Transcripts
1. Intro: Hi, my name is Carminys Guzmán. I'm an animator, illustrator, and a scriptwriter based in Spain, originally from Dominican Republic. In this course, I will teach you how to create funny character-based loops that people will love to watch again, again, and again. I'm the co-founder of Operary.com, an animation studio based in Madrid. We have over nine years of experience producing beautiful animated explainer videos for hundreds of companies worldwide, such as Intel, Deloitte, Bayer, Porsche, and many more. I'm very excited to share my knowledge with you. We will start preparing the designs in Adobe Illustrator so we can work effectively in After Effects. Then we will get in touch with the After Effects interface and prepare our character to animate it simply. Next, I will show you how to easily animate the character and four different ways to create amazing animated loops. To finish, you will do an extra exercise to apply everything you have learned by making an animation from scratch. You can download the project files. This way, you can follow the instructions in real-time and it will be much easier for you to apply what you're learning. This course is ideal for animators, illustrators, graphic designers, creative artists, and generally, anyone who wants to learn how to make amazing animations easily and in the shortest time possible. This is an easy-to-follow course. However, if you have not used After Effects before, you can take my previous course, Animate Your Illustrations in Record Time Using Adobe After Effects, first. There is no time to lose, join now, and let's get started!
2. Project: At the end of this course, you will be unleashing your creativity by creating your own animated look. I would show you four different ways to make it. After finishing a lesson, I will give you some indications. Please don't skip it; follow them and practice to get the best results. Feel free to download and use my artwork to practice if you don't have time to create your design from scratch. Also, at the end of this course, you will do an extra exercise to apply everything you have learned. I'm looking forward to seeing your work. Please upload it to the course project gallery. If you have any comments or questions, please post them on the discussions tab. I can't wait to see what you come up with. Have fun.
3. Preparing the Files: Hi there. In this class, we will see how to organize our design elements to work efficiently in After Effects. We have used Adobe Illustrator to design our character. You can download the illustrator file from projects and resources, so that you can apply everything you learn during the course in real-time. To prepare the file for After Effects, we will separate the elements we will animate into layers. We will start from the front arm. Click on the symbol here to create two layers, one for the arm and another one for the front arm. With a double-click, we name them. Then we drag the elements within their respective layers. Now, we need to create two more layers, one for the head and one for the hair. As we have done before, we name the layers and drag the elements inside the corresponding layer. If we deactivate the head layer, we can see that there is a second head below. We have created two heads for our character because we will use this animation for two different things, one for the full chart of the girl playing ping-pong and one for the foreground following the ball's movement. In the foreground, we will animate both the eyebrows and the mouth. We will create three more layers, one for the mouth, one for the eyebrows, and one for the second head. Again, we drag the elements to their respective layers. We can now turn the head layer back on. Before we continue creating layers, let's take a look at the animation. If you notice, the finger is above the ping pong paddle, but it does not follow its movement. Besides, the ball also moves independently. We have to create three new layers, one for the ball, one for the finger, and one for the ping pong paddle. Once again, we drag the elements within their respective layers. Since the body, the legs, and the shirt don't have any animation, we can put everything within the same layer. We're going to call it body and legs, for example. Now we only need to organize the arm that is playing ping-pong. As we did before, we create two layers, one for the arm and one for the forearm and we drag the elements. With these guys, our character is ready to be imported into After Effects. Finally, we are going to save these changes, that's very important.
