Character Animation: Simulating 3D Turns with Adobe After Effects

1. Intro: Hi! My name is Carminys Guzman. [MUSIC] I was born and raised in Dominican Republic, and now I'm living in Portugal. I am the co-founder of Operary, an animation studio, where I work as an animator, illustrator, and scriptwriter. We've been producing top-notch videos for over a decade, And we have the pleasure of working with some incredible companies such as Intel, Deloitte, Bayer, Porsche, and many more. Now, we are exciting to share our knowledge with you. In this course, you will discover how to simulate 3D turns from 2D illustrations with Adobe After Effects, without using any plugins. The best way to impress, and wow your audience. We will start by organizing the designs in Adobe Illustrator so we can work efficiently in After Effects. Then, we will get in touch with the After Effects interface, and we will see the keyboard shortcuts that we will use during the course. I will teach you how to prepare the character to be able to animate it in a simple way. Once this is done, the best part will begin; creating wonderful 360 turns. Finally, we will create the final project, where you will learn to integrate the character with an animated scenario. You will have the option to download all the files that we will use during the course. In this way, you will be able to 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 bring their illustrations to life. This is an intermediate level course. If you have not used After Effects before, I recommend you to take my beginners course, animate your illustrations in record time using Adobe After Effects, first. With patience, a positive attitude and perseverance, you will succeed. Your time is now. Join the course. 2. Project: [MUSIC] Hi there. I'm so glad you decided to take this course. I'd love to get to know you better. So please let me know from where you're joining us and your motivation for learning animation through the discussion board. As your final project, you'll create a fantastic 360-degree character rotation and incorporate it into a scene. Usually, this type of animation is done with 3D software or traditional frame-by-frame animation. In this course, you will learn another method; simpler than 3D animation and without the need to have good illustration skills for frame-by-frame animation. Feel free to use my artwork to practice if you don't have time to create your design from scratch. After each lesson, I'll give you some guidelines Make sure to follow them and practice to get the best results. I'm excited to see your work, so please upload it to the course project gallery. If you have any comments or questions, please post them on the discussion board. I can't wait to see what you come up with. Have fun. [MUSIC] 3. Preparing the Files: [MUSIC] Hello there. In this lesson, we'll take a look at our character design and see how to organize the layers. We've used Adobe Illustrator to design the character. You can download the Illustrator file from the projects in Resources section to apply everything you learned during the course in real-time. In animation, the organization is key. That's why we need to separate all the elements we'll animate into layers before we start animating in After Effects. This will make our work much easier and help us work faster. If you look at the character, you can see that it's a very simple design. The simpler our character is, the easier it will be to animate. That's why the character designs are basic in most animated explainer videos. To better see the organization of the layers we'll go to the Layer Panel and click on ''Layer Panel Options''. In Row Size, we'll enter a value of 50 pixels and click ''OK''. Now it looks much bigger. Great. Let's look at how we have organized the layers. First, we have the eyebrows. We have combined them into one layer, just like the eyes. If we keep going, we come across the mouth and ears. Unlike the eyebrows or eyes, the ears have been separated into two independent layers. Why? Well, because we will be animating them independently. We will deactivate the hair layer for now. We will leave it for the end, as it is the most complex part of the design. If we continue, we can see that we have separated the head, headband, and bun into layers as we need to animate it independently. Similarly, we've separated in that body, arms, and legs. As you can see, it's a very simple setup. Now, let's activate the hair layer. In After Effects, we'll apply a mask so we can only see the parts of the hair inside the head. Since we want to create a full spin, we need the hair to work in all positions front, side, and back. That's why the hair needs to continue on both, the left and the right sides, so it can easily expand in either direction. If we can erase this, you can see it's a very simple shape. We've drawn the hair and when it goes behind the ears, we've made a curve downwards to draw the part behind the head. I will hide the ears for a moment so you can see better. Once the hair is drawn, we need to duplicate the hair on both sides. I don't think it's necessary, but just in case we are going to fill in the empty spaces with a rectangle. Remember that these parts here correspond to the back of the head so we need to make it more or less the same size as the