After Effects: Character Animation Techniques

Learn how to bring your characters to life with the character animation functionality in Adobe After Effects.

Discover how easy it is to bring your characters to life in Adobe After Effects. Join Angie Taylor as she shares tips and tricks for animating within this powerful motion graphics and compositing application. Learn how to set up anchor points, link the different parts of your characters together in a parental hierarchy, and create a simple character rigging system. Get tips for using the Puppet tool, including how to create a sense of depth in your animations and fix glitches with Starch pins. Plus, discover how to link master properties to your Puppet tool rig; leverage RubberHose, a rigging script for After Effects; and easily automate a lip-sync animation.

Introduction

• Design creative character animations in After Effects

1. Traditional Layered Setup

• Set up anchor points
• Link body parts with parenting
• Group body parts with nested comps

2. Rigging and Structures

• Set up Master Properties
• Use Controller layers
• Graph Editor and keyframe interpolation

3. Puppet Tool

• Motion capture with the Puppet tool
• Use bend pins and advanced pins
• Fix issues with Starch pins
• Create depth with Overlap pins
• Tweak Puppet tool animations

4. Advanced Rigging

• Use layers as adjusters
• Rig the Puppet tool
• Rig with Master Properties

5. Rigging Scripts

• Overview of RubberHose
• Overview of Duik

6. Audio Tricks

• Automate lip sync
• Trigger animation with audio

Conclusion

• Next steps