4. First Steps & Shortcuts: Before we start animating the projects, let's getting touch with the After Effects interface and also let's see the shortcuts that we will use in this course. We will work with the standard workspace, but you can choose the option you prefer. The first step is to create a new composition. We go to Composition and select New Composition. Opening new 1920 by 1080 compensation at 24 frames, name it, and give it four seconds. As a second step, we will import our Adobe Illustrator design. Go to File, select Import File, and then select the desired file. When we import a layered file, in the Import As option, we must select Composition Retain Layer Sizes. As you can see, a composition and a folder with layers have been created. We are going to work on the composition. First, drag the imported composition into the main composition. We will activate the Toggle Transparency Grid option by clicking here to see the design better. Now let's take a look at the After Effects interface. The panel where you see the characters is the Viewport. This panel is where we will see the results of our designs and animations. At the bottom, you can see the Timeline panel. This panel is where we will spend more time creating the animations. From here, we can easily modify the transformation properties of the layer. If we look to the left, we can see the Project panel. This is where all the compositions that we create and all the files that we import will appear. At the top, we can find the essential tools. Now we'll take a look at the most known keyboard shortcuts for this course. The shortcuts refer to the layers properties and the tools that we use most commonly. Let's see how to open the layer properties with a single click. Press "A" for the Anchor Point, P for the Position, S for the Scale, R for the Rotation, and T for the Opacity. Also, if we hold down the Shift key, we can open several properties simultaneously. Now we're going to see how to access the main tool with the touch of a key. Press "V" for the Selection Tool, hold Space Bar for the Hand Tool, Z for the Zoom Tool, W for the Rotation Tool, and Y for the Pan Behind Tool. It's about practice. At Projects and Resources, you have a PDF file available for download with the most helpful shortcuts.
5. Character Rigging: Class, in this lesson, we will prepare our character for animation. But first of all, we are going to prepare the background of this scene. To do this, we will create a shape layer. To ensure that we create a shape layer and not a mask, we need to go to Edit and Deselect all. Now we double-click on the rectangle tool and a shape layer is created with the size of the composition. From here we can change the color to our liking. Click on "Okay", and drag the layer below the design. To name the new layer, we press the "Enter" key. With a double-click we entered a ping pong composition. But hold on. Let's save the project before we forget it. Go to "File", select "Save" and save the project. We will start placing the anchor points on the layers to apply animation in their rotation. The anchor points will be the reference points around which the layers will rotate when we animate them. First, to make it easier to locate the anchor points, we select the first layer of all and open opacity. Remember to put into practice to chart case that we saw in the previous lesson. We go to the bottom with the first layer selected and with the "Shift" key pressed, we select the last layer. In this way, all the layers are selected. Next, we lower the opacity. By reducing the opacity, we can see better where our layer starts and end. We can also see where the intersections of the layers are. It is very simple. We select the pan behind tool, then select the layer and place, the anchor points at the reference points around which we want the layers to rotate. If you are not sure if you have placed to the anchor points in the right place, with the rotation tool you can rotate the layer and check if the rotation works. We will do the same process with the arms, the hair, and the ping pong paddle. If you realize we have not placed the anchor points in the layers that make up the head. We have only placed them in the hair, this is because to control the movements of the head, we're going to create a null object. A null object is an invisible layer that you can create to control the movements of other layers. To create a null object, we go to "Layer", "New" and select "Null Objects". We can call it head controller. As with the rest of the layers, we place this so that the anchor point of the null objects will be the reference points around which we want the head to rotate. Finally, I want to mention that we have not placed the anchor points on the finger or the body legs layer because we will not animate its rotation. Great. Now we can select all the layers again, and reset the opacity to a 100 percent. Now let's see how to use the parenting technique. Right now, if we move any of the layers with the selection tool, they move independently. But we need that, for example, when the arm moves, the fore arm follows its movements. Let's start by linking all the layers that make up the head with the head's controller. To do so drag the pick whip from these layers to the head controller. Now, if we rotate the head controller, the head moves too. We can deactivate the first head to see that the second head is moving as well. Let's turn it back on and continue to do the same process. We're going to link the finger and the ping pong paddle with the forearm. To finish we link the forearm layers with the arm layers. In this animation, we do not need to link the layers of the arms with the body because it will not move. Now it is necessary to link the ball with any layer because it will move independently. That's it. We already have our character ready for animation.
6. How to Get a Loop: Before animating the first loop, you have to understand a few basics. Having a perfect loop will depend on the duration of the movement concerning the duration of the composition. As you already know, our composition has a duration of four seconds. In our animation, we will make the movements of our front arm last two seconds. One second to turn to the left and another second to turn to the starting position. The rest of the body parts will make a complete movement every second, every 24 frames. To ensure that our loops work well, we only need to divide the duration of our composition by the duration of the animations. If the result is a whole number, it will work perfectly. Okay guys, having these on mind, we can start with the animation process. See you in the next lesson.
