
10:05 75Radial and Linear Wipes
03:20 76Color Correction in After Effects
03:33 77CC 2019 Update - Selective Color Adjustments
03:25 78Quiz: Puppet Tool Animations
79Motion Tracking Basics
09:51 80Tracking Text and Visual Effects to Video Clip
06:21 81Tracking Rotation and Scale
11:33 82Adding Details to Our Text
04:04 83Quiz: Motion Tracking
84Intro to Character Animations
01:31 85Design Your Character
14:32 86Rigging Your Character
02:50 87Animating Our Character
09:55 88Adding the Animated Background
09:12 89Adding Details to Character Movement
06:46 90Adding the Paper Cut Out Look
05:29 91Quiz: Character Animations
92Exporting an H264 File from After Effects
07:03 93Exporting from After Effects with a Transparent Background
04:03 94Exporting from After Effects through Adobe Media Encoder
04:40 95CC 2018 Update - Exporting an Animated GIF from Adobe Media Encoder
02:14 96Create an Animated GIF from After Effects CC 2017
07:03 97Audio Tips for After Effects
02:19 98Working with Premiere Pro
05:54 99Quiz: After Effects Workflow & Tips
100Expressions Basics
07:24 101Animate a Flickering Light with Expressions
17:35 102Quiz: Expressions
103Conclusion
00:44 104Final Quiz
Lesson Info
Animating Our Character
now let's animate. So what I like to do when I create my character is to duplicate this composition. Just so I have another draft of it. If I ever want to go back, refresh, restart, I can do that. So I'm going to take the hero to layer, duplicate it and I'll just name this one hero to draft. Okay. And I'll just put that in the compositions folder if you want to look at it too. Okay, so for a hero to No, we still have our hero too. I'm actually just going to close out all of these other tabs and I'm closing those out by pressing command. W that's the shortcut for that let's animate. So in our other one actually let me open that back up, we animated the legs. So he sort of kneels down, he gets ready with his arms and then he springs up and there's also a little subtle like deeper little push and then he jumps up. We're going to do something similar, but he's just gonna sort of do a squat and then lift up. So what we need to do is animate both the legs and the arms right now. So starting ...
with the legs which seems to be the most obvious thing to animate first. Let's open up our leg well right and leg left. Go into contents and we're going to be animating the path. So I want to open the path of both of these so we have it easily accessible. Okay, zooming in. Okay, so to get that squat action first, we want to set a key frame here at the beginning. So he's going to be standing there for just a moment to set a key frame for path for both legs left and right, then go forward. Maybe a 2nd or so. And now in the path we want to creates sort of a bend. So we're going to take this point. We're going to bring it up a little bit so it's a little bit shorter. But then take the extension and drag up. So we get that sort of bend. Now for the leg left. Let me just show you something so that you understand what's going on. If I just click left leg and then I try clicking on this. Whoa. That's not exactly what I wanna do. You gotta click into the path. Okay. And so we're going to bring it up to about the same point. And then bandit just like so kind of match the bend. Something like so we can even bend inside too if we want. But I'm not going to do that. So that looks kind of close but you'll notice something funny happening. He's bending his legs but he's not squatting down. What the heck? So what we need to do is animate the torso as well. But how do we know exactly where we want him to squat down to? That's where we use rulers. Now. You might have noticed that I have these rulers open. If you don't have those open, go to view show rulers or press command. R. See you now what I can do and if you've used adobe illustrator or Photoshop this is similar. We can click within the ruler on either the top or the left and dragged into our composition. And this creates sort of an invisible just for our reference. A line that we can use. And I'm gonna put that right there at the bottom. That's where his feet are. Right. Okay so now what I can do with the torso press P. To bring up position. I can set a key frame right there where our first position key frame is for the path the first path key frame is I'll go to the second key frame just by pressing K. On my keyboard and I'll drag down. Okay so now it looks like he's actually squatting down now. We might want to make this a little bit more extreme actually. So what I can do is bring him down further closer to the ground and then that gives us a better reference for how much we need to bend our path. So let me go again into our path one not just the path because if I take the path and I take my selection tool it moves the whole path Click Path one. I know it's confusing and I keep repeating myself but I know this is confusing for a lot of people. Let's take our leg up like so and then make even more of a bend now with our other one take our path like left, just like that. Okay, let's take this one. We can even take this one in for the other one too. That might actually look good. So let's rotate this like, so okay, so now if we zoom out, we get more of a squat. Okay, the one thing is that the legs kind of blend in with the arms, so actually for the leg, I'm going to change the color so I'm gonna select both legs right and left. Take the not in the film but the stroke and make it a little bit darker. So we just have a little bit of a difference in color from the legs and the hands in case they cover each other up. Like so awesome. So that looks pretty good. We actually, one thing I realized is that I don't want the feet to move apart, you know, this is just playing around with it. So I'm gonna move this point in just a little bit at this point in, okay, that looks better and we'll play around with the speed of this stuff too, which will make it look better. Okay, so the legs go down and maybe when the lights go down, the arms kind of go up and the elbows like point up. So let's close our legs. Okay, now go into our right arm and left arm going to contents shapes, path, shape path, go to the first key frame set a key frame for path, so we'll start there and then if we go into here, let's zoom in, click on our path, we can bring this up like so Okay, bring the elbows in something like that. I think that looks pretty good. Take our other path, bring it up, rotate our arm around. Okay, something like that. Okay, that looks pretty good. Crouches down, That's pretty good. Okay, let's play through this. Crouches down and then he needs to spring up so we'll send another key frame for around here a second later. So let's just copy all of our key frames. Press you on our keyboard and then you again to see all of our key frames and let's just copy them copy paste, copy paste. Or just click this little key frame button on the far left, which creates a key frame based off of the other key frame that was previously set, so now it sticks down there and then we'll have a shorter sort of jump up. So what we can do is just actually copy these first key frames but we might want to I don't know if our I think our arms, I guess our arms when we jump, we probably putting them down, but a superhero is going to put his arms up, right? So instead of these key frames for the arms, let's make our arms go up. So again we have to go into our arm path layers itself, move them up. I'm sure the rotation is right, just like so okay, maybe one arm is up, One arm is down. You can do whatever you know kind of motion you want? Okay, so now let's zoom out and see how this looks. Yeah, that looks pretty good. Arms go up. No like so so let's play through this. Crouches down, springs up. Cool. Okay so now let's play run with the motion or the speed. So again press you you again select all of these key frames F nine on my keyboard or right click key frame, assistant easy ease. Now when he crouches into this key frame we want to slow it down. So let's go into our crafting graph editor. Select this point which is now selected for all those key frames I've selected. So it's going to slow into that Crouch and then it's gonna be like a pop. So let's take both of these key frames in at the end. Yeah, that's good. That's good. Looks like he's popping off the ground. So now this looks like good motion, he's jumping up but we need to add some context to it and that's what we're going to be doing with adding a background
Class Materials
Ratings and Reviews
Student Work
Related Classes
Adobe After Effects