head. We can select the hair layer and drag it over the head to check that it works well. Great. That's perfect. That's it, we have our character ready to start animating in After Effects. [MUSIC] 4. First Steps: [MUSIC] Hi there. Before we start animating the project, let's get in touch with After Effects' interface. We will work with the standard workspace, but you can choose your preferred option. The first step is to create a new composition. We'll go to Composition, New Composition. Open a new 1920 by 1080 composition at 24 frames. Give it three seconds and name it. As the second step, we will import our Adobe Illustrator design. Go to File, select "Import", "File", and 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. Also, I will close the Render Queue tab. Now let's take a quick look at the After Effects' interface. The panel where you see the character is the viewport. This panel will show the results of our designs and animations. At the bottom, we can see the Timeline panel. This panel is where we will spend more time creating our 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 where all the composition we create and all the files we import will appear. At the top, we can find the essential tools. Perfect. Now we will take a look at the must-know keyboard shortcuts for this course. The shortcuts refer to the layers properties and the commonly used tools. 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 will see how to access the main tools with a touch of a key. Press "V" for the selection tool, hold "Space" 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. Head Rotation 1: [MUSIC] Hi there. It's time to start animating the character. First, we'll enter the character's composition. We can see all the layers that make up the character from here. Now, we're going to create several markers on the timeline to define the animations timing. To do this, make sure to place at the beginning of the timeline and create the first marker with the asterisk key. We need to ensure that we don't have any layer selected because if we select a layer, the marker will be applied to the layer. Next, we double-click on the "Marker" to enter its configuration and we write front. This way, we define that our character will be facing forward at the beginning. We advanced 12 frames, equivalent to half a second and with the asterisk key, we create another marker. We access its configuration with a double-click and call it, "Side." From this display, we can see on which frame we are in. We advance another 12 frames to the second one and create another marker named, "Back." Once again, we advance 12 frames, create a new marker and also call it, "Side." To finish, we advance 12 frames again, create the last marker and call it, "Front." Great. We have defined the animation times and can use the markers as guides to avoid making mistakes. In summary, we're going to create a full spin, which will end in the same position it starts, and we'll have a duration of two seconds. Don't worry about the duration of this spin. In future lessons, I will show you how to play with the timing of spins easily. Before configuring the character, we will apply continuously rasterized on all layers. We simply click and drag down on all layers. By applying these, we make sure that our character doesn't pixelate. Additionally, they take matte from layer of fact that we will apply later, needs this option to be active. Great. Now we're going to pre-compose the face elements in a new composition. If we select the eyebrows, eyes, and mouth, while holding down the "Shift" key, we can select multiple layers simultaneously, and with the right-click, we click on "Pre-compose," we name it and press, "Okay." Now it's easier to modify the face elements. Additionally, in future lessons, we'll need to duplicate these elements. Grouping them in a composition will help us work more comfortably. Of course, with a double-click, we can access the face elements. We're going to go back to the main composition and we're going to create a null object to control the movements of the face and hair at the same time. To do this, we go to, layer, new, null object. We select it, press the" Enter" key and call it, "Face controller." Null objects are invisible layers in after effects that can be used for efficient control of the movements of other layers. We place a null object on top of the head and simply link the new pre-composed composition and the hair with the face controller. To do so, drag the pick whip from these layers to the face controller. Now, if we move the face controller all the linked elements will also move. To finish this lesson, we will apply an effect so that we can only see the hair when it's inside the head. To do this, we select the hair layer and go to, effect, channel, set matte from the effect controls in the take matte from layer option, we choose the head layer since we only want to see the hair when it's inside the head. Great. Our character now looks more beautiful. If you can't see the effects controls window, activate it from window. Now, we want to apply the same effect on the face. We select the effect and copy it with "Control C" or "Command C" on Mac to save time. Then we select the face layer and paste it with "Control V" or "Command V" on Mac. Now, if we move to