7/30/2019 How to animate a character in after effects

1/4

80 Technique

01 An oten overlooked step in the process o producing an animation is that ostoryboarding. I oten work through ideas and timings at this stage to decide how theanimation should ow. Working out your ideas at this point is critical as it makes thewhole process more efcient knowing where you need to go with your project ratherthan wasting time later with no clear plan o action.

Ater Eects, Photoshopand Illustrator CS4

or laterAnimate a

character inAfter Effects

Stuart Preece

explains how to breathelie into your characterdesigns using AterEects built-in tools

Youve just drawn a cool-looking character in your

sketchbook, but why miss out on all the fun and stop there? Itsreally not difcult to turn that design into an animated motiongraphics showcase. In this tutorial Ill be covering how to set up yourcharacter to be animated in Ater Eects. As an example, Ill beusing a character that I created or an animated short, but Ill coverall the steps that enabled me to produce the job efciently while

retaining the initial vision or the design.

Stuart PreeceHaving previously

worked at CodeComputerlove andLove Creative, Stuartrecently branchedout on his own underthe name DigitalCavalier. Hespecialises in digitaldesign, interactivemedia andillustration. Seemore at www.digitalcavalier.co.uk

Time needed5-6 hours

SkillsStoryboardingand timingTaking sketchesinto Illustratorand PhotoshopSetting upcharacter designor animation

Computer ArtsSummer 2010 www.computerarts.co.uk

ART178.tut_ae 80 7/12/10 12:46:34 PM

7/30/2019 How to animate a character in after effects

2/4

81

02 From your initial drawing, youll need to start thinkingabout how your character is built. In this case, my characterhad numerous dierent poses, so you need to think about howthe character could be broken apart into the relevant bits:arms, legs, head, torso and so on. At this stage its important tocreate a toolkit or your character so that you can concentratelater on the un part o animating, without having to go back tothe start to create assets again.

05 Using File>Place, import your scan into Illustrator. As youre only ater asimple black and white trace, the deault Live Trace setting works fne. Ater Live Tracehas fnished, click Expand to convert the trace to paths.

04 Clean up your scan in Photoshop and, using Levels,crunch the whites to get a really clean background. Doing thismakes or much easier tracing in Illustrator and saves time.

03 At the initial stage I oten fnd it easier to hand-drawelements in pencil. Scanning in the pencil sketch and thentracing over in ink solves a number o issues: you can get youridea working much quicker in pencil rather than diving straightin with pen; and tracing over the pencil with ink creates a muchsharper image that can be live-traced more accurately withewer graphical arteacts cropping up.

Subscribe at www.myavouritemagazines.co.uk/coa/p090 or see page 92 Computer Arts Summer 2010

ART178.tut_ae 81 7/12/10 12:46:36 PM

7/30/2019 How to animate a character in after effects

3/4

82

Computer ArtsSummer 2010 www.computerarts.co.uk

10 One particular sequence calls or my character towalk, so with this in mind I create a pre-comp walk cycle thatcan be looped on the main timeline. Using the Pan Behind tool,I assemble the characters joints and move them to the centreo rotation or that body part; or example, lower legs at theknee, arms at the shoulder joint and so on.

08 For ease o importing, youll need to have your individual character assets asattened fles. You can save a master o your layered Photoshop character fle then

create a version with your characters components merged into separate layers. At thisstage youre likely to be dealing with a number o character parts, so its important thatyou take time to name your layers correctly.

07 Once youve got your bare outline imported, its timeto start bringing your character to lie with colour. I tend to workin layer sets or dierent parts o the character. For example,I have a head older containing the base colours, highlights

and lowlights. Keeping your layers grouped like this gives yougreater exibility should you need to change things in aparticular asset later on.

09 When everything is coloured, its time to get your assets imported into AterEects. Select File>Import>File and, in the dialog box, select your layered Photoshopfle and import as Composition Cropped Layers. This last point is important, as itmakes each object its own size rather than the size o the original Photoshop doc.

06 I tend to work up my masterelements at 300dpi, which gives me theexibility to scale them down later onwhen animating. It is o course possibleto keep your assets in Illustrator ormat I just fnd it easier to do this stage inPhotoshop. Create a new document andcopy and paste your traced vector pathas a Smart Object. At this stage itsworth keeping it as a Smart Objectrather than rasterizing it, just in caseyou need to tweak anything later on.

ART178.tut_ae 82 7/12/10 12:46:42 PM

7/30/2019 How to animate a character in after effects

4/4

Subscribe at www.myavouritemagazines.co.uk/coa/p090 or see page 92 Computer Arts Summer 2010

Technique 83Animate a character in Ater Eects

12 Once youve created a character loop pre-comp, you can use this asset inyour animation. One useul MotionScript that I use a lot is the loop_out command.Enable Time Remapping on your character animation pre-comp in the main timeline.Alt/Opt-click the Time Remapping property to bring up the MotionScript panel and

paste in the ollowing:loop_out(cycle,0)I you scrub the timeline, your character animation should now loop continuously.

13 One element that I was keen on having in myanimation was a sense o depth, but adjusting the camerasocus is oten quite tricky and doesnt give the control that youneed. I ound a great script that binds the ocus distance to anull object, meaning that when the null is moved in a scene thecameras ocus moves accordingly. Firstly, create a new nullobject and give it a name, or example null ocus. Alt/Opt-clickthe ocus distance property o your scene camera and pastethis code into the feld:L = thisComp.layer(null ocus);P1 = L.position - position;P2 = toWorldVec([0,0,1]);dot(P1,P2);You can now move the null object in 3D space to control ocus.

14 Working through your animation, its important to keep a sense o timingwith what you are doing. Always reer back to your storyboard to make sure that youare keeping on-track with everything. Animation is all about the preparation,especially when working to a tight deadline.

RAM previews

A good tip is to use RAM previews when working throughyour animation. Doing this enables you to get a eel or the ow oyour animation and also to tweak things on the y. Oten, I hold odoing a ull render until the ver y end o the day, then leave it goingovernight so that I can review it with resh eyes the next day.

11 When the anchor pointsare correctly aligned, I build thecharacter by establishing parentrelationships the torso is theparent o the arms and the upperlegs, upper legs are parent olower legs, and so on. In thissequence my character would bewalking, so with this in mind I needto create a walk cycle that can belooped later on. I create a compwith a time o one second; this isenough to create a basic walk loop.Keep your movements simple,spend time considering yourkey raming, and remember todo RAM previews to get a eel oryour animation.

ART178 tut ae 83 7/12/10 12:46:47 PM