7. Loop 1: Now that the character is ready, it's time to start with the fun part, animation. Let's just start with the front arm. We select the Arm 1 layer and open the Rotation property. To animate the rotation of the Arm 1 layer, we need to create the first keyframe. Let's do it by clicking on the stopwatch. I like the initial arm pose, so I will leave the rotation at zero. Now, advance one second on the timeline. You can see the time counter on the left, and we rotate until we achieve the desired result. We are looking for a very smooth movement for the front arm. We will rotate very little. We are going to do the same with the Forearm 1 layer. Again, we go to the beginning of the timeline, create a keyframe and rotate slightly, advance one second and rotate in the opposite direction. Perfect. Now that we have created our keyframes, we will create an expression to save time. We need to click on the stopwatch while holding down the Alt key to apply an expression. Next, we write a loopOut ping-pong expression. We will copy the expression that we have applied on the Arm 1 layer rotation to save more time and we will paste it into the Forearm layer. For this, make a right-click on the rotation and select "Copy Expressions Only". Next, select the Forearm 1 layer and paste the expression with Control V or Command V on Mac. If we press zero on the numpad, we can see that thanks to the expression loopOut ping-pong, the Arm and the Forearm layers movements comes and goes throughout the composition. As we saw in the previous lesson, the front arm animation lasts two seconds, one second to turn to the left, and another second to return to the starting position. But the movement is a bit rough. To smooth it, we select the keyframes, right-click "Keyframe Assistant", "Easy Ease". You can also apply it by selecting the keyframes and pressing F9. If we take a look, we can see that the animation now looks smoother. Now let's do the same with the head. We select the Head Controller and open the Rotation property. We go to the beginning of the timeline and rotate the head until we achieve the desired result. We cannot forget to create the first key by clicking on the stopwatch. Next, advance one second on the timeline and rotate the head in the opposite direction. We do the same with the Hair layer. We create a keyframe and rotate. Advance 12 frames again, and rotate in the opposite direction. Oh no, before I applied the second keyframe of the head controller in the wrong place, it must be in frame 12. We select it and put it in the right place. Remember that except for the front arm, the rest of the elements will make a complete movement every 24 frames. That is, every second, 12 frames to go and 12 frames to return to the starting position. Select the keyframes and press F9 to smooth the movement. Next, we copy the expression that we have applied on the Arm 1 layer rotation, right-click on the Rotation and select "Copy Expressions Only". We paste it into the Head and the Hair layers with the Control V or Command V on Mac. Let's take a look. Later, we will add more fluidity to the animation, but for now it is okay. Now we are going to animate the rear arm. The process is exactly the same as what we have seen so far. We select the Arm 2 layer and open the Rotation property. We create a keyframe and rotate the arm. Next, we advance 12 frames on the timeline and rotate it in the opposite direction. Again, we do the same with the Forearm 2 layer. We select the keyframes and apply the ECEs with the F9 key and we paste the expression, we copy it before with Control V or Command V on Mac in the Arm 2 and Forearm 2 layers. Let's take a look. Great. Now we only have to animate the ping-pong paddle and the ball. Animate the ping-pong paddle is very simple, since we will apply the same method that we have used so far. We create a keyframe and rotate the paddle, advance to our frames, and rotate it in the opposite direction. Now apply ECEs with F9 key, and again, we paste the expression with Control V or Command V on Mac. It is a good practice to review the animation during the process to ensure that everything is going well. Before animating the ball, we will improve the animation. The goal is to imitate the inertia created by the most exaggerated movements of the body to make the animation appear more natural. To do this, just select the frames and move them on the timeline. The paddle follows the inertia of their arm movement, so we will move the animation two frames. On the other hand, the hair follows the inertia of the head movement. We are going to do the same, select the keyframes and move them two frames. Before reviewing, we will select both the hair and the head keyframes, while we hold down the Control key or Command key on Mac, and we're going to move them two frames. The reason for this is that I want the start of the head movement to coincide with the start of the ping pong paddle movement. If you notice, the ping pong paddle movement starts at frame 2. Okay, let's preview. Now, the animation looks much more natural and fluid, and we made it by moving the frames slightly. Now we are going to animate the movement of the ball. Let's make the puddle hit the ball in frame 6, for example. Next, we go to the Ball layer, open the Position property and create a keyframe, and we put the ball on top of the ping pong paddle. Advance 12 frames to frame 18 specifically and move the ball up. Again, we copy the expression loopOut ping pong that we applied previously on the other layers' rotation. When we copy and paste expressions between different properties, we need to select the property directly, in this case, the position, and then paste it. Let's take a look. Now we will