the position of the face controller layer, we have configured the movement of the face. Oops, there is an error, the facial elements should not come out of the head. Do you remember I told you that we had to activate the continuously rasterized option on the layer for the take matte from layer effect to work. When pre-composing the face elements, I forgot to activate this option on the new composition. We will simply activate it and now we can only see the facial elements when they are inside the head. In the next lesson, we will animate the head rotation of our character. Don't miss it. See you there. [MUSIC] 6. Head Rotation 2: [MUSIC] Hello again. In this lesson, we're going to start animating. Let's just start with the most complicated part of the animation; the head rotation. Before we begin we'll turn off the ears, headband, and bun, so they don't get in the way. To animate the head rotation, we only need to create three key frames. We make sure we are at the beginning of the timeline where the first marker is located which corresponds to the front position. We open the position property of the face controller layer, and create a key frame by clicking on the stopwatch. Then we move forward to the central marker named back, and move the position until the back of the hair is centered on the head. Finally, we move forward to define our marker named front, and modify the position until the hair is centered on the character's face again. Notice that we can't see the character's facial elements in the final pose. Don't worry, it's an easy fix. We go to the beginning of the timeline, and select the Face layer and duplicate it with Control D or Command D on Mac then we go to the [inaudible] option, and we move the link from the new duplicated layer. Finally, we move forward to the last marker, and we link the layer with the face controller. Now if we preview, we have the complete rotation. It's that easy. The good thing about this method is that once you understand the dynamics, you can create a 3D rotation in a few minutes. Now is the time to animate the movement of the ears. Again, we only need to create three poses. Let's go. We can now activate the layers that we had deactivated. We select the right ear, open the Position property, and create a key frame by clicking on the stopwatch. We advance to the central marker, and drag the ear to the opposite side. Finally, we advance to the last marker. We select the first key frame, and copy it with Control C or Command C on Mac and with Control V or Command V on Mac, paste it. We do exactly the same with the left ear. Create a key frame at the beginning of the timeline, advance to the central marker, and drag the ear to the opposite side. Finally, advance to the last marker, select the first key frame, and copy it, and then paste it. If we preview, we see that there are still some details that we need to improve. Right now the ears are always in front of the head which should look strange. To solve it we are going to duplicate the ears, but before I continue I just realized that I had misnamed the ears. They are reversed. I'm going to fix it quickly. We just need to select the layer, and press the Enter key to modify the layer's name. Done. Returning to the problem of the ears, we are going to duplicate the ears. We select one ear, duplicate it with Control D or Command D on Mac, and do the same with the other ear. We select the duplicate layers while holding down the Control key, and drag them below the head. To keep everything organized, the layers behind the head will always be the ones identified with the number 2. During the first half of the animation which is until reaching the central marker that defines the back pose, we want the right ear to be above the head. We go to the right ear layer and animate its opacity. We create a key frame at frame 23; one frame before the central marker, then we advance one frame and lower the opacity to zero. During the first 23 frames the ear will be visible, and in frame 24 it will be invisible. To work faster we select the key frames, and copy them with Control C or Command C on Mac. During the second half of the animation, we want the ear to pass behind the head. We go to the Right Ear 2. Again, we place one frame before the central marker, and paste the animation. With the selected key frames, right-click "Key frame Assistant" , "Time-Reverse Key frames". In this way, we create the opposite animation. When the top layer is visible the bottom layer is invisible, and when the top layer becomes invisible the bottom layer becomes visible. If we preview, we can see that the animation works perfectly. We are now going to do the opposite with the left ear. In this case, we want the left ear to be behind the head during the first half of the animation. In other words, we want the left ear layer to be invisible during the first, second. We go to frame 23, and animate its opacity. We lower the opacity to zero, move forward one frame, and raise it to 100%. Just like we did with the other ear, we copy the key frame, go to the layer behind the head, and paste them. Right-click "Key frame Assistant", "Time-Reverse Key frames". Let's take a look. Great. We have it guys. Let's temporarily deactivate the headband and the bun. We now have our head rotation almost finished. If