Daniel Brodesky walks through the fundamentals for creating animated transitions and flashes in After Effects, using shape layers and their unique attributes. Shape Layers are a bit of a double edged sword in After Effects. They are amazingly powerful, allowing you to add, augment, and affect vectors with tons of controls. That comes with the price of having to sift through all the controls and “unfolding” layer after layer to access properties.

the fundamentals for creating animated transitions and flashes in After Effects

On that note, a while back Vic Garcia shared a great tip for working with the endless attributes that can be Ae shape layers. Vic showed how you can use the After Effects Composition Search field for speeding up your animation workflow by accessing specific shape layer attributes as you work.

Here Daniel breaks down how to use shape layers and their attributes to animate a few simple effects that can be used to pepper your work with animated transitions and flashes. Daniel creates some cartoonish style animated effects that could prove useful giving you the the basics for many creative outcomes.

 

More Resources for Working With After Effects Shape Layers

Mikey Borup walks you through After Effects shape layers, showing you how to create a nice looking meter animation with the post Getting Oriented Using After Effects Shape Layers.

Evan Abrams had a look at After Effects Shape Layer Repeater for radial motion graphics and animation. Understanding the Shape Layer Repeater

Mikey Borup shows how to create an intricate looking animation using Shape Layers in After Effects with secondary animation. Animating Sweeping Circles With Shape Layers in After Effects.

Evan Abrams showed how to get random particle like movement in an After Effects project, while still maintaining control over each of the elements in the group, by using shape layers and expressions. Creating a Controllable Array of Shape Layers in After Effects.

Mikey Borup shows how to create custom geometric transitions using Shape Layers in After Effects which will provide a sort of procedural approach to creating transitions. Creating Geometric Transitions Using Shape Layers.