smooth the movement when the ball reaches the top to make it more realistic. To do this, we select the second keyframe and apply ECEs with F9. We don't have to apply ECEs in the first keyframe because the ball must bounce sharply against the ping-pong paddle. We can see that it is not enough, we need to smooth it even more. There are two ways to do this; through the Graph Editor, and the other is by modifying the influence of the movement. The second option is much simpler and it is just as effective as the first one, so we will select this one. Once we have applied ECEs some the keyframe, we right-click "Keyframe Velocity" and set the influence to 80 percent. The higher the value, the smoother the movement. Now, if we preview again, we can see our animation is almost finished. It is looking very good. Up to frame 6, not all of our animations are working. The ball, for example, is floating in there air the first keyframes, this causes the look to be not perfect. To solve this, we simply select all the layers and drag them onto the first keyframe of the ball is at the beginning of the timeline. We drag the layers to the end of the timeline. Now we have our first loop finished. Let's go to the main composition to see how it looks with the background. Nice. I'm very happy with the results. Are you?
8. Loop 2: Hello, class. Taking advantage of the animation we created in the previous lesson, we will create loop number 2. Let's go for it. First, we will go to the project panel. From here we duplicate the ping-pong composition, select it, and with Control D or Command D on Mac, duplicate it. With a double-click, we entered the composition ping pong 2. First of all, we will deactivate the head layer since we are not going to use it. Then I am also going to move the hair layer below the head 2 layer. We will start by animating the mouth of our character. We are looking for the mouth to open and close every 12 frames following the ball's movement. We select the mouth layer and open its scale property. We create a keyframe at the beginning of the timeline. We scale it down, and then we move to frame 12 and scale it up. We select the key and press F9 to smooth the movement. Next, we copy the expression we have applied in the previous lesson on the head controller rotation, for example. We select the scale property and paste. Let's zoom in to see better. Having increased the scale of the mouth above 100 percent, the layer has become a bit pixelated. To solve it, we will activate the continuously rasterized option by clicking on this box here. If you can't see this option, click "Toggle Switches/Modes" until you can't see it. By activating this option, we can expand the scale of our layers without getting pixelated. Better yet, we will activate this option in all layers since later we will scale the entire composition to make the foreground of the face. Now we're going to animate the position of the eyebrows. Select the layer of the eyebrows and open its position property. We create a keyframe at the beginning of the timeline, then we advance to frame 12 and move them up. We select the keyframes and press F9 to smooth the movement, and we paste the expression loop out ping-pong. We select the position property and paste. Let's take a look. Great. We already have our second animation ready for the loop. We go to the project file, and from here we duplicate the loop 1 composition, and with a double-click, enter the new loop 2 composition. Drag the ping-pong 2 composition into it and scale it up to 280 percent, for example. Thanks to the fact that before we have activated the option continuously rasterized within all the layers, now we only need to activate it in the composition so that it is not longer pixelated. We are going to flip our animation by right-clicking Transform, Flip Horizontal. Perfect. We will place our character in such a way that the paddle is not visible. We can expand this scale a little more. This is perfect. Now let's create the loop. First, we go to the second one in the timeline. Select the ping-pong composition and create a keyframe in each position's property. Since we want the animation to disappear from the top of the screen, we advance to second two and move our composition off the screen. Select the keyframes and press F9 to smooth the movement. Now we want the ping-pong 2 composition to follow its movement. To do these, go to the second two, right where we have created this second keyframe in the ping-pong composition, and link the ping-pong 2 composition to the ping-pong composition. If we preview, we can see that we already have half of the work done, but the movement is not fluid enough. To improve it, we make a right-click on the keyframes on which we have previously applied Easy Ease. Select Keyframe Velocity and set the influence to 80 percent. Let's preview again. The movement is now much more fluid. We would advise in the timeline to second three and create a keyframe in the ping-pong 2 layer position. Next, advance to the end of the timeline and move the character out of the screen to the left side. Select the keyframes and press F9 to smooth the movements. Again, we set the influence to 80 percent. Now let's take a look. It seems that we have to move it more to the left so that the ball also disappears from the screen. Great, we already have it. Now select the ping-pong composition and duplicate it. Move to the beginning of the timeline before we have applied any keyframe. By clicking on the stopwatch, we eliminate the keyframes that it has applied. Once these is done we just have to scroll to the end of the timeline and link the ping-pong composition with the ping-pong 2 composition. Now we have our wonderful loop finished.