our character didn't have a bun, we will have finished setting up the head rotation. Now, all we have to do is animate the headband and the bun. We're going to activate the layers. The process is similar to what we have done with the ears. We are going to create a key frame in the position of both layers at the beginning of the timeline, then we advance to the second marker that we have called side, and move the elements to the right. We advance to the fourth marker, and move the bun and hairband to the opposite side. Great. Finally, we move to the last marker. Layer by layer, we copy the first key frame and paste it. It is important to do it layer by layer because if we copy and paste key frames from different layers at the same time, the layers will be duplicated. Let's take a look. We almost have it. Now we have to see when they have to be above, and when they have to be below the head. In this case we want them to be above the head in the central part of the animation, that is, from side-to-side, from the second marker to the fourth marker. We're going to start animating the bun layer. We move one frame before the second marker and create a key frame in the opacity. We advance one frame and lower the opacity to 0%. We select the key frames and copy them. We advance to the fourth marker, go back one frame, and paste the key frames. Right-click "Keyframe Assistant", "Time-Reverse Keyframes". To go faster, we can copy the opacity animation, and paste it into the hairband. To do this, we move to the first keyframe we applied to opacity. We select all the key frames and copy them, and then with the hairband selected we paste them. Okay, guys. Now we are going to duplicate the layers. We drag the original layers above the head. Remember the layers numbered with the number 2 should go below to keep everything organized. Now, we just have to select the first two keyframes applied to the opacity of both layers, and with a right-click, apply Time-Reverse Keyframes and then we do the same with the last two keyframes. Let's see how it looks. The bun layer should be above the headband layer. Voila, we have our head animation finished. Right now the animation looks robotic. Don't worry about it. We'll fix it later. If you want to animate the character with long hair, follow exactly the same process that we have done during this lesson. In the next lesson, we will continue with the rotation of the arms. See you there. [MUSIC] 7. Animating the Arms: [MUSIC] Hi guys. Now that we have animated the head, it's time to animate the body of the character. We're going to start with the arms. The process is very similar to what we did to animate the ears. But before we start animating, we are going to place the anchor points on the arms with the help of the Pan Behind Tool. The anchor points will be the axis on which the arm will rotate when animating the rotation. We're going to place them at the junction between the shoulders and the body. Great. Now we're going to animate the position of the arms. We add a keyframe at the beginning of the timeline. We advance to the central marker, and move the arms to the opposite side. Finally, we move to the last marker. We copy the first keyframe and paste it. We do the same with the other arm. Again, we go to the beginning of the timeline and create a keyframe. We advance to the central marker and move the arm to the opposite side. Finally, we go to the last marker and copy and paste the first keyframe. Let's take a look. To make the animation more natural, we need to animate the rotation of the arm as well. We simply animate the rotation in a natural way, so that the arms open a either add the extremes. Finally, we copy the first keyframe and paste it. Of course, we do the same with the other arm as well. [MUSIC] Let's take a look. Perfect. Now we just need to duplicate the arms and decide when they should be above and when below, the same as we did in the previous lesson. We select the arm layers and duplicate them with Control D or Command D or Mac. In this case, we want the arm layers without numbers to be above the body, and the layers with number 2, should remain below. We simply place the layers to achieve this. In this case, for the rotation to be natural, the right arm will be above during the first half of the animation. In the previous lesson, we used opacity to decide when they should be visible, and when they should be hidden. In this case, we will play it with the length of the layers to see different methods of doing the same. As we want the right arm to be above during the first half of the animation, we place at second one and simply drag from the right end of the layer to the central mark of the timeline. We do the same with the layer of the right arm that is below. But in this case we drag from the left side so that the layer becomes active from the central marker. That is so that it is visible when the top layer is invisible. On the other hand, we want the left arm to start behind the body. We go to the top layer and drag from the left side so that it remains invisible at first. Again, we do the opposite with the left arm that is below the body. In this case, we drag from the right size so that it remains active during the first half of the animation. Let's preview. We have it. At first, it may seem a