After Effects Puppet Animation

In this session we concentrated on character animation in Adobe After Effects and experimented with different tools and techniques to set up a quick easy method to animate characters. We looked at making a 2D character walk from imported layers made in Illustrator. 

2D Walk Animation

The first thing I needed to do was to import the Illustrator file and make sure that each layer in the file were separate to each other, the reason for this was so I could move the layers individually within After Effects. It looked like this.

The next step is really important and crucial to making the body parts moving realistically. There is a tool called the pan behind tool and what this does is moves a symbol on each body part that is known as the central pivot which is what the object rotates around. Of course the central pivot is in the middle of all the objects so I had to move them in to the right place and the right place is where we would find a joint on a real body, e.g. the arms joint is at the top where the shoulder meets so this is where the central pivot will go.

After this I dragged each body part together to form the complete character  and then in the layer manager I made the body the parent layer for the other layers so now when I move the body the other layers will follow.

Using the walk sequence reference I rotated the left and right arm in to the correct position on the specific frames so when my character walks his arms will be swinging forwards then backwards. Next I needed to get the character to start bouncing up and down to create some realism to the movement so again on the right frames I slightly move the character up and then down.

Finally I needed to move the legs but it isn't as easy as rotating them into position because of the angle the foot and knee are in during the movement. So to enable more control over the legs I used the puppet tool which allows me to attach points to specific parts of the leg which I can then drag to move the knee or foot without moving the while leg. So now, on the right frames using my reference I rotated the leg but then also moved the knee and foot to create more fluidity in the movement.

What Did I Learn?

In the past I had a slight understanding on how to make a character in Illustrator and then animating in it After Effects but I didn't know the specifics to do it properly. I knew I needed to create each body part of my character in separate layers to import to After Effects but I didn't know about the pan behind tool to change the central pivot to make a character move properly. I also didn't understand how to use the puppet tool properly and that it is used to move more specific parts of a body part. Now however I am well aware of these tools and how to create and animate a character using Illustrator and After Effects.