9. Loop 3: Hi there. Welcome to this lesson. We will create loop number 3 by animating this scale of the character. You will see how simple it is. Let us start by duplicating the loop 1 composition from the project panel. Then a new composition called loop 3 will be created. By double-clicking, we enter inside. Now we are going to duplicate the ping pong composition from the timeline. Before animating anything, we need to place the anchor point at the point we want it to take as reference to animate the scale. If you look, depending on where the anchor point is, this scale will behave differently. We're going to leave the anchor point at this point here. Next, we move to second two on the timeline and create a keyframe in this scale property. Then, we advance to keyframe 3 and increase this scale until the character disappears from the screen. When increasing the scale, E becomes pixelated. To so solve this, we have to activate the option, continuously rasterize both in the composition and inner layers, just as in the previous lesson. We can finish scaling the composition. Select the keyframes and press "F9" to apply Easy Ease. Once again, we set the influence to 80 percent to improve our animation. Now we just need to go to the second three, where the second keyframe of the first layer is located and link the second layer with the first. As simple as that. We don't want the second animation to show during the first half of the loop. To solve it, we simply cut the animation by pulling from here and drag in. We can even make it start a little later, so that it is better integrated. This is perfect. That's it. Another great loop made with minimal efforts.
10. Loop 4: Welcome to this class. Let's go for the fourth and last loop. In this lesson, you will learn how to create animated loops by animating the characters rotation. As in the previous lesson, we will start by duplicating the loop 1 composition from the project panel. Then in your composition code loop 4, will be created. By double-clicking, we enter inside and we duplicate the ping pong compensation from the timeline. We will place the anchor point at the reference points around which we want the layers to rotate. Let's place it here. Next, we move to the second tool on the timeline and create a keyframe in the rotation property of the first layer. Advance to second three and apply a rotation of minus 180 degrees. We're going to deactivate the layer below so we can see what we have done. Next, we select the two keyframes and press "F9" to smooth the movement. Let's take a look. It is okay but it can be better. We're going to improve our animation by applying a little anticipation to it. For these, we go to the first keyframe and advance four or five frames more or less. Rotate slightly in the opposite direction to which the rotation occurs. In this way, we create an anticipation that help us read the animation better and adds more dynamism. Let's preview again. It looks good, but I'm going to reduce the anticipation duration by one frame. Great, we already have it. I'm going to move the second frame a bit. So the second three. Now, locate at the height of the second keyframe in the timeline and lead the second layer to the first. That's it. If we preview, we have created another quick and easy loop.
11. It's your turn: Hi there. If you have come this far, it means that you are able to make funny animated loops. Now, it's your turn. From Projects and Resources, you can download the design you see on the screen. Then applying everything you have learned during the course, I invite you to create a loop similar to It. It is simpler than the one we have done during the course. You have already learned everything you need to do it. If you feel ready, I invite you to pause this video and try the exercise by your own. If you don't see it clearly, don't worry. In the next lesson, I will explain the keys to do it without problems.