tedious method, but once you learn it, it is a relative quick way to give a third dimension to your characters. In just 20 minutes, you will be able to create incredible animations. In the next lesson, we will see how to animate the legs of the character. See you there. [MUSIC] 8. Animating the Legs: [MUSIC] It's time to animate the legs. In this lesson, we will learn how to animate paths to easily animate the movements of the feet, but first, we need to animate the position of the legs in the same way we did with the arms. We will place the anchor points of the legs with the help of the Pan Behind tool. We will place them at the junction between the legs and the body. We select the right leg, open the position property, and create a keyframe at the beginning of the timeline. Then we advance to the central marker and move the leg to the opposite side. Finally, we move to the last marker and copy and paste the first keyframe. Of course, we do exactly the same process with the left leg. We create a keyframe at the beginning of the timeline, advance to the central marker and move the leg to the opposite side. Finally, we move to the last marker and copy and paste the first keyframe. Let's take a look. Great. Now, just like we did with the arms, we will animate the rotation of the legs. We create a keyframe in the rotation at the first marker, we advance to the central marker, and open the legs a little to give the character a more natural posture. Finally, we advance to the final marker and copy and paste the first marker. Of course, we need to do exactly the same with the other leg. Great. Now we're going to animate the character's feet. To do it quickly and easily, we're going to animate the legs parts. To access the parts, we need to select the layers, right-click, Create, Create shapes from vector layers. By doing this, the shape layers have been created and the original layers are now hiding. We're going to drag them over so they are together. If we select the shape layers and in the timeline search bar, we write path, we can access the paths more quickly. Perfect. Now we just need to animate them. We're going to zoom in a bit to be able to see it better. I'm going to create a guideline to make sure the feet are always in contact with the ground. We're going to deactivate the option toggled transparency grid to be able to see everything better. To animate the paths, we need to have the option shape path visibility activated. We're going to select the path. Now, if we click on one of the control points of the path that make up the foot, the path we need to animate in the timeline will be selected. In this case, path 1 remains selected, so this is the one we need to animate. We place at the beginning of the timeline and create a keyframe. If you don't have much experience animating paths, you can select all paths. This way, you make sure you select the path you want to animate. We advance to the central marker and with the selection tool, we modify the control points of the path to our liking. First, we select the control points of the path and then we modify it. In this case, we are looking for the foot to look towards the opposite side, so we simply change the position of the foot, making sure that the base of the foot always stays in contact with the ground. Finally, we advance to the last marker and copy and paste the first keyframe. Done. Now we will do the same with the other foot. We select one of the paths and then click on one of the control points that belong to the foot. Again, path 1 remains selected, so it is the one we must animate. We will create a keyframe at the beginning of the timeline. We advance to the central marker and modify the path so that the foot looks towards the opposite side. Remember, first, we select the control points of the path and then we modify it. Finally, we advance to the last marker and copy and paste the first keyframe. Let's see how it's turning out. Fantastic. I really like it. We will reduce the zoom of the view part a bit and we will reactivate toggle transparency grid to be able to see it better. Well, it is time to duplicate the legs. As usually, we want the layer that do not have numbers to be above the body and the layers with number 2 should remain below. Similarly with the arms, we want the right leg to remain in front of the body onto the central marker. Therefore, the right leg number 2 will be invisible on [inaudible] the central marker. With the left leg, the opposite occurs. It will be behind [inaudible] the central marker. We will hide it during the first part of the animation and we will activate the left leg number 2 onto the central marker. We will take one last look, almost there. We have to reorganize the layers a bit because the legs and arms are getting in the way. You see the arm is in-between the body and neck, it looks unnatural. To solve this guys, we will simply drag the left arm number 2 below the leg layers. Let's see. We also have to drag the right arm number 2 below the leg layers, that is, both arms must be below. Great. We got it. We have the complete turn of our character. In the next lesson, we will see how to integrate the character into a scene and create a much more fluid and dynamic turn. See you there. 