Lee Daniels shows how you can use Ae native brush tools to create frame by frame animations.

Apps like After Effects get so vast that it’s easy to forget that a particular feature exists. As an example, using the brush engine in After Effects, you can easily create frame by frame animations. Check out this quick tip from Lee Daniels that shows how to get started.

The brush tool is simple enough to use when you want to create a frame by frame animation, but it does have some drawbacks. The brush engine isn’t what one might be used to with Photoshop or any other modern app. Ae won’t let you draw directly in the view, either. Also, every stroke that you create is a sub-layer element under the layer. Still, it’s a speedy and convenient way to knock out a simple stroke-driven animation.