Mt. Mograph gives us a look into the basics of production workflow and the simplicity of animation. Showing how to create a ripping effect that will reveal a soft, gooey center, Matt uses shape layers and keyframes to knock out a neat effect.
We’ll cover the super powerful Turbulent Displace effect, drawing gooey rips with Shape Layers and also a quick and easy way to create minimal characters in Illustrator.Matt – Mt. Mograph
Matt creates a vector head that will be torn apart to reveal another inside. Starting from creating the shapes in Adobe Illustrator, and then bringing those into AE set up the animation, Matt provides some tips for that workflow. The gooey animated center is created using Ae’s shape layers, and the animation is built up using just keyframes. Nothing fancy going on here to get a really great result, just good old fashioned key work.
Matt covers using the Turbulent Displace Effect in After Effects, and he does use a 3rd script to assist in his workflow.
After Effects Move Anchor Point Script
The gooey animated center is created using Ae’s shape layers, and the animation is built up using just keyframes
The Move Anchor Point Script for After Effects (from BatchFrame) aids in setting pivot for all the elements. Move Anchor point will allow you to easily adjust the anchor point of a layer in After Effects, without changing the initial position of the layer. The script allows for predefined positions, and also can move the anchor to a precise custom position. You can learn more about the After Effects Move Anchor Point Script here.
Going Further with After Effects Keyframe Animation
We have had the opportunity to look at some other After Effects tutorials that cover creating animation, simply by using keyframes to achieve some really great results – it’s not always about the expressions and 3rd party tools and automated tricks.
the School of Motion’s Joey Korman shows how to apply squash and stretch in After Effects, one of the main principles of animation: Using Squash and Stretch in After Effects Animation
Mikey Borup shows how to key a character’s walk cycle using the puppet tool in After Effects: Creating Simple Character Animation With the Puppet Tool
and Evan Abrams uses some elbow greased keyframes to create an unfolding animation: Creating Animation With Unfolding Triangles