9. Final Project 1: [MUSIC] Hi guys. In this lesson, we'll start creating the animation you see on the screen. First, I want to show you the Adobe Illustrator file. It is a simple design made up of several elements separated into layers. A mouse arrow, a button divided into two layers, and finally, the background. The file has a size of 1920 by 1080 pixels, the same size we are working with in After Effects. Let's go back to our After Effects project. From here, we will go to File, Import, import as Composition-Retain Layer Sizes. With a double-click, we enter the project 1 composition. Before anything else, we will modify the duration of the composition. We will go to Composition, Composition Settings and set a duration of four seconds. We will drag the layers to the end of the composition. We select the first layer, and then while holding down the Shift key, we select the last layer and we drag the layers to the end. Let's start animating the movement of the plants. To do this, first of all, we will place the anchor points of all the plants at their base with the help of the Pan Behind tool. The anchor point will be the axis on which the plants will rotate. Perfect, now, we will animate the plants very quickly with the help of a very simple expression. We open the rotation of the first plant, and while holding down the Alt key, we click on the stopwatch and we write the wiggle expression that you see on the screen. Thanks to the wiggle expression, the plants will move randomly without the need to create any keyframes. With the first value, we define how many times they would move per second, and with the second value, we define the amplitudes of the movements. We have established the frequency at 0.5 and the amplitude at five, but you can play with the values. We select the expression, right-click, Copy Expression Only. Then we select the rest of the plants and paste it, and we preview. When animating the plants, the parts that are outside are cut off. To fix it, we go to the Illustrator file and make sure that all the plants are within the working area, and save. Then we go back to After Effects and preview. I love using this expression to animate the movement of the plant. It's super easy and it looks very good, perfect. Now we're going to animate the mouse arrow. We open the Position property and create a keyframe, and we take the mouse arrow out of the screen. Then we advance one second and place the arrow on top of the button. Once here, we create a keyframe in the scale. We advance three or four frames and reduce the scale to 80 percent. We advance four more frames and copy and paste the first keyframe. Now we're going to animate the interaction of the mouse arrow with the button. To do this, coinciding with a moment when we animate the mouse arrow, we're going to create a keyframe in the position property of the button. We advance four frames and move the button so that it is just above the button 2 layer. Finally, we advance four more frames and copy and paste the first keyframe. Let's preview and see how it works. Perfect, now, all we have to do is improve the movement of the mouse arrow. We select the keyframes, and with F9 key, we apply Easy Ease. By doing this, we apply smoothing to the acceleration and deceleration of the movement so it is more fluid and organic. Next, we right-click on one of the selected keyframes, Keyframe Velocity and set the influence to 60 percent. The greater the influence value, the greater the smoothing of acceleration and deceleration. Let's take a look. Now, it looks much better. Finally, we are going to apply an effect to add more depth to our project. First, we select the plant layers, right-click, preComp, rename it, and press "Okay". With the new composition selected, we go to Effect, Blur & Sharpen, Gaussian Blur. Coinciding with the moment we click, we create a keyframe in blurriness. We advance a few frames and change the value to 20. By doing this, the plant become blurred. We go to the blurriness option and make a right-click on it and select "Reveal in Timeline" to be able to see the keyframes we have applied. Now we select the keyframes and copy them with Control C or Command C on Mac. We go back to the moment we created the first keyframe. Select the mouse arrow layer and paste the animation with Control V or Command V on Mac. We're also going to select the bottom layer and paste the animation again. If we preview, we see that at the beginning, the foreground elements are in-focus and then they become blurred. We're going to select the button to layer and paste the animation on this layer, too. Now we're going to do the same with the background elements. We select the background layer, and with Control V or Command V, we paste the keyframes. We're going to drag the character to the scene. We place it and adjust its scale. Again, we paste the Gaussian blur animation effect on the character as well. With the character layer selected, we right-click on blurriness and select "Reveal in Timeline". Then we select the key, and with right-click, we apply time-reverse keyframes. We do the same process on the background layer. In this way, at the start of the animation, when the foreground elements are in focus, we give priority to these elements. Then when we click with the mouse, we focus on the character and background animation. This is a resource that we like to