12. Solution to the Task: Hi there. In this lesson, I'm making a breakdown of the exercise so that you can do it easily. During the course, you have seen everything you need to do this exercise. Remember, if you have any questions, please post them on the discussions tab. Let's go for it. First, I have separated the character into layers. Here, on the right, you can see each of the layers. For example, the rocking chair and body layer is composed of the chair, the body, and parts of the legs. I have created a new composition with the same settings as the course projects; 1,920 by 1,080 composition at 24 frames, four seconds long. Then I have imported the design into after effects and dragged the imported composition into the main composition. Within after effects, I have placed the anchor points. In the rocking chair layer, the anchor point must be placed on the base for the animation to work well. Next, I have linked the layers following the scheme that you see on the screen. In this exercise, you have to link the arms and legs with a rocking chair, and body layer since it will be in motion. Following the same method seen during the course, I have animated the rotation of the different layers. Next, I have a blight easy ease so the key frames and the expression loopOut pingpong. To make it easier to create the loop, I have made the movements lasts two seconds. In this way, when applying the expression loopOut pingpong, the entire movements lasts four seconds, exactly the same as the duration of the composition. Remember that to save time, you can copy the expression and paste it in the rest of the layers. I recommend to preview the animation often to check that everything works well. As you can see, the process is exactly the same as we did in the loop 1 lesson. We animate the rotation, smooth the animation with easy ease, and apply the expression loopOut pingpong. In the case of the mouth, I have followed the same method, but animating it to scale. This shadow is not animated. The arms, the legs, and the head follow the nature of the rocking chair and body layer. We will move the animation to frames. On the other hand, the head follows the inertia of the head movements. Finally, to create a perfect loop, I have selected all the layers and drag them so that the first key frame applied to the head is at the beginning of the timeline. Of course, in this exercise, I have enlarged all the layers to the end, and that's it. We already have the full animation. To finish, go to the main composition, deselect everything, and create a shape layer with a double-click. Apply the color that you like the most. I'm going to eliminate the white stroke that has been created and move the new shape layer below the sleeping composition. Of course, you can also make different styles of loops following these steps you have seen in the previous lessons. A perfect way to learn is to open the After Effects file with the animation applied and analyze it. Therefore, I have left you a file with all the loops applied for the exercise. I hope you like it.
13. Level Up Your Skills: If you really want to make professional animated extraordinary gifts from scratch, you need to master three skills: script writing, illustration, and of course, animation. From my profile, you can access the animation fundamentals section where you will find fantastic courses to improve these skills. Once you have learned the basics, I recommend you specialize in more specific topics to develop your animation skills. On Skillshare, you will find an extensive collection of amazing courses. Take advantage of it to continue learning and improving day by day. I hope to see you in my other courses at the end of this one.
14. Rendering: Now that we have the projects ready, it's time to export them. Keep in mind that the composition that we currently have opened will be exported. For this, we go to Composition and select Add to Adobe Media Encoder. Media Encoder helps us export projects more efficiently. First, we choose the codec. In this case, we will use H264. It exports the video in MP4, the most used format for the web. Regarding the output resolution, we can choose the match source high or medium bitrate option to avoid mistakes and export it in the same size we have worked on the project. Finally, we choose the location where we will export the video and give the file a name. To finish, click on the play button here. You can also export your animations as a GIF. To do this, go back to After Effects and send the video back to the Media Encoder. We choose the codec Animated GIF and the option Animated GIF, Match Source. Again, we choose the location and give the file a name. We finally click on the play button here. With these, guys, everything will be ready. Once the process has finished, you can open the video and start sharing it on your social networks.
15. Final Thoughts: Congratulations and bravo. You did it. I hope you find this information helpful. You can now create amazing loops for your social media web page, portfolio, or any place you want to show your talents. I'm looking forward to seeing your work. Please, upload them to the course project gallery. If you enjoyed the course, please leave me a review. I will be very grateful. Follow me and be the first to know about new courses and more. See you soon.
Carminys Guzmán, Motion grapher