use in our studio and gives a very professional look to the animations. As you can see, the character disappears from the second tree. This happens because its composition only lasts three seconds. In the next lesson, we will see how to solve this and finish animating everything. See you there. [MUSIC] 10. Final Project 2: [MUSIC] Hi, everyone. Let's continue animating the final project. We will enable the time remapping option. This option will allow us to make the character rotate faster or slower, and we can even smooth out the animation so that the movement is much more fluid. We select the character, right-click, enable time remapping. When we apply it, two keyframes are automatically created. We will move to the last marker and create a keyframe by clicking on this little diamond here. This way we have two keyframes, one on the first marker and the other on the last marker. We can delete the last key key and extend the layer to the end. [MUSIC] We will preview again before doing anything. The magic is that now we can modify the speed at which the animation of the character is played by simply moving the keyframes. For example, we can move the second keyframe to the central marker. Now, if we play it back, we can see that it rotates in half the time. The problem is that the movement is too rigid. [MUSIC] To solve it, we select both keyframes and with F9 key, we apply Easy Ease and we can smooth it out even more. Again, we select the keyframes, right-click Keyframe Velocity and modify the influence value. Just like before, we can leave it at 60% for example. You see now the movement is much more dynamic and attractive. We will move the keyframes to the moment when we click with the mouse. [MUSIC] Now we only need to add a second turn to the characters spin. To do it easily, we move one frame after the last keyframe and copy the keyframes. Then we paste them with Control V or Command V on Mac. If we preview, we can see that the animation makes a stop between spin and spin. That breaks the breathing of the spin. This is because the animation hat is moving applied to the acceleration and deceleration in all keyframes. To solve this, we will remove this moving. To do this, we select the central two key frames and click on one of them by holding down the Control or Command key on Mac. Now, yes, we will have the double spin working perfectly. From here, you can use the characters spins in 1,000 ways. It's an incredible way to make your animations more eye-catching and attractive. The only limit is you. [MUSIC] 11. Looping the Animation: [MUSIC] Hello, again. In this lesson, we will learn how to create a loop of our animation very simply. To put a loop in context, we have created an 8 second simple scene. We drag the character's animation and placed it in the scene. Next, as we already saw in the previous lesson, we select the character, right-click, time, enable time remapping. We create a key frame on the last marker. We select and delete the last key frame, and finally, we drag the layer to the end. So far we are repeating what we have seen in the previous lesson. Perfect. Now we will apply the expression loop out on time and remap. To create the expression, we click on the Stopwatch while keeping the Alt key pressed, and we write a loop out expression you see on the screen. If we preview, we can see our wonderful character spinning endlessly. To improve the look of the spin, we are going to apply an effect with the layer selected, we go to effect, time, posterize time, and we reduce the frame rate to 12. By reducing the frame rate, we get a more cartoon look that I like. See you in the next lesson. [MUSIC] 12. Rendering: [MUSIC] Now that we have our projects ready, we can export them. Keeping mind that the composition that we currently have open will be exported. For these, 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. With these guys, everything will be ready. Once the process has finished, you can open your video and share it with all of us in the course project gallery. I'm so looking forward to seeing your work. [MUSIC] 13. Final Thoughts: [MUSIC] Congratulations on completing the course. I'm so proud of all that you have accomplished and the progress you have made. Your hard work and dedication have paid off, and you are now equipped with the skills to create 360-degree character rotations. As a teacher, it has been a pleasure to guide you on this journey and I am excited for you to apply everything you have learned by creating your animation from scratch. You can use the course files or even better, animate your own designs. Please share your projects in the gallery or tag me in your Instagram posts. I will be very happy to give you feedback and help you improve. Remember practice is the key, and don't be discouraged if you have to repeat the process or make mistakes. The process of learning animation is not easy, but it is incredibly rewarding. I invite you to visit my profile to stay updated on new classes and discover other classes related to the animation world. Your feedback is very important to me, so please take a moment to leave a review of the course and let others know about your experience. I will appreciate it. Thank you for being part of this class and I hope to see you in my other courses soon. Happy learning. [MUSIC]